Kate Solusar’s Holocron

Our communal gardening experiment with our friends and family (I wrote about this in an earlier holocron entry) has been going fairly well, even though our cherry tomatoes and plum tomatoes are just beginning to ripen. My in-laws’ garden is beginning to wind down, although their raspberries are still going strong.  We are looking forward to our friends’ beet harvest as well. For now, we’ve been enjoying corn on the cob from a neighboring farm down the street and local squash and zucchini. It’s been great and a wonderful learning experience for the boys, who have really loved gardening.

As far as the flower gardens are concerned, our day lilies have finally run their course (they’ve been in bloom for two months now), our sedum is starting to put on its late summer to autumn show, our St. John’s Wort and butterfly bushes have been keeping our honeybees and hummingbirds busy as well. Once the lilies are finished and have started to die back, I will be dividing them and planting some of the bulbs in the front yard for next year. We do lots of bulb plants (crocuses, tulips, daffodils, irises, and lilies), which are a boon to perennial gardens and have been very successful establishing some lavender plants as well. We tried bluebeard plants but they didn’t work out with our soil and the conditions, so they have been replaced with the more suitable azalea plants, which like New England’s more acidic soil conditions. I believe that next year we will finally be successful in having blooms in our flower beds from spring through autumn. Next year, we plan to establish a shade garden in our back yard with hostas and impatiens. We are really excited about the prospect. Our holly, lilac, forsythia, and hydrangea have all done exceptionally well this year. Our Japanese maple and burning bushes have continued to grow and thrive.

All in all, it’s been a great summer for the gardens. Even our berry harvest of strawberries, blackberries, and raspberries was a good one. It has definitely been a good season for being in touch with the living and sustaining Force. Gardening tends to put me in a meditative mood any way, and I find peace and strength in the energy exchange I sense between me and the living plants I tend. I have also been able to work side by side with the honeybees without disturbing them, or them me. These are not the only living creatures that I sense a strong closeness to during meditation in the gardens. For some reason and most especially since I began to consciously live, train, and study the Jedi way, I find birds of all kinds willing to come and stay nearby. Even the hummingbirds that visit our butterfly bush don’t seem to mind my presence.  They’ll even let me just watch them from the window.  It seems to me that they sense the meditative state and come to participate somehow. That’s what I sense anyway. It is a wonderful, uplifting experience. It isn’t something I experience every day, but it happens enough to give me pause to consider the connection.