On Growing Your Own Garden
April 29, 2008 by susangpyp
I wrote this over a year ago and today I was looking at garden books and it reminded me of it. It’s important to grow your own personal transformation and decide how that is going to go and how you’re going to bloom. I recently bought a house and can see that along the driveway are perennial gardens. I wonder what lies beneath the soil that will bloom in the spring and summer. I can’t wait to see and to fill in the beds with my own selections. I love designing a garden. When I first started gardening I would spend all winter with my gardening books, looking at the beautiful pictures and sketching out ideas in notepads. Then the spring would come and the work would begin…tilling the soil, selecting the plants, planting and then carefully pruning and shaping. Some took hold and some did not. Some surprised me with their beauty and hardiness…and some would pop up as a surprise…I wasn’t quite sure where it had come from…a random seed, a mislabeled seedling? who knew? but it was pretty and I enjoyed it all the more because it was unexpected.
All plants and flowers need the seasons and the cycles. When I moved to California I had to dig up my tulips and put them in the freezer because they need a deep freeze to be hardy.
When it is a dark time in life, when there has been loss and sorrow, it is good to remember that life is a cycle and in order to bloom and grow we need the dark times, the restful times, the time to go inward and explore our own depths before we can turn our faces to the sun.
It is difficult to appreciate our ability to bloom when we are in the midst of winter but know that we have it, that we are able to do it.
We have to do our work, our work on ourselves, our grief work, our journaling, our meditation, our hibernation time. We need it and if we do it, we will gain great rewards from the work.
Believe in it always. You will not only reap what you sow and enjoy the benefits of what you have planted, but there will random and unplanned joys along the way. Do the work in the heart of winter and the spring will reward you with a beautiful bounty.
Love the moment. Flowers grow out of dark moments. Therefore, each moment is vital. It affects the whole. Life is a succession of such moments and to live each, is to succeed. - Corita Kent
Susan, what a lovely metaphor for our process. As always, thanks for sharing your way, which leads to the way of our own beautiful healing gardens.
My favourite symbol is the Chinese Lotus, a beautiful flower that grows despite “horrible conditions”. We can do it, it tells me.
Thanks for this reminder Susan, and I hope you’re feeling better :-)
I LOVE gardening. It is about death and loss and rebirth. For the last 3 years I have seeded about 3 varities of basil and watched them turn into delicious herbs! I also seeded parsley and thyme…and I have a strong obsession with tree peonies and regular lactiflora peonies…I have hundreds. They are chock full of buds right now and should be in their full splendor for Mother’s Day! I will pick a bunch for my beloved mother and bring them to her.
I think I hold the record for the largest “in the ground” rosemary on the East Coast. They are tender here (Zone 7), so I have to mulch it when the fall comes and uncover it when Spring arrives. It is worth all the effort. I measured it the other day and it stands 3 feet tall and about 3 feet wide. It is covered in purplish-blue blooms.
Perhaps my proudest gardening moment besides my rosemary is my fig tree, which is now starting to leaf out again, after being dormant all winter, wrapped in burlap to protect it from the cold. The figs that ripen by mid-summer are fabulous.
Gardening is a lot of work, but it has provided me with plenty of soul-searching time. It has given me great gifts of fresh herbs (What’s summer without fresh basil for Caprese salad?) and time to relax and forget about work, my issues, my faults, my imperfect self…and getting to commune with nature. After all, ashes to ashes, dust to dust…