Mindful Gardening Newsletter No 16

It has been an emotionally challenging week for me and Bee here in Cordressagagh.  We lost a very dear friend.  I felt more vulnerable over his death than most all the people who I have known and who have died.  He was a soul friend, and I don’t have many of those. Especially when it comes to my relationship with men friends.  He was different.  He was a man who companioned my greatness and the greatness of so many he met.

A person without a soul friend is like a body without a head – St. Bridgit of Kildare

Polytunnel Preparation

This week together with the help of Lennon we have been clearing around the edge of the polytunnel frame in preparation for reskinning it sometime soon and hopefully before family and friends arrive towards the end of June.

Part of the clearance involves moving a lot of weeds to the back of the garden where I keep them in 1 ton bags that facilitated delivery of bark, sand, gravel, and pebbles of different sorts.  After a time, I may well have 20 tons of mature compost (or maybe not).

The mind is like a garden. The thoughts are the seeds. You can grow flowers, or you can grow weeds. – Sri Sri Ravi Shankar

If the recycling doesn’t work, then I will repurpose the bags for growing hostas. 

This will mean that if slugs want them, they must climb the equivalent of two and one half feet in slug eqivalent.  They would have to be Olympian slugs and maybe they would deserve the hosta leaves for their gold medal effort.

Buying New Seating for Sitting Doing Nothing

There is just not enough seating here in Cordressagagh where I can “Sit and Look and Be.”  This week we remedied that by buying another iron bench that has as its back a rose motif. 

I have sited this by the stream that runs along the West bank of the garden.  I love it when I garden there especially after a day of heavy rain where I simply stand and listen to the sound of the running stream and be reminded of a soul friend John O’Donohue who said: -

I would love to live like a river flows, carried by the surprise of its own unfolding. ― John O'Donohue

Now I have the pleasure of being able to sit and listen to the sound of the stream as it flows along the West side of the garden.

Foxgloves and Sweet Woodruff

One of the fun parts of this clearance is feeling how loose the soil is. I have dug it over several times over the years and now I find surprises such as foxgloves growing amongst the celandines. I have replanted that part of the garden south of the polytunnel with lots of foxgloves that are now prolific down most of the garden by the stream.

Today I am going to try an experiment which I think will work wonderfully well.  I will slide a spade end under the sweet woodroff that is prolific by the Buddha Hill and simply lay it on the ground opposite the polytunnel. 

This is what I did originally with a small piece of sweet woodruff and now the ground is covered in it – which I love.  Foxgloves and acquilliga now stick their heads above it.

Let me thy vigils keep 'Mongst boughs pavilion'd, where the deer's swift leap Startles the wild bee from the foxglove bell. – John Keats

St. Bridget’s Garden.

·       Perennial Sweet Pea.

·       Erigeron Karvinskianus ‘Mexican Fleabane’ Perennial Daisy.

I weeded behind the bamboo cane fencing that allows the honeysuckle to climb along it and the ivy that is called Paddies Pride that climbs the one piece of ancent bog oak that was found a long time ago when we first took out the trees in front of the cottage lovely large leaved ivy is from a cutting I took from our small patio garden when we lived in Leeds twenty plus years ago.

I was wonderfully surprised to see the perennial sweetpea and the Erigeron Karvinskianus ‘Mexican Fleabane’ perennial daisies begin to show.  I planted these daisies a very long time ago and I thought that the experiment with them had failed.  It seems that maybe they just didn’t flower in the first year. 

I have planted them in the cavity blocks that run along the back of the St. Bridget’s Garden.  The intention is that these daisies cascade over the blocks along with nasturusm to hide their rather unappealing look. 

Through Love the stone will turn into a honeysuckle! - Rumi

The perennial sweet pea is planted to mingle amidst the honeysuckle and give a longer seasonal interest. Perennial sweetpea is different from the annual in that it does not have a scent.  However, the absent of scent will be compenstated by that of the honeysuckle.

The Joy of Self Seeding

One of the joys I get in weeding is to discover many of those plants that I love have self-seeded. The self-seeders that do well here in Cordressagagh are: -

·       Poached Egg

·       Aquilegia

·       Ladies Mantle

·       Tree Mallow

As the Mindful Gardener, I ask myself what readily seeds itself in what I call the “Inner Garden.”  The seeds I sow are the seed potential held within mystical poetry, magic lyrics, and mythic storytelling.  Sometimes this self-seeding takes place in the dark and late into the night – like last night when I couldn’t sleep.

I spent hours writing in my head the story of The Nowhere Man which I will tell to the youth at the Cavan Burren on Cuinnui na nOg day.  It’s a story of getting Nowhere that is Everywhere.

He’s a real Nowhere Man

Living in his nowhere land.

Making all his nowhere plans

For nobody.

Self-seeding is seeding the SELF.  This is what the mystic Thomas Merton called the “True Self” rather than the false “self” driven by the ego and the mantra “I am separate.” 

A prompt for those who are into journalling is “What seeding goes on in your life where you find a surprise in your own unfolding despite all the weeds?”

The Woodland Bard

I leave this weeks Newsletter with a poem written by my soul friend John Wilmott which finishes his book Bathing in the Fae’s Breath.

When my spirit departs from my body

It will rejoin the river of spirit that flows

Not to any particular place,

But to all places at the same time.

My body will rejoin the earth

And commune as one again.

A tree will be born from where my body faded,

And melted from its unique singular vessel

Into an acceptance of letting go,

No longer protecting what it does not own.

What way ‘my’ temple

Will nourish another body again.

The tree grows, holding and caring for

Another singular droplet of spirit

Separated from that timeless river,

To guide the tree into reaching out and sharing.

From that tree another living temple being

Will be nourished again.

The dance of dreaming and joy continues….

He was a great companion of greatness.  May you companion your greatness and in the words of this Woodland Bard find your story – your true story - when spending time amongst the trees or in the garden and especially within your “inner garden.”