Wednesday, February 25, 2009

To Be a Bee Garden

At the Bee Gardening workshop this past weekend, one of the participants made this looping symbol as a suggestion of how to link two paths and I really had a strong gut response to the power of the image. It strikes me as a symbol of security and protection, so as I prepare to make the bed ready for a bee garden, I put this symbol in the four corners of the bed to hem in the energy.

I did the same on the Means of Production monolith, which Oliver informed us really is one big chunk of stone. It is not concrete. All I can say is "Like wow Scooby, that's a big chunk of granite!"

Using chalk pastels, I drew figure eights on the entrances to the garden.

So from this angle you can see how close the garden is to the street. It's a bit of a fish bowl too, with all these apartments around it.

The yellow crocuses are about to open and provide pollen for the bees.

This is the view to the Northeast. We're at the top of a steep hill looking down on a very busy highway.

I like the way the shorter woven willow fence is echoing the corners of the bee garden. That feeling of containment feels very important to me. Someone suggested grape arbors, which led me to thinking about one of my favorite gardens in England which has these amazing scarlet runner bean arbors. That's do-able!

Here is the first part of the new commons gate Sharon Kallis has been working on with the volunteers.

The catkins are coming out of the harvested willow.

This is the dye bed, looking quiet and dormant, directly to the north of the soon to be bee garden. You can see a bit of the paper garden right behind the dye garden. I've ordered some seeds for flowers that are both good bee plants and dye plants such as Coreopsis tinctoria. I can't wait to get planting! Thanks to all who came out to the bee gardening workshop and gave us their input. I will be working with Jean Kindratsky and Brian Campbell to get this space growing. I'll also be looking for volunteers to foster some bee plants until they are ready to be transplanted into the garden. Stay tuned to this blog to find out more information about becoming a bee plant parent.

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