Landscape Fabric

While transplanting yesterday, i dug up a piece of landscape fabric. Oh yeah. 15 years ago, there was a path here. I put down landscape fabric so weeds wouldn't grow in the path. Now the path is 3 feet farther downhill.

Landscape fabric is for gardeners who don't garden. Landscape fabric is trying ever so hard to make the garden stay the same--just as it is today. But guess what! The garden moves. The garden moves so incrementally, you don't notice it. My yard has a slight incline, and the dirt moves downhill ever so slowly.

If you're never going to move a single plant, never going to divide an overgrown plant, never going to dig in your garden, then you might consider landscape fabric. But, really, what's the purpose of landscape fabric, or black plastic? I'm betting you want to keep the weeds down. If you want to keep the weeds down, mulch! Mulch is very pretty, and you can dig around in it all you want.

Black Plastic Pros & Cons

Carole laid down black plastic in her vegetable garden to absorb and increase the heat in the soil for her peppers and tomatoes as well as to suppress the weeds. Now, a tribe of voles has taken up residence under the black plastic, and are pruning every plant in sight. Not only the broccoli and the beans, but also the peppers, including the hot peppers. (I wonder if the leaves and stems are as hot as the peppers?)

 We too lay down various forms of weedy thought suppression: Oh, i shouldn't think that or Oh, i shouldn't feel that way or I don't want to feel this painful feeling.

We try to grow nice-ness as our cover crop. And what happens? When we're not looking, our best efforts are nibbled away, undermined by the very feeling/thought we are trying to suppress.

Mindfulness is our refuge. Lean into that unpleasant feeling as if it's an acupressure point. Make friends with that unpleasant thought/feeling.

That's the way to grow a garden. Pepper your life with mindfulness.

Turning a Weed Patch into a Garden

A friend moved into a new apartment with a weed patch for a front yard. She asked the landlord's permission to turn the front yard into a garden. Now she's looking for a rototiller to borrow.

I do not have a rototiller. I love my turning fork, but a weed patch might prove to be a wrestling match for a turning fork.

If she has patience (and for a gardener in April, patience can feel like holding a team of wild horses),

1. cover the area with black plastic this summer OR
2. use the lasagna method and layer on whatever you have--newspaper, cardboard, dead leaves, manure if you can get it, compost, old wood chips, mulch hay OR
3. combine #2 and #1. Do the lasagna method and then cover it with black plastic. Or an old carpet (preferably wool).

When we want to turn the weed patch of our busy minds into a garden that gives us happiness and contentment, we can begin by allowing our bodies to rest in meditation. This requires some patience because our weedy minds have a lot of seeds that suddenly sprout up.

We may try to turn over a new leaf, beginning right now, but we actually do not have that sort of control over our minds.

Mulch your mind with meditation, practice patience, and a year from now you will have a garden of happiness.