Awakened Spirit: Spending and Saving

These days I'm noticing what is spent.

A shrub, just outside my fence, produces fragrant blossoms in spring. They're now dry and browning, and what once was a lovely, lilting backdrop in my writing view looks leggy and is mixed with a tangle of weeds coming up through the spaces in the foliage. I'll be pulling out my hedge trimmers and taking it down to the fence line. Again.

I folded the daffodil leaves over and rubber banded them weeks ago. They'd dropped with a rainstorm and no longer were standing upright. Took up too much of the planting room. Dry and brown, having sucked up nutrients from the soil, they are ready to be clipped away.

The rose bush seems to offer one flowering. My mother's bump-out rose bushes produce all summer, pushing away the spent blossoms as new buds form and flower, filling the air with fragrance. I haven't grown roses before, so I'm not sure what to do with this, beyond some reading for now. They may require dead-heading.

The dill is dying to flower. And it will die when it does, so I keep nipping away any flowers that form. The sage seems to be at the end of its flowering. The peonies are done. The iris are done. Thinking about how to keep that part of the flower bed looking fresh while staying true to its cycles and seasons.

Even as I notice what is spent, I notice the new life that pushes through. Up through the peony and iris foliage comes another flower. It is fierce in its growth and ready to flower. My neighbor tells me she did not plant them, that they are a gift of the birds. Her flower bed, which abuts mine and is separated by a low fence, is filled with them. They play well with the coneflower, she says. My irises have migrated to her flower bed. Flowers may not respect boundaries. And that may be a good thing. She has planted her bee balm in a pot. I have mine in one as well. I read that they drop a million seeds. I can see the flower bed becoming home to the three plants and there are other things I'd like to plant there.

Ultimately, I'll let them have their way. I can always plant more of what I want in containers. I have a new respect for the word as they contain the spearmint that, otherwise, would run rampant through any free spaces in the bed and probably crowd out other things. I hear that lemon balm behaves the same way. It's now planted in two pots and seems to have spread overnight.

The lettuce is restored. The kale makes a beautiful potted plant as well as being good eating. I'd never thought to have used it decoratively if my bunnies hadn't shown me the detriment to having it in the ground in my garden. As I think of it, children's stories come to life in my experience. I'm still noticing the patterns of light here. Still, really, just playing with the garden, as we get to know each other.

The summer days move relentlessly forward, tomorrow becoming yesterday too quickly. Already two weeks have passed of these 100 summer days. Wasn't it just yesterday that I first read the poem?