It's Still Very Early
lessons from the garden
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I believe that gardening is the most sacred ritual I perform. It’s the holiest act and the most significant offering of gratitude and praise I can make. I’ve learned my most profound lessons from the garden, second only to those I’ve learned from grief.
They’re a curious pair, those two: gardening and grief. One is active, requiring all my mental effort for researching, planning, and learning and all my bodily strength for digging, pruning, weeding, and building. Grief is all passivity. It comes unwanted, washes over you, moves through you, and overwhelms you. No effort is required. Like God, it comes whether it is called or not.
Vocatus atque non vocatus, Deus aderit.
Bidden or unbidden, God is present.
~ Desiderius Erasmus
The garden, while primarily joyous and a great source of pleasure for the senses and the soul, also contains some grief, usually when a plant or an animal who lives in or visits the garden dies. But life in the garden is so abundant that it carries the weight of grief with strength and hope. New life takes over, and the grief wound is quickly healed. Is that callous, or is that good?
I wonder if the same can be true for grief. Is there some element of blessing, joy, and hope that resides in grief? While the grief wound heals quickly in the garden, the wound of grief in the human heart heals far more slowly. Yet, working in the garden can help heal the wound of grief. Perhaps it is the surging life force that inhabits the garden that seeps into the soul and hurrys the healing along.
Time Is Weird in a Garden
There’s something about the way time works in a garden. It doesn’t conform to the regularity of a clock, nor does it conform to the notions we have about what and when the seasons should be.
This is partly due to the growing illusion of virtual reality peddled by every screen we consult for news, information, and, most damagingly, affirmation.
Spring is here, and that means sunny skies, spring flowers like daffodils, hyacinths, and tulips, and cotton candy blooms on trees like cherry, pear, and crabapple. Like the carefully curated homes, vacations, lifestyles, clothes, bodies, and gardens on Instagram, that picture of spring is an illusion; it’s fake, like a lot of the news we’re fed. Some of that may be true, depending on where you live, but those images flood our feeds long before even more southern locations are experiencing nature in spring bloom.
In southern New England, where I live, it’s still very early. The snowdrops and crocus are open, but only one daffodil of my many has opened. We’re still a few weeks from the spicebush and shadbush blooming, even further from the azaleas and crabapples putting on their pink show, and those are the early bloomers!
For weeks now, I’ve been cleaning out garden beds. Last year's stalks mark more robust and shrubbier perennials, dried but still standing. However, there are many bare patches, meaning those plants have died back completely. Theoretically, their roots are just fine beneath the soil, and they are only waiting for more sun and warmer temperatures to coax new green shoots because it’s still early. I tell myself this as a surge of panic makes my stomach churn.
Did they die? Were they eaten? What exactly did I plant here? Will they come back? It’s still very early, I tell myself.
The anxiety is real. I’m a knowledgeable gardener, but sometimes, I’m in a hurry because I’ve purchased so many plants at once that I rush to get them planted. I love a bargain, and at the end of the season, I scoop up clearance plants. Sometimes, they're not in the best of shape, and they will have a shorter time to settle in before the frosts. Will those plants come back again this year?
Our inner life like the garden is often mysterious and progresses along a spiral path rather than a straight line. To honor this mysterious unfolding I installed a spiral meditation path in my garden. I mark the four cardinal directions and the cross quarter points with upright stones and the center with a Green Garden Sybil, who speaks only of green things and truth.
In our inner life we sometimes hurry trying to progress more than we reasonably can given our current circumstances. Other times we are trying to heal, recover or give ourselves a second chance like I do with bargain plants. Also like the garden our inner life and the growth of the soul moves through seasons and time at a varying rate. Thus, like my anxiety in the garden we can often feel anxious about losing progress in our healing journey. Spiritual practices that once brought us great joy go dormant. We can even wonder if we will ever revive after a dark night of the soul.
In winter time stands still in a garden unless you’re in the tropics. We often say, the garden is asleep. So, even the garden moves into the realm of its unconscious, or perhaps the entire ecosystem has a collective unconscious suited to its botanical nature and it dreams during the winter. Our concept of time exists to record change, or to function as a way to give words to the concept of things changing and moving from one state of being to another, or of having once existed though gone now, or existing now, or yet to exist, those things we can conceive of in our mind but that have yet to come into being. Time is an interesting and slippery thing and not nearly as precise or reliable as we generally believe.
Nothing is happening in the garden in winter, it lies dormant and time stands still for the garden. Spring arrives and there is minimal movement and change. Day after cool, damp early spring day I check my plants and trees and the changes are almost imperceptible. Time moves slowly, if it is indeed moving at all.
So too in our inner life. In the early days of seeking, learning and pursuing greater wisdom and understanding we constantly check in with ourselves hoping to see signs of progress. But it’s still very early. Sometimes we are like like bargain plants. The effects of trauma, neglect, illness or grief are long lasting. Old ways of thinking and stubborn misconceptions keep us in a wintery darkness, we haven’t quite shaken off. Time seems to move incredibly slowly and new inner growth is minuscule at best. We worry that we will never blossom into health, well being, and higher spiritual attainment.
When the garden and the soul are lovingly tended and given time they will change and grow.
Soon, the effects of the lengthening days and warmer temperatures are felt. After nearly two months of excruciatingly slow growth we arrive in late May and June when you can practically see plants growing right before your eyes. You can actually measure plants at the end of the day and measure them the next moring and they will have measurably grown.
Do Plants Grow At Night? Yes! The absence of light actually stimulates plants to grow fastest at night. Plant phytochromes detect darkness, encouraging growth hormone production, causing the plant to elongate in search of light. The same process helps plants orientate their foliage to light and helps seedlings stretch in search of light. ~ The Smart Garden Guide
Did you notice that little tidbit of information? Darkness encourages growth, it makes us stretch for the light.
Remember this once your inner work of healing, integration and deeper spirituality starts to take off, it is a universal law that you will instantly be hit with challenges, struggles, sorrows or tragedy. Why? Because dark times cause you to grow in your inner being and encourage you to reach for the light, Divine light.
At this point in the garden time moves at lightening speed and there is a great flowering. If you love flowers you know all too well that even long bloomers who blossom for six or eight weeks are gone far too soon because time in the garden is moving so quickly.
Autumn is it’s own unusual time in the garden and will be looked in depth when the season is upon us. For now it is still very early. Usually I’m fretting over plants that are still asleep and overly anxious about those that are just showing the faintest sign of green growth. Where is my trust? This year I’m more relaxed than I’ve ever been at this time of the year because I know it’s still very early, and hard won experience has shown me that I can trust the garden, the earth and the seasonal cycles. This is partly because I’ve finally made peace with the reality that some things will die over the winter despite my best efforts as a gardener. When they do they will open space for new things to be planted. This is a life lesson also.
I’m wondering when this lesson will make its way into my outer and inner life. Will I recognize that it’s still very early in the process of growth, healing, and recovery in myself or someone I love and be able to trust that time and grace will bring inner growth, just as the earth and the sun bring growth in the garden? For surely we are all human gardens capable or growing and even restoring beauty, strength, goodness and truth within ourselves.
Perhaps it’s still very early for you too. Trust and be kind to yourself as your inner garden slowly unfolds into a pattern of growth. Changes in the psyche and soul take time and the right conditions. Growth takes work and when you're not seeing the progress you had hoped for remember it’s still very early even if you’ve been at this for months or years. Reach for the light when you’re in dark time and grace will pour down like rain to renew you.
If you are in a time of bloom and blossom be thankful, practice gratitude, enjoy the beauty of the experience and help others for whom it’s still very early.
Mindfully living the Wheel of the Year means being intentionally aware of what is happening in the skies above and all around you on the earth below. It means noticing the small and incremental shifts in nature, the significant seasonal changes, how they correspond to various systems and structures, and your soul’s experience as you move along your life’s journey.
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a beautiful weaving of gardening, inner work, and a smidge of social commentary!