First Year of a New Garden
A personal diary
Off and crawling
This is the story of a new garden. It
is a personal story because I am the one telling it,
but I did not create this garden
It began with an idea, was helped along
with a grant from the US Department of Agriculture
and was planted by the instructors and students of
Eagle Academy
Summer of
’07
- Uncensored
We received a delivery of about 550
plants, trees and shrubs, got more dirt from public
works, used the wood chips for paths
Planting took a long time
Ran a soaker hose through the butterfly
garden
Rotating sprinkler through the rest
Making the garden beds
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June
Solar Well works! Water every day there
is sun
Two young eagles watch
We visit the Cape May Nature Center so
mother can share my
"vision"
for the garden. She makes plant signs
Bees love the thistle! The bees
& I work the garden together on warm summer nights
I hope signs tell a story
– I
worry about the bees –
they are so gentle - will people hurt them?
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July
No rain after the 4th
Deer are eating the goldenrod as fast
as it comes up
A few bushes and one sapling die
Weeds begin to take over
First Monarch mid month
First hummingbird end of month
Butterflies, damselflies, dragonflies
…..oh,
my!
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August
–
hawks and geese and deer –
and lizards too!
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September
Butterflies enjoy mud puddles made by
soaker hoses
Many hawks but no eagles
Several Virginia Pine seedlings have
died
New Cardinal Flowers trying to bloom
Blue mist flowers bloom
Hummingbirds still shocked to see me
Deer eat tops of Joe Pye Weed, no
blooms
September
Labor Day comes and goes and people
talk about what their summer was like
To me it is a beautiful, peaceful
memory of warm summer evenings watching birds,
listening to bees hum, watching a new garden grow
I worry about leaving it for the winter
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October
–
Good-Bye & Keep Cold
"I
wish I could promise to lie in the night
And think of an orchard’s
arboreal plight
When slowly (and nobody comes with a
light)
Its heart sinks lower under the sod
But something has to be left to God"
Robert Frost
