I thought my wildflower experiments were a total bomb but they came up. My dad kept not mowing them and they came up after the heavy rains we had a few weeks ago. Now they're in bloom!

Also thought an invasive weed had taken over my whole side yard garden - but I found some borage in there! One of my favorite gals!

Because the last post mentioned the Festival of the Beautiful Reunion and land-work.

There were 30-40 people at our site (the organization was doing work at about 10 different places), and we put about 1,000 wee baby shrubs and trees into the ground. The park we were in is really beautiful; there's another local group that's been doing restoration work there for many years already, and there were SO MANY birds active in the trees and plants, flying around, singing, yelling, FLYING IN FRONT OF MY BIKE DANGEROUSLY CLOSE and low to the ground when I turned into the park, etc. So awesome. (Benefit to being up relatively early: MOAR BIRB)

And it was simply nice to take these little plants, coo over them and tell them they were going into a nice big place where they could grow strong and healthy, no longer in pots, and wish them well.

I started by planting several beaked filberts in several places around the area. I tracked down the flag marking the spot for the last one, and started digging its hole - and felt something. Some presence, I assumed to be the local land spirit. I got a repeated sense from it that it would "take care of this one." It was a little unnerving, feeling so very observed by someone I didn't know, who clearly had some interest in this little plant. (Why that filbert? Was it the specific spot it was going in? Or was this just a way for the spirit to introduce itself - not that I got a name or any other kind of identifying anything - to me?) After I tucked the plant into place and moved on, I didn't feel the presence around again, until we were pretty much done with everything.

I'd walked down the boardwalk a bit, looking over the whole area, full of colored flags marking the new plants (they were set out ahead of time to show where each species should be put in, and left because they are SO SMALL and the flags show where they are, so they can get their mulching before the dry summer sets in). I felt really happy. It was nice to see, nice to know more work was being done in this lovely place to make it even better.

I can't exactly remember now how it happened, if it was my idea or the place/spirit requested it, but I climbed off the boardwalk and knelt on the ground to give the whole area some good wishes. (I keep being asked/nudged to "bless" things, which is a term/concept I am uncomfortable with; I don't know what any of the implications or results or meaning or a n y thing is and augh.) So, I improvised, as usual, and it seemed to be approved of by the local wight. So. There was that wholly unexpected additional task to the day.