We're All Growing

BEFORE...

AFTER...

This is how transformed the garden is from the beginning of my adventure here.  The growth is a wonderful visual parallel of the changes happening to me.  The best part of it all is that it’s not finished…and in a way, it never will.

I’ve learned a lot since I got to the Hammonds on June 1st.  The soil is alive.  We plant the life of a plant from a seed the size of a bead and given the right conditions, it grows to offer a great bounty back to us.  When we use it for all that we can, it withers away and falls down the ground, to only become part of the soil again.  It’s a cycle that life goes through.  I’ve been growing right along with the tomatoes, the corn, and squash.  I’m even relating to the strawberries who are having their second spurt right now, with a third to come.  We’re all connected to each other; and we’re all trying to grow into something beautiful.  Sometimes it’s amazing like that, and other times it’s brutal.    Life is constantly fighting to survive among each other.  The aphids are thriving in the garden this summer, probably due to the wet spring and mild summer, while (check this out for sure) we’re struggling to control them so the cucumbers and squash and peppers, etc. can survive.  We’re battling the white flies, and the cucumber beetles, and the gophers, and the cows.

Sara reminds me that it’s hard enough to grow food, without all the pests and animals.  Lisa began reading The Omnivore’s Dilemma and we’ve had some really great, but also frustrating, conversations about corporations and mainstream life in America.  Are we doomed to fall into the traps they lay out for all of us?  Where do we find power to fight for what we believe rightfully belongs to us?  We all need to realize how hard the small farmers are working, and appreciate the food that is grown on these lands that we somehow came to inhabit.  Maybe here we can find the strength to stand up for so many things that somehow fell aside as we pushed forward with “progress.”

I go to sleep at night and wake up every morning here with a bigger smile on my heart and soul.  I know that the path I’ve chosen for life is right for me, and hopefully for many others.  There’s so much beauty in the world that I truly believe, that if more people took the time to see the world around them, they would rethink so much more.  In a world that offers a plentitude of beauty, you can’t just ignore it after cracking the door open.  It flies open and birds zoom out singing, the wind starts talking through the trees, and world awakens as the sun rises.  You can so easily get caught in a daze of love with nature; including people…

We are nature too.