My Salvation Garden

This past week we’ve had mostly miserable weather and we’re getting a doozy of a storm as today turns into tomorrow. 100% chance of heavy rain and very cold temperatures are coming sometime overnight to keep us inside yet again all day tomorrow. But in the off moments of dreary days, we have had some pockets of opportunity to start new projects to try our best to get our many garden areas in good order. I personally have more half done jobs than completed ones, but these few finished ones are starting to perk up my lagging spirits and guilt over such slow progress. Finally, even in this odd Spring we have things happening that can’t be stopped. Budding is taking place and blossoms are dripping from what were bare branches just a few weeks ago. Although most of the lawns are drying out, there are still so many flooded ones that resist draining away on John’s makeshift channels. So when I notice a part of the yard where everything is starting to show real promise and is fairly tidy and even billowing in some places, I feel real contentment. There is an end in sight to this hard slog we keep doing.  Little by little we are conquering the mess and nature is helping us along the way.

The garden I’m speaking about has an old brass head depicting what looks to me to be the Buddha. Years ago I found some old metal rods that were part of a car I think that I dug up in the yard. My surprising discovery created the challenge of figuring out what to do with the disparate features. I think it was an old muffler, perhaps I’m confusing the rods that I use as outstretched arms as part of this buried treasure, but the muffler became the body of the Buddha. For some unknown reason, it seemed to suit the head that was probably only stamped out when it was manufactured, which might account for the 50 cents price tag at the dump. But I soldiered on and soon I felt the pangs of prayer coming over me, and a sense of pure peaceful bliss when I walked by this creation I put together. Today that area looks rather charming with its overhanging currant blossoms (or something that looks like that) just around the Buddha.  All of that leads to a recently pruned rose hanging over the gated arbor that John built.  That quadrant of garden used to have an old battered sign I painted over it that suited that primitive style fencing and gateway he created.  I called it Fort Fairweather, but the wooden sign has since fallen off from the harsh storms’ battering.  Inside there is a teepee my resident builder made for climbing beans to ramble over, which is still a couple of projects away from being reconstituted. The cleanup there involves making my way through the masses of brambles with their brutal thorns in the spaces left free from the wandering lemon balm that seems to have covered most bare patches. If I can remove the lemon balm at the very least we will have some self planted tall daisies and gorgeous opium poppies that pop up at will here and there.  But the entrance to this garden is looking a bit spiffy, despite what’s still left to be removed, because the Buddha behind it gives it a feeling of sacred space, unfettered with the stresses and strains of life. It is a small place of utter calm in a world gone mad and even a few minutes admiring it puts me at ease for whatever lies ahead of me today.