gardening

Some Soil

January 17, 2014 — 8 Comments

He spoke in a parable. He said

Some soil is just about dead

Walked over and worn out

Impervious to seeds,

A feeding trough for birds.

 

Some soil is stony:

Seeds sprout quickly,

Sprouts stretch to sun,

Sun scorches leaves,

Plant withers and dies.

No roots, he explained.

 

Some soil is preoccupied

Crowded with seeds of stubborn stock

That choke anything fresh

Before it can flower.

 

Some soil is just right

(To quote a golden-haired girl),

A dark loamy bed

Where seed bursts open in eager love,

Dying with life-force;

And soil honors seed’s sacrifice

Faithfully nurturing newborn sprout.

 

The seeds

I have gathered

Don’t come in uniform packets

Stamped with precise planting instructions.

They are scattered grains of life

Sown from everywhere:

Love letters and report cards, ocean waves and office buildings,

Toddlers’ tantrums, neighbors’ gossip,

Even radio talk shows and preachers’ sermons.

 

I have also

Discovered the soil

Doesn’t come in a bag

Purchased with indulgences and poured into the soul.

The best soil is made of wasted moments:

The garbage and leftovers of everyday life,

Piled in the back of the mind to rot,

Food for tiny creeping thoughts who give it back changed

Breaking up stony places

Crumbling softening

Light loose reborn

Hungry and thirsty for righteousness

A good place to put down roots.

Perennial

May 26, 2011 — 5 Comments

It’s late spring in Minnesota. That’s why this blog has a bit of the echoing sound of summertime school halls right now. I’m outside whenever I can be. I admit that I worship the sun. I finished this poem from a pouty roost at the coffeeshop yesterday while it was raining.

Perennial
by Julia Tindall Bloom 5/25/11

Perennial means forever.
I remember this each spring,
When the bleeding heart comes all quick and tumbling out of the bare ground,
Lines of tiny pink and white clowns
Pouring out of a celery-stem car.
Plants, unlike people, do not age.
I ponder this
As I survey my wrinkling skin,
My gathering cellulite,
As I pull on my first pair of shorts
In this new spring,
And I wonder about resurrection.
It is inarguable that we animals
Rise again as plants.
Is that all?

Winter Gardening

January 19, 2010 — 1 Comment

Under the snow is buried treasure.

Breathing cold quiet sterile air, I remember that in the ground are the hearts of the plants I happily nurture during the warmer months. I see the past and also the potential. Winter is the canvas for my gardening dreams, which makes this season precious. The work of the dreaming season is to build the desire that fuels the hard work of the growing season.

I remember where everything grew, and I recall my dreams of last winter. Some of them I carried out in the growing season, some changed shape, some were discarded, some set aside for another year. Now I file through the ones set aside. I reimagine the landscape, fill it in with memories and dreams.

Standing there in the quiet and the white, anything is possible. The sky is the limit in this moment when I need no money, no time, no muscle or tools to do the work that’s needed – the dreaming.

Surprised by Jack

May 26, 2009 — 4 Comments

fairy luI live in a fairy forest. It’s a minuscule woodland, and I am its caretaker, while my five-year-old Luthien fancies herself its fairy princess.

As the keeper of the itsy-bitsy forest (comprised of three towering evergreens and the woodsy floor beneath them in my front yard), I have been busy planting shrubs and perennials purported to enjoy such a shady, piny spot. I’ve also, of course, been occupied with pulling up weeds to make space for those plants and manage the appearance of my garden-forest.

My gardening style is a bit wilder than the wood-chip-mulched norm. I rarely rake the pine needles or remove pinecones, and to remove weeds, I use my hands rather than a spray bottle. My definition of weeds is rather loose. The clover and the violets and the purple-blooming creeping Charlie, even the dandelions and the plantain are all possible keepers in my gardens, depending on their placement. It’s like sculpting – in one place, that dandelion needs to go, but somewhere else, it fits just right.

This morning while the kids perched on the neighbors’ steps to watch some city employees trim trees on the boulevard, I sculpted (i.e. weeded) my forest gardens. And to my delight, I discovered a new Jack-in-the-pulpit volunteer! It’s the third one I’ve found in the gardens, none of which I planted. I’ve also discovered catnip and milkweed volunteering in ideal spots in my gardens, and this spring a shrub I had left alone the last couple years, not sure what it was or where it had come from, opened for the first time into delicate white blossoms, revealing itself to be a honeysuckle.

Had I been overly ambitious to eradicate weeds and mulch thoroughly, I wouldn’t enjoy such surprises. While I am happily the keeper of the fairy forest, I recognize it lives and breathes and produces beauty with or without me; and it’s a joy to work with it rather than reign over it.

So bring on the Jacks. May their tribe increase. And I’ll be happy to kneel in my gardens, take my time pulling weeds here and there, and enjoy those moments revelling in the wild beauty of my fairy forest.