Hurray! I spent my first day in the garden this year. And what a wonderfully magical moment it was! Although there were still patches of snow around our yard and in parts of our garden, the main flower gardens were clear enough to let the gardening begin! The day was warm enough to go outside in just a sweatshirt and jeans (the next day was another story). And of course I got to use all the requisite garden tools like clippers, loppers, rakes and brooms! It was time to start the spring cleanup.
The before and after photos of the yard pretty much tell the tale. (And I love to look at the photos as reward for the amazing transformation). We like to leave the prior year’s garden pretty much untouched in the fall to add some design to the winter landscape. So when spring comes round, there is a lot to do.
After nipping back spent buds of Buddleia, Iris, Penstemon, Black-eyed Susans and other miscellaneous flowers, I set about pruning. First off was the Rose of Sharon bushes that I pruned to within arms-reach length and to keep tidy. Then with my husband Andy, we took on the Japanese Maple to keep it from getting too tall. A final raking out of the beds and we are off to a great start for this year’s garden.
There will be many more magical moments in our garden to come, but after a winter as brutal as this one, nothing can quite beat the magic of the first romp in the garden. I wish everyone a happy gardening season—and I hope you have fairies to help you out!
from Fairies
by Mei-mei Berssenbrugge
2
Fairies begin their day by coming together a moment and sharing joy.
They love the feeling, which dew on the leaves draws from grass, lilacs and the response of meadow and flowers to the dawn.
Diminutive green sylphs now run in the grass, whose growth seems intimately associated with theirs, a single line of concentration.
They talk to themselves, constantly repeating, with an intensity causing their etheric doubles, grass, to vibrate as they pass, vivifying growth.
To rabbits and young children they’re visible, but I see points of light, tiny clouds of color and gleams of movement.
The lawn is covered with these flashes.
In low alyssums along a border, one exquisite, tiny being plays around stems, passing in and out of each bud.
She’s happy and feels much affection for the plants, which she regards as her own body.
The material of her actual body is loosely knit as steam or a colored gas, bright apple-green or yellow, and is very close to emotion.
Tenderness for plants shows as rose; sympathy for their growth and adaptability as flashes of emerald.
When she feels joy, her body responds all-over with a desire to be somewhere or do something for plants.
Hers is not a world of surfaces–skin, husks, bark with definite edges and identities.
Trees appear as columns of light melting into surroundings where form is discerned, but is glowing, transparent, mingling like breath.
She tends to a plant by maintaining fusion between the plant’s form and life-vitality contained within.
She works as part of nature’s massed intelligence to express the involution of awareness or consciousness into a form.
And she includes vitality, because one element of form is action.
Sprouting, branching, leafing, blossoming, crumbling to humus are all form to a fairy.
XOXO Rachel
Wondrance 