Yesterday, while focusing on recovery from my dental surgery and the long week of organizing and working with our stellar team, I knew I just wanted to GARDEN in my Growing Dome. I was out in my Growing Dome for about 5 hours, preparing old baskets for new plants, amending the soil and mixing up batches of goodness to plant the new babies in. While I was doing this, I couldn’t help but feel it was a metaphor for my own recovery process. THIS time, I am taking a risk by going with natural antibiotics like echinacea, goldenseal, garlic, and grapefruit seed extract, instead of the 10 day course of prescription antibiotics my periodontist prescribed. The addition of homeopathic arnica and comfrey to my regimen as well as Vitamin C are the natural “amendments” for my healing process. The soil mixtures I made yesterday reminded me of my body’s need for nutrients and support while healing up. I became aware with a little chocolate experiment that it led to immediate pain in the wound, so sugar is out. By listening to my body I can sense its power to work with this approach and do amazingly well. I am recovering this time by full engagement, from the inside out.
The deer here have decimated my garden outside the kitchen window and this year I decided to focus on beauty in our home greenhouse. I agree with one woman in our original video who says, “I love flowers!” and celebrates that she can have them year-round, in the Rocky Mountains in her two Growing Domes. This morning I could hardly wait to go in and see if the pansies that were wilting in the heat of the day yesterday had recovered. YEP! They sure had! What a miracle! I felt like a child, full of delight that my rescue mission and the mulching I had done around the newly planted flowers worked. The wonder of it all is so amazing to children, but it brings adults back to that wonder too. The time simply given to being with nature delivers such value.
Of course before all this result, I had to clear away the old dead leaves and twigs of old plants, cutting off the dead and gone, and trusting the stalk of some of the longer rooted plants to come forth in relief. This too is a metaphor. We have to let go of the old to make room for the new. (Sometimes, it is compostable, and sometimes not!) While transplanting things to bigger pots, there was delight in the thought that this same thing is going on in my life. I need more room to grow, more good soil, and a solid home for all my new ideas and vision for the season. (I am building that.) I needed more nutrition and a focus on health this spring, and somehow helping my plant friends reminded me to help myself.
This morning while cruising The Mountain Astrologer magazine for June 2014 which speaks of the age-old customs of lunar planting, I was moved by the words of a young astrologer named Chani Nicholas. She had impressive credentials for someone so young that included work in prisons as well as revolutionary practices. This statement of hers struck me most: “We are connected to the universe and our sky is a living thing that is always evolving and unfolding. I feel that, if we had that connection again, we might calm down and stop taking more than we need. Capitalism and consumerism have given us this immense insecurity, the false notion that we aren’t valuable, that we aren’t enough and that we are consumers instead of creators. Without a connection to the cosmos, to the land, to each other, we’ve gone a bit bananas.”
This morning I knew that my body loved the five hours of gardening, even though I was tired last night. This morning I took time to really notice the dawn and allow myself to breathe in the stillness of the waking world. Today, I can feel that connectedness with the natural world around me, and somehow, out of emptiness (not planning or working in my mind) there is fullness.
Happy Planting!
Puja Dhyan Parsons, CEO of Growing Spaces
