Gifts of gardening

    The last few days it has cooled off enough for me to return to puttering in the garden. I really love digging in the dirt and watching the things I plant grow.  It truly feeds my soul in so many ways.  I love handling the life of the plants, I love the smells of the garden and the dirt.  I hear and see God in the living things that make up my garden.  The exercise is also no doubt helpful!  

    Though it is an expensive hobby, David felt it was worth it to spend a bit so I could continue playing in the yard, because it is so life-giving to me.  Here is the result of the last few days:

     For those of you who are looking closely, you probably notice that the back part of this middle area of the yard still is pretty weedy but also bare in terms of chosen plants.  You might also see that the ring of rocks that surrounds this middle area is also still full of dry weeds.  

    The lessons: first, it takes time to grow and put together a garden.  The lantana that you see in this garden area I've been planting over the last 6 years.  I filled it in now with 16 additional plants.  There is still the back area, but it really doesn't get much sun, unlike the areas I filled the last few days.  So the kinds of plants I will need for that area are different.  Additionally, I have struggled the entire time we've lived here with knowing what to do with that ring of rocks that surrounds that middle area.  I've put paving stones/flagstones on top of it which makes it into a nice walkway, but I can't figure out how to clean up the weeds that have infested this rock ring.  My neighbor hired someone to do her yard who can pull out all the rocks, lay down ground cover fabric again, put in pulverized granite... all which sounds perfect.  I could then put the flagstones back on top and have a nice walkway around that middle garden area.  However, at this point in time, the cost is prohibitive.  Again, first lesson is patience.  I need to trust that these things will get done and not all of it has to be done today.  

    But the second lesson for me is to rely on the wisdom of others.  Do any of you have ideas about what I can do to deal with that weed-infested rock ring that I could do myself and for minimal cost?  I am happy to put in the work.  The area that you see in the pictures, I've not only done the planting but also done the sheet mulching around all of it.  Labor-intensive, and I frankly LOVE doing that work.  

    (As a side note, I won't use herbicides: I don't like putting poison in the ground and potentially poisoning the animals (and water).  So I am open to suggestions but only if they do not include poisons.)  

Plant Lessons

     The last two days we explored Bath, home of my favorite author Jane Austen (and we went on a tour of her presence in Bath as well as spending time in a Jane Austen museum) as well as place of the Roman Baths (which we visited to learn the history throughout the years). I was also able to visit and experience a number of gardens including the Botanical Gardens within the Royal Victoria Park, the Parade Gardens and the Sydney Gardens. Today we drove through the countryside to Wales where we will spend the next couple days.  Soon after entering Wales we visited a well known kitchen garden (attached to a fantastic restaurant) and then had the extraordinary experience of meeting and being taught in an interactive outdoor classroom by Adele Nozedar, an author and foraging expert who talked about reconnecting with our roots, with the earth, with the plants around us.  As she talked about the spirituality of the plants, their sacredness and the lessons they teach, I felt I had met a kindred spirit.  After our lesson, she and I talked about books we both love and the power of gardening and being in relationship with the plants around us.  But there are two things she said that are really sticking with me this evening.

    She said she really hated the word “weed.”  “What is a weed?” she asked.  It is only a label we put on some plants and don’t put on others.  It labels some as “bad” and in need of being uprooted.  She said every plant has gifts to give, lessons to teach, and when we label some as weeds we stop seeing them.

    Hm.  I could take this in so many directions.  First, we do this with people as well.  When we label someone a criminal, a bum, an illegal, it is a way of dismissing them, of no longer seeing them, or, as with most times when we label someone, never seeing them in the first place. It is unjust and dangerous: for it separates us from one another and gives us permission to avoid really getting to know one another fully.  But secondly, I agree with her about our labels around plants. Yarrow is a common “weed” but also a beautiful plant in its own right.  Wild flowers are often seen as weeds.  I started to wonder as I planted my garden, and now continue to wonder, how to make the decisions about what plant should be allowed to live and grow and what should not. When I decide I don’t want a plant in my yard (and two that come to mind are thistles of various kinds and scarlet pimpernel), what is best to be done about it?  I struggle with this. Scarlet pimpernel, for example, is really quite lovely.  But it takes over everything in the yard, strangling and spreading as it goes. It is invasive, a non-native plant to the Americas and toxic.  But as I’ve read about it, it, too has gifts to give and has been used medicinally for centuries in many different cultures. Should I label it a weed?  Or is there another way to remove it without vilifying it?  

    The second thing that Ms. Nozedar said that I want to share is actually a story of a practice in Llanfrynach, Wales where we had our foraging lesson.  She said that there were times, as there always are, when two people would be feuding within a community.  If it became too much for the community, they had a practice.  They would send the two people to “the tree.”  As the two people walked towards the tree they were permitted to argue and bicker as harshly or loudly or argumentatively as they wanted until they reached the edges of the Tilia tree (linden tree) which creates under it’s big branches a quiet refuge.  Once the two came to the edge of the tree, they were to step inside the tree in silence, and stop talking.  They were required then to sit together in the silence under the tree until one or the other was moved to apologize.  Only then were they allowed to leave to return home.  

    What a powerful story!  I think we have forgotten how to fight with each other, or rather, how to reconcile and deal with our differences.  Perhaps it is time to resurrect this practice, first speaking honestly about our own thoughts and feelings, and then sitting quietly together, thinking about what the other said, being in the stillness until there is movement in our hearts and a place and space to see our own culpability in any conflict and to forgive one another.  The tree plays a big part in this.  It creates the sacred space of listening and quietly waiting for healing, for answers. It also acts as a witness. It stands as a testimony to all who have entered under its boughs and been brought to consciousness of their own failings, moved to repent and to ask for forgiveness which then opens the door to reconciliation.  It is a reminder as well as a symbol of what is possible when people are intentional about working through their disagreements.

    I am so grateful for these stories and all that I learned today.