Legacy Garden 🪴 & Art Class!

Happy Saturday friends!

I've been out in the garden as much as I can this week, usually in the later afternoon when the sun slips around the side of the house and the front is shaded. I was thinking about what things are helping me heal lately and overwhelmingly it's the garden. It's Mom's legacy in my hands. This spring, as I've slowly been planting my gardens here, I feel Mom next to me, planting beside me, in me.

I never cared about gardening when I was growing up. When we were growing up in southern California, Mom took a little over half of our backyard for a food garden. She made us help her weed, water, and pick: "Go get some spinach to go with dinner." 

I hated it. Funny how that changed ;-)

We moved to North Carolina and she had flower gardens. She didn't have much money to play with so would just get the smallest perennials she could find, knowing they would grow and often multiply—she was playing the long game. 

By the time I moved into my first little house in Knightdale, she had been growing her gardens for just 6 years and already had a ton of stuff to share. When we would take our tours around her yard, she would say, "You could put this sedum over in that back bed at your house, it would do well there." I'd agree and off she'd go for a shovel and a plastic grocery bag. That's where I learned that most plants aren't too fussy. She's just dig out a chunk with no concern for roots or carefully separating, back fill the hole with some compost and send me off. I was thinking about that when I bought these Cast Iron plants for under my dining window:

They came in two big pots that I bought from someone on Marketplace, my favorite way to fill my garden :-) Cast Iron plants are evergreen and spread slowly through rhizomes. The owner had just cut into the clumps, potted them up and sold them. A good way for your garden to pay for itself! I was just going to plunk them into holes but decided to see if they could be teased apart. They were growing in clay before so it was a wrangle to get them apart but I finally managed to get 12 plants out of the 2 clumps. Normally I would plant in clusters but I wanted them as a backdrop to other plants I'm planning for that area in the middle. 

I wish she were still here so we could share stuff. I have things here that I know she didn't have and would have loved. Like the Beautyberry bushes! It brings in so many birds! The spring after she crossed I took cuttings of some of her favorite things in her yard. Nothing survived. But I had also dug up a few of her bulbs and now, since we took out all the front trees and have so much sun, there is this little patch that is my Judy Garden:

It's just a clump of purple iris and some red cannas that are leafing out but it's enough to make me smile every time I see it. 

She had spots in her yard that she would call the "nurseries", perfect micro climates where all kinds of things would pop up that she wasn't expecting. I have tiny Japanese Maples that have popped up from seed in a pot on the front patio as one of my nurseries: 

The best part about these 2 seedlings is that they come from my 40 year old Bloodgood Japanese Maple but because it was a grafted tree, the seeds won't be true Bloodgoods. They are a genetic mix of Bloodgood and the base tree that it was grafted onto. They do that for strength, just like with a lot of roses. So, the old tree's leaves look like this:

But the two seedlings have completely different leaves, both from the mother and from each other! Is that as cool to you as it is to me??

Maybe not lol.

Horsies anyone? "Mom! Mother! Would you please stop talking about plants?"

Blu has decided to allow Tori to eat near him after all:

I love seeing them all lined up: 

I went outside one morning and found these two just waiting for me:

Usually when they see us coming they start braying!

BIRDS AND CRITTERS:

I've stopped listening to music, podcasts, or shows while gardening and have just been enjoying the quiet. Although it's not actually quiet with all the birds around :-) With listening comes watching and it's fun to see what I notice while outside, especially if I'm fairly still. I looked up to see Lucy, and followed her gaze:

Mama Carolina Wren hatched out her three golf cart babies this week! Look at that mouth, just waiting for food:

We had another record day of turtles, sixteen! (this is just half of them)

A Great Blue Heron joined the turtles on their raft, they didn't seem disturbed at all:

And we've seen three Great Blue Herons together on the farm. I say "together" loosely, they were chasing each other around. I will have to research and find out if there is something we can do to encourage them to have babies here. Can you imagine??

We've gained a second Green Heron and they keep going in and out of the brushy willow trees on the bank so I'm hoping for babies there too:

And I caught both herons preening, which is sweet:

Did you watch the little video at the top? I was outside doing evening chores on Thursday evening when movement caught my eye. Two little squirrels were racing up and down the outside of the goat barn with mom watching, with a third hopping back from the pasture. It seemed more timid than the other two, nervous about a goat on one side of the fence and Tori the pony on it's side of the fence. Mom had to go out to it multiple times, trying to encourage it to follow her. Once she appeared to try to pick it up but it's too big for that now lol. They have a nest up in the rafters of the goat barn, just so darn sweet to see the whole family together like that!

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We are thinking of getting guinea birds this year. I've heard that the tick season is starting off with a bang and the tick bite doc visits are double the norm. We used to have guineas in Colorado and our ticks weren't bad at all, guineas love ticks! They are weird and wild little birds, very prehistoric:

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The weather (minus pollen) cooperated and we got to be outside for this week's Women's Circle! The herd was so happy to see us and let us know that we were missed:

MONDAY NIGHT ONLINE ART CLASS:

Monday, 4/20, 7:30-9:00pm ET, online via Zoom (download here): come as you are (jammies!) and paint a sparkling lemonade watercolor with a fun little group of women! Take a look at the pic above, see all the simple shapes? We'll work through them: circles, ovals, triangles, rectangles. We use watercolor to paint it and then finish it off with black pen. It's very illustrative and fun and the black lines do a lot of the work :-) You will leave this class with a finished painting!

Each class is $35, pay ahead to reserve your spot, one class or several, your call. Just know, when you pay ahead, you're more likely to show up :-) Life has a habit of getting in the way otherwise! Shoot me an email if you're interested and I'll make sure you're on the list! I take Venmo or Zelle, or cash or check if you're local and prefer that.

OTHER WAYS TO WORK WITH ME:

Equine Partnered Coaching! With horses, without horses, in-person, or online, your choice. 

Neurofeedback Train your brain to calm and ease. The most common response I hear about neurofeedback is, "I'm so much less reactive in my life!" It really does smooth out the sharp spikes. Super helpful if your world feels harsh and spiky right now. 

Reiki Another way to facilitate relaxation, calm, healing. If the weather is nice, you can choose inside, outside, or outside in the herd. 

And of course Women's Circles! The Wednesday circle has a waiting list, I will add you to it if you'd like.

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This is an AI-free newsletter! While I love to use AI to help me figure out a piece of software I don't understand, my intention is to use it to help me with the drudgery, never with writing, art, creation. All em dashes are intentional and mine, I was using them way before ChatGPT was a twinkle in Sam Altman's eye :-) 

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Thank you for reading :-)

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