I had planned this reclaim of my garden and finally found the perfect sunny morning to get the reclaiming started. As soon as I fell into the rhythm of leaning, kneeling, pulling and cutting the overgrowth my thoughts began producing words in rhythm with my work. I set up my phone to record my thoughts as voice to text, which came in phrases and sentences. Usually this is scattered, incomplete, with blank moments while I’m looking for a word. To my surprise, when I went to work over my thoughts to organize and refine what I’d said I changed and added very little, keeping the rhythm and structure and nearly all the very words I’d recorded. I’m not sure which needed to be done more, cleaning up my garden or releasing those thoughts. Both, I know, and the very work itself capacitated the words and their organization. I recorded the finished essay and created a video including the photos and short videos I took as I worked, adding other of my photos and artwork to illustrate the words. I hope you enjoy.
I think this site automatically makes a transcript of the video, but below is my essay, which I read quite faithfully so it may be more accurate.
Pull the stickseed and burdock, leave the violets and the wild strawberries. Sorting through the overgrown garden bed and the edges around it, pulling the things that don't produce for me, leaving some for the pollinators who need them, and whose presence I welcome around my garden.
Meadowsweet and jewelweed, I have gardened this little plot for all 34 years I have lived here. There have been years that I had little time and years that I started early and ended late and kept a cold frame of plants through the winter providing salad greens.
Fleabane, bedstraw, I have identified them one by one, and some, not a few, have become friends, cranesbill geraniums, wild mustards, everything in its season and in its place for me and the other creatures who share this space.
This garden has provided much more than food but inspiration as I honed my skills as a photographer and created artwork from what I saw, giving me thinking time while I worked intently and other ideas grew and matured in my mind while my hands were at work just as today. Celebration and joyful times, solace and sad times, this garden has fed my body and soul for all the years I've worked it.
I think best while my hands are busy, and it's no surprise that as soon as I begin sorting plants, pulling some, leaving others, watching the play of light, feeling the breeze, my creative mind awakens and also gets to work…
When I started, I had my old Pentax K1000 film camera and a notebook and a pen and now I have my cell phone in a pocket around my neck and I'm recording my thoughts, voice to text, and taking photos and videos as I work. I think best while my hands are busy, and it's no surprise that as soon as I begin sorting plants, pulling some, leaving others, watching the play of light, feeling the breeze, my creative mind awakens and also gets to work, putting all this information into something that communicates what I'm experiencing and that I can share with others.
Speedwell and wood sorrel, in my visually awakened awareness I have also in the background worked out my day's creative work, designing a logo, writing an advertisement, designing a newsletter page, working out an illustration, creating a new painting, drafting and finishing a poem, it all becomes clear to me so that by the time I end my work in this nurturing space I am ready with a head full of ideas growing so quickly I am breathless to see them realized by my hands in their medium.
Dead nettle and wild sweet potato vine, I spent years identifying everything that's sprouted in my yard just to know my neighbors. Most things I permit to a certain extent because they found it amenable here, but I make sure that they don't take away from other residents including me.
Clearing the overgrown garden bed, the method is simple, cut out those big burdock and curled dock leaves, not much growing underneath because they've shaded the soil. Some instant gratification for my work seeing the soil clear so quickly as the level in my compost bin grows.
There is poison ivy, and there is jewelweed, its natural antidote. I am lucky I am not allergic to poison ivy though if I have a scratch on my skin and the urishiol oil seeps into it I will get a rash, but I can work for an hour or so and encounter it and as long as I get inside and wash my hands and arms with soap and water I'll be fine.
Burdock plants took hold last year, this year they have good roots. I cut the leaves at the soil surface and if I continue that as often as I see them come up I will keep them under control. Maybe I'll dig some roots this spring and early summer for medicinal uses later. But later this year, over winter, I can dig up the rest of them. But some I will let grow. Burdock is good stuff to have around and makes for interesting photos in all seasons. When I was little I looked at those big leaves and thought they were the elephant ear plant that I heard mentioned, and for years I called it elephant ear. It's not, but in my mind I still call it that.
…I put my sadness into the soil, not burying it but sharing it with a place I will revisit year after year, that already holds the memories from a dozen other garden cats walking these paths, planting the seeds of my grief here nurtured with time and sun and rain and freeze and snow to sprout and grow my memories for tomorrow.
Irises and daylilies, spring in her enthusiasm has moved faster than me. Last year I got a great early start but Mewsette had developed lymphoma and it moved faster than both of us. As she did her best supurrvising me and following me around the garden more slowly with more rests each day, I moved slower with more rests each day to share her precious joy in life even as she declined. My garden sprouted with things I had carefully cleared earlier, the regrowth of things I had resolved illustrating my growing grief at her impending loss. I let it all go after she died, not wanting the fresh reminders of her absence, forever, as I followed the same paths, worked the same areas in the same ways with only her memory, then in later seasons losing her siblings as well.
This year with the cycle of loss just ended and the first anniversary of loss approaching I kneel on the same brick paths in the same fluttering light pulling the same stickseed and burdock in the same places, planning my spinach and salad greens in a different garden bed, welcoming the pink cranesbill geraniums and yellow buttercups blooming together carrying sweet memories of last spring, carefully clearing around the phlox and nascent autumn asters that bloomed last summer and autumn and hold the memories of Mewsette's brothers. Only Mimi follows me now, slower this year with her advancing age and the loss of her four best friends, her children, as she held off the osteoarthritis and renal issues, staying strong to support them, forever their mom at 20 and they 16. We remember, and make new memories each day.
Forget-me-nots and buttercups, I put my sadness into the soil, not burying it but sharing it with a place I will revisit year after year, that already holds the memories from a dozen other garden cats walking these paths, planting the seeds of my grief here nurtured with time and sun and rain and freeze and snow to sprout and grow my memories for tomorrow. The Earth is strong and sees much joy and pain and I share mine here.
You can read more of my writing on Paths I Have Walked, more of my photography on Today, more of my artwork on Portraits of Animals, and more about my cats on The Creative Cat.
Reclaiming My Garden