It’s high spring now, in our city and country gardens. That means a good deal of work before the South’s climate takes matters out of our hands to show who is really in charge: weeds and humidity.
For now, and given the blessedly cool temperatures, we can make a bit of headway in the flower beds and lay out the area for our vegetables. The difficulty can be, even for a gardener with a spiritual practice, that the work gets in the way of the practice. That’s why I was so pleased when my wife pointed out the purple irises we’d moved to our farm, and my sister sent me a photograph of my mother’s bearded irises, blooming with abandon in the near-perfect weather.
We don’t often notice such beauty until it goes missing, and with irises that means a week or a little more before the show ends.
There’s a lesson in that for us all; the beauty that the Goddess casts upon the good earth, like our own youth and strength passes. They pass more slowly than a blossom, but they pass nonetheless. I remain thankful that I have so many gardening seasons behind me and, I hope, many more to come.
My mother puttered in her iris beds until her last few years, when illness kept for from tending them. After she passed into whatever lies beyond the Veil between the worlds, I divided the corms and planted them with my sister. We sent some to a sibling in California and we put some in both city and country. Now the corms need dividing again, meaning that great-grandchildren who never knew mom will have a share of the beauty that moved her and moved within her.
I cannot end without the planting tip she passed on to me. Never bury the corms when you plant them. They should be slightly visible on the ground. Once they take, don’t over water them or they’ll rot. You’ll then enjoy these deer-resistant plants (no small thing at our farm) every season.