Red-flowering currant

Have you been in your garden yet this spring?  What a pleasure this has been for me.  Daffodils, grape hyacinths, yellow forsythias, and red-flowering currants are budding all around.  Tulips are starting to flower their bright reds, yellows and oranges.  Spring is such a time of renewal and birth!

Walking the labyrinth and seeing all of my perennial herbs popping their reddish-green heads out of the soil, brings me such joy.   Mother earth is birthing lots of babies all of the time as new plants, shrubs and trees start their life cycles.

The other day as I pruned back the dead stems and leaves, I thought of the similarities of us humans and the garden of plants.  Being pruned back to us is like getting a haircut, taking a shower, scrubbing off the dead-skin cells from our body.  This is necessary for us to maintain our cleanliness, hygiene and health, much like pruning is needed for the plants to grow and show their beauty without dead parts of the plant hanging on.  Lucky for the plants, their dead parts eventually fall off anyway; I guess ours do too (our skin and hair), but doesn’t taking a shower and washing your hair just make you feel so clean afterwards?

Grape hyacinth

Weeding out plants that you didn’t intend to grow in your garden is almost akin to our life as well.  That same day, while weeding in the garden, I thought about all of the extra things in my life that I haven’t planned to happen or to focus on. Those pesky little weeds could relate in our lives to the darker sides of ourselves, or our shadow side(s), or the unexpected events that entangle parts of ourselves or our lives.  Sometimes those weeds can really take over the garden; sometimes they fill the space when we don’t know what to plant next.  Sometimes they add nutrition to the soil for us, until we’re ready to plant our garden.  And sometimes we harvest those weeds (wild herbs) for our own nourishment and remedy. The weeds can sometimes be our greatest teachers, if you notice which plants keep showing up in your garden.  You may decide that you are ‘fighting’ that particular weed every year, or maybe you decide that you want to befriend her, maybe watch her and see how she grows.  What does she bring to you?  I can relate this metaphor with varying aspects of my life.

For many years I wanted to ‘get rid’ of my fears (i.e. fear of failure, fear of success, fear of not being enough…), everything I could do to not have fears anymore was what I tried to do.  Slowly I began to realize that working towards loving and embracing my fears is more energetically beneficial for me, as long as I don’t allow the fears to take over all of me.  My garden is similar; I don’t worry so much about weeding every little plant so much anymore, as long as the other plants who I want to grow there have plenty of space to grow.  Why not share some of the soil with a few of the weeds who also want to produce?

Tending the garden is much like tending ourselves.  What does our garden need?  What do we need?  How does the garden grow, does it get enough water, compost, and attention?  Do we get enough water, compost, and attention?  Does the garden have movement; is there a variety of plants growing, insects, birds singing, in the garden?  Are the ‘weeds’ taking over everything?  Do we get enough movement and exercise, stimulation from others, creative expression?  When you’re in the garden are you at peace?  Are you trying to quickly get this job done so you can move quickly to the next task that is on the list?

As I continue in my garden this spring and into the summer these are some of the questions that may come to mind as I work, weed, transplant, harvest, enjoy and revel in the beauty of my garden.

With Love,

Susie