Life Lessons From The Garden: What Flowers Can Teach Us About Love

Of all the lessons I have learned from gardening over the years, I think the one that has had the most profound affect on me is what the flowers have taught me about unconditional love.

A flower starts off as a seed just like almost every other species on the planet. Right away it must struggle to grow in two different directions: downward to establish roots to stand on and absorb nourishment from its environment, and upward as it works to push itself through the soil up into the sunshine. From there it continues to grow through rain, wind and sun, and all of it just so it can fulfill its purpose: to give of itself unconditionally. It gives sustenance to the insects and birds who depend on it, and it gives beauty both visually and through the senses to humanity. Its whole existence has nothing to do with whether it is more beautiful than the flower next to it, whether it gets more water and plant food than the others, or the gardener likes it better than the next flowerbed over. In fact, the gardener may find it so beautiful and pleasing that it just might have to give up its life in the garden to become a cut flower in a vase on a sunny table, thus watching its own life fade away as the sun goes down.

A flower has to be what it is and serve the purpose for which it was put here ... to grow, to give, to be who it is. It doesn't wish it were a tree or a cow, nor does it wish to live in warmer climates or closer to the beach. It just lives its life being who it is and doing what it is meant to do which is to give pleasure. If that isn't what love is all about, I don't know what it.

And so it is.

Life Lessons From The Garden: The Stillness at the Bottom of the Pond

For all of the years that I gardened on a large scale, I always wanted a small pond. I was not one that went in for those huge, fancy water features with the splashing fountains surrounded by exotic terraced plantings. No, all I wanted was a little pond with some water plants and rocks, enough to entice the neighborhood frogs and wildlife with a few fish and turtles for company. Alas, the place where I gardened was a rented home and while my landlords were perfectly okay with my digging up the grass to put in yet another flower or vegetable bed, they had a little problem with my excavating a part of the yard for a pond. So I had to be content with a few bird baths and tabletop fountains.

I have always loved ponds ever since I was a little girl living in Queens, NY. My godparents had a small fish pond in their backyard and I would sit and watch it for hours. What really interested me was not what was happening on the surface of the pond such as the antics of the fish lazily swimming about or the frogs diving in from the lily pads. No, it was the little stone figures of mermaids and deep sea divers that sat at the bottom that had my attention. I often imagined what a mystical experience it must be to sit down at the bottom of the pond in total and perfect silence. At some point an air hose that was attached to the figures would burp forth a bubble of air that would slowly rise to the surface and pop causing a ripple to begin to spread out all the way to the stone sides of the pond.

Until I discovered the bliss that comes from sitting in meditation, I, like everyone else, experienced most of my life on the surface of my understanding. Life was "out there." Once I began to mediate and become connected with the stillness and silence at the core of my being, I began to experience life in a more intentional way. From that place of stillness I "heard" not with my physical hearing, but with my heart. I became much more responsible for  the bubbles that rose to the surface in the form of my personal interactions with the rest of the world and how far reaching those ripples could be. An unkind word spoken in a moment of anger or frustration, the need to be right rather than kind, could very well ripple out and touch people I didn't even know, affecting lives in ways I could never imagine.

Meditation teacher and author Davidji tells us that before we speak we should ask ourselves three questions about what we are about to say: 1. Is it true? 2. Is it kind? 3. Is it necessary? If we cannot say yes in response to all three of those questions, perhaps that is one ripple that does not need to rise to the surface. How more beautiful our relationships would be if we only caused ripples of kindness and love in our own personal ponds? Perhaps the next time you find yourself in a discussion or disagreement with someone, you would do well to sit in stillness at the bottom of your energetic pond and ask yourself those three questions before releasing your bubble.

And so it is.

The Second Half of Life

Two years ago when I first started writing my blog, "Flower Bear's Garden: Planting the Seeds for the Second Half of Life," people asked me just what I meant by the second half of life was. When did it start? Was there a specific birthday that marked the halfway point? And what kind of seeds were we supposed to be planting anyway?

Even though life seems to be measured in chronological years, in reality, life is measured in experience. The first half of our life is our educational experience. Through both formal education and life experiences, we absorb the world around us and build on those experiences. We grow up, go to school, get jobs, get married, have the kids ... in essence, as Dr. Wayne Dyer tells us we, "fill out all the forms." Then the day comes when the kids have moved out into the world, the job is past tense, and we look at what we have learned and experienced and ask ourselves which beliefs have been true for us and which ones were someone else's ideas or experiences that we adopted as our own. Which ones no longer serve us, which ones need to be changed, and what is there left to learn that we might not already know? More importantly, what is there yet to be experienced that calls to us?'

The second half of life, then, is where we pull out the weeds that are no longer true for us, or were never true to begin with, and plant something better in its place. We plant the seeds of gratitude, love, beauty, peace and our own personal truths. We  plant the seeds of passion and excitement, of adventures yet to be taken and experiences yet to explore. This garden  that we plant ourselves and not by others, grows into an intentional life that we water and nurture on our own terms.

I would be curious to know what you are planting in your own intentional gardens, and which weeds you have pulled out. I would not be surprised if many of us are planting the same things.  Perhaps we can share our seeds with each other.

And so it is.

Taking Up The Challenge

Ever since I made the very hard decision to move from my happy little country home and garden some years ago to an apartment in town, I have been challenging myself every spring and summer to find ways to bring the joys of gardening with me even it it meant I had to totally re-educate myself about what was possible. Since I had already come to gardening late in life, pushing 50 when I picked up my first spade and packet of seeds, it would have been easy for me to just let it all go, hang a few pots of petunias around and not tax my little grey brain anymore. But when we stop challenging ourselves, we stop growing and growing is an essential part of living. Life Coach Tony Robbins tells us that we all have a need to make progress in our lives and if we don’t grow, we stagnate and die.

It’s so easy at this stage of our lives to tell ourselves that we are too old to learn anything new and, for heavens sake, why should we? Haven’t we learned enough? We made it through all of the grades in school and all of the stages of life, and it’s kick-back time, right? Wrong. It’s okay to kick-back once in a while, and in fact learning and promoting self-care is one of the most important challenges we can pick up and run with as we move forward. Real challenge keeps us alive, gives us a reason to get out of bed in the morning and adds excitement to our lives.

This summer I have taken on two challenges although one was not really a choice but was dropped in my lap. The first challenge was to find a way to grow salad fixings on my porch garden and the second was to be able to tend that little porch garden while learning how to walk again after surgery to repair a fractured leg. The garden variety challenge involved finding certain types of tomato plants that could grow inside a screened-in area. After trial and error (and lots of advice from other container gardeners online) I found one that grows cherry tomatoes galore in a hanging pot without the need to have it on the other side of the screen for pollination purposes. I can now boast that my little porch garden provides me with tomatoes grown in pots, lettuce grown in window boxes, basil, parsley, other assorted herbs and, of course, flowers.

The other challenge was a lot harder. My great grandson, Xavier, is starting to walk at almost 10 months. To watch the two of us it is amazing that humans ever learn to walk at all. One of us has no preconceptions about how to get the job done. He just plunges ahead and shakes off the inevitable tumbles when they happen. The other refuses to let a 10 month old beat her at a game she already won once before … she just needs to move past the pain and the fear and put one foot in front of the other. So I challenged myself that by the end of June I would be able to walk out into my garden room and pluck my very own tomatoes off my very own plant all by myself sans a walker or other equipment. As I write this,it is June 30 and a bowl of beautiful little red gems sits at my elbow on the table collected by yours truly with no help from anyone except a little black and gold cat that has been my bodyguard since I arrived back home from the hospital.

If you are facing a challenge, whether it is physical, emotional, financial or any other kind, pick it up and take it on. After all, we didn’t make it this far by sitting on our butts and coasting. Challenge is growth, and growth is what living is all about. And if you are lucky enough not to have any unwanted challenges at the moment, challenge yourself to learn something new, or to take something you already know in a new direction. My new challenge for next summer? Pole beans on an indoor trellis! I dare anyone to say I can’t.

And so it is.

The Gift of Receiving

The last time I posted here it was to share with you my experience after I took a tumble while out walking with my granddaughter and the job my ego did of beating up on my already  black, blue and humiliated self. As it turns out, my friends, that was only the tip of the iceberg. Beneath the surface what I thought was a wrenched shoulder and bruised hip turned out to be a fracture of the top of my leg bone and another minor one in my shoulder. After 12 hours in ER and a week in the hospital which included putting two pins in my leg so the fracture will heal properly, the whole "woe is me, I'm not old and helpless" tape was erased and replaced with a really tough lesson to learn: how to receive with grace and gratitude.

I am the do-er in my family and circle of friends. I am the one who takes care of others. I helped my daughter with the kids when she had wrist surgery. I helped my best friend when she had a hip replacement. I am the one who helps set up for Sunday Service and coffee hour every week at church. Suddenly, I was flat on my back, pins in my leg, arm in a sling, needing help for even the most personal and mundane things like getting washed and dressed, going to the bathroom and eating meals. This time there was no room for ego or hurt feelings. Without any fanfare or debate, I had no choice but to let go and learn to receive without loosing my dignity. It wasn't pretty.

The amazing thing is that eventually it became a little easier when I accepted that I had no real choice in the matter and that whether or not it would turn out to be a positive experience rested with me. The more I was able to let go and receive with a smile and a kind word of thanks, the more I was able to accept that this had nothing to do with how old I was but with what a remarkable opportunity this was to grow as a woman and as a spiritual being having a human experience. At first the aids and nurses all spoke to me the way they would to their Grandmothers (several of them said I reminded them of their Granny). They would walk into the room and address me in a very loud voice as if a hearing problem was included with the fractures (why do they assume that after 60 we automatically go deaf?). Eventually they got the message that my hearing was just fine and stopped yelling. Before the accident, I would have responded to that from my ego. After the accident, I just let it roll off my back with a smile. I found that the more I smiled, the easier the whole experience became.

I also found that the more I let go, the more clear headed and focused I became. Maybe because my ego was no longer running the show and that nasty old tape that had been playing on a loop before had finally dried up and disappeared along with cassette players and big hair.

Being able to receive with grace and gratitude is very much a gift that not all of us find easy to acquire but once we get it, it paints a very different picture of ourselves and the world around us that has more color, more depth and more love than the one we had before. It also comes in handy when you come home from the hospital and people bring you food ... lots of food ... all of your favorites. So good-bye to, "oh, you shouldn't have done that," and hello to, "thank you, what a lovely surprise." In the end it is a gift for both the giver and the receiver, and that is probably the most important part of all.

And so it is.

The Older The Plant, The Deeper The Roots

One of the things I learned about gardening long ago was that if you wanted to try and remove a plant or bush that had been there for years, you'd better be prepared for some heavy digging and pulling because the roots were guaranteed to be in there deep. Our long held beliefs can be much the same way no matter how much we have cultivated new ideas and new ways of looking at things.

Case in point. I like to think of myself as a moderately enlightened woman. Sure, I still have some old habits and ideas that I carry over from my growing-up years, but mostly I believe that our thoughts create our reality and who we are is who we say we are. I am honest enough to say that I probably should be in better physical shape than I am right now (okay, no probably about it, I should be), but I'm no where near falling apart either. That changed somewhat on Saturday.

On Saturday I spent the day with my 7 year old granddaughter, Gabby. We spent the morning putting together a mini-greenhouse for my front porch garden all by ourselves ("girls rule and boys drool," we sang out as we hi-fived each other over our mechanical triumph). After messing about in potting soil and seeds for a while, we decided to go for a walk to the garden store to check out the plants and then get some lunch. We were about 3 blocks from my apartment when I turned my head to grab her hand as we were about to cross a side street ... and the next minute I was airborne! The outer edge of my sneaker got caught on a hairline crack in the street and my upper body could not stop the forward momentum. I crashed.

My first thought: did I break anything? Body scan: nope. All parts still working. Second thought: am I hurt? Body scan: yep, banged up knee and elbow, wrenched shoulder ... and unbelievable humiliation. I was able to pull it together for Gabby's sake who by this time was in utter tears and terror that I was not okay. She helped me up and I assured her that some first aid for my scrapes and some ice cream for my pride would fix me up in no time. I limped back home and cleaned myself up. I was more battered that I realized but needed to hang in there for her until her Mom, who was 20+ miles away, could come for her. So we managed to go two doors down to Friendly's for lunch and ice cream where she announced that she was too exhausted to go plant shopping and just wanted to hang out the rest of the day (her way of dealing with stress is Netflix).

After the initial excitement calmed down, my formerly enlightened, new-age thought processes went right down the tubes and my years of conditioning took over: I was a bumbling old lady who can't even go for a walk without tripping over her own feet (never mind that this endless winter combined with cut backs to road repair in our town had resulted in cracked and broken streets everywhere). Now I was going to have to stay put for a while to heal (God knows how long that will take), will have my adult daughter treating me like I'm ancient, and with good cause! Now, keep in mind that I am just turning 65 in July and can still pull out a few yoga poses along with 5 mile walks, thank you. But in that moment, I fell back into that mindset that says 65 is old, used up, incompetent and needs taking care of.

I let that mood keep me down for about 36 hours, a long time for me to be down as the most I usually allow a bad mood to hang on is about 12. I did not even post to my blog on Monday as I normally do since my left shoulder still hurts and typing doesn't feel really good(I am typing this with one hand-Yay Me!). This morning I sat my butt down in a chair (the floor is out until the knee heals) and did a gratitude meditation: I am grateful for this day, and each new day which is the gift of a new beginning. I am grateful that I wasn't hurt more severely, that Gabby is okay, that this will all heal, and that I learned something important. I am not as enlightened as I think I am and I still have a lot of deeply rooted beliefs about who I am regardless of my age or physical condition. I still have work to do. Fortunately we are all still a work in progress.

Today I have mastered one-armed bed making, showering, dish washing, cat box cleaning and breakfast making ... and typing. Yeah, girls rule!

And so it is.

In The Space Between

I have come to realize, as I grow into my wisdom years, that the power of synchronicity is alive and very real. The term coincidence has almost disappeared from my vocabulary entirely. So when I get three different messages on the same topic for three days in a row, I tend to sit up and pay very careful attention.

It started on Saturday when I went to a baby shower for my niece. Although this is her second child, it is the first boy for my sister's family. As we all sat around in a circle while she opened her gifts, I couldn't help stepping back and looking at the picture as a whole. I was reminded of a photo that sits on a shelf in my den. It shows my Mom, then my sister and I, all four of our daughters, and my daughter's first child - four generations. On Saturday I had that same feeling: our whole lives were lived so that we could see this moment in time. This is what it's all about. 

On Sunday at church our speaker addressed the idea that everything we do is connected to everything and everyone else. She used some Native American drums and music to connect us all to each other and to the earth, and I was reminded of the Native teaching that says before you make a decision or take action realize that whatever you chose will affect the next seven generations. 

On Monday, Memorial Day, we were all reminded, with parades, memorial services and events, that how you live your life affects us all in some way. Later that day I was listening to a song by former American Idol winner Scotty McCreeery called The Dash. It tells the story of a small town that gathers together to welcome home one of their own fallen soldiers for the last time. The phrase, the dash, refers to the dash on a tombstone that goes between the date of his birth and the date of his death. The singer tells us that what matters is how we live our lives in the dash between those two dates regardless of much or how little time that space represents.

Taking all three of these messages together has given me a greater awareness of the importance of making each day count. What I do today is my legacy for the children that come after me. How I treat the earth and all living things on it will be felt by all of the generations that follow. Choosing to fill the space between those two dates on the headstone with a life lived in integrity, love and responsibility is all that matters however long that time may be. 

This morning I had the honor of explaining a tomato plant to my youngest grandson, age 4. I explained that the yellow flowers had to come first in order for the tomato to come next. I asked him if he understood what I was trying to tell him and he replied, "yes, Grandma. The flower helps the tomato to grow." I certainly hope so.

And so it is.