Broken Hearts, Wild Boundaries, and Garden Meditations

There’s a gentle rain coming down tonight, and I’m enjoying the soothing sounds of it in my cozy sunroom. I feel like I’m stealing time here. This space is enclosed by rickety old metal windows, and with the drafts and lack of insulation, I expect it will be off-limits in a few weeks for the duration of the winter season.

I spent the day in my little yard, as I have done for the past three weeks prepping garden beds for next year’s growing season. To tide me over, I planted some rocket and coriander last month in the existing beds next to the house along with a flat of cheerful pansies that have mostly survived the deer and rabbits. I do love poached eggs on a bed of spicy arugula.

As far as “clearance” tasks, so far, I’ve engaged with creeping poison ivy (not sure if it will be completely vanquished in round one) and lots of strangling honey suckle (salvaged a few sections of lovely spirals saved in a vase for future heart intentions). I disposed of a rather vicious cat briar bramble in tiny bits with only a slight loss of blood) as well as an onslaught of crape myrtle scale (trunks cut down and stacked for burning next spring as I don’t want to put it out for garden collection and inadvertently spread it around). I have a large stash of fallen leaves stored in the garage for mower shredding and mulching under the greatly thinned out shrubs. 

I’ve distributed two pallets of Oklahoma rocks as edging around the yard and moved eight yards of hardwood mulch.  I’ll need more before it’s all over, though perhaps I can make do with visits to the municipal compost facility where I go to get bins of leaf mulch to lighten the Garland County clay soil. Many bags of composted manure have been added. There are earthworms in the front yard, but not much sign of life in the back. I’m hoping the addition will add a bit more zest to the proceedings and maybe in the spring I can do a Korean natural farming inoculation.

I have four metal raised garden beds waiting to be assembled in the basement, but that is a task that will have to wait until December. My goal for the next two weeks is to complete 3-4 more beds and whittle down the remaining “super-soil” mix that has been a hulking presence in my front yard since Halloween. I also need to relocate my garlic from the refrigerator into the ground and plant two boxes of “deer resistant” spring bulbs, with the help of an exuberant four-year-old neighbor on the block. Afterwards I promised to celebrate our accomplishment with a tea party.

The two heart-shaped beds that surround decaying stumps from the former owners in the front yard have been inaugurated with perennials and a $6 hybrid tea rose salvaged from the end of season clearance racks at Lowe’s – coreopsis, balloon flower, lobelia cardinalis, and sweet William, a favorite of my great aunt Vivi. I added a few basil cuttings I’d rooted from a bundle I’d gotten at the farmer’s market. Sure, they won’t overwinter, but it makes me happy to look at their greenery out the picture window and gather garnishes a few times a week.

I installed three ferns under the azalea out front where the grass won’t grow. When I bought the house, the shrub was a rather nondescript lump, but I cleared out the dead wood, shaped it a bit, and it rebounded nicely with a trimmer, elegant structure (ah, if only I could say the same for myself). In China azaleas are known as the “thinking of home bush” (sixiang shu), which is somewhat bittersweet. There are two empty nets inside – perhaps symbolic of my old home and my new one here in Hot Springs? This is bird land and often jays or cardinals or wrens hop into its branches and peer at me inside as I do my work. They’re good company.

Outside my front door a petite wooden Don Quixote, a gift from a friend, stands guard next to my planter. I repotted the marigold that was languishing in an old fiberglass urn a few months ago and even though it has gotten a bit leggy; it continues to offer a bright pop of cheerful color. The strange thing, and tell me if this is common, is that in the past few weeks the new blossoms coming on are a clear, bright yellow instead of the red/orange combo on the rest of the plant. These flowers are on the existing branches, right next to the regular ones – strange. There is also a mother spider who had been tending a rather large egg case for many weeks. I was kind of hoping for a bit of “Some Pig” action, but nothing seems to be happening. The spider appears to be a devoted mother. We are running out of time before frost. I hope everything is ok.

Today was overcast with a slight drizzle, which made sod removal easier. The lawn here is a hodgepodge of random grasses and weeds. I’m ok with that and the neighbors aren’t snobs about appearances, which is nice. Over time, I hope to have much less grass and many more flowers. Yesterday I started on my “broken heart” project. I wanted to plant bulbs next to the driveway, but I didn’t want to line the pavement, since I need to cross over to get to the hose and to mow and roll out the trash cans. Instead, given the lay of the land, I decided to create two half-heart beds, one on either side. Even though my heart has been broken, and there is pain associated with it, the brokenness has also opened new opportunities for me and I am embracing them with gratitude.

The stones I chose for the borders are somewhat rounded, but irregular. I know that I will have to go back and create a dirt edge beyond them for the mower, but I love the casual cottage look they provide. I’m adding lots of curves to a lawn that was very square, creating little “rooms.” I feel like a little girl again, playing in the empty lots and on the dirt piles around our subdivision created from a rolling Kentucky farm in the 1970s. I selected a pallet of rocks that were manageable for me to move. Each is the size of a sour dough loaf or smaller. In laying them out I tried to match the edges, so that they nestled against one another. I’ve read that soil heave may topple some of the stones and that they need to be lifted and reset every few years. I guess that will be my workout. I’m ok with that. This nestling and unsettling seems symbolic for relationships that once felt solid, but given a particular harsh cold snap were swiftly upended.

Once I move the remaining pile of “super soil,” I plan to put a circle bed in place in the side yard over the dead grass, an intention for renewal and future reconnection – infinite potential. In it I plan to plant iris saved from underneath the overgrown shrubbery in the backyard, red spider lilies gathered from around the stumps, and when it gets warmer tall sunflowers, okra, and amaranth recently gifted to me by post. The sunflowers are in honor of my dad, a Kansas boy. I want to grow lots and lots of okra, a relative of the hibiscus. I already have three types of seed waiting in the cupboard. I am going  to learn to cook it in many, many ways. Lately I’ve been hanging out with folks who host vegan pot-lucks and I am gradually expanding my repertoire.

Behind the pile is the neighbor’s chain link fence with aging wooden ties that are composting at the base of it. There, soil and seeds collect, and ants make their home. Lots of weed trees grow out of this fence line. I’m on the down slope side, so it guess it is my lot to try and figure out how to manage the coppiced stumps that had already weathered years of prunings before I arrived on the scene.

In my kitchen is a sweet hand-painted plaque someone made me with dandelions and the saying “Grow in the Cracks.” I love that idea – it is on the wild borders where the magic happens. I know I am never going to eliminate “the weeds” along this fence. They were here before me and will very likely be here after me, since I’m not inclined to use brush killer on them. In the coming season we will learn to be with each other, and perhaps the pear and privet, oak and gum trees will offer their tender shoots to fuel my compost pile.

As I dug into the lawn I could see where the topsoil hauled in gave way to the slate and clay of the old, old ridge line below. These are the bones on which my little brick ranch house sits, the remnants of an ancient sea hundreds of millions of years old stacked up when what is now South America slammed into what is now North America and created the Ouachitas, one of only a few ranges in the United States that runs east-west. The orange cream color of the hot springs sandstone looks like sherbet. Supposedly the water that creates our hot springs percolates out of the sandstone, but my hunch is that it may actually be primary water resulting from volcanic activity in nearby Magnet Cove.

For me gardening has become a meditative practice, not intentionally so, but I recognize it now as a time when ideas come to me as my hands are busy and my mind is open to wandering. Today I probably spent three hours turning and sifting through the soil removing roots and rocks and sorting them for compost and lining a small swale I made in the back to route the downspout water away from the garden shed. I am terrible about wearing gardening gloves (thank goodness for Gardener’s Hand Therapy lotion), but it feels so good to connect with this land and feel it directly. I couldn’t help but remember John Trudell’s saying that we are shapes of the Earth, of the Biblical story of Adam formed of clay. The idea that treasures exist all around us, even beneath the ground upon which we walk – whether wriggling earthworms or a “smile.”

A heart broken open has room to grow. When I was at a very difficult point in my life last year, I told myself that I was going to create a garden and make my corner of the world as beautiful as I could. I feel like this process of being quiet in a place where the song of birds surrounds me and the pine trees offer a verdant embrace is just what I need right now. I have been blessed with a relatively blank slate to work with, a sunny southern slope on a quiet block with nice neighbors. This is my path towards healing. I am ready to move on from the trauma we have been navigating for the past several years into a new state of mind. Being on garden time, I can cultivate more detachment from the drama of digital space while finding solace in the simple things – accomplishments like a brush pile whittled down or an asparagus bed ready for the arrival of crowns next spring. The bulbs sitting in the boxes in my garage, each a blueprint of embodied joy awaiting their day in the sun a few months from now.

Below are some recent videos inspired, in part, by my days puttering around my yard. It is a random assortment, but perhaps there will be something of use for you as you walk your own road. Use your brain, think about your thinking, try to not go too deep into any one “reality tunnel.” The archetype of curious observer has been serving me well. Keep your eyes open for the universe’s playful possibilities. I have found operating from a place of bemused wonder is preferable to operating from a place of fear. In this community there are monthly kirtans where people gather to sing mantras together led by a local woman with a beautiful voice who plays a harmonium. I’ve never been much for yoga, but singing yoga for me is great. One of the mantras is directed to Ganesha, remover of obstacles. I am picturing my careful removal of the cat briars, the painful tangles we are all confronted with in life, knowing that our consciousness in connection with the divinity of the universe is very powerful. May we go forward with love and confidence that we are here for a purpose even though the way may at times be quite murky.