Growing together: Garden & Gardener

Reflections on training the Fruit Tunnel while listening to Braiding Sweetgrass

Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer on my ladder in our Fruit Tunnel

“…While they were working on the land, the land was working on them.”

🌿 From Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer

Pruning and musing

I spent many hours at the end of July, just before getting sick again, pruning and training our Fruit Tunnel. While I was up on a ladder, balancing my scissors, twine, bamboo canes and zip ties, I was also soaking again in an audiobook that has come to mean a lot to me. While listening again to a familiar chapter, I started to wonder:

Am I working out some of these ideas here at Havenwood? Have these years of pruning done anything to build a relationship to this little property? Do I know more than I did ten years ago when I started? How do I know?

Today, I would like to introduce you to a book that has made me think deeply and feel even more. I will also talk about how my family got here over 200 years ago, left, and then suddenly found ourselves here again, tending the fruit of the land and looking for something more.

Tools of the trade in the Fruit Tunnl: my wooden ladder, hand pruners, twine to tie in, and Braiding Sweetgrass on audiobook.