This hasn’t been the summer it was supposed to be. It started with a new covenant: plant a kitchen garden, sustain our bodies with its fruits, and build a sustainable life. A new life no longer anchored in corporate America, but built upon the freedom of time that is mine to own.

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It was going to be the summer when I solidified my next career move by launching bwak.news and The Weekly Tinkerer newsletter to build my brand and serve as a funnel for building trust with my future customers.

I had it all planned out; this was going to be my second coming-of-age story.

And then I woke up one morning to find the toilets wouldn’t flush. It was the perfect harbinger for things to come.

So, when your septic system guy says pump your tank again in 2025, he means 2025. Not 2026. Failing to pump your septic system regularly can cause it to back up. And, in case you weren’t aware, all your sewage runs into one location, and when it backs up, it starts to seep out of the drains.

We were a few flushes away from sewage flowing back into our bathroom and having a bigger mess to clean up.

Next up, our upstairs AC finally kicked the bucket and needed replacing. I knew it was going to happen; we had already had to charge it with refrigerant twice in 5 years. But there was no more charging; we couldn’t go into the summer blowing hot air through our vents. Another couple of days lost as we got it replaced.

And as if right on queue, the tarp covering our newish chicken coop ripped off. This hoop-coop was a new design I tried, and now I don’t like it. That took a day to repair before all the rain hit during the spring.

Then we had the big storm roll through, a lot of lightning and even more rain. RadarScope showed 4 different lightning strikes on our property. It was a storm for the ages. We survived the night, but we woke up facing another calamity. The pergola on our back terrace collapsed. No one was hurt, except my plans for the ideal summer.

Collapsed pergola on our terrace after rainstorm

Oh, and I nearly forgot about the shutoff valve in our upstairs bathroom that failed, flooding our main bedroom. Who knew that you should replace those shutoff valves every several years? I do now.

And not to be outdone, Ada wanted in on the action also. We’ve known for a while her eyelashes were thick and growing the wrong way, irritating her eyes. We just failed to understand how serious the problem was. Each eye developed an ulcer, with one of them nearly ready to rupture, ruining her vision permanently. This required immediate surgery. We met with the doctor on a Friday; on Monday she was under the knife.

I could go on with several more surprises that hit us this summer, but you are sensing a theme here, and I won’t bore you with the rest.

The mental fatigue of waking up to a new problem each morning started wearing on me. Getting out of bed to face the day’s crisis was taking longer and longer each morning.

The lack of motivation to get things done compounded into sleepless nights.

Eventually, the kitchen garden, which had started with so much promise, was overgrown, with the fruits of my labor dying on the vines in the searing heat of August.

I needed a reframe, and it just so happened to come from a video^[1] I watched on a recent sleepless night.

Until that video, wabi-sabi was not in my vocabulary. As I watched the video, a sense of calm came over me. The toil of everything unplanned that happened over the summer looked different.

The backed-up septic system was not one step away from catastrophe. It was a lesson to tend to the system that makes the farm work.

The failed AC was not a crisis; it had been building over time, and I got to choose when to fix it.

The failed covering on the chicken coop was not a disaster in the middle of the winter, when the chickens would need protection the most. Instead, I replaced it between rainstorms and reinforced it with a velvet underlayment, which improved it.

The collapsed pergola was a reminder of time’s passage and the impermanence of man-made structures that require our care. The collapse is simply a passage of time, marking a new beginning for our terrace.

The plumbing leak, which required new flooring and ceiling repair, was a reminder that I can take care of our property and meet its needs.

Ada’s eye is distressing, but she is now on the road to recovery, and her kisses remind me that she’s going to be just fine.

And then there is the garden. Despite the record-setting heat and drought we are experiencing in the late summer, this past spring I equipped it with a drip irrigation system, and the lushness of the overgrown garden is a testament to its effectiveness.

Today, I stand on our front porch looking out over the land with different reverence. Until today, I had been failing to see the beauty in the imperfection, impermanence, and incompleteness of our lives and our land.

A lesson that usurps the original covenant I made with myself at the beginning of the summer.

Sources

“6 Simple Wabi-Sabi Habits to Bring Beauty and Peace to Your Life” Produced by Zen to Manabi.

—Kevin

The Toilets Wouldn't Flush