In the Garden

Foundations

The elements of earth are stronger than
our feeble efforts to subdue –
the sun, the rain, the wind offer plenty of push

against our frail exertions to tame.
What makes us so arrogant as to assume
we can harness even a trace of their energy?

Essentials multiply and divide,
yet we attempt to attain atonement for
such atrocities we’ve reaped upon

the foundations of earth, that swirl and simmer,
leaving us to sputter our frustration
in ever-limiting conditions.

No matter what we invent,
the earth has her reply and will
present us with our just due.

                     ~ Annette Gagliardi

Foundations is published online at Down in the Dirt Magazine at: http://scars.tv/cgi-bin/framesmain.pl?writers  and  published in the Down in the Dirt Magazine (vol-170), April 2020.

Our Relationships with Gardens

By Annette Gagliardi

            I don’t know about most of you, but I cannot wait to get my hands dirty! I’m talking about gardening. I’ve been outside raking (probably too early), checking for new growth and thinking about what changes I might make this year. I am delighted when I see a flower blooming in one of the small gardens of my yard. I always make my kids groan when I say, “Hi ya, cinth!” and stop to admire their beauty.Their fragrance is such a wonderful sign of spring. The daffodils and tulips are the second stage (after crocus and snowdrops) of spring color and I spot them along the yards as I take walks throughout the neighborhood. Yesterday I spotted ground phlox blooming and was surprised at how soon the lovely lavender flowers have appeared. I’m a tiny bit proud for knowing the names of the many flowers and plants in my gardens.

            Even though there is no scientific reason that gardening makes us happy, the World Health Organization says gardening can increase our health in a variety of ways, including by gaining a better sense of self and providing a way of exercising—not just your body, but your brain as well. Gardening is a way of reducing stress, improving hand strength and coordination. When we spend time in the garden, our reward is a chance to bond with family members or friends, and often provides a better night’s sleep.

            The other day, as I was walking along our south-yard garden with my daughter and her children, we spied the biggest bumble bee! It was a wonder how big it was! We watched it go from leaf to flower and back again, for quite some time—time enough to listen for and hear the soft ‘buzzzzzz’ from the beat of tiny wings and to marvel at its size and song.

            I bought a bag of manure (okay, fertilizer) and I have taken over a week to dig it into the four sections of my garden. While I dug, multiple worms were discovered, much to the delight of my six-year-old grandson. He gathered them into a pile, all the while telling me a tale about what kinds of worms they might be, where they would be going and how he would use them. Eventually, the worms and their “dirt mansion” were returned to the garden – in a different section all together. 

            Later, I noticed that we both were happier and a bit calmer after spending just over an hour digging and discovering. We had been irritable and impatient during the morning and I marveled at what our time outside had done for us. What is it about nature that restores us? It’s not surprising to me that I find rehabilitation, i.e. healing, in my garden. The soft and intense greens, the shades of red and yellow, the hues of blue and purple offer meditative moments that cannot be found elsewhere.

“Gardens can aid in physical, mental, and emotional healing in myriad ways,” says Chris Fehlhaber, assistant horticulturist at Chanticleer Garden in Wayne, Pennsylvania. (This from a Psychology Today article)

            Chris Fehlhaber has numbered the ways gardens aid us: they help us slow down, be ourselves, get out of our own head, connect with nature, connect with others—including the departed, find life in death (the renewing of the seasons), receive love and be opened to change. The garden offers the discovery of new things each time you see it. I would add that being alone in the garden provides an opportunity to grieve the passing of loved ones and commune with those dead, without the judgement of others who observe our grief.

            If you are gardening with children, there is the inevitable discussion of the garden built on worm poop—and bunny beans—and insect poop, dead bugs and dead worms, and the cow poop I dig into the soil. So, death, and poop are what makes a garden. No matter how much I talk about the fertilizer providing nutrients to the soil, the kids focus on the excrement angle. And they laugh and laugh about it.

            I try to pack quite a lot into my small vegetable garden area. I think about how to build structures or train the plants to stay in one area or grow toward a specific area. The last couple of years we have had a six-foot tall teepee with zucchini and cucumbers vying for space on the walls. This year we have decided to build an arch so the kids will have a tunnel of sorts to crawl under with the vines making the covering. We are still debating which two of three vegetables to plant: zucchini, green beans or cucumbers. I’m excited to see how it turns out.

            When we plant seeds, we build hope for a future. We build future opportunities to rest and renew in nature, to glory in what we had a hand in producing—giving life to a seed that continues to grow and then produces food for us in return. We meet ‘mother nature’ where she is at and plug in to the greater universe that continually moves forward in growth and regeneration.

            It will be a few weeks before I can plant the tomato and broccoli plants, yet I’m preparing the space for them. I’ll plant spinach and lettuces this week and be comforted when they come up. Actually, the planting comforts me in a way I cannot explain. “Putting up food for the winter” comes to mind. But of course, that is not what I’m doing. I’m more accurately planting for salads in the summer.

Connecting to the greater movement

            There is something about being outside – especially after the long, cold Minnesota winter, that invites one to clear the mind, to focus on ‘not-yourself’, to open up to the natural world. And that is what legends are made of, that is what all the singing is about – pan left to Disney’s Pocahontas singing “All the colors of the wind”, and know that it is all true. Disney knows what is what.

            In an age when the vast majority of our cultural material is reduced to “content” and “assets,” the stillness of the garden helps connect us to the greater world, helps us make a connection with an immense motionless movement. The eloquence of silent life (birth, growth and death) is more evident in the garden. It’s like a physical discharge, moving at a pace we cannot see, yet we can discern the movement if we stop to observe.

            The achievement of stillness in nature, in the midst of the chaos of our society, is very similar to prayer. The soft sounds of a garden call to the gardener and gather us into its singular world. The smell and texture of the earth is a comfort in which we can immerse ourselves. Plants (trees, flowers, weeds) are living beings that ask nothing of us. Communing with other living beings that offer stillness or quiet presence, really is a spiritual communion. 

            The garden offers a door into great spaces (think the space of time, the space of eons of atoms that mingle and mix) that do not stop at a given moment, yet move in such quiet capacity that it carries us along without our awareness of it—the meeting of the finite and infinite—a motion that is endless. The garden operates on a wholly different time and scale and it requires a wholly different pace of cultivation.

            Our task is to be still and discern the movements we can encourage and enhance, which have a point of departure vital enough to set off rhythms of new life. In gardening, if we learn to be mentally still, we can, at the same time, allow our minds to disengage from the chaotic, humdrum, rational thinking of our daily lives.

            Margo Rabb in her article “Garden of Solace” (New York Times) says there is a gentleness in the garden that helps us escape from the violence and news that we are constantly confronted with.  We can easily let go of our preoccupations, get out of the maze of our own narratives and focus on the soil, the planting and the life in our gardens.

            And it allows us to look to the future in thinking about how the particular space will look down the road, in the not so distance future. Gardens are ever changing, and allow us to understand that change is not bad, that life goes on. Nature will continue with or without us. Gardens show us that death is part of the life cycle of birth, growth, death and rebirth. 

“Gardening is an affirmation that change is inevitable and okay,” Fehlhaber said. “It’s neither good nor bad—it simply is.”           

            In the garden, our silence melds with the silence around us to create a harmony that is the song of nature. Nature is not silent, yet it is still. The natural world is quiet, yet holds the song of the bird, the bee’s buzz, the croak of the frog and a myriad of other sounds that weave together to create the symphony of nature. Yet, we can be in the garden and not hear that symphony, or only parts of it at a single moment. We might find renewal in the piece of nature offered to us: the silence, the music, the organic moments in communion with other creatures around us.

            Gardens provide the quiet, the scents and the visuals that calm our souls and renew us. The feel of the breeze on our skin, the aroma of fresh flowers and touch of moist dirt renews us in a way, even a spa treatment cannot. A garden is an expression of health, even in disarray. When you tend to the garden, the love you are giving is given back—tenfold.

            In the garden, things come slowly, following their natural course. Yet every day is a new discovery. Things grow, they mature and ripen. Even when nothing is asked of me; I must weed, I must water, then eventually prune and cultivate, harvest and savor. And I must thank the earth for her gifts of food and flower, of time and space and for the growth in myself.

“In the wholeheartedness of concentration, world and self begin to cohere. With that state comes an enlarging: of what may be known, what may be felt, what may be done.” ~ Jane Hirshfield about the effortless effort of creativity.

Resources:

The healing power of gardens by Oliver Sacks at: https://bit.ly/HealingPowerGarden

Why are Gardens so Good for the soul? Seven ways of finding comfort and healing in the garden posted by Seth J. Gillihan, Ph.D. At: https://bit.ly/good4soul

I work like a Gardener: Joan Miro on Art, Motionless Movement, and the Proper Pace of creative Labor by Maria Popova at: https://bit.ly/workLikeAGardener

Eight surprising Benefits of Gardening, April 20, 2017 in UNC Health Talk at: https://bit.ly/gardeningBenefits

Quote from: Timeless advice on writing: the collected  wisdom of great writers by Maria Popova at: https://bit.ly/timelessQuotes

Photos by Marian Gagliardi, 2020.