Sparkling Lotus Ink

sunshine after rain

Am 63 years old now.  It rained a great deal on my Tuesday birthday as it often does.  The ground was in need of massive soaking and it's our combined gift to have it so.  Hope you enjoyed some glimpses of my exuberant (and lengthy) morning inspection tour.  It began around 7:30 and everything looked sensational.  Despite the amount of wind and rather violent rain there were no casualties beyond a few stalks of the Great Fleece Flower.    And a daunting amount of windblown debris.  We had roughly 3 inches of rain.

(we also on/for my birthday had our first take out pizza since before the winter holidays.  T eats takeout roughly half the time from a small constellation of trusted places but this was a major adventure into former normalcy for the two oldsters.  We liked it but I wouldn't want to get back in the habit.  This is the kind of thing that only truly made sense when J had to drive past the places in order to get home.)

It's an ongoing practice for me to take the first couple of days in July as extra time to rest and reflect.   A revolution around the sun has finished and another is beginning.  I like to be still and undistracted enough to soak up that liminality here in the green hearted season.  More generally I also like to consider the dreamy restful needs of the newly born.  What if our birthdays offer us a chance to unfold anew - just as an infant does.  Feeling and breathing air with increased understanding and acceptance.  Coming to understand form and light.  wind and water on the skin. 

I thought about that a lot this year.  And as the rain poured down and I made a point to think about myself and the past year rather than fictional characters I also thought about how hard it was raining the night T was born and how I hadn't a clue of that until he was taken away, with J, for his second apgar test.  And the two midwives said to me enjoy these moments alone.  You won't see anything like them for a long time.  And they laughed amidst shared looks as women do.

***

In tonight's early evening I broke a pair of reading glasses.  Third pair in a week.  A single pair remaining.  Jim suggested a CVS run to re-stock.  Why not?  We'll jump in the truck right now.  Both of us suddenly ready  - both at the same time -  to go out and do this thing.  We went to the one with the self-serve checkout that never has more than two or three other people in it.  Ever.   

We had masks, gloves and a list.  In both directions we enjoyed beautiful rides through the woods and fields right on the cusp of twilight.   Once in the town with the CVS we made note of people socially distancing in line at the barbecue place.  Across the road a group of 7 squeezed maskless around a picnic table all seeming to talk and laugh at once.    People have been going around to places of service work to decorate with handmade banners of appreciation.  Knew that was a thing but it was nice to see it locally with my own eyes.  We came home on a different road that was quite leafy and wild.  Then we took a slight but compelling detour before coming home. 

A road at the edge of a secondary hill on the next ridge over from our own.   We looked at a place there.  One year on J's birthday we stopped, spur of the moment, to pick raspberries at a farm a bit further along the road that's since become a lot more high profile and considerably spiffed up around the edges.   We gawked like people taking in Manhattan for the first time.

in beauty its beginning is finished

Ended my last post with a certain wish for finishing our garden gate once knowing J would top it with a stabilizing crossbar because the frame is so heavy.  I'd hoped to hang the wind chimes above in the resulting space but alas the piece is too long to fit.  J hopes 'at some point in time' to find stained glass we could insert in the space.  When he mentioned that I brought up an idea I'd had to somehow mount/insert a big dish I recently found by the side of the road.  He saw it clearly but the space isn't quite tall enough.

The place where I hung the wind chimes is well suited for the lines and look of the piece.  A female catbird watched everything - including my journey towards this spot.  She clocked me (I saw her flutter to a closer branch for a commensurately closer look) as soon as I stepped out the door.  Later - after it was hung and had grown silent she flew to sit on a maple branch near the western edge of the garden -  She sang and sang interspersed with her more percussive repertoire of noises. 

Yesterday in between rain showers we hung the gate.  This morning I once again leaned into horse wire while Jim affixed wire to wood.  He used hardware from a gate (and entire section of fence) that fell down years ago after one of the hurricanes.  I'd forgotten about this episode as well as the gate's saved hardware.  Think this is fine for its purpose  Anything that can get through the gap can also get through the fence's wire grid as well.  Have concluded I'm going to cave to popular advice and use the dish as a low bird bath.  I know a great spot that's well-aligned with the flight paths of small warblers and other woodland birds. 

*****

Last night I took an unplanned three hour nap on the couch.  Once awake I spent some high quality wandering around the downstairs time.  Doing little boring-to-me things I notice on the fly but never actually fix/change/re-organize.  There's something about mild disorientation and a re-setting of circadian rhythms that I find a pleasant match for a whole host of tiny ideas I have and then conclude I don't have the patience or sufficient devotion to detail to implement them.

with-in my wandering I shook out a curtain in a way that made a beautiful Tibetan bell ring.  Where it has always hung - the spot for which I bought it - frames it awesomely as a thing to see with your eyes.  But it hardly ever rings.   Have never felt this bell was meant to be mere set-dressing so I took it down and let it swing gently in my hand.  Realized if we put it in the field hanging from the gate's cross-beam it would ring any time the gate opened or closed as well as when the wind moves it.

Yes.  Okay. 

The hammered pattern on the peace symbol is a flowering vine.   J's eyes lit up when I first rang it this morning and suggested this bell was a great solution until the stained glass shows up.  We hung it this morning and then I lingered to plant-out leeks and hill-up the shallots and take general stock of what's needed most in the week ahead.  Have concluded the volunteer squash plants are actually pumpkin vines.  Figured I would scythe the plentitude of kentucky mint and let the vines forge their own path beyond the one I'm making to access other key plantings and gradually give them more room to breathe free of goldenrod, mugwort and other leafy opportunists.

Yesterday I tied up tomato plants and pinched-out suckers for most of an hour once the gate was in place.  I didn't have the foot stool I use in deference to a cranky leg.  The opposite knee became super duper cranky as the result of squatting for an hour straight. I've thus appropriated an unused knee brace from J's collection.  It's far too snug for him but on me it's comfortable while also providing support.  So I definitely made it a point to bring the stool today. 

A bit later we went out just as the rain began for a bit of point and shovel transplanting in the strip gardens.  At the moment there's still a hole waiting for me to pop in an African foxglove.  Planted three and have four or five left to get situated. These plants are just coming into their first budding.  Am hoping I can get them all in the ground this afternoon.   Also put in a Van Houttei sage and a newer low growing anise hyssop variety.  [eta: just verified my info and see that it grows to 3 feet.  I thought it was 12 inches which I found completely enchanting.  will now have to transplant somewhere appropriate where it won't cross-pollinate with the other varieties.  sigh.]

My next big garden push involves working-in the rest of the horse compost so I can plant beans.  Also going to plant-out a lot of my tulsi crop since we got a late enough start to leave empty space in the new growing track.  That soil will also need pitchfork revival and some amendments.   Starting kale, broccoli another round of traditional culinary basil varieties and more leeks on the deck.  My gardening brain trust is evenly split on whether or not it's too late to start finocchio so I'm going for it.  The first bunch, which had begun to set plump bulbs, were ransacked by skunks.

While I was composing this post J made himself available to dig a few transplanting holes as agreed upon earlier in the day.   We didn't get all that far before the rain changed from pleasant to punishing but every empty transplant pot is its own form of accomplishment.  Working on filling in the strip gardens because it's close to get back inside if lightning suddenly erupts.  Haven't heard any thunder for about half an hour.   And this is perfect transplanting weather!  Will have to let my knee decide how much more I get done on this particular day ...

let's wander like cats

images are mixed mid-week to present from the sunny/rainless time that's just now probably almost definitely getting ready to end.

this red sage is a new trademarked variety that's supposedly hardy through zone five.  We're now classified as 6b.  When we arrived we were 5a.  The shift is a lot more fun for a gardener born and raised in zone 7.  Entirely grim in context and collective root of the climate change crisis.

Am planning on re-potting or planting it this weekend. Most likely potting until this flush of blooms fade and then planting to encourage a second flowering in mid-autumn.   Meanwhile for this flowering welcoming it to the back deck where generations of the same hummingbird clan have been nectaring in my vacillating container gardens. 

We got the last side of the fence in place mid-week while it was still brutally hot in the early evening.   Was consequently running on half-power and a very sore body for two days.  Today is day three and so far I'm pacing my activities super mindfully.  Am still a bit uncomfortable physically from the effort of getting this sucker in place.  J had said repeatedly it was going to be a beast and I finally asked him to stop but now I comprehend a lot more of why he had to psyche himself up in that particular way.  The middle section went up seamlessly in just under a half an hour like we did it for a living year after year.  He'd been bang on to Eeyore over the final stretch early and frequently, though ...

Today the gate will be attached impending rain storms permitting.   Tomorrow for sure if they last longer than expected or arrive later than radar predictions.  This final part of our garden fence building project is going to be epic.  Especially from J's intuitive building skilz POV and also because it means he'll turn his outside world attention towards opening the pool and having that be ready for his morning and afternoon work breaks.  It's epic for me because I've been in the garden a lot most evenings due to ongoing watering needs.  I've come to know the feeling tone of its enclosed iteration without the full impact.  Is downright magical rather than claustrophobic as I'd feared. 

The physical gate itself has been a morphing testament to J's inner vision from the jump.  He saw what he intended to construct in his eye's mind and then worked with what we have to hand amplified by what he knew to be available at the local lumber yard. He's been there a lot since This began.  And has consistently felt comfortable entering and walking/driving through.  People wear masks even if some have a lot to say about it.   Quality of pressure treated lumber is going down due to presumed rushing of process to meet increased demand.  And EVERYbody's got something to say about that including me.

  the Yard has always been a center of considerable local activity but now it's also enabled former procrastinators - especially from the tech-centric class, like J, who worked long hours and then commuted a couple more per day -  to become rarin' to go lunch hour warriors.

I love seeing this and thinking of the larger collective quality of life shift it's creating - in various ripple effects - for those who've decided to respond to our shared life shifts in this particular way.  Just a few months before the pandemic locked us down here in MA it must be said that I felt partially adrift within a life/style that was equally locked in and at the same time entirely removed from who I planned to become when we moved here - who we knew ourselves to already be. 

I don't at all like the manner & context prompting either one of us to get ourselves and each other shock-waved into a form of action that's been too-long pushed into the realm of a future tense left unimagined at a practical/planning level.  But the enlarging - and fencing - of the garden has put us in a much different (far more balanced and rewarding) relationship with ourselves, each other, and our authentic capabilities to live a life much closer to our dreamy plans and the Place. 

     [spontaneously got up from completing this post when the rain began with a gentle patter.  Potted the red sage as planned and placed her in a position of prominence in the deck container garden. Finished potting up the overplanted calendulas I rescued from the field a few weeks back and began to situate in their permanent homes yesterday.   Put in the three straggler tomatoes that were becoming very straggly indeed.  Potted up six Sweet Thai Basils.  Working in the rain was amazing - first at my poolside potting table and then out in the field.  It took me through memories of every adult gardens' history and much relating to my teens and childhood garden bases.  Also girl scout camp.]

I dare to hope against hope for a certain clearly envisioned grace note following the gate's successful installment.  bulletins as and when.

harbingers of summer's abundance & beauty

I love cobalt blue.  biennial Italian Alkanet blooms are the very essence of that color and so I fell in love with them at first sight 30 years ago.  For the past few years I've failed to get them through their first summer let alone the winter hibernation they need before blooming in glorious brilliance during the solstice season of their second year.  Last year I got just three very scrawny plants that far.  Only two returned. 

The larger and far more robust of the two - pictured above - is roaring strong if small in diameter.  It produced five flower stalks.  This is what greeted me Sunday morning - a mad proliferation of joyously grateful flowers freshly popped in happiness.  I feel certain it was in part a response to the previous day when I was called to create a fresh iteration of this flower essence for the Sparkling Lotus repertory.  At first I balked as I thought the temps of the rising sun would be too hot for the flowers.  But in the end their calling prevailed and I had a palpable sense of appreciation from the plants on the following morning.  Have been walking a bit above ground ever since.  [and don't worry.  I've since staked and tied the branch properly.]

The plant's electrical flower medicine signature focuses most strongly in the fourth and fifth chakra range.  The key word in that sentence would be focus.  Of both visual and in-sight-full natures. One of the key components of the SL classic synergy Red R[evolution].  A bit later I was also called to prepare a re-boot of the amazing Lady's Mantle/Cathedral Quartz blend that's attuned to this time rather than the pre-Katrina summer 2005.  And then the next day -

I was called by chickweed and the self seeded dark plum columbines - both volunteers at the edges of the tiny strip gardens lining a short brick walkway from the driveway to the mudroom porch.

One of the upsides of having little to no rain for the last few weeks:  the number of red clover micro-harvests I've been able to make.  Every day I make the rounds - harvest roughly a fifth of the freshest blossoms available on any given day.  This is what I've determined to be my fair share  - taking into account what I know we need year-to-year and then a bit extra to share.  And then, when it's a good harvest year, also reserving yet a bit of extra-extra for experimentation and unforeseen happenstance.  By the week's end all my available small-scale drying baskets were filled.  I had to resort to pinch-hitting with my great-grandfather's painted (it's a clump of daisies) china platter. 

Using it for practical medicine making purposes, especially during the solstice weekend, gives everything a ceremonial flair.  I would have held it in my open palms, like ladies on ancient urns and vases, but I'm an extraordinarily clumsy person.  and I don't want to break this platter or any part of my body during a reflexive but ultimately ill-advised effort to save it.

So far I've put up a quart plus an additional pint and a half.   This is plenty for our family's needs including the all important (to me anyway) smidge of extra.  Additional harvesting (which is only going to last another week or so - presuming we get the thunderstorms predicted for tomorrow as 85% likely.) will be set aside for tea blends intended as gifts.  Gonna be optimistic and say people will [all/hopefully most] be willing and able to receive such wellness tokens.

Shortly before the Solstice sunset I smelled the unmistakable scent of a freshly bloomed gardenia flower.  The potted bush who has been a stalwart companion for 14 years had put out a single flower from a small branch I'd planned to remove once the rest of the bush was through blooming.

this is something for you to have.

There were a few leaves, and I'd apologized to them, but there was NO bud on that tiny branch when I announced my intent to prune it away.  Had there been, obviously, I would have made no such announcement.  It seemed the bush wished me to have one of its flowers as part of the pruning process.  I took the antique perfume bottle vase to my nightstand and the flower's perfumed my sleeping dreams since.

*****

Also of note - J will be starting a new job next Monday.  The past two weeks or so leading up to that announcement have been fairly intense.  But now I can see the way it's shaking down as rather perfect timing wise.  We just got the garden fence task completed yesterday and this afternoon he's constructing the gate.  He'll spend the rest of the working week getting acquainted with new hardware, work protocols, etc. 

  Meanwhile I went out & about this morning on day two of MA being further opened.  Had a personal errand to run and thought I might add a stop at the liquor store between here and there.  Am concerned I don't have enough for the flower essence repertory's needs.  At the beginning of the season I bought two 12 jar cases of half pint bottles.  Figuring that was more than enough for an optimistic projection of what I'd need for mother stock storage.

I have just 6 remaining and it's only the third week of June.

also of note that's HUGE from a gardening perspective:  Yesterday J got a four-way splitter for the back spigot.    Prior to this I've been hauling water here there and everywhere not reachable by hoses attached to the Y-splitter.  In plastic gallon jugs, two at a time. This got the job done at a bare-minimum level.  I felt zen af and also as pure-living as I seem likely to get but the seemingly endless process of it also hurt my body tremendously.  J says he's been watching in disbelief "the way you hustle out there."

The faucet by the side of my garage bay is unusable for now and so the back spigot ultimately irrigates the field and evolving sanctuary.  Prior to last night I'd need to wrest the hose across the driveway to clean and freshen the bird bath plus water the strips by the mudroom porch.  BUT.  yesterday J also got a separate hose for the deck and not-quite-a-patio container garden.  This year it has an additional extremely inelegant but equally true to my south jersey girl roots annexation of lawn space.

Here's yesterday's tiny strip gardens by the porch from a doorway view

This morning's errand went smoothly and I did not encounter anything disturbing, ill-advised or downright bone-headed along my way.   Had planned to make a second stop at the liquor store since I might need more brandy for preparing individual usage stock bottle strength for distribution.  But there weren't any cars in the parking lot or lights on in the store.  Automatically assumed there'd been somebody there with covid but who knows.

news and the deteriorating homunculus not yet taken away and tended to and so much unrest unleashed with careless disregard  -- rising numbers on infection in a whole new group of specific places where I know and love people.  I have not grieved with any true conviction for the first group.  Working very slowly on articulating the shock factor of unplanned release.  Very different plans being made in the Italian cases.

Yesterday J played me a beautiful song he wrote in response to the death of a friend's mother.  Today I asked if he'd made a file I could listen to because it's so moving to me in a way that's ultimately uplifting and hopeful.  We listened to it and I gave it my breakdown of highlights/glowing review and then he told me of the influence.  Don't know what he has planned for words.  But the melody line is lovely.

[just looked in on the gate making project.  J was in the process of getting the braces fixed into position.  No way can we carry it out to the field together.  It'll have to go in the back of his truck.  There's been so much intentional gardening and harvesting this year.  It's equally magnificent and boggling to parse.]

happy solstice!

~May you travel peacefully yet with a renewed sense of personal capabilities for tremendous growth and fruition during these days of the long sun~

it was a good day outside

The area to the mid-right in your viewing orientation hints at a pivotal area J cleared for me yesterday afternoon.  I'm both happy and grateful plus a little bit in shock but in a very good way.  Over the winter I hoped to get this far but one never knows how that will go beyond inner visions or lack thereof.  Now I'll have the necessary space for planting most of what I was picturing when making my seed order choices.   This doesn't always pan out (understatement) but when it does the achievement can lend a festive celebratory air to mundane and repetitive tasks that must be done as thoroughly and mindfully as possible.

It was very good medicine to be out there mingling with all the rest of everything while also asserting myself as a gardener I didn't know how to be until I had a deepened sense of the space.  And equally deepened understanding of what was already there.  This season the very name evolving sanctuary has taken on greater meaning and ongoing relevance.  Despite/because of how crazy busy this next chunk of time will be in the task upon task sense I've been making a point to actively spend time just-being within the garden's sensory and energetic embrace.  quietly sitting on the ground near an especially favorite plant just as I have since early childhood. 

Today I realized there's space for a camp chair there in the garden-within-a-garden.  A small overgrown patch of grass that I just started cutting as a place to walk amongst the developing plantings.  Am beyond grateful our various garden-related projects are coming together in their own unorthodox fashion. That pleasant/encouraging happenstance is keeping me in touch with how much a garden gives, constantly, by way of solace and deep-space dreaming.  Re-membering the core of soul's self.  Maybe it's collective - that core - in radiant light as well as underbelly darkness?

While J's finger has healed I've been experiencing a stretch of time in which my muscles ached and burned so much I didn't do much gardening beyond dreams and a loosely woven series of plan b, c, and d planting options if J couldn't spare the time to do what he did.

From a different angle you can see how this piece of clearing work was a final link of sorts.  The imaginary sight line angles I've had trouble explaining with words are now able to explain themselves because they're beginning a rudimentary form of actualization.  The garden feels loved again.  In the way a gardener does love their spaces of work, worship, and well-ness. 

Am going to plant a [modest] mass of the white African foxgloves I started in my basement greenhouse.   They reach 5 -6 feet in height and i think they'll be a nice eye-resting foil for whatever  combo of Sunflowers I'm able to successfully sow.  So far my efforts have been thoroughly ransacked.  Glad I didn't get my heart set on making the sunflower house happen.  Fingers crossed.  Should have started some seedlings under lights in the basement a few weeks ago.  Next year perhaps I will.  Ditto zinnias.

Yet another angle of the newly cleared space.  Will weed-out the goldenrod, chocolate mint, etc. from in front of the Siberian Iris.   As you can see I added some additional top soil.  That's all I had juice for because I needed to keep as much reserve energy as possible for Fence Day today.   Tomorrow I'll add the lobster compost conditioner and twist-mix everything together with my pitchfork.  Dig the additions in deeper and see if I need to add any more top soil.

  *****

It was a good day to manifest the critical foundation level of a goal I knew I wasn't physically strong enough to achieve on my own.   Today J is sore from various forms of hustling yesterday.  So a slow start to the day's activities is giving me a chance to catch up on laundry as well as getting this entry posted.  

Behind the two milkweeds in the center of the above image you can see another freshly mulched spot where J dug-out the largest clump of assorted opportunist plants that's been clogging the evolutionary corridor.  Asked him to do that first in case he decided the larger section would take too much time away from fence prepping in the field.  But he was up for doing as much as possible on such a picture perfect day.  Hence the stiffness and current napping on the couch.

There are a few smaller clumps at the other (front) end of the bed that I can handle on my own.  Lots of additional wild strawberry runners and some baby yellow docks that are still young enough to get the roots out intact when you pull them just-so.  Will inter-plant what's there with lemon bergamot and hopefully sunflowers occasionally punctuating everything else. 

buzzkill alert: chagrined to see cucumber beetles copulating like mad on the datura leaves.   Let's hope the neem will help.

constancy: how things have looked

evolving sanctuary/roughly 7 a.m. yesterday.  Everything is growing quite quickly.

I love this young poplar tree - encouraged and sworn protection by me upon arrival following closing - despite its inappropriate location from a homeowner's point of view.  I have lifelong associations with the poplar medicine spirit but this past decade is the first time I've lived with one.

am grateful the landscape remains vibrant and lush.  We've been short on rain of late but today's changing that in a deeply appreciated way.  On any given day since my last post I've been 'slow' gardening and micro-harvesting healing & restorative herbs.  Day to day my activity level (and general internalized reaction/response narrative) unfolds in slow increments.  Between one thing and another I'm glad it's happening at all.  Extremely grateful as well.  To have such a strong and actively healing counter-balance to so much else that's beyond difficult to parse let alone consistently integrate.

(usually the smiling elemental has a far more public location.  think the switch up is its own meditation on fostering quiet and purely personal forms of sustainable joy and happiness.)

  for daily restoration and psychic nourishment I've been infusing fresh picked red clover and tulsi with one of the remaining dried anise hyssop flowers from last year's harvest. Still being at least two thirds wordless given the way our demented destiny continues to unravel - I cannot adequately describe how much this specific combination is helping me stay both focused and ever so gently de-toxified.  The combined phytochemistry is glorious:  Red clover cleanses the blood which in turn nourishes the liver. All of which brightens the skin and lowers inflammation.  Tulsi soothes and sharpens the mind in equal measure.  Plus it's a solidly effective - yet very gentle - digestive tonic.  Tulsi's phytochemistry lends strong support for elevating the tone and scope of individual consciousness. Anise hyssop comforts the central nervous system and very gently restores it to balance.  Also helps with anxiety and re-settling into gentle rest after waking from a nightmare.

 the beautiful volunteer foxglove is a goddess of immense presence and beauty.

(morning inspection tours remain a highlight for all involved.)

was both charmed and delighted to spy a flower head developing on the most prominent part of the sequestered echinacea.  I love that something's happening here that I can't begin to understand but do comprehend it's deeply known between these two species.

Peering into the co-creative matrix I see the two fully supporting each other's life flow. 

(and sometimes I feel a strong connection between the foxglove's energetic imprint and my grandmother Pearl)

a newly developing full-sun area.  love how it includes plant stock from my former garden (red bee balm, one of two remaining A. archangelica descendants), volunteers from the original plantings (lamb's ears and blue centaurea).  I've also planted joe pye weed, blue vervain and a very showy violet flowered centaurea. One of the three thymes.  Plus a datura I meant to plant close to our bedroom window.  But horrid flying insects heretofore unknown to me made it clear my intended effect would come to disappointment.

Added neem oil to our health food store order this week in case the succubi return. and because there are bound to be other insect battalions in need of discouragement as summer arrives. 

tackling the fence - part 1

Yesterday afternoon J and I got the first piece of our garden fence erected.   He'd suggested this after I announced this past weekend as an ideal time to get our tomato plants in the ground.  I had not suggested it because there are all kinds of other ways I'm obliged to tweak his sense of doing things as he feels things ought to be done just so we can get them done.   And so there we were.  Figuring it out based on J's formulated ideas morphing into a few degrees of winging it.

Don't have to say, as I often do, that I took direction well.  It was more a morphing physical and mental process of my own.  The fence was like doing yoga in tandem with an energetically and physically oppositional Force.  Intuitively I understood a form of movement practice I've never experienced.  Just knew how to be with it - moving only as need be and focused in an almost binocular way on Jim's task of tacking the fence gauge to the wooden posts.  He also created half of something I call a temporary gate-fold right where the fence gate will be.

Through all of this I literally shouldered the fencing's weight in the place he'd asked me to stand.  This took me places I've never been/seen/imagined before.  Just in terms of learning what my body's capable of at an intuitive level right there in the moment.  If I hadn't focused on that specific slant I might have spent most or even all of the time making a silent mantra out of i can't do this.  Having accomplished most of the best so far all the while telling myself I couldn't accomplish diddly - well.  I thought with everything else that's changing and re-arranging itself in these times I'd upgrade and discard as many I can't programs as possible.

Shallots are up enough that they must have a bit of topsoil hilling provided by day's end.   Also watering.  At the moment that's kind of faraway on a list of things for doing far later in the day.  Am still sore and slow from yesterday's work.  J cut himself prepping vegetables last night so we'll leave the construction project off-burner for a few days while the cut heals. Can definitely get the tomatoes planted a bit at a time over the next few days.  But just for today I have a single - albeit three-fold - gardening goal in mind:

In keeping with this season's theme of sacred pairings - I'll be planting a pair of blue vervain plants in three locations.  It wouldn't be right to let it go at that  because -

This is the arrangement the plant's medicine spirit sought before the physical plants had even arrived.  My brain couldn't make the jump so it stuck.  I'd get to yes okay I see and I understand.  It will be fine.  Convince myself I felt a few molecules lighter and more crystalline.  And then my brain and intentions would jump backwards. 

it wasn't so much I balked at the direction.  Was my ingrained attachment to planting in Groups of Threes.    I traced the roots of this - the way they traveled almost endlessly back to the neighbor lady who allowed me to become a fixture in her garden when I was four years old. Our relationship and her tutelage developed throughout the next decade.

always plant your tall mainstays in groups of three.

The larger co-creative theme of this growing season is definitely sacred pairings.  This has been confirmed in emails from my vibrational/energetic/intuitive gardener's network.  Sacred pairings have shown up in other ways as well.  This isn't about moving numerology forward it's about getting the duality of polarity held in balance right in the here and now.  Or so it seems.

eta: as of early afternoon I've planted two of the three pairings.  am anticipating no problem getting the third pair done after a bit of rest.  Oak pollen is swirling all around and I wound up leaning into an allergy caplet.  Third such choice in the past eleven days. 

additional edit:  J has in fact got the proper fence clips.  He explained some other Thing involving a tool he doesn't have but has since discovered he doesn't need.  For reasons he has definitely explained but I don't remember specifics.  Seems like there's so much to keep straight about this garden enlargement and all the many different Things it's proving to involve.  Plus there have been snafus aplenty as with anything you suddenly decide must be done three months before everything involved needs to function.   

Mainly it boils down to everything happening at a slower pace with plenty of cogitation in between.  What is happening is good and a very positive hint at how total enclosure might feel from the inside.  Had been a bit concerned the space surrounded by wire would feel cut-off from the established field energy.  But nothing of the sort occurred.  This time of year J. stops mowing around the fire pit.  Many of the medicinal herbs I wildcraft for tinctures, blended herbal teas, and oil infusions grow there. 

clarity & focus

Unexpected yet incredibly well timed - was called to prepare a flower essence around noon today.  Above shows the bowl shortly after settling it in perfect suspended balance between two of the repurposed field rocks.  It contains three vibrant blooms from the largest surviving Montana Blue Centaurea. This flower essence is all about vision that's both crystalline and comprehensive.  Can think of no quality more relevant to these times. 

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one of the fleece flower's stalks topped by an exploding baseball-sized sphere of still tightly budded flower panicles.  the Fair Maiden lives!  holding breath a bit waiting to see if she blooms as well.

Took this documentation just prior to 'staking forward' per the plant's suggestion.

Discovered the echinacea that's appeared utterly eclipsed by the foxglove has managed to thrive enough to produce a side-shoot clump of itself.   This was completely concealed and utterly unknown to me before the staking.  Have spent some high octane quality time in this general portion of the evolving sanctuary bed today.   The energetics feel good.   See below the rough facsimile of an isosceles triangle formed by the three vibrant blooms that offered themselves for the essence bowl.

Love the fact that one of the flowers is completely red violet.

today is a hush of deeper greening

Yesterday was a no camera day in which I was able to move my body gently and rest it in appropriate ratio and measure.  Today I woke after five deep sleeping hours.  Stayed up late because fibro is like that sometimes and also to wait for the predicted rainfall between midnight and one.  Wanted to see how hard the rain would fall.  The basement seedlings are fully hardened off and ready for planting in terms of dramatically vacillating temperature/full sun exposure but they've had zero rain/wind experience.  

The rain was gentle.  I stood inside J's office looking through the french doors with the overhead deck light on for a moment quick enough to prevent waking T who sleeps just beneath the blaring light's placement. It was enough to see the seedlings would get their first real natural soaking.  That's an important first experience for them.  I feel it enlivens their natural intelligence at a level that becomes more individualized and richly encoded via collectively shared experience.

  My gardenia bush was right on the other side of the glass.  Just after I turned off the light I stood in the dark with my forehead and palms against the glass panes in the door.  This plant and I have spent 20 plus years together.  I could feel her leaves thickening and growing glossier.  Their leaf-green color  darkening.  Water beading for graceful distillation within the upturned leaves.  I smiled and turned towards sleep in which I dreamed of her flowers.  

The dreams, though consciously un-recalled, insure my perspective is overwritten by the gardenia flower medicine spirit:  lightened awareness in mind and intention.  Regenerated and purified soul & spirit.  Yes.  It's one of my favorite vibrational signatures.  Known to some who read here as a single essence - to others within the blend Sight Unseen.

Not-bothering J during his work-related portion of the day - I stepped outside to be greeted by Mama mewing with a note of rebuke atop the lower deck's picnic table.  She was waiting for our shared morning inspection tour.  Usually I'm ready an hour or so earlier.  

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above is a tree coming to life on our watch.   A dogwood I'm currently unable to locate in my tree ID link cache.  So many are from sites long gone.  Perhaps someone knows and will refresh my memory.  We have a few of this species that I'm encouraging to settle into the spaces where they've appeared.

The walk down to the stream from the back dooryard is fairly steep.  New trees grow at a 45 degree angle that eventually follows their strongest nature and sense of rooted gravity.

Birds are by now fully nested and thus situated for their summer family life to come.  Wild rose canes we missed in earlier sweeps won't be eradicated until the year round wrens etc. have safely situated elsewhere in later autumn.  Carrion vine I pull up whenever I see it.  Pulled up a youngish vine with a very long root just before I reached the bridge.  Mama prefers to sit at the rim of the incline and observe my navigations from a level-footed perspective.

I'll still be able to pull some vinca closest to the bridge.  But most of that will also have to wait for later autumn.   Each day it gets harder to come down the slope and enter this landscape within the larger place and think about things like responsible land stewardship.  My gardenia dreams already had my mind dropped into a calm and glowing awareness of collective Earthstar energy.  As the greening elementals and rising life force of everything from the stream bed to the rocks envelope all layers of our carbon form(s) it is an invitation for ceremonial and experiential laying-down of those forms.  It is a time frame close enough to my birth to feel myself beginning to steep in awareness  - to re-fit myself within the pure essence of human spirit as I most organically embody it.  And then to feel my spirit take a soft leap beyond that.  I feel a glimmer of starseed formation.  The particles of pure light and cosmic life force/energetic essence I contain.

co-mingling.  knowing exactly what peace and co-operative alliance feels, sounds, smells, and tastes like.  A microcosm of inter-mingled life-forms co-creating abundant pockets of nourishment and mystery.

The water's continuing to move in a steady way but there's far less of it.   I can get lost in the slow steadiness of its path through the rocks and plants.  This is an excellent spot to amplify the giving and nourishing practice of gratitude.

In the next small chunk of time we must commence scything the violet colonies, dandelions, etc. in order to have a clear view of the pond edges and, hence, Snappy.  After a day of ongoing study I see the creature isn't really any bigger than it was last fall.  Upon first sighting both this spring and last my brain registered a much larger animal.  From formative memory and also because that's the way my neurology encoded earliest life danger-trauma.  It doesn't have to be a familiar danger it just has to represent legit threat.   When it is legit everything about it mushrooms in size and scope-of-threat. 

all the more reason to keep the ground around the pond tended to.  This area is the green world's energetic epicenter.  Every year we cut the violets to keep the area less attractive to ticks.  But I like to wait until this later point in spring so that the hosts of flower have had their full unhurried chance to sing in unison right here in this lodestone of life and regeneration.

The massive wild rose warren above has sheltered many generations of various wrens and tiny warblers.  There's another at the edge of the field and a third in a place we always mean to cut back but, as per usual, other stuff took precedence.  I'm not-so-secretly pleased.  That particular warren yields fledglings who get all their earliest flying instruction at the edge of our top deck and the foundation rhodies around the corner of the house.  They fly from the rhodies to the maple branches beyond.  They fly from there to the electric wires and back down to their starting point on the railing of the top deck. 

The lessons coincide with the point in late summer when my studio is intolerably hot during the day.  It's sweet compensation to sit with watercolors - quietly exploring color until the excited noises of wren fledglings changes the script completely.  I turn slowly enough to be soundless on the other side of our dining room's front windows.  They can hear through the screens.  Their mother is stationed closer to the ground in a strong crotch of the rhodie.  Her instructions are unmistakable to mothers everywhere.  be careful.  remember what I told you.  I don't care what your brother/sister/the other children are doing you focus on what you're doing.  Now do it again. be careful.  REMEMBER WHAT I TOLD YOU!!!

I treasure those weeks of the year and smile wide to spend these moments capturing memory into words.  For the next few months the green backdrop of these images shelter and amplify all manner of bird drama and behavior.    I love nearly all of them equally but my favorite birds who share their lives with ours are the catbirds, the goldfinches, and the hummingbirds.

A wealth of sweet rocket - all descended from the single surving seedling I brought from the old place - are now in bloom at the edge of the field.  Note in the background the self-seeded plant growing through the center of the gooseberry bush.

On the afternoon and evening when I spotted J's use of the augur we stayed out late enough to catch the first wave of blooms release their scent to the cooler air.  I can now say with authority that every third year there's a blast of sweet rockets blooming as far as their dispersal radius allows.  It's a very wonderful thing to see - an accepted and beneficial introduction to the landscape. 

[while writing this I heard the season's first nearby calls of the peregrine falcon who spends much of their summer and autumn time in the part of our land where we never go.  The falcon is a signal of constancy amidst humanity's state of devolving chaos.  Have been considering what I seek in place of anything my brain conjures for the word normalcy.   Rather than replacing various aspects of what the word must come to mean why not change the word I use for what-is.  Especially in the context of what-is it about tangible reality that holds the most value for me?

Constancy.  That's my word for what I most need, seek, and intend to build/grow/dream into my life, home, and this place.]

Didn't have gloves so I pulled only a few straggly clumps of goldenrod.  Picked out a massive number of burdock sprouts.   Looked around a lot and tried to envision the fence in place.

The whiskey barrel above contains assorted beets.  The stone in Mama's direct background used to mark the ground just beyond the original tilled bed.  Now it's a good 10 to 12 feet within the enclosure we're creating.  J took a day off and then went out yesterday afternoon to sink posts for the two sides with augured holes.  Then he dug holes and sunk posts for a bit of the third side.  Just up to the first gate post.  I saw the accomplishment around 6:30 in the evening with a great deal of surprised admiration. He was all oh yeah this was the goal for the day but it didn't make his goal's successful accomplishment any less amazing to me. 

It wasn't simply the physical task breakdown of the day's effort bringing our intentions closer to fruition.  It was the vision behind the way he'd tilled and planned the expansion's shape and how the fence would be shaped beyond the new beds.  He'd explained - oftentimes right on location while gesturing helpfully but I don't see beyond what's-there on the same wavelength.   In these moments I do what he does when we stand in the same general space and I'm the one explaining and gesturing.  Reeling off plant names left and right - trees and bushes too as the gestures grow wider in scope:

Nod.  put together words like oh yeah uh-huh sure.  I can almost see it. 

He has discovered post extensions via a buddy.  So that's how we're fixin' to solve the issue with the metal post lengths.  The wooden posts are taller to begin with.   All the same, thanks to Jamie's comment we're considering ways we might baffle below ground.  Burying in a deepish trough some of the left-behind scraps of wire fencing that isn't as sturdy but could be tied together in doubled panels.  My vote is to wait and see what, precisely, breaches the perimeter.  But I have ideas.