Random thoughts apon a patch of clay-heavy soil...

A row of peas, a windowbox of lettuces, a row of green onion bulbs, a patch of potatoes. Attempt to rescue the Bay Laurel which is dying for some unknown reason... may have to replace it... Damn. Bush beans between the corn sprouts. Then a few butternut squashes... I notice now that my garden is becoming colour co-ordinated by vegetable type... Yellow in this box, Radishes with the tomatoes in the barrel...
Unconsious obsessive disorder?


Rouge d'Etemps pumpkins, the ones that look like something out of a Cinderella illustration at the back, begin building a new raised box for a second salad garden...

One of the few open recognitions of the existance of hope that I indulge in, my little garden. Like most things I truly love doing (swimming, fishing, painting, hunting, writing) it does not carry the distintion of being something I do exceptionally well... barely adequate sometimes to be truthful.

The dearth of bees is a noticable thing to me... When ever newspapers talk about dissapearing frogs, bees and other little animals, it makes little impression on most people I know personally... I feel it. the peepers are no longer singing in the evenings like when I was a kid. The few bees is cause for concern... visions of myself out here with a Q-tip pollinating my garden by hand all summer.

It rains softly but frequently... relaxing as long as you're not working in it. Sit on the porch with a cup of last year's peppermint leaves steeping in the water. This is as close to contemplative as I come. Usually figuring things out is taken on as an aggressive act, a war against mine own ignorances... (study, politics, scupture, driving a car... all bring out in me the common ancestor that Chimpanzees and I share quite demonstratively) The garden is "Mark's Little Ponder Place" as my kid brother called it when he lived here... Somewhere between Gandalf and Bilbo I sit, watching rain fall on the turned black soil, smelling the good dirt in the air and being, for a moment, at calm.