How Digging In The Dirt Can Be A Gateway To Your Soul

Great article/blog post Fran!

Beautiful, Fran. Thanks for posting it.

This post really touched my heart. I know I can move on from my house when the time comes but leaving my garden areas will be so difficult. They are me.

Lady, you are speaking from my heart. I recently discovered gardening for myself. I had grown up with a farmer dad, a gardening mom, but paid little attention to it, and rarely helped (as teens are wont to do). I had a couple houseplants in college and in some of my apartments. A year ago, I began gardening for real. I turned my scorching hot cement patio into a little urban oasis, and it healed me from a grief blackness that I couldn’t seem to shake any other way. Every morning, I would wake up and run to the patio to check on my babies (the plants). I would care for them, and nurture them, and cheer when they grew bigger than expected (example: a potted tomato growing 8 feet tall).
Last night I was actually telling my husband how surprised I was at the power of gardening. I had no idea it would heal my broken heart the way it did, I just thought it would get me exercise, and keep me occupied. I explained to him that I could feel the soul of my plants, or aura or whatever it was, they would share their energy with me, and I would heal little by little every day. By the time winter came a couple months ago, I felt almost whole. I had been grieving for 3 years while my mom battled cancer and then after she died. The magic of the plants was beyond my expectations, and I am counting down the days to planting season again! This was a beautiful post, thank you for sharing it!

How about I share this from my article along the same vein? “Nature is not a garden, but it’s too easy to see nature as something imperfect. When we can take a step back and see a fallen tree as beautiful and purposeful or appreciate an assassin bug enjoying its moth dinner, we can see that the world doesn’t seem to need us in it, and we can start to become a more humble and rewarding part of it. A garden can teach us how to interact with life and guide us into deeper self-discovery if we design with purpose, then let that design evolve with the species that come to call it home.” http://www.houzz.com/ideabooks/57501816/list/the-surprising-ingredients-every-good-garden-should-have

Fran,

Thanks for your kind words about what we now refer to as TMFH… The Move From He–.

I know it sounds incongruous if not downright crazy coming from a seriously religious Jewish woman, scientist and generally pragmatic person, but my introduction to the faerie world was with a set of Doreen Virtue’s faery oracle cards and a book about them that were given to me by a close friend when I was going through the first of my two most recent five-year chemo protocols. I was really quite ill at the time and she would come and help me out into the garden in my wheel chair and she would sit with me and read with me and just spend time with me in that beautiful place.

Although I find her a bit commercial, I do like Doreen Virtue’s faerie books and I have used the faerie cards to meditate. I feel that they have helped to open some spiritual doors for me and helped me establish a connection with the faerie beings in our garden.

Once I was back on my feet so to speak, I went to an independent book store and sat on the floor in the New Age section and paged through many books on fairy (or faerie) mysticism and bought quite a few others.

“Connecting with Nature’s Angels: The World of Faeries, Elementals & Nature Spirits” by Blake Cahoon is another book that I have but I really need to actually see my books and handle them (and read my little notes that I write in them LOL) to tell you better which are my favorites.

What I have found over the years (and this is probably an unfair generalization) is that people who write about mystical topics such as faeries start out giving truly helpful information that resonates with me but then as they become well known, they become very “commercial”. That makes me uncomfortable for some reason and I find that I want to distance myself from their commercial ventures, even though I may have found some of their original teachings truly, truly compelling. It’s sometimes hard for me to reconcile my feelings about the author/practitioner and their work. Does that make any sense?

Cathy

Fran,

I have to have plants around me, both indoors and out. I can’t really articulate what it means to me not to have them in my space. My husband is the same way. There is no question in my mind that the time I spent in the garden while I was undergoing the long term high dose chemo protocols was healing.

I may have related this to you before and if so, I apologize for repeating myself. We moved from Massachusetts to California’s Napa Valley just before the major earthquake in 2014. The quake destroyed our home in Napa and when my husband finally found another place for us to live, we literally had to start all over again with a couple of suitcases of clothing and not much more. So here we were, without even a bed to sleep on (we were sleeping on a mattress on the floor, awaiting furniture to be delivered), eating at a borrowed fold up card table with a handful of mismatched plates, a tea kettle, and lamp that had also been loaned to us, mugs, a single bowl, and my lap top.

A more practical person might have bought a frying pan, some flatware, a measuring cup, some real chairs and a table. Not us. The first thing we did after my suitcases were dumped on the floor of the second bedroom was to head over to Mid City Nursery where we purchased pots, soil, 4 roses, a lemon tree, an earth box and a half dozen herbs, some succulents, a fountain, a stone bench, and all of the makings for a small fairy garden. We also got some garden furniture — two chairs and a table on clearance — so we could sit out on our patio and read or have breakfast. We built a beautiful container garden on our patio before we even had a real bed.

Some would say our priorities were absolutely in the right place. Others would have simply shaken their heads, rolled their eyes, muttered things like “tree hugger” and “straaaange” under their breath, and moved off in the opposite direction.

The reality is that it took one day to create a beautiful space that got us through some very difficult months. We are under a significant water restriction here so we collect water during our showers and from cooking, washing vegetables, and rinsing dishes to water our little garden.

There isn’t much that makes me tear up but reading this did: i am being faced with having to sell my house soon and it is the garden that makes we want to stay in spite of everything else. if i could have just one more season here I tell myself …

Cool post! For some of us, digging really is the best way – sometimes its better to get down in the dirt than to have your head up in the clouds 😉

I agree that gardening is good for the soul. out in the garden it’s only you and the plants so you do develop a connection with them. The best part of the day is having a libation of some sort and just sitting and enjoying the beauty of your garden.