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  • A B- Garden

    Summer                                              Full Grandchildren Moon

    Lugnasa, August 1, the Celtic first fruits festival heralds the beginning of the harvest cycle of holidays.  Lugnasa, Mabon (Fall Equinox) and Samain, October 31st, carry our sacred calendar though the bread made from the first wheat to the last of the crops gathered into storage.  This means that the tenor of the year, changed at the Summer Solstice, has begun to gather force, no longer is the emphasis on growing and nurturing, but on collecting and senescence.   At least in the vegetable garden and at Artemis Hives.

    The flower garden still has a few licks to get in yet as the chrysanthemums, monk’s hood, fall blooming crocus, clematis softlily250and asters preen themselves as the light begins to fade from the sky and the air cools.  Right now the hemerocallis are going strong, creating a lively dance of color in the perennial beds.

    Truth in writing disclosure:  this has not been the best gardening year.  I’ve not put in the amount or quality of labor I have in the past and the garden shows it.  I’ve had trouble keeping my focus focused, my priorities prioritized.  This is a fact for me in the best of times, but when I don’t pay close attention my center can shift often.   Elsewhere I’ve called this the valedictory life, that is, a life in which I try to get an A in everything I do, instead of settling for a B or a C once in a while.

    To make the valedictory life more challenging I find the world has many things that fascinate me, as any reader of this blog will have learned by now.  Right now, at very best, I’d give the garden a B- this year.  Sad to say.

    On the other hand, I can make it better and that’s what I’m going outside to do right now.