There are things that are going well…

Our Lady of Larrapin…with flowers now

There are many things going well at Larrapin Garden. Keeping up-to-date with blog posting is not on that list! But I thought I’d do a series of posts on things that are working well —as well as as things that aren’t—and what I’d like to do better or different next time.

We could start with the weather. After an entire summer’s worth of rain in one week in late spring that nearly washed away a lot of the state, we’ve hardly seen a drop since the first of June until we were gifted with a lovely forty minute rain day before yesterday. Who cares that the wind blew just hard enough to blow over the corn and beat down the cowpeas, it was rain. Those bone dry fifty days in-between were what was tough, especially with the knowledge that it covered the month and half *before* the month and a half of late-July and August that are more traditionally bone-dry and hot as hell here. And nobody, including myself, seems to think it just ‘came early’….no, more like we may be in for what feels like a hundred dog days of August.

And while I obviously can’t change what the weather is going to do, it did become clear to me that I can be more prepared next time with more mulch, more land forms that hold rainwater so it can sink deep, and soil with a higher organic matter content. All of those things can make a huge difference in how your land holds rain.

This is one of the things I love about learning the principles of permaculture—how the goal is to build a system, a human-made landscape, with a similar intelligence, diversity and resilience as a nature-designed landscape. Nature designs landscapes that are self-sustaining and tend to grow in abundance with time…all without additional inputs or help. Now *that’s* a garden design!  And this is for another post! Back on topic:

So what are some things going well at Larrapin?  For one, garden art. Now let me say I have a low-bar definition of garden art: stuff I build that makes me feel happy somehow to look at it!  (Fine artists are cringing about now, but I know even you guys know what I mean!) This year one of my garden resolutions was to make more garden art and to my surprise, it was a resolution I actually kept. So in the pic above, a wonderful metal stepping stone is instead placed on an overturned pot by a giant rosemary plant. It’s nobody’s picasso, but I  love looking at the beautiful disk floating there in a fragrant mound of herb…all providing some company for a young Arkansas Black apple tree.

Meanwhile, down on the bottom edge of the veggie garden, a piece of would-be firewood got interesting with a dash of blue glass and a stack of rocks. Like I said, it doesn’t take much to entertain me.

The garden, meanwhile, creates the finest of art every day in the form of beautiful flowers dancing with bees, vines covered with tomatoes, making soil become darker, deeper and more alive. But in case I miss it, sometimes the garden sends little messages that all the love and attention I give her is noticed, and the feeling is mutual. These often arrive in the form of heart-shaped rocks. The latest valentine however, was with the red potato harvest:

What kind of art are you finding in your garden?

—A Larrapin Garden  www.larrapin.us
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