At yesterday’s breakfast there was a small box sitting on the kitchen table with a return address from someone I did not know. I opened the box carefully and found precious gifts inside.

A new friend named Ruth read in the blog how late the gardens, specifically the Cherokee Trail of Tears Garden, were going in.

Ruth said in her letter to me, “I live in Huntsville, Alabama which is on the Trail of Tears. I felt maybe I should send you something from this area that would carry the spirit of this place. Maybe these things will help this garden.”

Not only the garden Ruth, but me too.

Each object was tenderly wrapped in beautiful pink, orange, and gold paper.

I opened the first parcel and found this. Ruth explained, “one is a rock with a fossil in it- we find these things all over this area and up into Tennessee where many of the Native Americans on the Trail came from. Much of our earth is made up of fossil rocks- it’s not all the red clay that people associate with the south-”

Ruth’s next parcel contained this. Ruth notes, “I’m also sending an arrowhead which I found in my garden. I have found several there, and they probably were left by ancestors of many who were sent on the Trail. Actually I am not sure whether it’s an arrowhead or a scraping tool!”

Ruth’s final gift was a tin of altar sand from her personal prayer altar. She explained, “Finally, I’m sending some beautiful red sand from the banks of the Cahaba River, which is South of here. It isn’t on the Trail of Tears, but I felt moved to send it anyways!” She went on to explain, “Maybe because I have had a bowl of it on my altar for a long time, and it’s had many tears cried over it during hard times ( it’s seen a lot of smiles, too, though!).”

What sweet comfort and support offered from a stranger. Thank you Ruth. You are a stranger no more to me. I am grateful for you reaching across the illusion of strangerness to remind me of our common ground, the tears and the smiles of our similar journeys. The fact that we all walk trails of tears at times gives us so many opportunities to connect through our vulnerabilities. I am so grateful you did. You lightened my load!

My gratitude to all of you extends in so many directions. Even as I spend most of my daylight hours out in the gardens, even as my hands do garden tasks, I remain so grateful for all of your many, many kindnesses and think of so many of you with love and gratitude. Your love and encouragement in all its forms lifts me up. I thank you all.

At the Angels request, Ruth’s gifts. including the paper and ribbon. were put in a beautiful red pottery bowl Ben threw and glazed. The bowl was then placed at the center of the Cherokee Trail of Tears Garden at the beginning of the spiral of brassicas.

The Angels explain, “Each of you beloveds necessarily walk your own Cherokee Trail of Tears. The Grandmothers of the Cherokee Trail of Tears remain a steady presence of comfort and support as you walk. We, the Angels overlighting your journeys, never leave your side. We love you and are with you always. Yet even as we remain steadfast companions on your journeys, we are glad when you find kindred spirits from the human community. This gift of Ruth’s, placed at the heart of this garden, expresses the interconnectedness of all life, but it also represents the great gift you give to self and others when you reach across to another on the Trail and offer your love.”

June. Also about weeding. This week, Emily, Lizzy, and I have worked in the berry patch. We have been down there for three days straight and we are STILL not done. Someone told me a few days ago that it had rained 21 out of the last 28 days. This was a lot of encouragement for weeds. The berry patch has never been more of a jungle.

The weed situation was compounded because I did not get an initial once over weeding and mulching done in the berries in April. Consequently all the bindweed that would have come up easily then became an immense tangle smothering the Raspberries, Red Currants, Gooseberries and Black Currants. The small amount of crab grass in the Blueberries became a lush thicket of grass, so our work there was really more like sod removal than weeding.

Emily began the week saying she liked the process of unwinding bindweed from each Raspberry cane and following it to the ground to uproot. Now I think she will run for the hills at the very mention of the plant.

Here she is day three in the berries, working her way down the rows patiently.

Lizzy moved in to mulch every place we cleared. We knew she had had all she could take of this activity when on load four or five she fell off the tailgate into the wheelbarrow which flipped on its side landing her on the grass. No doubt this free fall will become part of some choregraphed dance piece.

On Friday Lizzy and I planted the Venus Garden. The theme for the garden this year is Forgiveness. I don’t feel like I have a single coherent thought on this issue. In fact, I felt quite unprepared to plant a garden around this theme, but the Angels said to get on with it. So, we planted.

The basic geometry is that of a five pointed star with a center spiral of Mehera White Marigolds. The star is planted in a diverse group of many kinds of Purple Flowers. The points are more Meheras and White Osteospermums. The star is outlined in Yellow Marigolds and the whole garden is ringed in Sweet Alyssum.

Lizzy and I did some fairly rudimentary math to get the star laid out with stakes and string. Then like a good dance improv ( or what I imagine it is like to do good dance improv), we found ourselves nudged to plant things this way and that. Much to my surprise the garden slid into being with great ease.

That could basically sum up the week. A harmonious, joy filled, and smooth week of planting when I expected to be scrambling.

Bella, our elder stateswoman black cat, sat on the steps to the barn as we planted. She is very shy so we were very happy that she joined us.

All the Flowers for this garden were grown in the greenhouse. I had not started any Petunias. Since I associate Petunias with forgiveness, I expected the Angels to send me out to buy some, but they wanted to go with exactly what we had grown. Not surprisingly, we had exactly the right number of plants for the spaces to be filled.

Here we have just finished planting the inner spiral of Meheras and the points of the star. Lizzy is just starting a ring of “Violet Queen” Cleomes.

This is what the design looked like on paper. Below is what it looked like when it was all planted.

There is one little clump of orange icelandic poppies right there at the bottom. It will be interesting to see if the Angels will ask us to transplant them elsewhere. Planting the Alignment Garden last year was like marching with a well practiced drill team. Everything was done so precisely. This suggested a connection to its theme of Alignment.

I wonder if part of the Forgiveness theme will involve leaving this “imperfect” rogue patch of orange Flowers. We shall see.

We finished the garden with the Yellow Marigolds. As the last Marigold was planted, I asked the Elementals if I needed to water the transplants in. This is my standard operating procedure for anything being transplanted. An emphatic NO was followed about two minutes later by another twenty four hour deluge.

Here is the brook at the bottom of our hill today. It is still raining.

A busy week. Rain a near constant companion. Joy too!

Here is Lizzy surveying the scene with her cousin Caroline, moments after receiving her college diploma amidst a torrential downpour. Note mended ankle!

Everyone, including cousin Taylor in her signature pink raincoat, beat a retreat across a lush landscape to the dance studio where the cousins celebrate with some improv dancing.

The next day, Sunday, Ben runs a half marathon. The rain begins again right after he finishes running.

There is a two day pause in rain storms on Monday and Tuesday with overcast skies perfect for planting. The Angels’ plans to have us plant the gardens this week prove inspired, as always. Emily, Lizzy and their friends Lilly Callahan and Anna Pierce Slive prove to be a joyful foursome of enthusiasm, humor, and zesty wisdom. I haven’t had this much fun planting the gardens in years! Here we are planting the main vegetable garden which this year is a series of concentric rings broken by three equidistant paths. From above, it looks sort of like a peace sign.

The center was all lettuce.

In addition to the lettuce in the center, this garden has beans, parsley, leeks, basil, squash, pumpkins, corn, zinnias, and red shiso planted in it this growing season.

Compared to many years, this garden is very simple in its design and I am grateful for this.

The fabulous foursome rests on their laurels for a victory photo when the first garden is DONE! We even have a few moments of blue in the sky!

May May also thinks she needs a rest after her arduous supervisory duties.

The next garden, planted on Tuesday, is a spiral of brassicas including cauliflowers, broccolis, cabbages, and brussel sprouts with the outside of the spiral several rings of potatoes.

Here is Lizzy planting tomatoes behind this crop of garlic. Peppers and Eggplants also went into spaces outside the bigger gardens.

A pause at dusk on Tuesday. Almost a real sunset but not quite.

On Wednesday Emily and I worked to put annuals in all the different Flower beds. It rained harder and harder but we kept at it until everything was planted. Tomorrow we plant the last of the big gardens that needs to be planted.

When I first moved to New Hampshire, one thing that delighted me was that there was so much less poison ivy than where I grew up in Connecticut. Avoiding poison ivy was nearly impossible in my childhood world, much as I tried. Consequently, I had many bouts of poison ivy as a child, including one case where I puffed up from head to toe because a neighbor had burned some poison ivy in his leaf pile and I had gotten downwind of the smoke.

When I arrived in Meriden twenty seven years ago, it was rare to see poison ivy. Between vigilance about avoiding what little poison ivy there was and this general lack of poison ivy, I had many years free of poison ivy problems.

But not anymore. Poison ivy is spreading like wildfire throughout the region. Here at the farm, there is more and more poison ivy in the hedgerows. And despite my best efforts to avoid contact with the plant, I have gotten poison ivy a lot the last few growing seasons. In fact, I have a bad case of poison ivy right now. I seem to get it from the dogs’ fur. They run through the poison ivy and when I pet them, I get poison ivy.

Right now my glass of water is dosed with liberal amounts of Healthy Coat, Breathe, and Outburst. The Healthy Coat and Breathe are excellent for any situation of skin irritation or allergic type reaction like my reaction to poison ivy. Outburst helps with any kind of explosive situation and I consider poison ivy to fit this bill. The Angels also suggested it would be good for me to work with Flee Free more. This helps both animals and people to rebuff all sorts of irritants and pests. They said it would help increase my poison ivy threshold. Will report back.

Sadly, I am steering clear of love fests with Riley and May May in order not to get more poison ivy. They are acting understandably confused by this. I will ask the Angels for some ideas about what I can do about the poison ivy patches the dogs run through most frequently. I would welcome your suggestions too. I am hoping for a non toxic, earth friendly spray that kills the poison ivy but does not hurt anything else. Yeah, yeah, I know. What can I say but “Hope springs eternal”. And you are right. In the fifties, I would have bought swamp land in Florida.

Jim heard on the Vermont public radio yesterday that the reason poison ivy is spreading like mad is that, like most plants, it thrives on the increased CO2 build up of global warming, but that with poison ivy, the CO2 build up also seems to make poison ivy more virulent. It’s just so nice to know that signs of global warming are all around us.

I sit here trying not to scratch and also trying to accept that global warming is a necessary learning lesson for humanity. If I talk with the Angels, they calm me down and help me see that it IS all for learning. As you already know, when I sit with the Elementals, the mood is a bit different.

Speaking of my partners, I have had unusual instructions this year. The greenhouse is full of plants ready for planting, but nothing has been transplanted into the Venus Garden, the main vegetable garden, or the Cherokee Trail of Tears garden spaces yet. My guidance is that it will be planting time all next week, several weeks after things usually go into these gardens.

This could simply be the Angels way to keep me sane. Lizzy graduates from college on Saturday and I am cooking for three different gala events this weekend. This doesn’t exactly leave time for transplanting several hundred heads of lettuce and every other plant baby awaiting life in the soil.

So the next couple of days I will be cooking not planting. I think Lizzy will be glad to see me at Bennington on Friday with dirt free fingernails and my gardening pants retired for a few days. Will also try hard not to look like a poison ivy test volunteer.

And now, I need to go fill up my water bottle with my Flower Essence friends from the Animal Wellness Collection.

PS Vicki’s husband Kevin is doing an oral history project about Green Hope Farm. This has given us a chance to boggle his mind with our stories. Today he wanted photos of life in the office. We took some action shots of us reading the alumni magazine of the school where he teaches. He is on the cover of this edition of the magazine. Since we all have the sense of humor of students in junior high, we thought it was so funny to take these shots of us reading the magazine.

Kevin is the guy on the cover wearing sunglasses. He is responsible for Vicki’s big belly. Baby due in October.

Birthday girl Patricia on left ( her birthday was yesterday) and new Jane have a Kevin moment.