Prayers for a dying garden

With a week of over 100 degrees, my garden is resembling more a stack of straw than the beautiful picture of color that I had hoped. As I walked my garden today, the struggling bermuda (finally, something that can conquer it!) crunches under my feet like broken glass. My ponds are gooey messes of algae and floating bugs. My rose bushes have thorns and not much else. And I resign myself to another fall of digging, mulching, re-design. Who was it that said that any garden can be beautiful in spring -- it's in August where the real gardening shows. The heat reveals all the shortcuts I've taken with mulching, it reveals where I haven't dug deep enough, it shows off my mistakes letting me know that when dealing with nature, I'm much more of a novice than I might have believed in spring.

The fact is my garden is in need of updating. The oldest parts of my garden are about 5 years old this year and they are showing the signs of needed life transfusion: composting, mulching, adding organics to the soil

I spend early morning hours just trying to keep things watered,though, with little thought of remedying some of the more glaring mistakes until cooler weather returns. At this point, I'm just in survival mode reminding myself as I go that I must, I just must get some water sources out in the far back so the bulky hoses that I use won't totally destroy the shrubs that break under their weight. My mother gave me a wonderful gift this weekend -- 2 seeping hoses 75 feet each and I received this gift like a starving person might receive food. It is just what is needed.

It is so hot in my garden that simply sitting out and reading a book (one of my all-time favorite activities) works up a sweat. Evidently, just holding my head up is an exercise that is "over-doing" it in the Oklahoma August heat.
So each morning before 6 a.m. I head out in shorts and t-shirt and begin weeding. I think I've commented on weeding before and I'll say it again -- there is a satisfying element of weeding when I just yield to it. It's not as if I arise and say, "WOW! I get to go pull weeds in my garden until my cuticles are bleeding pulps!" I go more out of guilt and a sense of responsibility -- I was there for my garden when it was pretty, so why shouldn't I be there for it now? Sometimes I feel like a very fickle suitor. So I pour buckets of water that I collect from dripping hoses onto the fading shrubs, offering it like a prayer.

Once I'm in the garden, and the soaker hoses are doing their work, there is a meditative quality to weeding. I have heard it said that tending one's garden is tending one's soul and maybe this is true. There is a satisfying sense of having accomplished something when I review the row of clean garden patch, despite the dirt embedded in my fingernails, despite the branches that cling to my clothing. And it is amazing that during this sweaty work, knotty problems that I didn't even know I was working on begin to find resolutions. Ideas spring to mind as I lift pull on the bermuda and lift it out of the soil, popping it out like a zipper on my fat cousin's dress.

I'm sure there are those that find recluse and sanctuary in churches and other structures. Admittedly, the cool rooms of my church are enjoyable after an hour in the garden. Despite the blowtorch heat, divine spirits still emerge and nurture me as I traipse through the reamins of the garden this year. Call it peace, or enlightenment or connection -- and it is all these things -- I find solace in the garden despites it broiled leaves and toasted buds.