everything i need to know, my garden taught me

This morning I was sitting in the "outside living room" I created a couple of days ago with two colorful indoor/outdoor mats I bought at my local garden store. I had my tea; nobody else was up; I thought I would be able to do Morning Pages and get centered and ready for the day, for at least a little while.

One word in (not kidding) I heard, from the top of the stairs in that luscious little voice I love: "gramma!!!! gramma!!!! morning hug and kiss!!!!"

Well. Anybody who would ignore "morning hug and kiss" in order to write a few more words does not know what love is. I put down my journal and my pen and went up the stairs and wrapped my arms around this lovely little sprite who joined our family almost four years ago.

It was still chilly out, even though this morning the fog hadn't rolled in and we had a beautiful clear blue sky, so I went and got her robe. She sat at the top of the stairs while I helped her into it and tied it around her luscious perfect little waist. Then we went down the stairs, holding hands, and out to the back patio.

Where I now have an oasis I only dreamed of a few months ago.

I did not see this coming. My back patio has been a wasteland of concrete for years now. I have looked out there and thought "Oh crap I SHOULD landscape this."

Well. That was a lot of shoulds. I've been "shoulding" on myself for as long as I can remember. It has not helped.

Notwithstanding all my shoulds -- I now have a space out back that I love spending time in. In fact, I can't wait to get out there in the morning, and in the evening I light candles and spend my time out there until it gets too cold.

How did this happen?

One day, a couple of months ago, Stella and I went to Pastime Hardware to buy something we needed (I don't remember what it was). We walked by a display of seed packets.

Stella noticed the seed packets. "ooo!!!" she said. "oh gramma!!!" she said.

So I said "Cool, Baby. Pick out what you like and let's plant them!"

So she did. She picked out sunflowers. and dwarf cosmos. and sweet peas. I bought them, thinking "Oh yeah, this will be like everything else I've planned for a garden in the last buncha years. These seed packets will sit on the dining room table until it's 2014 and they have passed their "use-by" date.

That could have happened. But it didn't. Because I had an approaching-four-year-old Being who was all about "planting babies" and taking care of them. So I bought some really good organic potting soil, and put it in the places where we would want to plant the seeds.

And then we planted the seeds.

We planted seeds. Little dry tiny nothing-to-write-home-about things we poured out of paper packets into our hands. We made little holes in new soil with our fingers (Stella was totally into that activity) and we put a seed in each little hole. Then we poured some water over the area where we had planted our seeds.

I've gardened. When I was in graduate school my front garden was so beautiful people would stop when they walked by my house and bask in the beauty of what was growing there.

I've gardened. But i've never planted from seeds.

Because I don't trust seeds. I look at seeds and I think "OH yeah. sure. I don't think so."

And then I go to the nursery and I buy seedlings that are already well on their way to being plants. And I plant those. Because I only trust what I can see has already emerged.

Imagine my shock when I look at my back patio and I see (from seeds) a fully fleshed out, mature garden.The sunflowers are taller than I am. The other day I witnessed a fat squirrel climbing up the stalk of one of them (it's strong enough to hold the weight of a full-grown fat squirrel) and wrest a small bloom off the stalk. Where we had a bare square left over from the apricot tree that died this spring, we now have a plethora of sunny yellow and orange dwarf cosmos, and nasturtiums. I've put in other flowering plants, in pots. They are thriving too. And adding the colorful mats has just brought the space to life.

To me, sitting out there in the sun now, or in the fog, it's just magic. I look around, and I cannot imagine what it was like before we planted those seeds. And I am astonished at what we have now.  And I don't know how that happened either.

Here's what I've learned, from this experience: I had a wasteland of a back patio. It was concrete. It was grey. I didn't know what to do with it. I had some fantasies. But no plans. Just a desire.

I bought some seeds.

I planted the seeds.

I watered.

When something showed up in my world that seemed it might fit, I bought it and put it back there too.

That's all I did.

I did not strive. I did not plan. I did not map out a strategy. I did not obsess. I did not spend a lot of money. I did not work hard. Nothing whatsoever about this was difficult.

All I did is follow my heart.

And now i have a heart's home.

in shed, re-membering

Jake the Snake, my rosy boa constrictor

Yesterday I spent the entire day in bed, reading Book Three of the Ice and Fire Series. I only got up to pee and to eat. I had a heavy weight on my chest. My body felt alien to me. I'd look down at it and wonder whose it was. I heard my daughter and grand-daughter and pets out in the rest of the house and felt a gulf between their world and mine.

I wanted that gulf.

I didn't want to Be Here. I wanted to disappear. So I disappeared into fiction.

Truth is, I've felt this way for weeks.

By the end of the night I also knew that in the morning I would get up, and get busy, and start accomplishing things I'd been avoiding and delaying and putting off. I knew that I have had enough of feeling this way, and that in the morning I would take action whether I felt like it or not. I knew that sitting on my bed, even if I am "being productive" in some way, makes me feel like an invalid. I knew that in the morning I would not start my day sitting on my bed.

This morning, instead of having my cup of coffee on the bed, I sat in the wicker chair next to my rosy boa Jake's cage. As I drank my coffee and contemplated my day, I realized that what I've been experiencing the last few weeks is what we call shed in snake husbandry.

Every few months, Jakie gets unaccountably sluggish. He goes from being all about coming out of his cage and draping himself around my shoulders and exploring the environment and making friends with the other pets to lying curled up either behind or inside his warm hidey-hole and sleeping away the days. His skin gets dull and flaky. He refuses his rat pup. He seems to be in an all-around general funk. And he wants no part of me.

When I first got him I was apprehensive about taking good care of him. I fell in love at first sight. I have always loved snakes and when I found Jake I finally realized I could have one of my own. But I didn't yet know his patterns and I had to learn them as time passed. I'm accustomed to shed now. I don't always know that's what's going on with him, but I let him have his down time and figure he knows best what's right for him. Now that he's been with me for a couple of years I almost have the schedule down as well...it's been three months...he's acting anti-social, he's probably in shed.

What I just realized this morning is that I have similar patterns. They don't come every three months, thank heaven. But they come. And I'm in one of those times now. I have lost my "appetite." I have retracted from outward things. I have pulled my energy in. And I am shedding an old skin. It is the skin of what should have happened by now. It is the skin of what I should have accomplished. It is the skin of how I should be and how I should look. It is the skin of who I was when I was younger and who she thought she would be by now.

Perhaps it is the skin of expectations.

me at 23, photo Martha Cotton

My last post was a post of grieving. Of asking where is she? about my younger self. Here's the truth I'm remembering today: She is where she has always been. In her moment. Always. As I am in mine.

I know time is an illusion. I know every moment is eternal and we are always simultaneously present at all times and in every place. I know I am a multi-dimensional Divine Being pretending to be limited. So it is impossible for me to have lost her beauty and her promise. For me, these statements are not beliefs. They are not even convictions. They are experiences of consciousness.

I also know that in her moments as I lived them, she was equally not there, not content, berating herself. Doing to herself then -- when she was young, and so beautiful, and so full of promise -- what I have been doing to myself now, when my body has aged, and my promises are only partially fulfilled, and I know that might be the end of it this lifetime.

So why would I need to recapture that time? I don't need to.

What I have done, over the years, is shed. And shed again. And shed yet again. It has nothing whatsoever to do with failure.

Tonight I embrace that truth. Tonight I know I am in shed. Tonight I can feel the luster and softness and sheen of my new skin as it is emerging.

I accept my moment. I accept my Self in this moment. I know she encompasses all those "earlier" selves and that she has also shed them as she has needed to.

And I am excited to see what comes next as I move through this illusion of time.