The End of Summer

The garden didn't get much more than a few good waterings this week. It's been dry and blazing hot in the afternoons. Neither we nor our plants like being in the garden in those conditions, so we try to make it as comfortable as possible for them, giving them long cool drinks and reminding them that it will get better soon, and then we wait.

Oh, what a beau-ti-ful mor-ning....

This was our lovliest gardening morning in months! Cool breeze, bright sun, few bugs, and lots of visitors! WeMoon was being rented for a workshop, and many of the attendees leaned over the wall to talk dirt and give compliments. Amid all that good energy, we managed to get the ENTIRE garden weeded. We added a few new herbs, too, perennials who thrive in our cooler weather: catnip, rosemary, and curly parsley. We have lots of plans for transplating some of our underestimated residents, plants whose growth surpassed the space we'd allotted to them, and that will probably take place slowly over the next month or so. And we'll try to get winter-hardy plants in the ground and established. This weather may be a tease, but we'll take it as long as we can get it.

One Year Old

The Spirit Garden is one year old this month. I'm not sure how to commemorate that, or what to think about it.

There was such an amazing vision when we first broke ground -- a vision of many women tending this soil, adding plants and sculpture and music and love to a place that we would all share and cherish, and which would come to be comprised of flowers, herbs, and vegetables as unique and beautiful as WeMoon. How tightly must one hold a vision? How does one know when a vision must be released, and to love what is in its stead?

The garden has developed and held its own spirit, one that reflects and exists outside of the intentions of the women who spend time there. So I'd like to quietly recognize that we have passed our first year, that we have communed with the earth for four seasons, but maybe spend a little more time thinking about what exactly is a milestone for something that is an ever-changing process.

Here are a few pictures of where we are today:



This is an overall view of the garden. Many of our summer crops faded early, and we are still preparing the beds for a new winter planting, so it looks a bit sparse.



The moon flower vine, which we put in a bit late in June, has wound more than halfway around the hoop.



Lavender mexican sunflowers and a big healthy sweet basil sit side-by-side in the west corner of the bed that borders the bottle wall.



The south edge of the spiral currently holds some of our most successful late-summer plants. In the immediate foregroun (kind of fuzzy) is a dahlia bloom. Just behind that, a little bit up, a pretty comfrey. Then rue, cardinal guard, cann, a big lemon balm, and a few fuchia impatients. At the far upper left-hand corner of the picture some coral sage is in bloom. On the other side of the path astors and lebanese mint have freely intermingled.