What Does Our Garden Have To Teach Us?

This year I missed planting my bulbs in the fall as I was away on my India trip. The re-entry to home life took time, then holidays intervened. So I bought the tulip bulbs last weekend. Some people say you can plant them up to the end of January here on the west coast. But Diana at the nursery says you can plant them anytime; they just come up a bit later.

So I went out and began shallowly planting a few purple and pink bulbs in places that were visible from the kitchen window, back deck, or the walk to and from the car. There was one section of the flowerbed, that gets virtually no sun this time of year; it was very hard when I tried to dig with my trowel. I pushed at the soil and muttered to myself “what’s this?”. I didn’t realize at first that the ground was frozen, as it’s such an unusual event out here on the ‘wet coast’.

My mind immediately drew an analogy between gardening and life change. Making big changes in any area of our lives is usually very challenging. Martha Beck didn’t invent the mantra “this is way harder than I thought and that’s alright” for nothing!

Sometimes the ground of our psyche or our spirit is wounded. It may be too hard to plant seeds of change in it. Perhaps our mind is closed in a particular area; maybe our heart has shut over years of disappointment. Sometimes our physical beings need to be built up just as we would nourish the soil for stronger, better flowers or crops. In a similar way we must strengthen ourselves with good food, vitamins, herbs and so on, to have the stamina we need to both create change and live it.

I’ve been working on the soil that is me by exercising my body with walking and movement classes, feeding my spirit in nature, and my emotions by receiving neurological treatments. But the toughest thing for me, and perhaps for many of you, is having faith. Faith that my dreams and hard work will manifest in the life I dream of.

Each spring it’s a miracle to me when the plants begin to sprout. I know it will happen, because it always has, but still it captures my attention and my imagination. I trust that spring will come, and the plants will grow beautiful.

My new resolve is to trust that this force…call it nature, or the Universe, or the Goddess if you will…that brings the flowers to fruition each year, will bring me the life I yearn for.