Green Thumb, Here I Come

I asked myself a question Sunday afternoon, "If I could only study one thing for the rest of my life, what would it be?" Yesterday, while driving home from work, I answered my question: "Plants." Plants make the world go. Everything that happens in this world is because of plants. For far too long I have stood back, watching my husband plant, transplant, build garden boxes, and care for all the plants in our house and on our land. I said I didn't have time, but I now know the truth is that I am afraid of doing something wrong. I am afraid of killing the plant. Why? Am I afraid a great googly-eyed plant monster is going to come after me for killing a seedling? Plants are more forgiving, and tougher, than that. If you've ever tried to kill a burdock or a poke plant, then you know what I'm talking about.

It's time to really slow down, and not just hear my husband when he talks about gardening and plants, but to actually retain what he tells me so I can benefit from it. So the entire family can benefit from it.

Mulberry Meditation

Last night I picked mulberries while my husband watched our son and dogs. My mind wandered here and there and then came back to picking berries. I thought, this is a meditation. I heard the birds and the traffic and brought myself back to berry picking. I wondered how my guys were doing and came back to berry picking. I stopped to take pictures of the fruit and the insects, and came back to berry picking. I wondered if we were going to get a storm, and brought my mind back to berry picking.

One of the insects I found was a newly hatched grasshopper. He was such a pale, translucent green that his features were unrecognizable from a distance and the camera had a hard time picking him up. I would have missed him if I hadn't picked berries.

I have a problem with holding my breath. I think I always have. I carry a baseline level of stress that makes me stop several times a day and have to start breathing. Even with this pleasant task of berry picking I found myself having to unclench my chest and begin breathing again. I think I need more nights of berry picking.

I wondered why people wanted to get away from picking their own food and got jobs elsewhere. City life and working in an office is something I have grown to hate. I would rather be able to pick berries and can tomatoes and harvest potatoes, but I cannot, and others gave that up in the past. Then I thought, they must have needed to because of drought and insects and the like. If everyone around you looses their crops for a season or worse, several seasons, you start to go hungry. So the first people to leave the farm-life probably had no choice and now every farmer needs to have a second stream of income. Of course later, after I went into the house, I remembered the stock-market crash and the dustbowl and thought, "duh!" I really should remember my history.

The birds were singing so beautifully that I said to myself, "I wish I had a tape recorder. That dates me doesn't it? What do they call recorders now? Is it a MP3 recorder? Of course the traffic's so loud I wouldn't be able to just record the birds." I returned to picking and tried to stay present and "in the moment" but the mosquitoes got worse and I decided insects were the reason people stopped farming and I kept wondering what time it was and if it was time to give my son a bath yet, and the clouds were fast and dark and I figured I would get rained on before long, so inside I went. But I want to go back. I want to do something like this every day. I want to capture a piece of what our great-grandparents had to give up.