Catbirds, gardens, and doing what you can where you are
Hi there to the new readers and the ones that have been here in the beginning.
The Golden Thread started with Catbird. Here’s the post:
I was sitting outside in a gorgeous yard not settled inside for reasons of the collective, honestly it was more about the mid-way point of my life being upended unexpectedly. I had every right to be upset, but I knew that I had every reason to be delighted. I sat there and thought about some of the miraculous places I have lived, and unexpected journeys I have been on, intentionally trying to find the rhythm of appreciation and joy. I felt the drum of exquisiteness start to beat through my system as the memories cascaded through and I asked myself:
What here can capture the same magic?
That was when Catbird sang. I looked to the birds. The ones that traverse between air and Earth, who have the ability to change perspectives in an instant — I looked to them. Every morning I looked for Catbird. Almost every morning I found her. I’d see her perch when I returned from a day out, and I saw her fly low and close when I would settle in with my morning coffee.
If we look for our answers in Nature, she provides. Every time.
It may not be as we expect; it could be better. It always is offered in a perfected, medicinal response.
After the summer of the birds, began the summer of gardening. I lost to the grubs. I was actually in a war with them. They descended quickly upon my soil and carefully selected plants. I didn’t know the problem at first; I only saw plants that weren’t growing and really fruiting and then when I saw the first few, I picked them out. That became my morning practice. I stopped looking to the birds; I plummeted in to the Earth and rooted out every last thing was stealing my nutrients. I mean my plants’ nutrients.
I would spend some mornings feverishly uprooting grubs; these disgusting little things that I never knew existed. If you know them, you know I lost that summer. I was never going to win with the set-up I had, and I was dejected. It’s not good to stay there in the hurmpf of it, but it is also futile to not feel the frustration and delude myself while difficulty is multiplying in the dark.
Incidentally, the summer of the grubs was also the summer of the deer. While we were away for a week, a mother deer had given birth to two fawns under the evergreens and tucked them between the yarrow and the shed so she could go out and do deer-mom things. We know this because when dusk would set, the fawns would come out and play in the backyard with her. It was magic. We still see them, and they know us. They come back to nibble geraniums.
Both the deer and the grubs were the same summer. Birth and destruction.
This summer was different. I went out and got a slew of marigolds, mushroom dirt, diatomaceous earth and pollinator plants. For every medicinal herb, or strawberry plant, I planted a marigold. I didn’t weed out my dandelions (which meant not buying having a nutrient dense salad mix), and I left the mugwort to grow with the lavender. May garden was small, but she was mighty.
She has given us strawberries and lemon balm. Her watermelon vines have flowers on them so we are hopeful. We have thwarted the Japanese beetles and I have zinnia flowers again. This garden has started a morning honeybee check with my son, where we cheer them on for their work, and has given me a quiet place as the sun is setting. She is small, but she is mighty.
She isn’t yards and yards, and I am confident that we can expand her more next year — slowly. I have had lettuce whenever I wanted and celery and kale. It turns out though, as soon as I realized I didn’t quite like the kale variety I had, the aphids came and ate it. Instead of fighting them, I pulled the kale and created space for what I might want to plant next. Right now, there is empty space between the marigolds and the onions.
She was the garden I could plant.
I have friends that are herbalists and friends that have hives and chickens. Maybe that will be us someday, maybe it won’t. But we did create what we could, where we are and as my son reminds me: “You really got that garden to grow, Mom.”
I smile. Maybe it’s about growing what we can, now today. Perhaps in that clarity we can see the sweetness of all who enjoy it: the fox that only nibbles the flowers; the bees who visit every morning, and my son who screams from the yard, “Mom, we got another berry!”