Spring In The Garden

September 1st

A Spring Is Sprung kind of day.

Sitting in fave cafe with laptop after dropping F. at bus stop,  before going to meet L., the seed-saver , at the Community Gardens. Gonna do the usual interview/ article/photo  for local paper.

this blogging thang, been doin it just over a week now, a good discipline, to write every day...BUT...there is something a bit weird about it , a bit deathy about being so engaged in cyber-space. I miss my old friends, the paper page, the pen.

And of course I have not emailed my blog address to one single  person because...why? Well because of my never-ending fear of making an idiot of myself. I mean So What  if my friends think it’s  a load of drivel, or can’t even be bothered looking. They’ll still love me.

I recognise my old familiar polarity ie ‘I’m Great’ vs ‘I’m terrible’ ( runs right through on lots of levels, but right now will just stick to the blogwriting biz). Most of the time, like most people, I’m just muddling along in the middle zone somewhere, neither a genius or a moron. 

Of course the Dharma take on all this is that it’s all an illusion anyway, and one that causes endless suffering. This identification with a constructed ‘self’, an ‘I’ that is somehow solid & permanent etc. 

Even as I write that, I hear another part of myself protesting, “I do so exist, ...” - off it goes again on it’s endless tape-loop.

P, the meditation teacher at retreat a couple of years ago when I complained to him that ‘My mind is driving me nuts, I can’t shut it up’ etc, replied, ‘ Not your mind, just Mind’.

So I try to think of Mind a sort of vast ectoplasmy thingy , that we are all plugged into...hmm

Time to go interview the SeedSaver.

Later:

Well an hour or so  at The Garden has got me back in perspective.  As L.said, ‘It’s real’ Yup. We sat in the spring sunshine among marigolds, poppies, and bushy gone-to-seed masses of broccoli with many bees and white butterflies among the little yellow flowers. ‘This is a healing place’, she says, and tells me about people who come here and find new purpose for their lives, growing things. Unemployed kids, retired people. 

There are little hippy purple signs up ‘Food for all’ indicating greens and pumpkins for anyone who needs them. As I walk around the couple of acres before L arrives, I’m thinking , why the hell don’t I spend more time gardening and cooking?

I have to admit to a sort  feeling of inadequacy and guilt: I should be a better gardener, I’m slack. And of prejudice I have - I don’t know why, about permaculture and sustainability stuff. As if it is all very worthy but kind of dull. All those earnest people. 

Then I step into a garden, this garden and it’s a magic place and it feels more important than anything else I can imagine, reconnecting with the earth, growing food together, tuning into the cycles, witnessing the miracle...

I hear all sorts of sinister stuff from L about big seed banks in the Arctic which will be used for the profit of Big Business etc. Guarded by polar bears. Nowadays nothing seems too surreal to be true!

Mainly, though , she’s focussed on just doing stuff. Growing medicinal herbs to treat sick people. Cataloguing seeds.  I glimpse something in her eyes that makes me think of the long ago healers and midwives and herbalists, some of whom were burnt at the stake for witchcraft...

I leave feeling lighter, more alive, excited. Later in the day, as my therapy client leaves after a session, she says ‘I feel so much lighter’  Yup, that sort of day. Spring is sprung.