Meditations on Visionary Gardening, Philadelphia, Summer 2015

Branch & Wood Garden Art. The sculpture with the shells is a creation of a neighbor who lives two blocks north. I couldn't believe the beauty of his work as I happened to pass by his house. He sat peacefully on the porch, while I got out of my car. As I walked to the sidewalk to begin a tour, he gets up and comes to the porch railing to tell me that he'll give me a good price. I left with several sculptures and a chair. 

                                                                          Gardening, Summer 2015
My daughter and I are in dialogue about how things are going to shift next year. We are going to focus more on the greens- kale, turnips, collards, salad greens- and I'm going to give broccoli another try.

Lucinato and purple leaf kale. What's amazing about these greens, including the swiss chard that's all gone now, is that if the leaves are cut off about 1/2" from the root stalk, the greens will continue to grow. It's September and I've had kale for 2 months. It freezes up nice too.

The kale was grown in a keyhole garden that I structured last year. In the center, I dug a hole, that serves as a composting bin. I'm reading about the exact ratios of leaves and scraps that make for ideal compost. 

In the keyhole garden next to the kale is rue, planted last year. It has more than tripled in size. This herb is used in cleansing rituals. I have another in the front sidewalk bed. I figure my house is protected. On Pinterest, I found this, "The Romans call it "Mars Herb" because it can be as fierce as the god Mars. It is known to relieve pain, colic and to improve appetite and digestion." 

In the keyhole garden between the kale and the rue are two types of tarragon, a dark and light green variety. I used them in a marinade for turkey chops, and then grilled them. The aroma was amazing, and the taste, incomparable! These herbs are perennials, so they'll be back next year. 

Gardening, in this time, in this period, I've discovered is multi-dimensional: it is a form of protest, it is an act of rebellion, but more than all of that, it is one of the ways in which we can shift how we are living on this planet. 

Three years it has taken me to remove all the grass from my yard, front and back (I'll begin on the side sometime next week). During the past three years, I have taken/am taking in everything that I can about the urban gardening movement and permaculture. In all honestly, I have had to take a serious look at my time. 

Gardening, on this scale, the scale where you eat what you grow, and you try to grow as much as you can of what you eat, is not a couple of days a week. Weeding is three or four times per week, given the size of the back and front gardens. Pruning, watering (especially during the dry spells, and we've had some dry spells in Philly this summer), staking, these are daily. Throwing in the harvesting time for some plants, like the fig tree I planted 2 years ago, seed planting, canning, the gardening season begins around March and extends into November. 

I have never been in Philly when the figs are ready. So as of next year, I will stick around, waiting until about November, to begin my migration to Mexico. I'll be making fig paste and fig and brandy preserves.

Then there are the tomatoes! Tomatoes! And more tomatoes! I grew two heirloom varieties of which I will repeat next year, the purple cherokees and  the yellow zebras. But the cherry tomatoes I will forgo next year.

What else? Cucumbers galore. I have been drinking cucumber, apple and ginger most mornings for the past month or so. I feel great! I went out one morning with the intention of cleaning the cucumber bed because I thought they were all finished, and this is what I discovered hiding behind the vines that had wrapped themselves around the gates of the garden entrance. 

Jalapenos (excuse the lack of accent), yellow wax beans, mojito mint (will come back next year), Thai red peppers (used a couple to season a mess of greens and some green, purple and yellow beans). When those purple beans hit the heat, they turn green.

Finally, there's the front sidewalk bed of thyme, rosemary, and in the front yard, lavender, oregano, sage and valerian! 

  

Lots of flowers from seed this year, and a little more focus on one of my favorites places of my sanctuary, the porch. 

Purple, spicy basil. Robust flavor.

Last year I cleared the grass under the side wall, that borders the driveway. The purple grass didn't make it through the harsh winter, so I had to find something else suitable for the area. 

Well I'm participating in a show coming up in December that requires 5 more pieces. I suppose I can focus on them now. I know that I haven't posted "here" since April, since we lost "Athelstan," (The Vikings).  There are two other publications on my plate,  the workplace blog and the ezine. It's a handful, but I love it.  

Oh! By the way, if you're into new earth consciousness stuff at all, I would recommend a book that I just finished. Charles Eisenstein's The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know is Possible. Fucking brilliant! Inspirational, motivational and right on point. I enjoyed every chapter. What else am I reading? The Way of Mastery, a thorough review of topics covered in ACIM and ACOL. I'll settle down this fall and start focusing on that 4th book that I wanted to finish last year. The Sessions in Shifting should be completed within the next couple of weeks, and I've decided to offer them for free. 

All and all,  I'm on it and the Source is with me. Always. Eternally.

April 7, 2015 The Resurrection

Flokki took Athelstan out! Geez.

Athelstan was an interesting, conflicted, beautiful character on The Vikings. I don't know how many of you watch the series, but I have been addicted since the first episode. I had come to identity with Athelstan's conflict. Not his conflict between his loyalty and faith in Thor or Odin and the Father of Jesus Christ, but the conflict between seemingly conflicting states. His, as mentioned, was between a relationship with the Viking Gods or the God of Jesus Christ.

The nature of my conflict was slightly different, but nevertheless a conflict.  It was the conflict between being in relationship with the world, as it is, with separation, its anxiety, its ups and downs, the addiction to the emotional roller-coaster ride, to polarity.  Up one day, down the next. On the other hand, it was the attractiveness and the peace of being at home in Christ Consciousness. Joining heart and mind in oneness, uninterrupted focus on being at One. That conflict, like any, is intensified when one can clearly distinguish, in feeling and experience, between the two states.

Athelstan had made peace with Thor and Odin, and he made a choice, one that preceded, as choices always do, the experience of being born again, or the resurrection into the light. When Flokki arrived, Athelstan was at peace with his choice and his experience.

It is clear. The old self must die in order that the new self may be born. It seems an easy choice doesn't it? -between lack and limitation, sadness, conflict and discord, and the eternal peace of Love's embrace. Not so.

Michael Hirst, the writer and producer of The Vikings, in response to the death of Athelstan, said that the kind of internal conflict Athelstan was experiencing must have a resolution. It had to end. A Course in Miracles says as much: there is a limit on pain, and sooner or later, the spirit seeks relief. Athelstan has merged back into non-physical, and that's that. So be it.

It's time to get in the garden, one of my favorite spaces, and one of my favorite times of the year. I am not a summer person, and gardening is the only thing that I can really appreciate about the summer. I'm just not a happy camper in the heat and humidity of Philadelphia, but the garden and the joy I experience in it, overshadows all of that discomfort. I've got plenty of projects that I want to get underway. I bought wood to construct a garden arbor last year, but never got to it. That was mainly because I didn't clear all the ivy from the back of the yard. It turned out to be a labor intensive endeavor. I have resolved to make clearing the remainder of the ivy the first thing I do after starting my seeds. I have purple grass that I planted last year along the driveway, and it grew so fast, that the plants are taller than the wall that borders the driveway. They will have to moved to the back. Where, I do not know. Hopefully the garden spirits will pick out a spot.

 
Then there is the inside! I started last year working on the foundation of the front of my house because there are so many cracks in it. It's an older house, and it just needs some tender loving care which it hasn't gotten from its previous two owners. Let me tell you, cement work is no joke. No wonder masons charge so much. I'm not mad at them. But I will see the project through. It may take another year to finish all the cement work, but I am up to it. I am the woman for the job.

I love my house. It is my sanctuary, my refuge, my temple of solitude and peace. And I have no doubt that it was given to me to heal, and as it is healed, so am I. It's a great exchange. Giving and receiving is one in truth.

What else is up?

A show in December, 2015.  I'm three-quarters finished with the pieces. I have two more to complete this summer and I'm ready. I'm averaging about two shows per year, and with that, I am satisfied, and grateful.

Books. A stack that I have to get to. So it will be many evenings, after working on the house and in the garden, of gin and tonics and some good reads. Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, been on the reading agenda for over a year. Charles Eisenstein's The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know is Possible; Resistance Against Empire, by Derrick Jensen; Hemenway's  Gaia's Garden, all about permaculture and the urban gardener.


Relationships! My children. I'll hang with my daughter and daughter-in-law, my grandchildren. Take in tapas and the Eastern Market in DC. with my son. Visit sisters and brothers. Take in a wedding and there's plenty birthdays to celebrate! 

It's a divine unfolding going on here.

Tonight I am working on the text for the Sessions in Shifting, and ideas or information, however one wants to put it, always come to me when I am putting together something that is for a learning purpose (or in this case an unlearning purpose). Sometimes the information that comes to me has nothing to do with what I am writing. I just think that it is when I am in that zone of nonresistance, the communication flows so much easier.

But what came to me tonight was this idea about time. I felt like 2014 flew by, and I have heard other people make the same or similar comment. There is a dialogue in A Course of Love and A Course in Miracles about time. In ACIM, time is defined as a learning interval: it's the time it takes one to become aware of who they are. All life experience "in time" is engagement in lessons that are designed to bring about the awakening. Once that awakening takes place, there is no longer a  need for time. In ACOL time is used to complete the transitioning from the state of separation to the state of Unity Consciousness. ACOL takes one through this transition in The Treatises and in The Dialogues. 

Some of the guidance includes recognizing when one is acting, mostly from habit, from beliefs in the separation. It's called "running into your old self." I do this a lot, and it is what I am focusing on now. Like with this idea of time. I have begun to experience this dismantling of time. It's not like how I thought it was going to be. At first, it is emotionally painful and disorienting. Some depression comes with it, and I think this is because those structures that I based my life on have been deconstructed, and are no more. And I wouldn't go back, couldn't go back, and rebuild them anyway. They were all based on illusions/falsehoods.

Anyway, what I am finding disorienting is nothing but mind's response to absence of those structures. It's totally about thinking, and that is why ACOL says that all thought, as you have known it, must cease, or else...well, I will spend the rest of my days in this transitioning, and I simply cannot bear that.

So I will say it again. Tonight, while I was working on the Sessions, I received some communication: I've come too far, and I can't turn back now; and there ain't shit in that old world, that old life that I would turn back too. Nothing.