An Ode to Nature : Our First Family Garden

To let you feel my hearts connection to nature, I would be to wrap you in the poetry of Mary Oliver.

To share in my deep conviction for human regard to the earth, I would introduce you to Wendell Berry.

To take you by the hand and show you the beauty of this world, I would give you over to the beloved Anne Shirley.

To awaken you to the wonder of new life, I would hand you the key to The Secret Garden.

To teach you the name of every flower, I would sing you the songs of the Garden Fairies.

If I could do you any good at all by my own words, I would do it.

And if I had but one gift to give you, I would give you permission.

I would invite you to you is to seek your place. Be it a garden or otherwise; dream it, envision it, take a first step, and a second, make a little map to help you along your way, and then take your next step.

If I could offer what may be the very best of my learned experience, I would implore you—Take hold of your vision and turn off the hand-held electronic “wisdom”. Fashion for yourself a web of tangible inspiration. Call on a friend or family member and ask them to be your guide. Flip through books; fiction and non-fiction, children’s literature and nature encyclopedias, magazines and cookbooks. Start with what you have at home and then seek outward. Go outside and dig your hands and toes into the dirt. Pick wild flowers. Look up. Listen to the song of the birds. Ask about the names of flora that inspire you. Engage with people—tell them your ambitions, open up a world of conversation that will surely bless the experienced and the learner alike. Engage with nature— stand with your face in the wind and open your arms wide, look, touch and smell the flowers, notice their thorns and admire their resilience, lay on your back and look up to the sky, stand in the rain and cup your hands to catch the drops, gaze at the moon, and marvel at the stars.

Get lost in inspiration, the whimsical and the real. Feel it move through you, and let the tears come, tears nourish the soul. Be happy and heartbroken. Claim your unbridled joy and protect what has been put in your care.

Turn off the overwhelm of information and inspiration and seek less in order to feel more. Let yourself connect with nature in the way the heart knows how. Let yourself sit in the joy without need for sharing over the inter webs (yet). Don’t let the world behind a screen interrupt or validate your experience. Claim it for yourself. And after all that, if you want to share, do. Share with your heart on fire. And if you find it all too tender to freely giveaway so soon, hold that feeling close, for I think you will have found what is best for you. Take courage an honor that—your heart may depend on it.

My heart depends on it too.

So here too is my own permission to experience this journey from the ground up. All hands in the dirt, barefoot flower fairies prancing about, whispers and prayers over tiny seeds, a learners heart, a childlike enthusiasm, the making of a family garden.

For our records I started a Garden Diary, little scribbles on paper made by hand from recycled projects. We dotted glue onto the backs of little flowers, picked by benevolent little fingers, delivered to a grateful mama, pressed and preserved for lifelong keeping. This diary is as pure and honest a keepsake as I could ever dream it to be. And at the end of our first season we will hold in our hands, Year One; a deckled memoir brimming with pressed flora, pretty seed packets saved for sentimentality, and little snippets of time chronicled on film, all lovingly tied together with a silk ribbon.

Remove the excesses of voices and experiences.
Apart from the pressure to impress and inspire.
There is still you.
There is still me.
There is home.

“And the world cannot be discovered by a journey of miles, no matter how long, but only by a spiritual journey, a journey of one inch, very arduous and humbling and joyful, by which we arrive at the ground at our own feet, and learn to be at home.” — Wendell Berry