Zen gardening

I had all the ingredients – a rake, stones, gravel, and a large expanse of nothing.  So that ought to have been a perfect zen moment.

Instead it was an afternoon of very unzenlike behaviour. A bad back, too many rocks and pebbles unearthed as I raked and way too much soil to try and move.

Ho hum. That’s gardening.

But I wanted to finish what the builders has started. I needed to dig two trenches to install drains and then cover it all up and landscape like mad so I could have a lawn again.

Well, a lawn of sorts.

Bebere had done the initial drain digging so I knew where I should attack.

When you live on a mountain top with terracing, you learn that water must make an exit somewhere.

The whole of our region is full of underground springs; some good enough to supply us with water for the house. And others smaller, unexpected and inconveniently positioned.

You learn over time that many springs occur at the base of natural slopes or man made rock walls; and two of those are right outside our stables.

I always wondered why the last apple tree in the row in the orchard never thrived. And now I now. There is a torrent of underground water bubbling right beside it. Poor thing.

To to improve the life of this orchard and entire area of the garden, that meant finding a way to shift the water somewhere else. So it was just a question of shovelling, forking, digging and placing the drains.

Oh, and shovelling soil back over the drains to pretend they are not there.

I could have left it at that. But no. I wanted to sort out the rest of the building site.

And that meant raking and raking and raking the soil.

And grubbing out the pebbles, rocks and random roots that I unearthed.

It feels strange that I devoted so much time to just moving dirt. But sometimes I feel I have to fight against the building sites of this farm.

There is a fun play on words that I learnt many years ago ‘laisse thetique tranquille’. Leave the aesthetics alone.

But I can’t because I am trying to turn this farm into an aesthetic pleasure. So if that means I spend hours raking dirt around the back of the stables where no one but me will see it, then so be it.

Next month I will sow grass seed here and hopefully I will get the lawn back. Watch this space.