My heart is strawberries...

Perhaps this is all a bit dramatic...

...but

I have been wanting to complain to you
or maybe it is just a desire
to share my thoughts with you
on this summer
so far
...or as it ends.

I found this summer
different
from the last
the first
...and it has left me slightly melancholy.

...and I can't figure out why...this summer has been a great year for Guerilla Gardening in Lethbridge, and I have been a catalyst and part of many of the efforts. We did the Coyote Garden, seed bombs, the Boulevarden, small weeding/actions here and there...I traveled and visited with women around the Lethbridge area who offered and shared with me their stories and plants. Several of the press have been to the garden again this year. When we had a gg table at the Amnesty concert at the beginning of this month person after person come up to me to applaud my efforts, and to tell me that my actions have inspired them to make small/important guerilla efforts of their own (I say this not out of ego...but people have been really positive, encouraging and impassioned about guerilla gardening this summer...word has gotten out and people are excited about it - and I do know I have played a part in that).

which brings me to the dramatic part...

I feel a bit detached

from the garden this year. I think part of it is because I am disappointed that it has not done as well...plant wise. As I have said before the tomatoes were more than disappointing, the Basil died...and Zucchini barely grew! Those three items were what people mostly harvested from the garden.We had no plums this year...last year kids on bikes and would stop, grab a plum and ride off with a wave. We have not had much to share. Which has made me sad...as that was the point, right? or at least one of the points...I loved/thrived on the gift aspect of the Boulevarden as much if not more than the community part of it, well I guess the gift part is community,but...I'm sorry, I am talking in elipses...

Don't get me wrong...the garden looks wonderful...all of the flowers and perennial herbs have grown very well, and people have still been by to see and share the garden (and its tiny bounty...smile)...

But I worry me as my detachment has caused me to not be in the garden...or out front as often, I am not interacting with the community as often. Last summer I did a performance a day in the garden. This year when I go out I feel self conscious and have only done half a dozen or so. Although as I peer through my screened window at people in the Boulevarden (which I sometimes do) I feel I am in performance...I feel like another...I feel sneaky, closed, open..I have begun to wonder if they see me and have started to think of me as the strange woman who spies on them...if they feel self conscious...

So I don't know what
to do with this...
is just indulgent?
moaning and g(r)ow(n)ing?
I don't know...
but my heart is very still

very committed
to guerilla/community/performance gardening
...but it feels a bit like a small strawberry presently.

But then perhaps this is all just a bit dramatic...