Growing with Nature
Meditating on our patio I had an overwhelming sense of grief that came over me, realizing our garden is no longer ours, I felt sad to say goodbye to an old friend.
If you’re not into gardening you might be reading this and thinking, that’s a little dramatic, but if you’ve worked with plants and have a love for nature, you probably would get how hard it is to say goodbye to a garden you’ve grown for the past 14 years.
It occurred to me, the whole time I thought we were growing the garden and nurturing it, it was actually helping me grow and feel nurtured. There’s been times I’ve been stressed and distraught about the weight of the world and when I worked in the garden I felt restored and happy.
This garden has taught me so much and has felt like an old friend. I never thought I would be the type of person to go out and say to our roses ``how beautiful they’re looking today” or to our Angelina, “you need to make sure you’re being fair to your friends and stop overcrowding”.
Maybe I’ve become crazier as I’ve gotten older, or maybe working in the garden has taught me that nature is a living breathing thing, that flourishes with kindness. That we are all encouraged to grow with positive reinforcement and love. We’ve said goodbye to 4 of our cats in this garden, Futureman, Battlecat, Robotboy and Nemo. We grew our garden from a dirt lot to a beautiful thriving oasis.
There’s so many memories that I felt at this moment as I sat down to meditate.
I remembered doing yoga on the patio and looking up at the bumblebees working in the wisteria, watching the squirrels eat crab apples overhead, and planting all the baby hostas from a little root ball to now telling them how big they’ve gotten as I walk by them on the path.
Kyle and I envisioned this path maybe 11 years ago now. We dug out the grass, tampered the ground and laid the repurposed bricks ourselves. Taking off the debri of each brick before laying it down. Kyle laid the bricks for the entire patio and built the pergola by himself while I was away on Project Runway for 6 weeks.
We found the perfect nouveau style fountain and grew and trained the wisteria when it was just a small little plant.
People ask me often if we’ll miss our garden and how hard it would be to let go of that and what we created. It’s extremely hard and heart breaking to say goodbye, but I remember how much I’ve learned from this garden and how much more I can learn from our garden in Spain. I believe when you love something it’s good to give it away so that love can be passed on to others and enrich the next person's life.
The more I’ve seen how healing nature can be, the more I want to do my best to protect and care for it. I’m so excited to live more sustainably off the land and learn about all the healing properties nature has to offer.
Maybe I’ve become more of a soft tree hugging hippy in my forties, but I’ve really enjoyed this new found respect for nature and how all it relies on each other to survive, even what we think of as pests have a place in the garden.
Seeing all of it in its mature state has reminded me of the things I’ve learned about myself from plants and what I can take with me and continue learning in our next chapter.
Here are 20 things I’ve learned from nature
1) With a little patience and resilience anything is possible.
2) Diversity is beautiful and necessary to thrive.
3) Even pests have a place in the garden.
4)Everything in the garden, including insects achieve so much when they work together.
5) Lean on each other in times of adversity. Plants have a way to lean on one another. for support through a storm or when things are too heavy.
6) Enjoy every moment, because good or bad it will pass and you’ll miss the opportunity to enjoy all the beauty there is in that moment.
7) Nature is a resilient mother fucker, be like nature.
8) Don’t compare yourself to others, everyone is beautiful in their own unique way.
9) Words have energy, you’ll blossom with kindness and shrivel with negativity.
10) Have a plan, but be flexible, sometimes you grow more in the shade.
11) A little struggle helps to grow stronger roots.
12) You can’t bloom all the time. Sometimes you need to hibernate and replenish your energy on the inside to be beautiful on the outside.
13) Not everyone will appreciate you, you could be the most stunning plant and some people think you’re a weed. Don’t live for those people.
14) You’ll attract more when you radiate happiness and beauty.
15) Have boundaries, stay gorgeous and keep your thorns ready!
16) Change can be better than what you planned in the first place.
17) Stay rooted, sway with adversity. The more brittle you are, the more you’ll break.
18) The smallest roots can grow to be the strongest tree, don’t underestimate.
19) Nature is the medicine the world is craving
20) When a natural disaster strikes, nature learns how to recover and quickly heal itself.
