A Lovely Gardening Blog

I have just discovered this blog: Nature Abhors a Garden. Wonderful inspiration. Today I wandered about the back garden, spreading a bit more straw and wondering about the winter season and next spring. What will survive? Will anything flourish? What an adventure!

I have been thinking about my master's project. And it has sent me to cleaning a bit. Hmmm. An interesting phenomenon. But Holly Koteen told me I would probably become more conscious of cleaning in my home life as I study it for my project.

I have returned to Rudolf Steiner's Knowledge of Higher Worlds which was required reading for my Foundation studies at Sunbridge. At the time I found it hard going. I have just started rereading it, so I don't know how it will progress, but so far I am finding it amazingly refreshing and understandable. Four years can make quite a difference - can it be only four years?????

Now I understand why Ann Stahl had us choose a plant and observe it daily. My plant was the bronze fennel. I planted bronze fennel summer before last, but it died. This year I had better luck. It is frozen in the garden now, but I am hopeful that it will return next spring. That is a primary exercise - to observe burgeoning life and then decline and death - and rebirth - in Nature. An added insight now is the importance of developing an established root system. (I have also learned via Gail not to cut down perennials in the fall - the cut-off stems will act like straws, drawing any moisture down into the root system and rotting it out.) I hope I am developing established root systems - in a metaphoric sense, of course!