Spring has finally come to the Emerald City and with it I have finally had a couple of days to work on the Goddess Meditation Garden that will one day be out behind the garage. I had had grandiose visions of it being complete by this time. The Gnostic Retreat starts in just a couple of days. I had wanted it to be a place of solace that those participating in the retreat could go and sit, pray, meditate, say the Gnostic Rosary or chant the Tara mantra. Hmm, not gonna happen.
The previous owners of our property used that area as a dumping ground. Now I don’t just mean that they had the compost bin out there, I mean that they literally did not have trash service for seven years. Once every few months they would load up a truck and make a run to the city dump. Why???
I have this image of them as looking something like Ma and Pa Kettle with chicken coops and rabbit hutches and a hound dog out back. Nothing quite like the sound of a rooster at five AM to start the day.
So last year my husband pulled out several dump load of garbage and we racked and put down bark. I purchased a nice bamboo plant and an archway to go at the entrance. I pulled up all the weeds and thought. This is good, over the winter it will all just sit here and in the spring I can plant some flowers, set up an altar and a mediation bench. Oh yeah, I thought I could put a labyrinth in the back yard too. hahhahahahhaha
Then reality set it. The first warm day I went out and found that some how even in the snow and rain the weeds were back. But they had shallow roots and were not to hard to pull up. On the advice of my father in-law I dug up all the dirt that was resting against the side of the garage so that the wood will not rot. Good idea. This however uncovered even more layers of garbage. Candy wrappers, old gloves, broken window panes, some carpet, tampons. WHAT!! Ahhh man!
I have placed some used concert bricks that my neighbor didn’t want anymore (they are fairly hideous) along the garage wall to keep the dirt from piling back up on it. Now I need to level it out, I need to remove a large quantity of dirt (mixed with trash) in order to make it reasonably level. The back of the yard is higher so it will slope, but with any luck I can make it a gentle sloping mound rather than a big step or a hill all sloping back to the garage wall. I am not sure what to do with the excess dirt. Erik has some ideas.
One of my neighbors was separating some bulbs and left them in my yard for me to plant. OK, I have no idea where to plant them since the soil isn’t ready but they are going in the ground by the start of the retreat. They will be dead if I wait.
The lawn might not get mowed again before the retreat either. I think we missed our window of opportunity the other day. The grass is just a tad too tall now, but the grass is also damp. It is nice and grean however and that is a huge improvement over last year.
Oh yes, the lilacs are in bloom!! I thought that they would have died off by now, but so far they are doing great. We may have fresh flowers for the chapel every day. That would be so nice. Don't plan on it though. My cat likes to eat them and then she throws up, so we may be skipping the indoor flowers all together.
My cat rules the house. You have been warned. Or in the words of Wendsday Adams: "Be afraid, be very afraid."
M