This Year's Gardens: Chapter 5

What a change a week can bring! We have had cool days, we have had drizzly days, we have had sunny days, we have had just days. 

And the garden has responded.

I have been heading outside to water the gardens in the early morning, usually between 5:30 and 6:00 a.m. This quiet morning practice gives me time to take stock of myself and the day ahead. I listen to the earliest birds, I watch the sky change color, I note the clouds moving overhead, and I try (and often succeed) in staying rooted in the immediate moment. There has been a lot of overload lately on all fronts, so the quiet time has become an important element to my day.

This morning I changed it up a little bit. After finishing watering, I grabbed a couple of garden tools and—wait for it—actually did some weeding. 

April, weeding? Yeah. April, weeding. Check to see if the sky is indeed falling. 

Don't get me wrong. I think weeding is important. I think it should be done regularly. I just rarely (somewhere closer to never) get around to doing it. But something about the early hour, the hush, the quiet of this morning moved me to stay out among the garden, pulling up weeds, tending a little bit more than usual to the dirt and the plants.

And having done it this morning, I may just find myself doing it more regularly. Maybe. Possibly.

So here's where things stand at the end of the first week of June. The Hej garden is doing fine, especially the potatoes. I indeed called my aunt Gail about the potatoes and even sent her a picture of them, to her great delight. The photo arrived yesterday; Gail called me and we both laughed and laughed about the potatoes.

The Hej Garden

The kitchen garden is coming to life: the basil is finally stirring, the tomatoes are putting out blossoms (no tomatoes yet though). The peppers are holding back, demanding warmer weather. The back of that garden is a flower bed: sunflowers, cosmos (which I just broadcast each spring from the seeds gathered at the end of the prior summer), some zinnia and some wildflower seeds that I also just strewed about back a few weeks ago.

The kitchen garden 

And the same from the side

The kitchen garden is also where I have a small stand of milkweed; the blossoms are just starting to change towards their opening shades.

Milkweed blossoms forming

June has just started; we will see what it holds. I saw the first firefly two nights ago, we are starting to eat green onions from the red sets I picked up on markdown back several weeks ago. 

There is more to come in this year's gardens, from tomatoes to peaceful morning meditations. 

May I be open to it all.