New beginnings

A year ago I had an operation to help with my back problems which meant that the whole of last years gardening season went to waste. It was a small price to pay for something that has made a great difference to my quality of life, as I now walk straighter and have the core structure to move unhindered. But, it did leave the gardens in an awful mess... After the snow melted the debry left from last year has become painfully visible, and there is nothing to it but to start somewhere with the clear-up! I figure that as spring is early this year, there is more time until the growing season hits it with a bang, and so perhaps I will get it all done.

The first task was to clear the kitchen gardens of dead weeds and what was left of the annuals that grew there last year. Since I knew it would be having a gap year, I planted the vegetable beds with bee-friendly flowers such as marigolds and borage, sunflowers and nastriums. Now though, there was a lot of dry material filling the whole area.

Firstly I raked it all up into heaps, and then made little bonnfires. It sounds like an easy task, but it took almost a whole week to do. Now the beds and pathways are cleared, I will start weeding them from couch grass. It is my pet-hate-weed. It spreads everywhere with brittle but tenacious roots, and once it's there it is night impossible to get rid of. I usually view weeding as an excercise in mindfullness, but with this one I tend to curse much more than meditate.

It wasn't only the vegetable gardens that ended up in a mess, but the whole yard too. I couldn't rake the leaves come autumn, and so a thick matt of leaves covered the lawns. To make the work easier, I bought an electric leaf blower and that did help to some extent. Still, it all had to be gathered into heaps, put on the trailer and carted away to the composts, which all in all it takes it's own good time to get done. Working on my own, it feels nice not to be in a hurry. One day follows the next, and each day another area is cleared. Soon, all will be done and I can move on to other tasks.

Leaves make wonderful humus-rich compost with time, but they take a long time to disintegrate into fine organic matter. I have solved this problem by layering the heap with layers of chicken-muck and sawdust from the chicken coops, and with layers of leaves. This speeds up the composting process enormously, and by next spring it will all have turned out into beautiful ready-to-use mulch.

Chicken coop litter from the winter to the left, leaves to the right. After a 50 cm layer of leaves the chicken coop muck is layered onto the leaves to activate a faster composting process, and then more leaves are added until the middle bin is filled to the brim. This leaves the left hand side empty for starting a new compost this season.

There is no time of year I enjoy as much as early spring, when everything still lies before me and I'm filled with a happy kind of anticipation of what is to come. Clearing away last years leaves and garden debry may be exhausting work, but it is also a beautiful metaphore for life. We do need to spring clean our minds every now and then to let new ideas in, and sometimes we need to clear space to let beauty and grace enter our lives. I have a feeling that just like the flowers are turning up amongst last years leaves, so there are other good things coming with the beginning of the new season because I've cleared the space for it and I'm letting it in. To new beginnings then!