Tag Archives: Gardening

THE CROCUS

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March 30, 2020

THE GIFT IN THE DEBRIS

Despite the sun shining brightly this morning, and the orange tulips blooming on my table, I felt like the dried up lawns and dirty remnants of snow glimpsed through the windows. Everywhere lies winter’s decay, matted and brown and grey.

Despite my energy deficit, I finally talked myself into going out on the porch for the mail and to move the teddy bears into more visible positions for the children who go on neighborhood “Bear Hunts” with their parents. That’s a thing here in Duluth while we’re all home-bound.

The sun felt good. The air was moving gently. I looked out over my little front yard garden. Dead stuff, debris, a tumbled inukshuk, matted remIMG_1901ains of last fall’s final blooms. We had to put the deer fence back up last week to protect the tiny tulip tips who were waking up early, a delicacy for the deer. I noticed that they’re now an inch, some two or three above the dirt.

And then the splotch of purple caught my eye. A flower? Blooming? With snow still on the ground? A crocus!

I put on my shoes and went to investigate. Pulling the dead ornamental grasses aside, I found three crocus in various stages of bloom! I looked around at my wreck of a garden took a deep breath and went and got a rake. As I worked I noticed a robin hopping about in the grass, picking away, whether looking for food or nesting material I’m not sure. Both of us looking for new life. With each pull of the rake I found more green. I even found a dandelion growing in the middle of the Siberian Iris.

Standing there with my rake, I felt like I’d swallowed the sun!

 

GUERRILLA GARDENING

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A POCKET FULL OF SUNLIGHT

September 29, 2014

I was reading a Facebook announcement posted by my son-in-law for a guerrilla gardening event he is holding at the library where he works.  I remember how much fun he had last Spring when he got a group of enthusiastic youth from the community together and made a pile of seed bombs and then went out through the neighborhoods “bombing” all kinds of unlikely places to make them IMG_6854beautiful this summer.  Now they are going to go around the town planting spring bulbs and other things that will bloom come the spring.  I love the concept.  We’re encouraging our youth to sneak around–or go boldly in broad daylight–doing small things that nurture beauty and life and respect for the spaces where we live and work rather than defacing and uglifying them.  

It occurs to me that this is a great metaphor for another type of guerrilla gardening that every single one of us can do every day.  Every morning fill up your pockets with sunlight and plant seeds of Light and Love through out the day.  Good idea?  

As we move from moment to moment through our day we are radiating energetic frequencies.  These energy frequencies will have a lower or higher vibration depending on our thoughts, attitudes and intentions reflected in our emotions and amplified by our words and actions.  Spiritual teachers have been telling us for centuries that this energy we emit shapes our experiences and impacts the world around us.  Now science is demonstrating the physical truth of this.  

An entire community of people might believe that it would be far better to have lovely green spaces throughout the city than to leave them empty, full of trash and weeds, or to cover them up with dirty concrete.  But, someone has to go out and actually plant the seeds.  A group of kids need to throw seed bombs into the vacant lots instead of trash and plant bulbs along the   fences instead of spray painting ugly words.  Groups of us have to go out with rakes and shovels and trash bags and heal the areas that have been beat up.  We each need to choose to discard our trash in the trash can instead of dumping it in parks and on lawns and public sidewalks.  We have to do stuff.

An entire community of people might believe that it is better to love than hate.  Better to encourage others than to criticize them.  Better to be kind than to bully.  But, it is one thing to talk about it, another to live this way.  This is when I am reminded yet again that each waking moment of my day I am actually choosing how to be in my world.  Every day stories make the rounds about persons practicing Random Acts of Kindness, or doing gratitude challenges, or bringing people together to create peaceful solutions to conflict.  More and more of us are choosing to take up the tools we need to clean up and heal the spaces inside us that have been beat up and are ugly and smelly, to plant seeds of Light within our own hearts, and then in our environments and within our families.  We have to do stuff.

It is not easy work.  Old habits of mind are stubborn.  It is difficult to remember that our emotions are a result of our thinking not the other way round.  Our egos are highly skilled at defending us from every perceived threat; this does not always work in our favor.  Fear is sneaky and leaks in wherever it finds a crack or crevice unattended.  Most fear is not the healthy stuff, but the paralyzing ooze from the Dark Side.  

Yes, I like the idea of filling my pockets each morning with seeds of Light and planting them every chance I get throughout my day.   It is a good metaphor to help me when Fear spins out her silky lies, or the hackles on my Ego rise.  Slip my hand in my pocket and pull out a seed of Light–truth, love, gratitude, faith…plant it.  Move on.  It won’t blossom overnight.  Like the vacant lots where those excited kids threw their seed bombs, it will take some time before the seedling breaks the soil, stretches to the light, grows leaves and buds, IMG_8674Proof Sheet  and finally opens to full flower.  But this is where it begins.  There will be no harvest without the seed.  But with each seed there is hope for us and for our world, a promise that we can indeed create a world of beauty and love.  

Go ahead.  Fill up your pockets with sunlight or starlight.  Do some guerrilla gardening today.  Plant seeds of light and love.