Today was a wonderful day to get lost in the garden. My soul needs to get lost. The day-to-day pressure of this life wears on me. Dirt under the fingernails is healing.
We discovered the neighbors have a small field of mining bees nesting in the bit of yard just north of our fence. There must be over a hundred little holes in the ground where the bees are laying eggs! Fortunately, this is the one neighbor that is an organic gardener and is interested in preserving native pollinators (especially as this species of bee is stinger-less and very laid-back).
I planted four sword ferns on the north side of the garage, in that little strip of land that is ours but is a set back from the property line. The idea is to fill it in with ferns so neither the neighbor nor us will have to mow the lawn/weeds that grow there. We forget about it, and it isn’t their responsibility. Ferns the size of VW Beetles is the logical answer.
I filled in the part north of our driveway with orange daylilies and daffodils last Autumn. The yucca has been there 20 years (I planted it). There is still a section of about 4×3’ that needs to be filled in, but I’ll get there, eventually.
I fulfilled a promise today, too. I made this promise ten or fifteen years ago: that I would obtain a blackcap raspberry from the wild for a friend in North Portland. My husband brought me two blackcaps last Fall and I was able to gift her one. Her husband picked it up today.
My husband put two filbert saplings into the ground. Our lone filbert produces hollow hazelnuts, Guess you need more than one filbert in order to have meat in the hazelnuts. It only took us 18 or 19 years to figure that out and another few years to find a source of free filbert saplings.
He buried my hardy fuchsia when he planted one of the filberts. In his defense, he did not see anything growing right there: the fuchsia doesn’t begin to put up stems until late May. I saw it right away and carefully scraped all the soil off my precious flower. I’ve had it for 20 years!
Warm weather came on so quickly this year that I have fallen behind in the weeding department, especially with the chickweed. It is already gone to seed. At least this year I am not battling a ton of grass that migrated into flower beds, and even if the chickweed spits seeds everywhere when I pull it, I will still be able to get ahead of it in the coming months. That is, if one ever does defeat chickweed! It pulls up easily even as it spits hundreds of seeds into the air.
I did more, but mostly I just didn’t think. I didn’t think about our losses. I didn’t think about the day-to-day worries. I didn’t worry. I just smelled loam and leaf, apple blossoms. I watched blue orchard mason bees collecting mud from under the stone wall out front. I reveled in the city of mining bees next door. I let earthworms crawl away. I talked to the crow that came to watch me. I stayed in the moment. And that made today a wonderful day to garden.
Dirt under the fingernails. Better than a manicure.
Jaci Dawn 