No Beginning and No End

June 14th photo

Labyrinth Location: The Yin Dot
Vegetable: Chives and Tree Onion
Seed/Transplant Date: Early May (transplanted from another part of the garden)
Soil Preparation: Sod stripped about 7 cm deep. Soil underneath loosened with shovel. Sod replaced with existing garden soil, which had already had well-rotted manure tilled into it.

Where to begin? One of the principles of Tai Chi is that there is no beginning and no end. It is fitting, then, that there be no obvious place to begin a tour of this garden. But since I have to choose a spot, I think it is fitting to start with the yin dot in the middle of the yang part of the design. This dot represents the idea that although yin and yang are different, each one contains a seed of the other. So this yin-dot bed will be the seed of my garden blog.

I put my perennials here, thinking it would be easier to protect them from reckless tillage. Somehow it seems meaningful, too; they are part of the cultivated part of the design, and yet, their perennial habit gives them something in common with the grass of the lawn.

There is a barrier of plastic lawn edging to keep the grass out of this little circle, and inside it a row of bricks for the mower wheel to run on, so that it can mow right to the edge and not leave a fringe of grass needing trimming.

The steel post in the centre is temporary, just anchoring my arc-layout rope. A barn swallow likes to sit on it and sing at me. As long as he doesn't get more aggressive than singing, I'm happy to have him around eating mosquitoes. His nest is in my toolshed, though, so I'm a little worried.

Also in the centre, hiding among the chives, are two tree-onions from Mom and Dad. Last year they struggled among weeds beside the tree that grew in our garden (yes, in it), and they barely managed a few leaves. This spring, when we dug out the tree stump, we transplanted one tree-onion and overlooked the other. It somehow endured all our digging, plus some rototilling, and still managed to get a leaf up and catch my attention in time to be rescued and moved into this bed. It isn't as large as the one that was transplanted directly, but it's doing fine.

The larger one is already working on a second generation, with bulblets sprouting new plantlets on top of it.