Small Beginnings

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“The chief beauty about time
is that you cannot waste it in advance.
The next year, the next day, the next hour are lying ready for you,
as perfect, as unspoiled,
as if you had never wasted or misapplied
a single moment in all your life.
You can turn over a new leaf every hour
if you choose.”

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Arnold Bennett

The small efforts we make now in the garden will still have plenty of time to grow before autumn sets in, in Virginia.  We still have at least ten weeks, probably more in most parts of the state, to enjoy our gardens.

It amazes me, sometimes, how quickly plants grow when the conditions are right for them.  This little pot grows in the shade of our Azalea hedge, beside the driveway.

Ferns love these sheltered, shady spots.  I planted this Cretan brake fern from a 1″ nursery pot early in June.  Now it has settled in and given beautiful new leaves.  I added the hardy Begonia division about two weeks ago now.  There was a stand of them elsewhere, which needed thinning.  I dug up about a dozen babies and spread them around to see where they will take off and grow.

Hardy Begonias also grow quickly once they find the right spot and dig in their roots.  I hope to show you this one in bloom by early August.  It will grow to at least 12″ tall by then.  Even better, it will form a little bud at each leaf joint which can grow into a new plant next season.

The new leaf in front is from a rhizome left in the pot from another season, just now showing its first leaf.  We’ll see what it has in store for us this year.

Whatever early summer held for you, please keep your optimism and keep planting.  Whether you sow a fresh crop of seeds for fall vegetables, or whether you adopt some of the late season offerings at your local nursery, there is still time to make small beginnings and watch them grow into something beautiful this season.

All you truly need is the desire, a vision, and a small pot of good soil to get started.

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Here is my magical Begonia, which dies back to its rhizome from time to time. From its sad start when I set it out in May, it has now grown its summer crop of new leaves in a shady bed of ferns.

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“In the oddity or maybe the miracle of life,

the roots of something new frequently lie

in the decaying husks of something old.”

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Craig D. Lounsbrough

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This is one of our small ‘stump gardens.’ We’ve planted a seedling Hellebore, an Autumn Brilliance fern, and a Voodoo Lily in compost around the stump of a fruit tree lost to a storm. Each season we add a little compost as this tiny shade garden expands.

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Woodland Gnome 2015

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The same stump garden, from a different perspective….

Weekly Photo Challenge: Beginning

A beginning is something of a mystery, for every beginning is born from something already there.  Beginnings can be counted back in an endless web of connections and interconnections to… what?  If we trace back far enough, what do we find?  What is the spark, the point of transition, of energy into matter at the beginning?   Which came first, the darkness, or the light?

And what is the spark which energizes each new beginning, moment to moment, in our lives?

“New Year,”  “New Garden,” “New relationship;” at what point does the remains of the old transition into the Genesis of the new? 

The points we choose, so often, are arbitrary; allowing us to compartmentalize our experience into neat piles.  We close one calendar and open another.  We open a packet and plant a seed.  We shake a hand and say, ” Hello.”

Taking a snapshot in time and labeling it, “The Beginning” asks us to disregard all that came before.  We are all deeply enmeshed in this recycled, recycling web of being.  

We gardeners, whose hands are never far from the Earth, exploit the neatness of the system as we grow alongside our gardens. 

We treasure the compost of our lives as the brilliant, energetic chaos which allows birth and sustenance of the new.

We watch seeds ripen from the faded flower; pull tiny bulbils from the base of  last year’s bulb; cut a branch, root it, and watch it grow into its own maturity.

We look into our children’s faces and see our own grandparents.

We see all life and living as ripples and waves;  light shining on an endless sea of possibility.

All Photos by Woodland Gnome 2014

Weekly Photo Challenge