The Garden chronical

 

 

                          The Garden chronical

                                                               

As the harvest-time draws near, and frost is emanant.

My garden has been up for inspection, and I wonder if my garden was worth the effort I put in? And though the harvest looks a little small, I spent many lovely hours digging, and communing with the sun, sky, and earth. So I would say yes. the harvest was well worth it! 

The heat has been relentless this year, frying everything. It’s been hard on plants, and people, and objects. My greenhouse sheeting has been cooked black in many places. The wind helped splinter some of the sheeting, too. I’m wondering if I can make it last through the winter?

 I had been weeding my garden faithfully. But in the last three-week hurdle of the play in August, the sun felt hotter, and it seemed my garden had gone from a sort of tidy place, to a jungle, weedy, buggy, albeit interesting place. It was living. Whatever it was. Though it was not tidy, at all.

It was a mix-matched interesting, hodgepodge of homeless plants that people kept giving me, and stuff I intentionally planted. 

How the garden grew in the cooler months was promising.

But the hot months---not so much. 

If the state of my garden is any sort a reflection of the state of the world, then the world news update would be as follows.

       Massive squash bug invasion! 

                In breaking news, Gardner Stephanie just announced a state of emergency, and is asking all healthy squash plants to quarantine themselves for future safety.

       Leaf hoppers carrying fungus, wipes out bulk of innocent tomato plants! Gardener officials advise any uninfected tomato plants to take cover.

       Stalk market plummets on tumble weeds, as seeds flood the market.

Goats beheaded giant sunflower family. Three blossoms left mourning.

Beets got beet! They were well on their way to the finish line, but the chickens dug in. But it looks like they are trying to make a comeback.

       Watermelon seeks higher education  

In other news, a healthy watermelon seeking higher education, sought to come up in the world, and climbed up the chicken wire mesh. But took a huge plunge after having one of its fingers eaten alive by fowl characters, it decided branch elsewhere, in a new direction, and go higher up the wire. New melons growing. 

Potatoes, unearthed by cheeky gopher. There were many eye-witnesses.

Carrots asking for raised beds, and water, or there will be shortages. They wonder if anyone carrots at all.

Lettuce Wins the lottery, most abundant harvest, of the year. Wins Salad bowl award. 

Bug Housing crises on the rise as, gardener evicts unsavory residences whose population exploded.

                

Hidden cucumbers found, now wind up in a delicious salad. Gardner hopes to find more.

Snapdragons fire up color pallet,and win the award for most stunning flowers of the season.

As you can see, the news is a bit sketchy. But gardening is sometime sketchy.

         The funny papers would be various cartoons of me, hollering at chickens, and goats, and bugs, and talking to the plants with my hair on top of my head in a crazy wet bun, as I dowse my head with water, to keep my brains from cooking.

  Squash bugs!

 That should be a prime cuss word. As they give me the shivers, worse than spiders.

 I turned a squash leaf, and saw bazillions of baby squash buggers, squash boogers, shooting this way and that like hoard of bandits discovered.

                I picked some leaves that had their eggs on, wondered what I should do with them, and decided to put them in a bucket and feed them to my goats. It seemed a good fit. Oddly satisfying seeing the goats chomp down on the leaves. Both share an invasive forever hungry nature. As the goats snipped off all but three of my giant sunflowers, just before they blossomed.

                But the squash burglars and goats were not the only ones to slip into my garden.

                Mice.

                Pocket gophers.

                Little jumpy bugs spreading their joy from leaf to leaf.

                My poor tomatoes were sparse. But I did make a nice salsa out of the few tomatoes that survived. And I planted so many of them.

                I went through and weeded what I could. Watered best I could. When you don’t advocate pesticides, you might as well get used to the fact that your garden is something you do for recreation. You have to garden with the mindset that produce is optional, but not required. Hey, if you considered the mice, and gophers, and bugs as things you were growing, then I’d say it was a bountiful harvest. On the plus side, if you wanted to make a squash bug protein bar, you wouldn’t go hungry.

Before the squash bugs moved in for keeps, I tried letting my chickens into the garden, to see if they might keep the bug population down. But it didn’t work too swell, and they started eating my watermelon, and digging up my beets.

So, in a last-ditch effort, I got the bug zapper, turned it on, and hoped somehow the squash bugs would come to the light, so my little garden could be saved.

                But mostly we just zapped ten-thousand moths.

                Either way, my garden, got to me to thinking about this garden. My little Writing Garden.  It probably needs some watering, weeding, and planting, and sprouting, and harvesting here too.  Scouting for squash bugs, and gophers, maybe bring in what should be saved for the winter. 

Maybe shore up my greenhouse, and plant some new varieties? Word veggies, and flowers, all different, shapes, colors, sizes, some cacti, some root veggies, some annual seeds, that grow fast, and are gone. Some slow-growing words with deep roots. Some shallow, fun, and fading.  

Grow some words that are perennial, that you can harvest year after year. Words that can weather a frost. Words that rhyme, and sing. Words that are practical, honest, real, wisdom.  Words that are like fast food, easy to eat, and easy to forget. Words that are amusing. Long winded stories? Short stories? Essays from life? Words that are like a hearty deep-rooted plant, that are like a tree, comforting, sheltering?

This is the question, when you have lots of sprouts, and don’t know if you should plant them all---knowing that it is best to plant somethings in different times and seasons, and moon phases.

                Sometimes when the moon is dark.

                Sometimes when it is full.  

             I had a conversation with someone which made me think about how much we use books, and words as some sort of body armor, as spiritual, and intellectual materialism, instead of enlightening our souls. 

                It got me to thinking, though.

    Can you transpose your own masterpiece from the space where all beautiful words come from?  

                Perhaps we’d be better off listening to the silence if it kept us close to the source of all words.

Hence this little thought stream sprouted from the conversation I had.

               

                               

                                    Words

                   Books, ink, page thoughts.

 Spilling out from every direction, cramming empty spaces, with sounds and vibration.

                Gathering in from everywhere you look, words are hiding in every nook. We gather words, like squirrels gather nuts, hiding them into our brain’s, crevasses and huts.

                Collecting them from friends and neighbor, the words become our master, judge, and savior.

                Somehow, though, it feels quite sad, to always be talking, reading another slab.

                From wisdom of the sages, down to our newspaper’s daily pages.

                Words flash upon our screen.    

                Filling our souls, beam, by beam.

                Building word towers, letter by letter,

                But, I wonder, with so many words, are they like a fetter?

                If there is no pause between phrases, no break between the mind’s endless pages, if no one stops to listen, how will we find the real, the wisdom?

                What are words for, if not to point to the truth?

                If they push in, and obscure the living, our soul’s natural youth?

                Where does your spirit go?

                If words crowd your heart out, words, that scream, command, and shout.

                How will know what is really about?

                How will you hear, the truest sound, how will you dig deep into the ground?

Will you let them fly, winged words, that tell of the summer, of the sky?

                Who will hear the silence of an empty room, who will hear the echo of the stars and moon?

                Who will read the words not yet found in a book? Who will provide ink, to the lost, and those forsook?

                Who will sing the songs that have not yet been sung?

                Who will write the poems not uttered from any tongue?

                Who will be empty, so you can be a meadow for new ideas to come?

                Who will hear with the heart, and soul, to the rivers, and the sunsets glow?

                Who will dare be still as an empty crystal glass, ready to sing, when God’s fingers pass?

                Who will sift the chaff, catching the wheat, what kinds of words will you keep?

 Who will be that bold?

                Who will let the silence be heard, to not utter a single word?

                Who can sit without need for a hum, of some-other’s words, sticking to them like gum?

                Who can allow their souls to be vast, to unfold, and let stars shoot passed?

                Who can let the books lay where they sit, who can stop searching for things to fill their minds up with?

                Who can let the river of words run dry? Who can let their own thoughts, zig right on by?

                Who can be quiet and still, like a mountain, or a tree, present, but silent, a rock, a hill.

                Who can live in such a way, that your collection of words points the way, to the places our souls like to stay.

                If no one keeps this hallowed ground, where will the spirit be found?

                If no one makes room, how will we grow anything other than the same things that have been kicking around?

                If no one finds the fabric where there is real magic.

                Who will weave and sew, who will garden, who will grow?

                If no one stops to hear? How will we know truth, from fear?

If no one gives voice to those who cannot speak, if no one brings spirit, and pauses to seek---How will we know the voice of God? How will we come, when he asks us to take his rod?

                How will we find the golden thread, that feeds the hungry souls the everlasting bread?