New Blog - New Outlook

Yesterday, I taught two gardening classes at my house. My hope through this blog is to not only post my notes from those classes, but make it a place folks can come to learn how gardening can impact their hearts, souls and minds, and bodies. I gain great amounts of joy from the three of the most important areas of my life - my husband, my children, and my garden. Yes, my garden is very near the top of my list. Every year, when I grow and lose plants, I gain a new spiritual understanding about myself. Tending to young and tender plants and watching them grow and thrive and live out their lives, having my hands in the soil, watching the lives of insects and other creatures that inhabit my garden, walking barefoot in the grass, eating the produce, or seeing the intricate patterns of all life in a garden that satisfies something inside me and makes me feel connected to all of life on Earth. It is cathartic. Discovering that my garden as a whole is not only host to living, breathing organisms, but has very human-like qualities in its ecosystem and is indeed a mini-earth. It has brought me closer to a spiritual understanding of exactly how dependent and close every living creature is to the Earth. Awareness has brought out a desire to build a nearly self sustaining cooperative between myself and the little plot of the Earth that I have been blessed to inhabit. I give of myself to the Earth and in return Earth gives me not only food on my table, but joy and the ability to share that joy with others.





Okay, all of that sounds very religious in nature. Honestly, it kind of is. I have had a rocky spiritual life. I have been in Christian churches off and on all my life, but have only come close to spiritual fulfillment through church attendance and volunteering a few times. Over the years, my dissatisfaction with church life has grown and life's events have made me question my faith and the very existence of any god, let alone whether or not the one in which I had placed so much faith was really the loving, accepting god I needed him to be. The essence of the message of Christ still rings as truth in my heart. Love each other, take care of each other, be kind, stand up and do something when you see evil in the world, share your joy. I know the evangelical message is much different than that, but right now, this is just where I am. At this point in my life, I am satisfied with that.

So how does any of that relate to gardening? My garden providing healing at a very low point in my life and has continued to bring me something wonderful. It goes back to sharing the joy and satisfaction and in general thinking time I have when I dedicate myself solely for an afternoon on a regular basis (at least weekly, but preferably daily!) to my garden. It has become a sort of church: the garden - teeming with life that seems to seep through the earth and breathe that life into every ounce of my being. I can equate this with how folks who gain spiritual fulfillment through their churches go home from church feeling energized and ready to face the week because of the "food" they receive in their respective places of worship. Gardening not only gives me physical nourishment, but a great deal of spiritual edification as well.

My reasons are personal to me and may bring nothing to the table for you. All of us have a calling, and this is mine. So those reasons aside, I hope the one person who will read this will gain some understanding and knowledge about how to at least feed your body with what you can grow on your own. If you begin to feel some sort of joy from doing so, it is all just gravy!

More to come soon!

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