Sprucewold gardens continue to grow, sometimes wild and sometimes carefully curated. It’s all beautiful. After all, E.B. White, one of Maine’s nature-loving writers, reminds us that "genius is more often found in a cracked pot than in a whole one.” We grow our gardens in concert with, and often in spite of, the rains, the droughts, the deer, the ticks, and all the other creatures that co-inhabit our land with us.  

Bill Griffin and I were having a lovely swim recently when we were lamenting that the deer have, yet again, expanded their palettes to include plants they’d never shown interest in before. Fennel, for example. And Bill noted that on their way to eat his dahlias (dahlias!!), they trampled the beds with gusto.

Elaine Rittershaus’s ceramic fish continue to swim in place, adding poetry and color to the mid-August garden. John Otto showed up at our screen door with a beautiful bouquet of blue hydrangeas, which lasted weeks in a vase. The hydrangeas have benefited from the wet spring and dance with delight in the slightest breeze. Leigh Pumilia and Carol Ortlip’s front patio is a magical mix of boulders, gravel and waving willows. Comfortable chairs await. Joy Larabee is enjoying a second year of harvesting tomatoes from her float, which is the only place the deer can’t reach them. Kathy Moulaison has two amazing barn quilts, one which she made, and one which she purchased.  While not technically plants, they do ornament the garden with colorful, geometric images.

Here at my own homestead on Crooked Pine, it’s an “on year” for the foxgloves and the hollyhocks. At one point I counted 19 foxgloves.  Next year should be a good one as well, because there are numerous new starts. I love volunteers, and this year, a pink poppy emerged.  I’m also having luck with sweet peas, for the first time in my life. They smell divine. In the garden that Janet Hughes and I share, we’ve had great success (Finally!) with our rugosa roses. They are blooming and spreading like wildfire.

And speaking of wildfire, let’s all remember to trim our tree branches up to forestall the development of a fire ladder in the event of fire.  Remove dead or dying branches, and clear wood off your property.

Keep your fingers in the ground, look up at the seagulls and osprey overhead, and remember - gardeners know all the dirt!