As You Think, So You Grow: Lessons From The Garden (vol. 1)

August, 2014

Does your radar go up whenever you hear someone tell you, “I have a job that only YOU can do”? I am a part of a community garden that has space for about three dozen people to have plots for growing vegetables. My father paid for five spaces for us to work in, which is what we’ve had for years. Both of my parents, my two sisters and I worked the soil together. But my older sister succumbed to cancer last year, so now there are only four of us to work the garden.

Each plot can hold up to four rows of vegetables. Each row is 100 feet long. So we’re talking about 400 feet of work in each plot. My father is ambitious. He’s also going on 89 years of age. The past year took a toll on his health and energy level after surviving his third bout with cancer. The four became three when my father realized things had changed for him. As he processed it all he put down his gardening tools and walked away from our community spot. He gardens at home now.

There are a few rules to gardening with this group. You must keep your plot(s) free of weeds. My father used to manage the garden group and everyone knew he would give those gentle nudges to get the weeding done. If you’ve noticed in the photos and news stories of folks getting back to raising their own vegetables, the gardens are always well maintained and weed-free. No one flaunts their tomatoes when the weeds are thriving. And make no mistake, weeding is work. I mentioned in an earlier blog how I have to diligently pay attention to them.

So picture five plots with about 2,000 feet of ground to tend. Once my father left I committed to taking care of his former space. Once you sign onto being in a space you are responsible for keeping it up. So my mother, sister and I would share in the planting, weeding and harvesting chores for this very large area. My mother had a freak, minor mishap that bruised her ribs. It was minor but it would keep her from doing anything strenuous (read gardening here) for several weeks. And then there were two.

A fellow gardener was kind enough to run a tiller through a large portion of our “farm” that had become pretty thick with weeds. I definitely want to stay on top of that to avoid seeing grasslands where a garden used to be. Some days I would meet my younger sister in the garden in the afternoon and we worked together. I’m so focused on keeping the weeds at bay, not just because of the aesthetic beauty of a well maintained garden, but because they crowd out the vegetation I want to focus on cultivating. We focus on what has meaning to us.

I watched my sister move from weeding part of her section to directly tending to the plants, pruning and tying up tomato plants. She joked about getting easily distracted from one task to another. We get distracted by things that are important to us. There’s lots to do in any garden and tenderly caring for plants can be a lot more relaxing than weeding. By dusk she was ready to go and urged me a number of times to drop the hoe, walk away from the weeds and leave. I needed to finish the row. I was near the end of it and didn’t want to come back the next day to do the last few feet.

Early one morning I went to the garden to get some quiet time in before anyone else showed up. My goal was to, of course, get the weeding done in my space. I looked across my younger sister’s plot, the space where my deceased sister would have worked, my father’s plot and over to my mother’s plot. They all needed work. My sister’s work schedule cranked up and didn’t allow her to spend as much time in the garden anymore. And then there was one. Remember the line from the children's song, The Farmer in the Dell, “The cheese stands alone.”

I realized three lessons that fit that moment and following my path in life. First, as hard as the work is, and as important as it was to me, I would most likely be doing most of our total family space without any other members there with me. For three hours I was alone in the garden. Lesson: I accept that there are things that only I can do, and only I will do them. And they must be done. It may seem like a mammoth, tedious task, but if I choose a different lens I can see progressive, incremental stages with things unfolding along the way. Sort of like a growth cycle in life.

Second, normally on a Saturday morning there are lots of people there. But this particular morning I had that large open space all to myself. Lesson: There may not always be someone beside me working with me, still I have to do the work. There may not always be folks providing support or tips, but I still have to get the work done. There may not be anyone to show me the way to accomplish what I need to do, but I am the one to do it. All I need is one tool and profound commitment to begin. Folks will show up eventually. But even during those times when they don’t, I am clear on why I’m there. In that open space where there are no interruptions, I listen and hear the voice of the Spirit that guides.

Third, I didn’t come close to completing each plot, even after four hours there. Lesson: My work may take longer than I planned or hoped, but it won’t go away. It will still call out to me and I have to get it done. And when I’ve completed whatever portion of it that I could for that day, I look back and can see that it was done well. It was what I needed to do for that span of time. Nothing more and nothing less.

Weeding never ends. Have I mentioned that already? It gets my attention probably because it has meaning for me on a few levels. Weeds that I find no use for crowd out the best of what I want to grow. Whether it’s a plant that came from a seed in the ground, or a new way of being and thinking that I want to practice in my life. I go back to the metaphor of our minds being like gardens, and our responsibility to cultivate what we want to grow. And not just in our minds but our hearts and spirits as well. That thing that I must do, that calls to me is creating more conscious cultures.

As a culture of humans we have to slow this train down and be still long enough to listen and hear that whisper that guides us. If we don’t become more contemplative, we’ll derail soon. Some may say that we already have. We have to go further than becoming mindful, and begin integrating our spiritual intelligence into our strategic planning and decision making practices. When we take a more holistic approach and consider the Holy Spirit guidance, we move through tumultuous periods with fewer challenges. We will have less devastating outcomes because what we need shows up for us; and all of it is for positive ends. No destruction of life, communities, our environment or our work places. I know what I know about being more integrated and seeing the "more" that is available to us, and I must share it. What is it that you have to do?

~

I hadn’t thought about taking a picture of our garden this year. This photo shows three of the five plots of our 2013 garden last summer. Full disclosure: my father and younger sister did the weeding on this while I was out of the country for three weeks.

Keywords: Choices; Learning; Productivity; Success; Transforming