Gardens

Gardens

I like my magick garden. The fence keeps out the critters, especially the deer. I have many plants there: culinary herbs, berries, fruits, veggies, greens, medicinals, and ornamentals.

With the animals and the droughts and diseases and the clay soil – it is often a precarious existence but this garden has done well for me and has been fairly easy to maintain compared to others that seem to have gotten infested with weeds. Yet it is still a wild garden. Plants are magical. They have numen/prana/chi. They have various powers and essences.

I guess a garden is a place constructed for plants to thrive and to be enjoyed. It is a home for them and us.

                                                                Sweet Woodruff


A garden is also a community of plants, a group composed of individuals - the many and the one, the kingdom and the crown. Each is different in many ways yet there are many similarities, in type, in sizes, shapes, and other qualities. Herbalists throughout the centuries have sought to decipher and utilize the inner qualities of the vegetable kingdom.

                                                            
                                                                  A Happy Show


Sometimes humans can improve on the designs of nature but often nature is most beauteous and functional:

                                                                    The Bonnie Bluets

Spring is a time of opening, of unfolding, of waking up to greet the growing sun. But there are also cool and mucky wet days and though these are more bearable with the knowledge of the green, of the dressing of the maiden of the land.

                         The Lilac Queen she rules the season, nothing ventured nothing gained

The food garden can be great fun and rewarding, whether for oneself, for one's friends and neighbors, for one's animal friends, or even for those animal thieves like raccoon and deer.

                                           A patch of turnip greens for the deer for winter

                                                          Naturally spicy Arugula

Last summer I made a traditional Native American Three Sisters Garden with Corn, Squash, and Beans in their symmetry of growth where the squash leaves shade and cool the soil and keep the weeds down around the corn. The beans  and some of the squash too climb up the corn. It was aplot of land that had its topsoil removed a few years previously so I added quite a bit of goat manure.
                                                         

                                                             The Three Sisters

The model I used was a combo the method of the Haudenosaunee, or People of the Longhouse - the Iroquois tribes of New York and Pennsylvania and of tribes in the Western Plains. Evenly spaced mounds were made with the seeds planted in traditional configurations. The circle is about 25 ft in diameter.

It is thought that the Mound Cultures of the Mississippi and Ohio Valleys had a well established agricultural tradition that was finally damaged by wars and drought and existence became less settled and more mobile.

We harvested quite a bit of squash of several different varieties and some beans but just before the corn was ready to pick the garden was ravaged by raccoons who toppled every cornstalk and took every ear of corn. The deer may have been involved as well. They did manage to dip their heads over the short fence and eat all the sunflowers too. There were a few cukes and gourds as well but the late summer was very dry and I was not around enough to keep things going. I had plans for a scarecrow of sorts, mostly for fun, but never got to it. Unfortunately raccoons are immune to most fences. Next time I do this garden it will be close to where I do the tomato and pepper garden near to where the dog dwells.

There are also the magickal varieties of plants - they perhaps look a little diferent than the earthly varieties. Children may see them better than us as the followong drawing by our grandaughter Savanna shows:

Below is a lavender wand - with ribbon woven among lavender stalks by local botanical mages.
Thie pic shows it among spent lavender stalks from our plants. I got this as a gift for Savanna.

But  a garden doesn't have to be just plants. Other beautiful and meaningful things can be used to make a garden: gemstones, fountains and ponds, statues, memorials and shrines to the dead and the living, and various art objects.

Above is our old Jizo Garden. Jizo is the Japanese version of the Earth Treasury Bodhisattva, Kshitigarbha. He is depicted in monks's robes carrying his staff of six rings - which represent the six classes of beings - devas, asuras, humans, animals, hungry ghosts, and hell beings. In Japan he is the protector of children and of travelers. He is said to have been appointed to be the guardian of all humans by Buddha. I suppose I have neglected tho old Jizo garden as it seems a lonely place these days. It used to be fenced in but we moved the fence to give the goats more room to ramble and browse.

But statues crumble and edifices rot away and there is beauty even in decay as Kwan Yin and our rotting porch kinda sorta illustrate:

Good soil is not always easy to find so we are lucky to have plenty of goat manure and a bit of chicken manure too. Nonetheless my wife had me make some compost bins out of old pallets. Hopefully I can fill them up good this year with that black gold from leaves, grass clippings, kitchen scraps, gutter cleaning and other mucky and yucky organic finds. Smilin' Jack approves.

Got to have some spring greens for dinner the other day. The collard greens and kale overwintered from last year. The purple bok choy (very good tasting) and the arugula from this year.

I try to garden by the moon when I can and to utiilize herbal lore but that is not always possible.

Gardening is a year-round thing with lots of chores but it is also fun, relaxing, and physically and emotionally healthy.