Sunflowers

IDEA OF THE DAY: GARDEN YOUR WORRIES AWAY

The pandemic has been a boon to home gardening. The mental and physical benefits of the activity are well known: longer lives, lower levels of depression, and exposure to vitamin D. “Gardening reduces stress,” Huma Yasin has written in The Times.

Contact with nature can also provide philosophical comfort, The New Yorker’s Rebecca Mead argues: “Many people, when faced with their own mortality or that of their loved ones, become more attuned to the natural world. This is evidence not just of a garden’s power to distract and inspire but of its power to console.”

And for some marginalized communities, gardening grants agency over food insecurity and a lack of healthy options. “Possibilities, solutions, freedom — that’s what I’m growing,” a Los Angeles gardener and activist told The Wall Street Journal. “That’s what the gardens represent.”

04:43 AM, August 21,2020; The New York Times "The Morning" 

To me sunflowers are the epitome of happy flowers brightening my garden. They seem so cheery with their bright yellow petals. The variety below, which I cut weekly to adorn our dining room table is literally overflowing with bright yellow pollen onto the table cloth covering our dining table. This flower below was cut from a circle of sunflowers planted in our front yard. The birds absolutely love the seeds once they have ripened so it is spectacular to watch the variety of birds eating their fill.

Hopi Black Dye Sunflower
Traditionally Hopi people have used Hopi Black Dye sunflowers
to make a dye for cotton, wool and basketry.
Colors derived include maroon-red, deep maroon, dark purple,
deep lavender, medium blue and black dye.

This Summer has been extraordinarily hot and dry. Very little monsoon rain for the entire region with most of New Mexico remarkably below the average rain fall. It is amazing to me that rains frequently fall in the higher elevations with only virga on the "flat lands". 

And now we are blanketed with wildfire smoke, mostly from Colorado but also from a fire zero % contained near the Santa Fe Ski Basin. The past two days we have been unable to see the mountains to the East because the smoke is so thick.

Pueblo Indians' Winter Squash.

But amidst this unpleasantness, which mostly keeps us all inside with the windows shut, I am still harvesting food to eat from our backyard. The tomatoes are finally ripening and the first carrot seeds planted are maturing . . . delish!! The corn is done producing but it was fabulous eating my fill of corn on the cobb! The Wild Garden lettuce mix continues to be succulent and enjoyed daily in salads or sandwiches. BLTs this time of the year are "to die for" as the saying goes.

"There is a great comfort in growing your own food.

Your are close to the soil.

You use the basic elements - 

water, sunlight, earth, air, and plants -

for your work, 

your sustenance,

and your pleasure.

You nurture your garden from seeding to mature plants,

tending,

pruning, 

weeding.

Year after year, you see cycles come and go,

from sprouting to harvest to withering, to seed again.

You eat your plants to live

You don't mind and they don't mind.

Some day, you will fall back to this earth,

back into the sun-baked dirt,

you will become food for the plants.

It's the way of life,

and it's all very agreeable."

                                 Deng Ming-Dao

And before the wildfire smoke moved in, Shasta spends her mornings outside in the backyard.

Here she is napping in Big Bluestem grass
which is one of the grasses growing
in the tall grass prairies.
"This and Little Bluestem are the grasses
that fattened up cattle of the Old West,"
Gail Haggard, the owner of
Plants of the Southwest.

As we all deal with the pandemic, and of course the drama of national politics, may we lighten ourselves with a good belly