Latest / Dits & Dahs / de-vine what's not divine
Transcript
- Sue: The unique aspect to me, my opinion, my blog, my views, is just how much of a commitment personally it takes to be a gardener. I'm not talking about being a master gardener. I have a friend or two that are, and I'll bow in reverence to their knowledge and experience. But we all share the same feature in gardening is that you have to commit to doing things because you can't predict what Mother Nature is going to do. Regardless of how you may be feeling, and to me, I guess it's like being a dog owner. If you don't have a fenced-in yard or place for the dog to be by themselves and do their business, you've got to go out there and walk your dog. I've committed to being out in nature several times a day just by having a dog. So committing to being outside to do gardening is not a heavy lift with regard to being out in the weather, but it is a heavy lift with regard to the schedule. of the way seasons work in the area in which you're gardening. Meaning, there are things that you need to sort at the top of the season that you can't do until a certain temperature in the air has become prevalent, and etc. As I'm courting this, we are approaching the last week of March and in the northeast of the United States, and I'm at about 800 foot elevation. We are in a place where the vines, as I mentioned in another post, are a priority for me to get coppiced. I have a neighbor out with his fruit trees. He's doing the pollarding and we are all set in our schedule via Mother Nature, committed to gardening to get done what needs to get done. Because in the end, we're all foodies, right? We want to eat the food that we grow because we know that that's what tastes best to us. We've selected what specifically we're gonna grow with that purpose. It's an act of unconditional love. I like to garden in a more hippie-dippie manner, which is, we're just gonna call it regenerative gardening. Meaning that at the end of the year, I let the garden sort of grow ragged and anything that might have had a seed pod like a flower head remains intact. And that way the birdies and all the critters that like to feed can do so, just as they do with my, the deer does with my tomatoes. Anyway, I digress. And so there's no more allowing myself to feel like I don't vie with gardening because I've made a commitment. I've committed time. And as a widow, I've learned that gardening in the past with my husband was a much more efficient process. We could exchange duties. This means I have to do it all. That's fine. But allocating my personal time to do it and to get it done and to be efficient about it and to be in a good place with everything else that needs taking care of. has taken me about four years of my widowhood. So there's also been a lot of forgiveness on my part. And I've also given myself mercy. Now we're at a place where you understand better that when you involve yourself with activities that make you feel good and positive, that on the days that you don't feel like doing them, you still do it because you recognize the foresight of the end result. Whatever it is that you choose to do. I know this is probably something everybody has talked about a lot. And I'm sorry to sound repetitive in that manner, but from my perspective, feel those energies sometimes of everyone just trying to get it together to do X, Y, or Z, leaving themself that big option of not doing it as a fallback. And having had to make that decision myself on many occasions, it was the right thing to do, but now's not that time. That's the recognition. is that a lot of these circumstances are gonna repeat in cycles and learning to respond differently and still be open and authentic with that decision. That's a tough place to be in sometimes, because it's very lonely. You're all by yourself in that thinking, and that's okay. You gotta do it a couple of times to recognize, yeah, I can do this by myself. In gardening, that means more than ever I have to be committed, because if I lose one day's session of gardening, who knows what Mother Nature's gonna bring the next day. You know, I don't want to be fill a hole with quicksand. And when you spend more time doing things that are positively charged for you, you have less opportunities for negative energies to permeate your realm, mind, body, and spirit. And that's a good place to be, ultimately. And it allows those dark energies to go somewhere else, maybe back to the center where they belong. Because you're not making it negative, you? You're doing the stuff that you love to do. That's why having stuff to fill your brain with fun stuff is very important, in my opinion. It helps keep you on tick over and feeling happy about yourself. And just know that there are a lot of us doing it. So you're not alone. Maybe this recording is just the motivation you need to continue on when you were thinking about sloughing off. And it's okay to slough off. Non-doing is very important. Maybe this is a confirmation that it's okay for you to be you and not be controlled by anything else. Wherever that's at, I was so anxious and excited about gardening and divining yesterday that I, despite being fully clothed and gloved, managed to get a little bit of nightshade, bittersweet nightshade rash on my wrist. Yeah, that plant's always been there. Just know that you aren't alone and that anything that you choose to do for the benefit of yourself in a good way, Everybody feels it. It lifts the mood in the room. That's a good place to be. Thanks for listening.