The Earth Savers Blog

Fun Flowers = Sunflowers

Every year my husband plants beautiful sunflowers in our garden. My kids love to watch them grow and have already started to plan where they will be planted this spring and imagine how big they might get.

Because we really want to get our kids interested in gardening, we have been thinking about planting flowers that will be enjoyable for them and allow them to participate. We have looked around, and decided on several.

• Impatiens- because they bloom all summer and they come in so many great colors that the kids will enjoy
• Sunflowers- which are always fun to extract and eat the seeds of
• Lady's Mantle because they have huge leaves that hold drops of dew on their surface and look like jewels glistening in the sun

In addition to the flowers, we have been busily collecting rocks, and shells that we have added to flower beds as decoration, and which really provide a delightful way for kids to interact weather it be to look under, paint, or catch water in as with the shells. They love to imagine that bee's can "take a bath" and that ant's can "take a break" under a rock and get some shade before they move on.  A garden with imagination can go a long way, and I look forward to photographing ours and sharing with our readers.

Fear of Transformation

Sometimes I feel that my life is a series of trapeze swings. I'm either hanging on to a trapeze bar swinging along or, for a few moments of my life, I'm hurling across space in between trapeze bars.

Most of the time, I spend my life hanging on for dear life to my trapeze-bar-of-the-moment. It carries me along a certain steady rate of swing, and I have the feeling that I'm in control of my life. I know most of the right questions and even some of the right answers. But, once in a while, as I'm merrily (or not so merrily) swinging along. I look ahead of me into the distance, and what do I see? I see another trapeze bar swinging towards me and it's empty, and I know, in that place in me that knows, that this new trapeze bar has my name on it. It is my next step, my growth, my aliveness coming to get me. In my heart of hearts, I know that for me to grow, I must release the grip on the present, well-known bar to move to the new one.

Each time it happens to me, I hope (no, I pray) that I won't have to grab the new one. But in my knowing place, I know that I must totally release my grasp on my old bar, and for some moment in time I must hurdle across the space before I can grab on to the new bar. Each time I am filled with terror. It doesn't matter that in all my previous hurtles across the void of unknowing I have always made it. Each time I am afraid I will miss, that I will be crushed on unseen rocks in the bottomless chasm between the bars. But I do it anyway. Perhaps this is the essence of what the mystics call the faith experience. No guarantees, no net, no insurance policy, but you do it anyway because somehow to keep hanging onto that old bar is no longer on the list of alternatives. And so, for an eternity that can last a microsecond or a thousand lifetimes, I soar across the dark void of "the past is gone, the future is not yet here." It's called transition. I have come to believe that it is the only place that real change occurs. I mean real change, not the pseudo-change that only lasts until the next time my old buttons get punched.

I have noticed that, in our culture, this transition zone is looked upon as a "no-thing," a no-place between places. Sure the old trapeze bar was real, and that new one coming towards me, I hope it's real too. But the void in between? That's just a scary, confusing, disorienting, "nowhere" that must be gotten through as as fast and as unconsciously as possible. What a waste! I have a sneaking suspicion that the transition zone is the only real thing, and that the bars are illusions we dream up to avoid the void, where the real change, the real growth occurs for us. Weather or not my hunch is true, it remains that the transition zones in our lives are incredibly rich places. They should be honored, even savored. Yes, with all the pain and fear and feelings of being out of control that can (but not necessarily) accompany transitions, they are still the most alive, most growth-filled, passionate, expansive moments in our lives.

And so transformation of fear may have nothing to do with making fear go away but rather with giving ourselves permission to "hang out" in the transition between the trapeze bars. Transforming our need to grab a new bar, any bar and allowing ourselves to dwell in the only place where change really happens. It can be terrifying. It can also be enlightening in the true sense of the word. Hurtling through the void, we just may learn how to fly.

- From The Essene Book of Days

Pots for Painting and Giving

Kids love the magic of growing plants and vegetables, and the experience can offer keys into the mysteries of living things, and open into a wide world of cross pollinating subjects like beautiful flowers & bumble bee's. Growing a garden or simply conducting a few garden activities can pave an avenue to so many great conversations to inspire wonder and appreciation in even the smallest child. 

As spring gets underway here in New England start by decorating flowerpots and putting plants in them, or planting seed's and watching them grow as spring progresses with your children.  You can create living gifts for special friends, family members and neighbors and use the opportunity to impress upon your children the gift of nature, and sharing that gift with others through this particular activity. 

The Comeback of the Victory Garden

As I walk around my neighborhood I am seeing the emergence of many new gardens in the very front of many homes- small, raised or enclosed beds, and I am reminded of the Victory Gardens my dad used to tell me about.

Victory Gardens which are described by Wikipedia as:

Victory gardens, also called war gardens or food gardens for defense, were vegetable, fruit and herbgardens planted at private residences in United States, United Kingdom, Canada and Germany during World War I and World War II to reduce the pressure on the public food supply brought on by the war effort. In addition to indirectly aiding the war effort these gardens were also considered a civil morale booster" — in that gardeners could feel empowered by their contribution of labor and rewarded by the produce grown. Making victory gardens became a part of daily life on the home front. 

Given the mounting pressure on our own struggling food supply chain, and our efforts to minimize our carbon footprint, this spring is the perfect time for anyone to start their own vegetable or herb garden. You don't need much space, just a small front or side yard would suffice, and would offer several great benefits.

Not only would this be a major contribution to the planting of our own natural resources, it would be an excellent lesson for our children in learning how to grow and nourish food sources on their own land. The garden itself gradually produces more nutrient rich soil, and of course the remains of the veggies, scraps, and leaf can all be composted within your own yard to re-deposit the waste into the soil creating a stronger source of vitamins and nutrients for subsequent gardens each year.  Use the vegetable or fruits or berries to cook with, bake, and the growth of stronger herbs to keep mosquitoes and other pests at bay.  Don't forget that your neighbors can be a wealth of information, and a valuable resource for gardening knowledge, and for trade. One can only eat so many tomatoes, so don't forget to share the fruits of your labor!

 

Basic Training

The Journey & Lemons

The journey of consciousness is not a comfortable one.

And so in my mind
I let go of the imagined way I'd like to travel my own
in a  luxuriously cushioned box car
with first class treatment
and glove tipped pleasantries
and the plate glass window zooming by the sights and places I might someday wish to visit.

I let go of believing that if I just keep my mouth shut and don't "stir up the mud" that everyone is happier
and that if you want something badly enough that you can make it happen.
I let go of my way of doing it, or the "right" way of doing it
I let go of looking like I "have it all handled" because it's exhausting
and I surrender to the comfort
of knowing
that something larger is at work
That each challenge, circumstance, or person in my life
is here to teach me to let go
of fear
and
attachment
and become
the best person I am meant to be.

I sip my fizzy water in the expensive glass with the lemon hanging off the side as I stare out the widow of the landscape of my life and think of how funny the expression is....

"When life hands you lemons....." 

Tomorrow

I was happy to come across this quote today, as I feel less than courageous this evening, and in fact rather defeated. Yes. Tomorrow is another day, and I will try to bring out my rainbow colors and make it beautiful. 

STAY!

Lately I have been learning to hold on tight and "let go" as my life continues to shift, hold on to my inner truth and my inner self, and let go of the things that are no longer serving me, out of my control, and no longer giving me peace. As the larger world continues to experience change that all of us have been grappling with. The economic situation, the change in thoughts, ideals, leadership. I think all of humanity is going through a major shift, an discovering "what's important."

I can't pretend to be "in control" of everything that happens in my life. I have to have faith that some things simply happen for bigger reasons I don't understand. I've been looking for ways to manage my anxiety, and my restlessness and although I have not quite managed to sit through yoga sessions and just "be" with all of it- I find that other things are helping me build peace and cultivate a compassion for myself. I've been loving acupuncture, and reading things that give me a new perspective.

This excerpt helped me this morning:

In meditation we discover our inherent restlessness. Sometimes we get up and leave. Sometimes we sit there but our bodies wiggle and squirm and our minds go far away. This can be so uncomfortable that we feel it's impossible to stay. Yet this feeling can teach us not just about ourselves but also about what it is to be human. All of us derive security and comfort from the imaginary world of memories and fantasies and plans. We really don't want to stay with the nakedness of our present experience. it goes against the grain to stay present. These are the times when only gentleness and a sense of humor can give us the strength to settle down.

The pith instruction is, Stay...stay...just stay. Learning to stay with ourselves in meditation is like training a dog. If we train a dog by beating it, we'll end up with an obedient but very inflexible and rather terrified dog. The dog may obey when we say, "Stay!" "Come!"  "Roll over!" and "Sit up!" but he will also be neurotic and confused. By contrast, training with kindness results in someone who is flexible and confident, who doesn't become upset when situations are unpredictable and insecure.

So whenever we wander off, we gently encourage ourselves to "stay" and settle down. are we experiencing restlessness? Stay!  Discursive mind? Stay! Aching knees and throbbing back? Stay!. What's for lunch? Stay! What am I doing here? Stay! I can't stand this another minute! Stay! That is how we cultivate steadfastness. [...]

When our emotions intensify, what we usually feel is fear. This fear is always lurking in our lives. In sitting meditation we practice dropping whatever story we are telling ourselves and leaning into the emotions and the fear, Thus we train in opening the fearful heart to the restlessness of our own energy. We learn to abide with the experience of our emotional distress. [...]

Coming back to the present moment takes some effort, but the effort is very light. The instruction is to "touch and go." we touch thoughts by acknowledging them as thinking and then we let them go. It's a way of relaxing our struggle, like touching a bubble with a feather. It's a nonaggressive approach to being here.

- Pema Chodron, from 'The Places That Scare You"