building a garden (of life)

 lambs ear intermingling with the gifted rose from my son's wedding celebration

My backyard is my world.  Now I am creating newly in my front yard.  The more I embrace this wonderful space around me, the more I can learn from it and be guided and enriched by it.  It provides me with animal life:  the squirrels fat and brown of this town in all seasons, always busy, always aware.  Coming to peek in my living room window at times.  Fearless even with the crows, the cats, the bark of the dogs.  The wonderful lumbering groundhogs -- there is a young one this year, scurrying fast.  The old one, like the squirrels will come up to the back step and peer inside, wondering about the glass separating us.  The raccoons visit, even nest, until I need to ask the animal man to come and capture him and clean out my eaves space -- the smell so strong he cannot breath well -- then needing the screen to prevent future nesting.  The rabbits, usually unseen; my surprise at the baby bunny nesting on the edge of the road, next to my mailbox.  The feral cats that leave their careful tracks in the snow beside the jumping tracks of the rabbit, enjoying the clear hospitality of the space under my parked car, free from the cold wet of the piled up snow from the night before.  The birds, of course, bringing change and joy and song.

echinecea plants from my new daughter transplanted last fall

 poking up through the grass

Now my emerging small garden, providing amazing memories from last year, with some plants intact, others expanding, others with unknown greens (weeds, they say) poking up -- my need is to clear the remaining packets of strong returning grass to make way this year for a new friend -- will it be beans or peas this year?  Slowly slowly adding to this small space.  I moved my carefully tended little trees last year, they seem to be thriving in the new location.  I must anticipate their size and needs because they will create shade in the future that will prevent the possibility of other, especially vegetable, crops.

 

transplanted peonies from my grandmother (lena) & tulips from the backyard

The others in the group talk about travelling long distances - to Yellowstone, to Alaska -- or forty acres of land up north -- or a farm land of grazing cows and goats -- or the massive Matthaei Bontanical Gardens.  But I am lucky with my land and my small homestead and the sun and trees that surround me and the moon that I can follow.  This small space is becoming more and more my teacher.

Transcending hesitation:

Understand my intention with my heart. Build on the clarity of that intention.

Create a plan to proceed.  Lists are good.

Follow that plan.

Seeing clearly, respond to the needs the garden itself presents to me.

wise words from Geri Larkin, Plant Seed, Pull Weed.