life, the universe, and everything

liliales birthday countdown: 2010

In 2010, I got a plot in the community garden. It is like an allotment, if you are familiar with those, in that you have a (20 ft x 20 ft) space with which you can do pretty much whatever you like, as long as you don't use unnatural pest sprays or fertilizers, etc.. But it's unlike an allotment in that you have it for only six months, then they plow it all under and you have to start completely over the following April. Previous gardeners do have first right of refusal, so you can keep the same plot for years, if you like.

I got to the town hall before anyone else to sign up for the newly freed spots, but didn't know how it all worked, so I didn't go inside until a few others had arrived. Still, I got to choose my spot, and it was a great one. 

People thought the way I planned it out was unusual, though I'm not sure why. And anyway, it was a patch that had been well-worked and well-loved, and everything grew beautifully, even artichoke plants. I have lots of posts on here showing off my progress and harvests. And there are some lovely photos of the wild beauty I managed to create—foster?—here.

The garden was 3 miles away, and I didn't much enjoy the drive to and from it; it was the kind of 3 miles that takes 20 minutes, but it was still grand. 

People on Google+ like to talk about being geeks or nerds. This decade, that's the thing to be. I don't label myself anything except maybe "dilettante." But if you know me from G+ you might get a kick out of my 2010 Holodeck update. (The Men of My Holodeck Fantasies; a thing I've been carrying on about for nearly a decade.)

But this is the post I most want you to read. What I see, what I know is there. It's short. And still meaningful to me. 

life and death and flowers and Frank

Earlier I compiled a list of the 20 Frank Sinatra songs I've been listening to most over the past year. It was one year ago this week that I began driving to the Lawrence Township community garden every day to start my plot, knowing I'd be leaving it after 3 months. I listened to these songs on the way there and back, up that old road in that old town, trying to collect joy in reserve for later. 

A year ago minus a couple days, my friend died. I was enriching soil and planting seeds and mourning her loss at the same time. At some point, I was gardening for her, for me. You know? It made a difference. The year before, my first community garden experience was a huge success. Beautiful and bountiful. There are photos on my flickr pages, linked to here. This time I wasn't going to see it finished, and I knew that going in. But I had to get it going anyway. I worked every morning, listening to music through my headphones, willing it all to come to life before I had to leave it behind. creating beauty through loss. Energy transference.

It did get going, of course, but then late July and August saw astounding record rainfalls there, so I suppose it all ended up underwater. I bet the flowers came out all right. 

Here where I am now, a year later, I have more space, more money, more everything I lacked before. But no ancient road to travel, no friend down the block, no sense of the pulling of the ocean tide. 

I still have Frank.

Nothing But The Best

And I have little lettuces and onions and leeks and tomatoes and peppers and lots and lots of flowers, too. 

You have to honor life, and the passing of it, by really using the energy you're given in the best way you can. Feeding the senses, feeding the soul. 

Let's Face The Music And Dance

 

Irises are like good bourbon

A great bourbon is fragrant, decadent, and wholly joyful to experience. Unless you greedily have much too much. Then you wake up thirsty, head crowded, and really don't want to look at a bourbon bottle for a long, long time. I experienced this once about four years ago, and will never do it again. 

Just because you can have a lot of something doesn't mean you should. That's a basic truth in life that irises (and everything in the mint family) haven't grasped, and neither have many people who grow them. These things were about to launch forward into the front yard because no one had thinned the herd in the past few years, and they just kept propagating like the soil whores they are. 

Normally you wait until fall to do this, but after hacking down the day lilies that died off early because of the tremendous Three Week Heat, I was in the mood for more destruction. 

And it's not like they can actually be killed. There are plenty more where all that came from.

I hauled the remains to the back and shoved it all behind the tree line. Maybe an iris forest will appear there next spring. 

 More on gardening plans to follow. 

a tiny garden project

It's been such a crummy week, I don't even. 

But I got to do this little makeover. 

First, there's no true before picture, but there were two bushes that had grown together, with a twisted little shrub stuck into them, near a pretty butterfly bush. So I spent an afternoon digging up the miserable little shrub, and turning the bush wilderness back into two small bushes again. Then the guy I'm doing this for bought three little salvia plants and asked me to put them in, so then it looked like this:

So then I worked on it some more this week between gigundous bouts of rain, and now it looks like this, only better, because these aren't very good pictures at all.

Next there is a little garden I will be finishing at the back of the house. I cleaned it up last year while his wife Lisa, now deceased, watched and chatted with me. But it still needs some work to look prettier and be easier to maintain in the future.