There is Magic in a Garden
There is magic in a garden.
A garden transforms a space that was one an empty lot, a field, a hard-packed, four-foot square hunk of sidewalk in the inner city, into a vibrant thriving, world of plants and animals. A garden introduces life, Earth cycles, and soil, rich with decay, into what was once just a uniform ugly plot. There is magic in any garden.
My main garden was just plain grass - part field, part lawn - when we moved in. I thought about where to begin my garden, considering sunlight, slope, and any obstacles to sunlight. I knew I wanted to grow vegetables. But a garden can go virtually anywhere. Some people build lovely garden spaces where there is practically no sunlight. You work with what you have.
Our garden is my exercise, my solace, and a nice portion of our food supply. As such, it’s pretty important in our lives. Every year at this time my weight drops about five pounds. That drop in weight is not related to a particular workout strategy, because if it was it would occur earlier in the spring when I move a lot of compost and turn the soil in places. But I retain my winter weight through the spring. Instead, that weight-drop comes later as my steps back and forth to the garden increase and the garden bounty finds its way to our dinner plates. The garden keeps me busy.
In the late spring and summer, with the Maine weather improving, I head to the garden about twenty-four times a day. I water in the morning, I weed a little. I take a bathroom break from work, ‘taking a leak’ outside, to keep the deer away. I weed a little more. I check for stink bugs and slugs throughout the day. In the late afternoon I pick some veggies for supper. I weed a little more. Every day, I try to pick a few garden chores and dedicate fifteen minutes to each task.
These steps add up. They become regular, a routine of sorts. A garden becomes part of your daily experience. An aspect of your life that feeds your stomach and mind at once. A place for napping and meditating. A place for your soul to grow and rest. A place for your body to stretch. A place for rejuvenation.
I also walk out to the garden to sit. To breath and experience being with the garden and all that it attracts. In the garden are insects; pollinators and squatters that use the garden as their place of living. Birds are attracted to the garden in part to eat insects or bathe in a bird bath. But I’ve noticed that birds, like Barn Swallows, like the garden because it offers warm currents they can ride to the higher levels in the air above our back yard meadow. I believe they like the garden because it is enjoyable.
Barn Swallows have fun in our garden. Each afternoon they return to ride the breeze, chase flying prey and land lightly on the garden floor where they scratch the soft soil for grubs. If you pay attention, in early July you will notice smaller baby swallows, trailing their parents in their garden sorties; their flight paths more awkward, and halting. What magic the garden must be to them!
A garden gathers the July sun into warm corners; pockets of soft vegetation, inviting a garden weeder to stop, squat and finally sit in the miracle of a squash patch or a chard row. To rest for a moment, bathed in the warm light from our closest star, the Sun; surrounded by a vibrant plot of life that exists in part because of your hand and in part because God made it possible.
That warmth in July, imprinted in your bones, is stored as a memory of summer days. Because come February, you’ll look outside from the kitchen sink window at the barren, frozen backyard, and the very idea of sitting in the warm summer garden will be seem utterly preposterous, outrageous and impossible. Yet you know it will return, bit by bit; a little warmer with each passing week as the Earth tilts in our favor and then swings back toward winter after the summer solstice.
But today, I sit with crickets, plants and birds, warming and understanding that this plot of ground, in this season, has performed its miracle. That there is magic in a garden; in this garden. A garden, with all it contains and shares, that can trace it origins to an idea in my mind. That’s magic, isn’t it?
