Peace in the Garden and for the Gardener

A meditation on patience, abundance, and growing with the seasons.

The blue oak in better times with our cats. Sadly the tree is gone, but there is a young live oak to the left about 15 feet tall. All photos by the author.

Somewhere along the way, my garden became a meditation. There are new plantings to tend to and more layers of mulch to spread. The weed and grass seed was sprayed by the string trimmer all over the paths. I want to cover the weed seeds on the paths with a thick wood chip mulch before the rains help the weed seed to sprout, yet there are beds to prepare for fall planting and spent perennials to remove from the flower beds. I see the seasonality, the phases, that make this work flow. I relax. I am connected with the life around me. The garden care will happen in good time.

How did I learn to relax about the tasks that need doing and trust the flow? This calm has not been my usual state. My husband understands the way work flows. In his professional life, he framed subdivisions with a crew of thirty. He understands how to make jobs flow in smooth sequential phases. He has cautioned me about being “out of phase”.

After we built this home three years ago, the garden could only start after the massive piles of rocks unearthed to dig the foundation were made into rock walls. I wanted to start putting my collection of nursery plants into the ground so badly, but that work had to be in-phase with the completion of the rock piles being moved by the big machines. The rock walls were done in October which is perfect planting time to go with the rainy season.

After the rock walls were made, the garden beds were started behind deer fencing.

I have always been a list-maker who checks off completed tasks. That has changed. There are some complicated projects that are better managed on paper with a list of tasks and needed supplies, yet I no longer write tasks for the day. The day seems to start with the basics like fill the bird baths, check for the eggs, take out the compost, harvest, and water the small greenhouse pots that dry out easily. Then the tasks go on from there. I can see what needs doing.

Today is an example. Fifteen greenhouse seedlings of sunflowers, runner beans and cucumbers are ready to plant. Tomatoes and a new berry vine need trellising. Morning glory needs pulling from garden beds and paths. Old spent plants need removal.

In the morning, I work on those things. The day before, I spread horse manure and compost. My 7-year-old neighbor calls to see if she can come help in the garden today. “Yes,” I say. I tell her to bring her 3-year-old brother, if he will not wander off without telling us.

A couple of weeks ago, his mom banned him from the garden for doing that. Our neighborhood is at the end of a road in the country, but he had also wandered off in a public place. Here he had gone off to his grandparents next door and the next time, he had gone into our house to lay on the couch. He promises he will tell us if he wants to go into our house or to his grandparents.

The children arrive, and I find the clippers and baskets that they use. We harvest blackberries and decide the birds are getting too many of the best berries. I put a shade cloth over the top of the vines. We pick beans. I pack up some extra flower arrangements for the children to take home. The flowers arrangements were left over from the day before when I work with others to do a flower give-away at the food pantry.

I was glad to have the extra flowers go to the neighbors. I plant the seedlings under horse manure and compost. The children go inside the house by this time for apple juice. My husband is talking to them when I come inside.

It is time for the children to go home. Our tools are put away. We get the flowers packed in buckets and the foods they picked in a basket. When we figure out who can carry what, I help them carry things to their house.

With all of these complicated maneuverings that keep children happy like helping to reach the blackberries in high places or the get the hidden raspberries deep in the thicket, the seedlings still got planted. This is a day when I can share what I enjoy with others. The flow of this day somehow allowed for the seedlings to get into the ground and watered.

There are still morning glory vines popping up as they will. They will get pulled or covered another day. The cart is full of spent plants to go on the compost pile. But even the hens had time in the yard and a bin of weeds was delivered to their run for them to scratch through. The tasks will be there tomorrow. Meanwhile the garden paths are easy to walk through and the tomatoes tied safely to supports. That is enough order for me.

I am not distracted by the activity of the digging voles whose tunnel entrances I walk by near the path to the garden. I saw a gopher snake with its head down one of the holes near the garden beds. I knew the snake was like a heat-seeking missile guided to the warm vole bodies in the dark.

Those tunnels provide shelter for the amphibians who eat insects in the garden at night. I am not concerned about garden pests, as I have seen how the natural balance between the insect predators and prey keeps the plants healthy.

I saw the first praying mantis of the season last week which seems like a good omen for balance among garden insects. Even serious tomato diseases seem to leave my plants alone. Perhaps my tomatoes are stressed enough from the wind bringing fog across the top of the mountain here and the rocks in the soil, that viruses are not attracted. Maybe it is the soil microbial life that I have fostered with composts, that keeps the tomato viruses from killing the plants like they are doing at a garden in town where I volunteer.

I know now that I planted the diseased plants too close together, not knowing they would grow so vigorously in the deep valley soil. My tomatoes have space around them, so there is good air circulation and probably few small insects that spread viruses. The tomatoes here are not as lush with this parent soil of mostly rock. Maybe it is the abundant alyssum that favors a tiny wasp that eats aphids and other small insects, that is helping keep my garden healthy. It is easy to focus on planting and layering composts materials on the soil since I find combating pests and diseases is mostly a waste of time. It is fun to welcome animals to the garden and recognise the abundance we share.

The native ensatina salamanders that lay their eggs in tunnels made by gophers and voles.

The dahlia tubers are in wire cages, so they are safe from the tunneling voles and gophers. This year the dahlia plants are already big and robust. I have given them extra water now that they are big plants. One had some leaf yellowing, so I gave it a fish emulsion watering. That plant looks good now. I am learning how to take better care of these magnificent plants, and it shows.

A surprise dahlia seedling from a accidental cross with a native dahlia and today’s hybrids.

Sometimes an unlandscaped area may get my mind racing about what to plant. It is tempting to get out of phase. I start to dream of plants that aren’t good in this climate like the beauty my great aunts made in their lath shade houses. Imagine hanging baskets of begonias, fuchsia shrubs, ferns, dichondra making lace on the ground, and stepping stones to guide you through this magic. With the loss of our beautiful spreading blue oak, I started to dream of these shade gardens of my childhood.

My husband wants to make a trellis to make this space feel more private. I imagined that he could put up a shade structure. Then I realized that the garden where the tree is missing can have the same level of care that the magical shade gardens of my great aunts had. It is the care that matters. This new landscaping doesn’t need to copy my childhood memories, but the same care that was apparent in those gardens can be in my new garden. I can use the easy-to-work-with plants for this climate. They are deer resistant, drought tolerant, and beautiful. Some are native plants.

Once I see this new perspective, I start to put together a list of plants that go together. The list of plants includes various design features like texture, leaf color, repetition and varying heights. I draw the plan on paper, and become enamored with the idea. Most of these plants are in my greenhouse right now or can be made from cuttings of plants that I have. This new plan makes me relax and feel calm. That is probably a sign that this plan suits the space and respects the spirit of the oak tree that was lost and the nearby healthy young oak.

I marvel at the peace I feel in the garden. I trust that the tasks are correct for the season and place. I do keep a calendar of what to plant when. Our goal is to have year-round flowers in a Mediterranean climate (zone 9), because of the flower give-away project. I also want fresh vegetables and fruits. That is all happening.

We are watching apples ripen, and there was a monarch butterfly caterpillar on milkweed last week. It doesn’t get much better then that in a garden, especially along with finding peace in my days and sharing the abundance.

Winter bouquets ready to be given away at the local food pantry.