While my gardens, admittedly neglected this summer, have morphed mainly to daisy-yellows and a plethora of pink malvas, the flowers from my friend Sharon's garden in Watertown, Massachusetts still flourish. But you should know that Sharon speaks with earth spirits and they obviously help.
These photos are from Sharon's fall garden. I've been following her purposeful planting since the late 8o's when her husband David gave her her first Garden Journal. She, like her friend and neighbor Paul Tamburello feeds her garden with love, not chemicals. I especially like Paul's assessment of what it is we do every year wielding shovels and rakes: random acts of nature and conscious acts of gardening.
Nature's randomness seems to be winning out right now in our little corner of Vermont. Blackberry shoots poke up over night saying, "I dare you!" And as lovely as Queen Anne's Lace is, I'm not sure it belongs in the perennial beds.
I fondly remember being in Sharon's Watertown garden one August evening. It was on what some call Lammas, a Celtic holiday perched halfway between summer solstice and the autumn equinox. It's a day, like a sweet-sour tart, still scented by summer but heavy with fall. We sat on a rug-blanket covering salt marsh straw under tendriled pumpkin plants, big and fecund as any found in the famous Findhorn gardens. Wrapped inside this deva-fairy land, we blessed its quiet space in the middle of an urban landscape. We honored Sharon's trees, from privet to pear, hawthorne to maple, apple to birch. In the cricket-filled quiet, we spiraled ourselves deeper into a sanctuary where only dowsers and fallen apples dare to go.
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