My garden, my love

Yesterday the hubs told me two things about my garden: One, that I have too many romantic notions about plants. And two, that my garden was a dry, dusty wasteland.

The first idea, that I have too many romantic notions about plants may be right. My mind has flipped out on fairies and majikal plant energies. It's because a friend re-introduced me to Susun Weed via her youtube videos. Susun Weed's energy has infected my mind! Or, re-awakened a sleeping spirit in me. I feel compelled to talk out loud to the plants and bees and winds.

This reminds me so much of the energy that swept through me when I lived with the wolves in New Mexico. There I made an extraordinary connection with a man who opened up the spirit world for me to have a peek. Really, it was just his mind, but it was extraordinary, and he reminded me that there are people talking with animals and plants and spirits and having real connections whether I participate or not. I jumped in with both feet and emerged gentler than ever before.

That experience slowly dripped off me until I let it go, or maybe just tucked it away. Because now after watching Susun's videos the old plant spirits are back, calling me to know them more and more and more.

That same dear friend who opened me to Susun Weed gave me a potted motherwort and it doesn't look like it's going to make it, which is devastating for someone who feels opened up to the energies of the plant world!! I say that with a hint of sarcasm because deep down inside, I know that Erik is right to say that I have too many romantic notions about plants. If I think about them too much and get so sad when one doesn't make it then I am projecting way too much onto the plants. Sometimes they just need to be left alone.

Which is what I think killed the motherwort! I should have re-potted it immediately when I got home?!

Who knows the reason... I put the motherwort on a bench under the blossoming orange tree with the chamomile next to it to comfort it. I try not to visit it too often, but is it my imagination or do the newest baby leaves look a little perky? The chamomile has a tendril hovering over the motherwort and it opened a flower on it today. So there is some hope!

So, yes, my notions of the garden are a bit romantic. He told me that I should be cutting all the flowers off the broccoli, but the bees are having the most blissed out time visiting all those flowers. He told me that the seeds aren't worth saving, that broccoli's genes get diluted by wild mustard. Oh well, I just don't care! I'm just letting the bees enjoy the flowers because I think it makes the garden happier. Also, my garden plants are packed so close together that I think if I ripped out the broccoli it would affect the parsley and chard surrounding it.

My notions of my garden are so romantic that sometimes I feel like I love my garden as much as I love a pet. When I see the strawberry plants with their prayer-hand leaves emerging from that bundle of green I feel so much joy. When I see the seedlings emerge their cotyledons from the black soil and open wide for the sun's energy it makes me feel so content and peaceful. I love my garden so much I could marry it!

So why did my husband say that my garden was a dry, dusty wasteland? Because he is encouraging me to pack even more plant-life into the nooks and crannies of the garden. More watering in more places. The garden is infecting us, we are becoming slaves to it, all willingly and peacefully. We are addicted to the rush of seeing food growing around us!

Moment of Awakening

When I returned from the Solomon Islands, I brought with me a wealth of experience living in a wholesome, integrated environment. I also brought with me the experience of living among people no longer divided by want of resources, but divided by the arbitrary event of which missionary group converted their grandparents.

I met Seventh Day Adventists who lived on separate islands and did not associate with their own family who were Methodist, or Catholic, or Mormon, or whatever other branch reached its tendrils to the Solomon Islands.

I had gone to the Solomon Islands solid in my faith. And left disillusioned--the emperor's clothes were slipping off.

My first job I got after returning was a kennel cleaner for the Helen Woodward Animal Center's kennel for dogs whose owners are on vacations. The first day I was hired I knew it wasn't for me. On my lunchbreak I sat outside a deli in an upscale Rancho Santa Fe shopping plaza. It was a weekday afternoon in fall. The stores and restaurants were mostly empty; the clerks swept the patio to stay busy.

Sitting at a round patio table, on the most pleasant of San Diego days, with an egg salad sandwich and a pickle, I felt uneasy. This job, with the dogs who were ironically so spoiled and loved by their owners, but they were just sad or frantic with homesickness. All the processing of returning to a world of shopping and working and planning from a world of gardening and fishing and being. And I couldn't turn to the church for comfort. I knew now that the church was just a shell game. God didn't help the people of the Solomons. People helped people.

But letting go of God was bothering me. I used to say that one of the biggest miracles of the church was that it brought people together. Even the Solomon people loved church and would be in church all day on Sunday, singing and feasting into the night sometimes. If I let go of God what would be left? What would I cling to? Who would take care of me?

And right at that moment a wren landed in a potted shrub right at my eye-level, and the little yellow glass bead of an eye locked onto mine long enough to burn the image into my mind. And the message from the bird was:

I am you and you are me. We are all one and we have each other to depend on and to help through life. And joy was born in my heart and I did not feel alone. I felt lighter as I allowed myself to let go...

That was the beginning of my atheism.

Today I lean toward Buddhism. It brings me the most comfort. One of the ideas of Buddhism that brings me comfort is reincarnation, which is just as much of a fairy tale idea as God. But I can choose to listen to whichever fairy tales I want to. I think that is a good place to be for me right now.