I’m sitting in an empty apartment, my belongings on a truck going who knows where. My new casita won’t be ready for a week or two, so my stuff will sit somewhere in limbo, maybe in Phoenix, maybe in Albuquerque.

I’m sitting in limbo, too, temporarily tethered to Phoenix. I find myself filled with emotions as I wait for the wee hours of the morning to start my drive east.

I dislike driving at night. I know lots of people prefer to travel at night, when the roads are less crowded. But for me the darkness signals increased dangers and decreased views. I like to see when I drive. I want to see the mountains and the birds and dusty houses along the desert highways.

In the hours before the sun rises, though, the darkness begins to lift and that’s my favorite time to drive. Get a couple of hours under my belt and then when the sun peeks over the horizon, I’m rejuvenated for the rest of the drive.

That’s my plan. But first I need to face these emotions. It felt natural to me, familiar, to write about them, as writing is my therapy, my best tool for disarming the negative emotions.

I’ll start with sadness. For sure, I’m sad. The sadness is amplified by the empty apartment I’m sitting in. Arizona has been good to me. I’ve met lovely people. I’ve been here nine years.

There’s doubt. Is doubt an emotion? I guess doubt would be a reflection of the fear of not knowing if I’m making the right decision or not. That same fear sparks anxiety and worry, too. Disappointment is in there as well.

There’s a part of me that’s grieving. For the life that could’ve been, but wasn’t. The life that was good, but not great. The life that carried a footnote that wondered if I tried hard enough.

But I did try. I came to Phoenix to improve my life and I did that. I learned, I grew, I experienced, I loved. In the end, Arizona is just not the right place for me. I never quite jelled with it. Sure, I like Arizona, and it’s really beautiful. But it never captured my heart the way I expected it to.

I’ve come to believe that’s because my heart never stopped loving New Mexico. Even now when I think about it, I get a little tug on the heartstrings. That’s when I know I’m moving in the right direction.

So to New Mexico I go, sometime in the early morning hours.

What awaits me? Mom, for one. My cousin Jenny, too. Hopefully lots of friendships that I can pick up where we left off. A killer job. A cute little casita. And endless possibilities.

I know what you’re wondering. You’re plant people – you’re wondering what I’m going to do with the mirliton, aren’t you? Billy, I’m looking at you! Lol! That’s the content you showed up for, not a dive into my feelings, haha!

So the short answer is, I’m bringing it with me. The bigger issue of will it survive we’re going to put to the side for now because of course I have no idea if it will or not.

Right now, it’s sitting in my car. Along with the tomatoes and the garlic. Yes, my car smells great right now!

Lemme walk you through my thought process. First, let me preface this by saying that the idea of moving back to New Mexico is less than a month old, so when I planted my vegetable garden, the thought of moving away wasn’t even a blip on the radar.

So here’s how the garden looked yesterday:

Healthy plants. Garlic, two cherry tomato plants and the mirliton (chayote squash) on the right.

You can see the mirliton growing outward not up toward the trellis.

I normally would see that and move the vine back to the trellis so it could grow up. But I knew that tomato cage wasn’t coming with me because it wouldn’t fit in my Toyota Camry.

I knew in advance I was going to have to cut these cute little telephone cords!!!

So hard to do! But necessary!

Now you may ask why on earth would I take tomatoes with me when I could just buy more when I get to Albuquerque? This is why:

And because no plants left behind!

Now the garlic was troubling because I planted it back in October but it won’t be ready until after Memorial Day. I called my good friend Judie to ask if she’d ever transplanted garlic before. Of course she hadn’t – no one in their right minds rips garlic out early. I asked her if she thought it would work and she said, “They’re not going to like it,” which is one thousand percent true but not necessarily a deal breaker for me. None of the plants will enjoy this move.

In the spirit of “try it and see,” I decided to try moving all of them with me. (Actually with me, as movers won’t take them across state lines plus I don’t want them on a truck.)

I tried both of these big pots in the back seat to make sure they’d fit (they do).

The tomatoes are already too tall for planting in a container that big and still fitting in the car, so the plan with them is to place them in the bottom of the pot for the drive, then plant them when I get to Mom’s.

The mirliton will likely live in a container for a long time (the new casita has a patio but I don’t think any beds), so I decided to go ahead and plant it. Since it’s a short plant, it’ll fit in the car easily.

Look at all those healthy roots! And the husk from the original squash!

I’m so proud of how much that mirliton has grown!

Here are all the plants, immediately after pulling them out:

So far so good!

You can see how I simply put the tomatoes and garlic inside that container without planting them. Now there is a little soil at the bottom to help keep the roots moist on the drive but they’re not planted in that red container.

Later on in the day, the mirliton had taken a turn for the worse:

Womp, womp! Sad, but hardly surprising. I just ripped it out of the only home its ever known.

This morning, signs of life!

Woohoo!

I loaded all the plants in the back seat of the car this morning, thinking we’d be on our way. When the movers took the whole day, I kept hoping they would be ok. I left them in place and will hope for the best.

So that’s the end of my story for now. I’m still sitting in an empty apartment, in limbo, but my mood has improved greatly thinking about what New Mexico has in store for me.

I’ll miss this pretty little apartment though.