Hail

Just as we finished with the final touches on the gardens along Wonderland Trail last week, a hail storm arrived and massacred everything in sight. In less than fifteen minutes, this entire garden was in shreds.

I have never seen Hosta looking so pitiful

So, we groomed, replanted and fertilized everything.

The gardens looked much better by the end of the week. But the tedious stooping over every single hosta carefully removing damaged leaves to expose new young ones took it's toll on my body. My back took in a lot of sun radiation in a Rose garden in Wilksboro as well, while pruning, removing diseased foliage and fertilizing on a scorching hot day. Not to mention the never ending dehydration.

All the gardeners I know have just about reached total burn out.

I can hear it in my daughters voices when we talk on the phone. Even though there is good news to share, like my eldest, Airynee calling to tell me she just had a photo shoot with Southern Living Magazine, for the gardens she is creating at Goodstone Inn in Middleburg, Virginia, we are acknowledging the need for personal restoration and balance.

It seems I will be needed on Goodstone as well. Airynee wants me to do some design work on CAD for the long term garden planning they need to do. I will head up there in July to begin.

It is hard to believe I was just up there a couple of weeks ago for a visit. June has been such a busy and productive month. I spend the weekend in quiet, resting, eating and painting my garden.

Ahhhhhh gentle rainstorms all weekend....I am in heaven.

Even Finn is spending the weekend sleeping in the sandbox.....

Way Hot

My White Siberian Iris is blooming, so I sketched it. It was way too hot this weekend to do anything, but go zen and sketch. I also contemplated The Way of Bee's.

I was so dehydrated from the work week, and hungry, no time to eat last week. We were in the ER resuscitating plants everywhere we planted.

I was gathering anger at the weather, stressing out about 'my gardens' and I was spiraling into energy whack. Bee's were aggressively scouting me in my garden. I usually have no issues with the buzzy stinging ones, but I was making them nervous, so they made me nervous. One sat on my head and in no uncertain terms made me aware of it. Something was up, and they were trying to tell me to chill.

I was going into 'me' and 'mine' energy.....whoops! Where had I stung or been stung recently?

I puttered, painted, drank lots of water, swam in Wilson's creek with my dog. I immersed my self in the cool water and soaked in the sun on a rock, like an old seal.

It was wonderful to feel chilled after I emerged from the cold water. I looked upwards at the skyline of the mountains above me, and absorbed the beauty of my environment. Fortunately, Finn had a few children to play with which gave me the time to get into this space. He had a blast. I surely think that dog would swim until he had a heart attack, if I didn't pull him out occasionally to rest up.

I reveled in my microcosmic place in the world, while allowing the macrocosm take care of its self.

We did magnetize a rainstorm to Ski Mountain right as we finished work this afternoon.

Apparently it didn't rain anywhere south of us. But we saw the potential clouds and invited them to the garden. It worked! A special Thank You to the nature spirits for that.