An ongoing labor of love, creating sacred space
I’m sorry, but when I look at this picture it reminds me of one of those cheesy poses that Martha Stewart does: you gotta hold the bowl just right so the cherries show, make sure you’re wearing a colorful gardening hat, smile a cheesy smile, stand straight, and have something interesting in the background of the photo. LOL!
When we purchased the land for our home, we blessed it prior to the first hole being dug. We called upon the spirits of the land to ask permission to build here, and we asked for them to lend their energies and attention so the construction would go gracefully and according to schedule, which it did.
I blessed every inch of the foundation, leaving specific blessings, stones, and mojo bags in each wall, according to the use of the rooms which would be contained within the walls. I did this blessing the day the concrete was poured, while the big trucks were on their way to the site. The contractor was nervous about the timing, but with the help of the foundation crew moving the ladders around for me, I got it done in time. Concrete won’t wait!
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Once the house was built, my friends came to assist Brian and I with the blessing of the house and property. It was a momentous occasion! There were many tears and much laughter, because everyone knew how hard we had worked for this, and that this would be our forever home.
We blessed every inch of the property, and made offerings to the land spirits and elemental energies.
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We blessed every room in the house, and set the intention and purpose for that room. We blessed every pipe and electrical source and appliance, we blessed and warded all windows and doors.
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Everyone insisted that I play something on the piano, as a way to finish the blessing ritual, and bring music into the home. I played a Scriabin Prelude, and then we all celebrated, shared our friendship, ate some good food, and some of us just took a nap!
Getting the Herb Garden built this first year was very important to me. I had a very productive herb garden at my house in Aurora (which the new owner immediately tore out!); all my herbs were living in pots at Jackie’s house, and the Herb Garden was to be the central anchoring point of the entire rear garden. So after putting in the driveway in June, we set to work on the Herb Garden in July. Bless my husband for his diligence and love.
Of course he did get to play with another piece of heavy equipment. After deciding that there was no way to dig the footings by hand, we rented an auger. Brian had soo much fun!
We designed the structure so it would sit around the septic tank lids and hide them. The east/west walkway covers the tank lids. When the tanks need to be drained, the walkway comes up so the septic service can access the tank lids and do their stinky thing.
Outer structure
The posts are 2′ into the ground and 6′ above ground. There are 3 levels of 6″ 2×6 to make the sides. The structure is divided into 4 planting beds by two walkways, which run east-west and south-north. (The east-west walkway hides the tank lids.)
Chicken wire keeps underground predators out, and once the picket fencing was up and painted, we stapled more chicken wire to the inside of the frame to keep rabbits out. 3″ of gravel was laid down under the walkways for additional drainage.
There are four doors for entering the garden, one in each of the four cardinal directions. I later painted them in the four elemental colors to match, yellow-east, red-south, blue-west and green-north. Brian put a lot of time and engineering into building this structure. I wanted it to be 8 sided to represent the wheel of the year,
and I wanted 4 garden sections. I also wanted the 4 gates so that entry into the garden from any side of the garden would make it easier to work in. I did as much as I could. I helped with the concrete pouring, holding boards while they were drilled and/or bolted together, and I put down the walkways. Then of course, 18″ of rich garden soil had to be brought in. Voila!
Yes, of course, I can. I have a vegetable garden, an herb garden and an orchard. How would it be that I wouldn’t can some of my beautiful bounty?! Besides, I was raised Mormon, and in southern California. We canned everything! It was the responsibility of every household to have a two year supply of food.
What we didn’t grow in our own garden (Mom did all the planting), we gleened from the fields after the harvesters went through. I remember going through the fields to pick potatoes, tomatoes, strawberries, peas, onions, carrots . . . Then we would go to the LDS storehouse and unload fruit off the trucks. I especially remember the apricots we helped to process one year. They would get poured out of boxes from the trucks and spilled onto the end of a conveyor system. We were all spread out from the beginning of the conveyor to the end. Some of us picking out rotten apricots, some of us splitting them in halves, others pulling out the pits, and then finally others turning them all cut side up and sweeping them into a box where they would go into the warehouse and magically come out in Deseret Industries cans of “Canned Apricot Halves.”
My fingers were so sore and raw from digging out pits that day, but we took home cases of apricots and other fruits as our share of the harvest, for working at the warehouse. Our family also went to the local apple and peach orchards and picked fruit. I remember climbing the big apple trees and shaking the branches, my sisters running around under the trees picking the apples up off the ground.
Good times and memories. Results of my first harvest:
I also put up a case of pumpkin soup, loads of pickled cucumbers, green beans, and I froze tons of kale and chard. As I am posting this in 2019, I don’t remember everything I harvested or canned that year, but thankfully, I had some photos. But it was a bountiful year, and a very successful first harvest. Mom was proud.
In early spring of 2014 I decided to take on vegetable gardening. I was really scared I wouldn’t be able to figure out how to grow vegetables. It all seemed very daunting. And there was this weird sense of responsibility. Like, what if all the seeds died? I killed food? It’s one thing to kill a flower, but to kill food?
Food plants are special. They hold the energy of life in them in a different way from flowers, or shrubs and trees. I could feel that energy when I went to the store to buy the seeds, and held the seed package in my hands. “Plant me,” they said, “I will feed you.”
While we were building the vegetable beds, I was organizing the seeds, reading my books and figuring out which seeds want to be planted next to which other seeds. When to plant the seeds, how deep to plant the seeds, how far apart. OMG – this seems really complicated!
Meanwhile, Brian and Jester are busy doing the hard work of drilling holes in the bed joints, all the way down to the ground, and then securing the joint with clamps and pounding the 3/8″ rebar through the holes and 12″ into the ground below. The boxes are made with 3 levels high of 6×6 cedar. These walls are NOT going to move.
Finished beds.
I had to post this picture of Brian. I saw him standing there taking a break and nearly fell over laughing. So I made him pose for a picture. He’s now my official garden gnome.
Filling the beds was back breaking work. 6 pickup truck loads of soil for each of the three beds. I did one bed per day.
I was both excited and scared to death when the first seedlings popped up. They’re growing! they’re actually growing! Believe it or not, I have never grown anything from a seed. I buy all my plants from the store, or get them from a friend, already growing in pots. So this whole vegetable garden thing took all my courage. What was I going to tell my husband if I couldn’t figure out how to grow vegetables after all the work he and Jester put into building this glorious garden?!? And how could I consider myself a gardener if I couldn’t grow something from seed? My whole gardening persona was on the line. But after much helicoptering, blessings, chanting, finger crossing, covering and uncovering the seedlings through the early frost period (up through May), they actually grew.
March 12, 2016: Someone posted a beautiful picture of a willow branch sculpture on facebook. I immediately put it into my file cabinet for future must do projects. I saved all the willow branches from last falls pruning and had a ginormous pile behind the storage fence just waiting to start this project.
It’s spring! Time to build the willow woman! My good friends D and Bear were all too happy to help. They love artsy projects, especially D (she’s an artist). Brian and I went outside early and laid out the weed barrier (because I’ll be damned if I end up pulling weeds out of my willow woman’s skirt!) Then we anchored in the basic frame for the structure.
We used tree stakes and rebar to build the shape of what will be her skirt and shoulders. The rear stake will anchor the rear branches so they don’t blow around in the wind.
D and I working on the outside of the skirt. (Bear was being camera shy, I’ll get her next time.)
5:30 pm. Filling the center of the skirt. Out of branches, out of energy. Done for now.
Week of March 1st, 2016: Waaay back in 2006 Brian and I took a trip to Augusta Missouri to see his Aunt and Uncle, Judy and Randy. They have a beautiful piece of land in a pristine valley, surrounded by wooded hills and vineyards. When we drove up the long driveway, the first thing I saw was a beautiful row of orange daylilies. I commented to Aunt Judy about how beautiful they were and she went into a tirade about what a pain in the ass they are and how they’ve completely taken over the hibiscus garden. I said: “what hibiscus?” She said: “exactly!” So she pushed her way through the daylilies and pointed out the poor hibiscus shrubs completely drowned in daylilies, and explained how she just hadn’t had time to dig them out . . . . . so here I am with a shovel digging out the day lilies.
Bonus! I get to take them home! I ended up with about 200 tuber sections.
This is the front yard, looking toward the east from the front porch. (The strip of disturbed ground to the left of the dirt berm in the front by the road). All the darker bumps (closer to the porch) are the holes for the 2000 crocus that I planted before the lawn was seeded. (FYI: The amount of water it takes to grow a freshly seeded lawn, will rot your bulbs. Plant bulbs AFTER the lawn comes in.)
Daylily bed, 2014This started out as 100 tubers. I planted two large beds of day lilies, one on the north side of the driveway and the other on the south side of the driveway. They are glorious in mid June. But spring cleanup is a real chore. I pulled out 4 large bags of dead leaves and stems on each side. But you can’t beat day lilies, really. They are troopers. And you need to be tough to live out here on the open plains in Brighton. So I’ve now got day lily beds strategically placed around the yard and on the berms. And if you drive around the neighborhood in June, you can also see my orange babies in several of my neighbor’s yards too. I love them, they make me happy.
I wanted to start this Blog on November 1st, the Witches New Year. Actually, I did – I wrote a bunch of stuff, everyday, in my own computer, just to figure out if I had the stamina. But I couldn’t figure out how to do this blog thing, got roped into a $200 set-up fee, which I had to back out of and got to feel stupid about. So I finally had to hire someone to help me figure it out, and she is awesome and it was WAY inexpensive. So here is my first entry into Wellyssas’s Womb. (Yes, I do know things generally come out of wombs.) So you missed all of November and December, all of my yummy, self-aggrandizing posts of holiday lights, snow fall on this plant and that one . . . yawn. So I’m finally on-line, and hopefully it won’t be a complete bore and waste of time. We shall see.
So today is Friday, it’s been around 50 degrees for the past 2 days, so all the snow is beginning to melt. People are all excited about that, going on and on about summer. What are they yakking about?!? Really?. It’s barely winter.
The trees are still resting, the flowers and still sleeping and thickening their roots, the bulbs are sleeping too, except for maybe the early snow drops and crocus – they might be thinking about a little stretch, maybe. Has everyone forgot about what happened last year? We had -10 at the beginning of January and 75 at the end of the month. The trees pulled up their sap thinking the winter is over, it’s time to wake up, get ready to push out buds, and then blammy! -14 the next week. I lost 3 crab apples and 4 fruit trees, 2 apples, an Italian plum, and a baby peach. And my two dwarf cherries don’t look so good. Devastating. So yes! Let’s all pray for unnaturally warm weather so all the pretty trees can wake up and then get slaughtered when the temperature drops below freezing again, like it’s supposed to do. Woo hoo! No. Shut up. Get over it. It’s winter, and it needs to stay winter for a few more months.
Why can we not enjoy some down time? Are we gardeners completely insane? Don’t you remember being flat on your back with every muscle aching from trying to keep up with the garden last summer when it was so unusually wet? It was like gardening in Florida. EVERYTHING grew, including the weeds. I’ve never had to weed as much as I did last year.
I still have tennis (er uh gardeners) elbow and the beetles on the vege garden – OMG – it was an invasion. So No. Let it snow, and keep on snowing for another couple of months. I’m not ready. It’s the dark time of the year. Time to rest, regenerate, put our roots down, contemplate – but not too hard! I’m enjoying looking outside and knowing that there’s absolutely nothing I can, or should be doing out there right now.
