As I sipped my coffee this rainy morning, watching the happenings at the feeders through the kitchen window, I spied the young male cardinal tucked solitary into the lower branches of an Elderberry Queen.
I followed the cardinal’s downward tilted gaze and laughed; a male squirrel that I have christened “Gets Along with Birds” was frantically rummaging through the new morning offering of seeds upon a split log.
Undoubtedly the intention of our squirrel friend was to bury most of his seed finds yet he appeared consumed with an equal desire to fill his belly with these delicious morsels; his frantic pace possibly a result of irritation stemming from his own indecisiveness.
Resident finches and sparrows chirp as they congregate happily around the iron ground feeder; a clear signal that their greet and eat this morning is an enjoyable one. A few errant doves waddle about the brassica bed, pecking here and there as they roam, occasionally extending a wing as the steadier rain dwindles to a lighter drizzle.
Nowhere that my eyes did drift had I spotted the female cardinal so seemingly her mid-morning interlude kept her elsewhere; I glanced back to where her companion had been a few moments before finding he had now placed himself on the curled iron top of the shepherds hook while still awaiting his turn to feed at the log.
I found myself drifting into a brief reflection as to how I arrived at this moment of such contentment and peace afforded to me through my relationship with these petite wild-ones.
It has only been a few short years since my three beloved fur children had returned to Spirit yet I see now clearly that it was in their departure that the space was created and seeded for these precious moments that I am now experiencing to exist.
Though the transition of my little soul mates and occurrence of subsequent events was not the only time I had experienced this truth it would seem that the gravity of my grief during this most recent “loss” delivered this wisdom to me in a manner that I now behold as Truth.
It is with that last thought that I hear quite simply;
“Every Parting offers us a Gift; sometimes it just takes us a while to unwrap it.”
Under today’s Virgo New Moon I began to harvest more earnestly than I have in these past many months of summer. Soybeans were lifted from their space of seasonal residency; aerial parts fully intact and nicely dried with roots left unto the Earth undisturbed. I resettled one little winged friend from the dried stalks, placing him upon the dried leaves now strewn about where the soybeans had recently stood.
Lemon in Garden 2022
Dried lima beans were gathered for a future life, seeds to be sown somewhere other than here I suspect. If that be true I will miss very little of the company that I have kept while here; almost all of my favored loves have departed this place before me. There is one whom I would miss greatly; my sweet little Lemon whom came in the midst of my sorrows and offered me companionship of the canine kind once again. I hold a hope that she and I will not be too far apart geographically as to prevent our visiting with each other.
Red bell peppers perfectly formed and hued are snipped and placed within the large metal colander, nestled atop earlier plucked Roma and Beefsteak tomatoes, the base for a tomato basil sauce to be created later this day. If time allows this sauce will be processed in Ball jars and then saved to be shared with new companions, if my sense of things before me is accurate, some not too distant day from now.
I now notice the condition of the cherry tomatoes upon three of the individual plants that I have not picked from in the past week. While many appear ripe and perfect to the eye, my taste buds have found them quite wanting for flavor even though they had received more attention, and better living conditions, then some of their other plant neighbors.
It has been a rather disappointing cherry tomato season.
Last spring I had inadvertently lost track of my tomato seedling varieties. After sharing some seedlings with others, and planting for myself those that remained, I was disappointed when I realized that I had not kept one single orange cherry plant that I adore for my garden. I placated myself with the knowledge that I still had an abundance of seeds for that variety and would be able to enjoy it again next season.
Quickly I file a mental note to return to these plants this evening, when it is cooler, with an intention to remove them to the compost for regeneration. I do not wish to waste any more energy attending to that which is unlikely to produce fruit that is desirable to my palate. Returning to my garden chores I clear the garden bed of the dropped, over-ripe and now undesirable fruits.
As the sun rises higher and the resident birds and squirrels rustle in the brush, the sounds omitting from their restless movements conveys their desire for me to retire indoors so that once again they might fully claim their space at feeders and water bowls.
I return to the last watering to be done for the morning.
With watering can in hand I tread across the grass now richly interspersed with plantain, feet bare today, enjoying the sole sensations arising from the meeting of flesh upon soft, cool earth.
My experience of the garden this morning was a frenetic one. So much disarray to be sorted through after last evening’s rain; yet Lemon was so agitated that my task was not one that was going to be undertaken with any ease and grace.
As I gathered produce, tended the feeders and up righted tipped planters she pulled and strained against her very generous lead yelping and panting; a half crazed, fully obsessed, bunny-lusted Lemon she was.
I moved her lead from stake to stake around the gardens hoping that if she were presented with enough differing angles (perspectives) she would come to the recognition that there was nothing tangible where she believed it to be.
Yet the more information she had to work with the greater her frenzy became.
I finally had enough. I stopped everything I had been doing, took a deep breath to clear my own irritation with her agitation and said,
“Lemon, just let it go now Darlin’, just let it all go. It is already gone. You are just chasing a Ghost now”.
Lemon stilled and became and quiet. Something inside of me responded in like manner.
For a few moments we were as such, she and I, calculating our next steps in consideration of the awareness we now had.
And then the first drops of a new day’s rain touched our cheeks and signaled a lesson completed.
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Paraphrasing Florence Scovel Shinn on the subject of loss:
Into the Mystic 