Fall Reflection: If your garden is working you during the summer, you are doing something wrong (soil building and chop and drop).

Fall Colors near Mud Puddle, about 5 miles from Dry Creek

Fall is here, as is a cold front.  Low, heavy clouds hang along Sandrock Ridge, White Pine Peak poking his head above them.  Below the clouds, most everything is burnt sienna, with blotches of gold and crimson red.  We had a wet July and August, and the trees are extra vibrant.  So much so, even while dealing with the pain of this infection, I forced myself to get out and see the colors closer than from the sliding-glass door.  Even as close as Dry Creek Canyon is to the house, I had to drive over and take photos from inside the car, but it was worth it.  I also drove up an area known as Mud Puddle, a low, wet saddle filled with Maple, about five miles from here.

Fall colors at Dry Creek, about 200 feet from the house

It takes a while to re-acquaint yourself with a region.  Although we’ve always spent our summers here at Dry Creek, it was our vacation home.  I did plant a few flowers during those breaks, had trees on drip, and kept a nice lawn, but I never got to know the earth again as I did as a child.  It’s hard to explain, but there is a difference between seeing a place and knowing a place.  After you stay put for a while, it’s as if there is some sort of spiritual exchange, where you become part of the place and the place becomes part of you.  You grow into each other.  It’s sad, for so many, career paths have replaced that connection.  Hardly anyone is from anywhere these days.  I don’t think that is meant to be.  For thousands of years local has been a definition of who we are.  True, migration always took place—Europeans uprooted themselves and came to America, east-coasters moved west, but those events took place once or twice in a lifetime, not every three to four years. Even migrant cultures, like the plains Indians, had a territory that they walked and rode seasonally.  Anyway, this is first summer since we moved back where I really felt grounded.  Part of that has to do with finding steady employment that meets our basic financial needs, but most of it just has to do with being here long enough to reacquaint myself with the land.

In fact, I’ve become so grounded, I hardly even leave my garden except to go to work.  I use to spend quite a bit of time on the ATV, riding up the canyon to see the creek, cottonwood, willow and foothills.  Once I got my fish pond and borders in out back, there seemed little reason to venture beyond the back yard, other than to water Marci’s cutting flowers over by the trailer, and to feed the chickens.


This small pond attracts dragon flies, bees, wild turkey, coyotes--and maybe even a mountain lion.



Marci's cutting-flower garden with our house in the background

Everything I needed to enjoy life was right outside the sliding glass doors.  The pond drew dragonflies, bees, wasps ,and wild turkey during the day, and at night coyotes.  I had humming birds, butterflies and tarantulas.  Every day something new had died and gone to seed, and something new was blooming in its place.  It was like watching the show Nature—only live and up close.

Flowers in the vegetable garden--food and color grow well together

That was up until late-July.  Then, the pain from this infection made even my garden out of reach.  Rio and Marci took over most of the watering.  Then, I watched from my recliner.  It wasn’t quite the same.  I could no longer watch the dragon flies hover above the pond—my favorite activity.   But, I could still watch the ever-changing tapestry of color, notice how a sun flower is peaking in the kitchen window, now almost the whole window is a picture of golden blooms, and now—dang they are so tall, the blooms are above the sight of the window!

Jack drinks from a saucer in the garden--even after a summer of no care, the garden has charm.

Yesterday was the first time I’ve really been able to spend any time in my garden in over a month.  Other than watering, it hasn’t been cared for since mid-July: no weeding, no thinning, no pruning.  And it’s still beautiful!  If you plant seed and water, nature takes care of itself.  People who think gardening is too much work don’t know how to garden.  Only lawns enslave their masters.  Gladiolas, black-eyed-susans, marigolds, amaranth, sunflower, tomatoes, zucchini—they just grow!  All you have to do is watch humming birds and butterflies.  Sure, it’s nice to pull that morning glory that’s yanking down that clump of bachelor’s buttons, but it’s not necessary.  Even entangled and pulled askew, they still bloom magnificently.

Sunflowers retain their beauty even after going to seed.

The main thing to do is grow soil.  That’s why my garden was so stingy last year.  I didn’t have enough soil.  This year I did.  It takes a while to grow soil.  My challenge this fall is to get well enough to dump leaves, sticks and horse poop over the dry bones and wilted flesh of this year’s garden.  That, after all is the most important part of gardening.

As I learn more, I’m realizing that the work of gardening takes place in the late fall and early spring.  Summer is the time to kick back, watch and enjoy.  If your garden is working you during the summer, you are doing something wrong.

Enjoy these two videos on soil building, and begin building a soil today that will create a relatively work-free garden next summer.