soul work

The ground I tend sustains me in the easy summer, but the garden of the spirit is the place where I go when the wind howls. This lush and fragrant expectation has a longer growing season than the plot of earth I'll hoe for the rest of the year. Raised in the mind's eye, nurtured by the faithful composting of orange rinds and tea leaves and ideas, it is finally the wintergarden that produces the true flowering, the saving vision.

This is an extract from an amazing book called The Blue Jay's Dance by Louise Erdich that my friend Lucy lent me. It is a truly beautiful book and I urge you to read it.

The morning after reading this Andy came to me describing what he wanted to do in the garden, his dream for the summer. I am not a gardener, it doesn't run in my blood this way. I enjoy looking at and being in a full and vibrant garden, but I don't share Andy's passion for growing. It is the importance of the garden to Andy that is special to me. It is one of the things that saved him from his depression and I am forever grateful for and supportive of his love of gardening.



So I was thrilled when on every window sill of the house pots and containers appeared with little bits of Andy's garden vision in them.This is the only problem with having things on the low window sill ;-)



One of the reasons we didn't grown anything last year was that we had no space in which to do so. Andy, ingenious as ever solved, this problem by building these great raised beds. They run all around the garden and are quite narrow so we haven't lost any playing space, but so plentiful that we have a lot of sq feet of growing space.He went and asked a local farmer if he could have some top soil, and he's been making lots of trips to and from the farmer's bottom field with his little Golf filled with buckets. The kids are really loving it, Rebe in particular gets so much pleasure from planting and Benny, well Benny just likes mud :-)

Not content with planters Andy whipped up this little beauty this weekend...

A wee green house, big enough for cucumbers and tomatoes and herbs, but again not taking up any play space and not intruding on the look of the garden. He's so clever and creative. I love looking down our garden at all his creativity, and in the summer surrounded by flowers, fruits, salads and veggies I am certainly going to revel in it.

Rebe, like her daddy loves gardening. This is all her own work, dirt, water and ...bird seed...

Thank you Andy for all your hard work x x