Garden Jounal: Moments Seep In During Simple Tasks

Blue flax, gaillardia, California poppy and irises by the pond.

For the past year, it seems I’m always waiting to heal, and doing what I can in the meantime.  It’s no way to garden, but I’ve had enough good days that I’ve been able to do a little weeding and some minor planting.  My brother Lloyd has been a big help, mowing fields and trimming trees—the heavy work that I can’t do.  Marci has helped out with watering when I couldn’t.  It’s not the garden I dreamed of by now, but there are patches of color and wildlife abounds.  Dragon flies hover over my pond; mother wild turkeys wander across the field, a trail of tiny babies behind; the chickens rush out of their coop, anxiously fanning out, greedily pecking at grasshoppers that scurry before them.

We too carry on: the daily watering, cutting flowers for the house, collecting chicken eggs, tinkering with pumps on the fountains, transplanting seedlings, shooing a momma turkey and her babies out of a new flower bed, cutting fresh mint for the rabbit... These are the moments of simple tasks when a fleck of sunlight, a jeweled hummingbird, or the sound of dripping water seep into the soul.



California poppies

The chickens head out hunting grasshoppers.



Marci heads back to the house with flowers from the cutting garden.

Sunlit two-tier fountain on my wall of flower buckets.