Farewell to My Mother's Garden

It was a bittersweet parting from my mother's garden. After 6 weeks of tending, weeding, harvesting, admiring, documenting, and even sleeping within 100 feet of the garden it was time to leave. Reluctantly.

I laid in the tent for far too long the last morning. It was raining and the wind was blowing and I didn't want to go. There is something so magical about being in a tent while it is raining. Especially seeing through the skylight and watching the trees sway back and forth and the rain drops fall in spatters. The tent was my refuge and my cocoon, immersed in the outdoors with only a whisp of nylon between me and the birds, the bugs, the rain, the coyotes, the grass, intermittent acorns falling on the woodshed roof. The tent is one place where I felt very present in the world and very alive with nature.

Everything was lush and dripping and misty as I made my farewell garden rounds. Pajama farming, I have discovered, is in my blood and making my morning devotion to the greenery is a meditation in wonder and peace and beauty. Moments spent in the bean teepee confessional are cleansing and replenishing to the soul. Sharing time on my knees, hands deep in the soil, beside my mother in her Church of the Garden has been a sacred ritual and a blessing.

Goodbye winter squash growing secretly on the vines under your big leaf umbrellas.

Goodbye teepee beans who I trained to climb in spirals and watched grow from the ground to the sky.

 

Goodbye fuzzy peaches now so ripe and sweet and pink.

Goodbye prolific bush beans.

Goodbye sweet peas, my mom's favorite flower.

Goodbye zucchini plant who provided so much raw data and amazement.

Goodbye green tomatoes ... and hello to the first ripe red one that was so delicious.

Goodbye kale rows waiting patiently until frost in the fall.

Goodbye rutabagas who I never got to taste, but grew so alluringly behind the beets.

Goodbye radishes, my tiny, spicy and adorably cute food that I grew from seed.

Goodbye worms and frogs and beetles and bees and slugs and spiders and ladybugs.

Goodbye squash patch where I weeded and mulched and that evolved and travelled before my eyes. 

Goodbye sunflowers watching over the garden and nodding your heads in agreement.

Goodbye lush lettuce leaves curly and ruffly and crisp.

Goodbye herbs always ready for picking and adding fresh to dinner.

Goodbye zinnias and nasturtiums and cosmos and four o'clocks and ageratum and squash blossoms and bean flowers and twinkle phlox.

Goodbye my friends in the garden. Thank you for growing as I watched, for being unruly and adventuresome, for blossoming as I slept, for surprising me everyday with subtlety and beauty and magic.