The month of May was a busy one for me! The spring semester winds down (think: final grades, faculty meetings and commencement), and the ground starts warming up! All those dreams and ideas that germinated in the winter are about to become real!
May was a confusing stretch of time for gardening this year where I live in Michigan. We had warm days and then cold days — sunshine and early plantings, then freezing temperatures that wiped them out. It was the most stressful time of waiting-it-out that I can remember. I told myself to stay focused on plans and preparations, and practice being still. Turns out, waiting was good for me.
When the day came for me to pick up my trays of organic seedlings that Willow Garden Organic Farms started for me, I was ready to go! I had a little setback with the basil, but it recovered and is now going strong. And the arugula, spinach, swiss chard, kale, and cilantro just soaked it all up and g r e w.
The word “resilience” is used pretty often in the world right now — and I’m learning from the garden — that plants are incredibly resilient, they strive to thrive, and given the time and conditions they need, they can survive and even g r o w. There must be a lesson for me there.
May brought not very many showers (we had drought conditions), but lots of weed barrier cloth, some new hoses, a start with drip tape irrigation (yay!), a start on my cutting rose garden, and those dreamy dahlia tubers, sprouts, planting, and now healthy plants! A new focus on our hens (they stopped laying for several weeks) and plans to give them free rein of the garden to snack on bugs and weeds. I do hope they don’t peck on the summer squash….
Even with all the waiting, today May is a blur. It came and it went. With early mornings, late nights, days of being still, and days of being busy. It’s all a part of the growing process, because June follows with some of the fruit of it all.
He makes grass grow for the cattle, and plants for people to cultivate–bringing forth food from the earth.
Psalm 104:14
Gwen's Greens 