By the end of June, our Mary Garden looked quite nice with all the greenery in it. Our marigolds had grown up from seeds and were beginning to bloom by the last day of June. Our garden stone, a project I'd been meaning to get to during Mary's month of May, finally got finished this month as well. I bought a garden stone form and mix at the craft store, and we picked out various blue stones and gems there as well. Caroline made a border all around the stone while I worked on the rosary in the center. The idea to make a stone with a rosary on it came from an online mom friend who enjoys making garden stones with her own girls... she shared a great idea too, of trying to eventually have enough stones to make a huge rosary around the yard from them! What a fun idea!
One moment after I took the above photo, we had one less marigold bloom in our Mary Garden. At least she didn't try to eat it. Is it normal for a 17 month old to still eat sand??
Here's a shot of the whole garden, showing the marigolds, garden stone, signs, rosemary, and basil (not sure if basil has any connection to Mary or not, but it is quite possible as many herbs are associated with her - I just keep it here because it is convenient when I want to pick some to add to our dinner!).
The basil is doing amazingly well. I bought three basil plants (two are in our vegetable garden) and one more that is of a different variety - it has some purplish leaves along with the green and has a hint of a cinnamony taste and smell to it in addition to smelling like regular basil. We found somebody locally who sells a variety of plants and bought them from him (after our plants started from seeds failed) and are very pleased with our plants so far!
And here is our rosemary... it is multiplying like crazy, so I need to find more uses for it! One thing we have enjoyed is chopping some up and adding it with freshly ground black pepper to olive oil as a dip for bread.
Cecilia thinks the round stones that make up the rosary are balls. Technically, she is correct. But they won't come out no matter how hard she tries! Oh yeah, we have random lawn bunnies in the garden too... they have nothing to do with Mary as far as I know, but that is where they have ended up.
Future plans for the Mary Garden will be to add something new each year. Mary has so many nicknames and things that are associated with her that it won't be difficult to come up with ideas. For example, I saw some star-shaped garden decorations at Target a while back... Mary is known as "Morning Star." Stick the star decoration in the ground, and we'd have an easy-as-pie meaningful addition to our garden.
I would love to hear any other ideas people might have of symbols or plants to add to a Mary Garden!
