Fall Gardens

I celebrated the first day of fall by going on a local garden tour--a fundraiser for a little K-6 alternative school. What i saw were some of the most beautiful gardens in my town (population 2,000).

Just when it seemed like the gardening season was drawing to a close, i saw loads of blooming flowers.

So it is with aging. Just when it seems like an 80-something should be closing up shop, they're still vibrantly contributing to their local community.

A young relative once asked me, "What do you do anyway, now that you're retired?" Ha! There are lots of blooming flowers in this old gal yet.

Appreciation

I'm the email secretary for our little local gardening group, Perennial Swappers. Maybe you could call it a club, but the only business is that Bonnie arranges the bi-weekly garden tours. Then every 2 weeks during the spring and summer, we meet at 6:00, give our extra plants away (takes about 10 minutes), and head off for a garden tour of a local, ordinary garden. I am amazed by the variety of gardens within a 5-mile radius of my house!

As email secretary, i pass along emails i receive that are of gardening interest. The Smith College bulb show, the Mt. Holyoke College greenhouse open house, an Ikebana workshop, a gardening seminar.

I send these emails out to the 133 people in the Perennial Swappers group. Maybe 10 or 20 come to any one meeting, and you usually see the same faces. Still, it's fun to trade gardening stories and to get together with other good gardeners to discuss plant problems and garden questions.

Today, i received 2 thank-you emails--notes of appreciation for letting people know about these gardening events.

Appreciation is all the pay i get for this volunteer job of email secretary, which i do enjoy doing. It pays to appreciate everyone we see today.

Garden Tour

My friend, Sam, and i went on a garden tour yesterday--the first of the season. It began at the spectacular garden of a British garden designer. We had barely set foot in the garden before Sam was overwhelmed with its utter neatness. "He's a landscape designer," i said. "He has a crew of gardeners."

The next garden we visited was a small garden around a very small house. "Oh, i spend about 2 hours a day in the garden," Caitlin-the-owner said.

How much time do we want to spend meditating--or gardening--each day? An hour in the morning and an hour in the evening leads to a beautiful garden. If we garden--or meditate--all day every day, as we might at a retreat, we will pull a lot of weeds.

How important is your garden to you? How important is meditation to you? Do the first things first.

The "Bones" of the Garden--or of Meditation

Yesterday was the first garden tour fund-raiser of the season around here. After the several plant sale fund-raisers of last weekend, many other small non-profit organizations offer garden tours throughout the course of the summer.

These garden tours are a great way to sneak a peek into gardens you would never otherwise see and meet the owners, whom you would not otherwise meet.

These 6 gardens (for $25) all had beautiful "bones" of stonework that defines various garden "rooms" (often including a terrace) and brings a sense of orderliness to the great outdoors.

The Dharma offers us the framework to build a beautiful mind, bringing a sense of orderliness and calm to the jungle through which the monkey mind swings all day long.

Open up your copy of The Meditative Gardener or any inspirational book now. Begin there with whatever page you open to. Begin your summer with a feeling of calm.