Weekly Words: "An Observation"

"True gardeners cannot bear a glove
Between the sure touch and the tender root,
Must let their hands grow knotted as they move
With a rough sensitivity about
Under the earth, between the rock and shoot,
Never to bruise or wound the hidden fruit.
And so I watched my mother's hands grow scarred,
She who could heal the wounded plant or friend
With the same vulnerable yet rigorous love;
I minded once to see her beauty gnarled,
But now her truth is given me to live,
As I learn for myself we must be hard
To move among the tender with an open hand,
And to stay sensitive up to the end
Pay with some toughness for a gentle world."

- May Sarton

Weekly Words: "Living in the moment, and then letting go"

“The chaos in nature is quiet, latent,” she says. “A lamb’s death is quiet; so is the gradual death of a crop of flowers.” Sitting on the lawn, birds singing from the trees, she remembers that long-ago bunch of black dahlias and sighs. “People look at flowers as objects — as a decorating element, not a living thing. But sometimes the most beautiful thing is the most fleeting. The most fragrant, delicate rose — often those wilt in minutes. Flowers are about living in the moment, and then letting go.”

- "Into the Wild With Sarah Ryhanen"

Weekly Words: "A Sanctuary for Our Souls"

"It took me a long time and a good deal of sweat to understand it — just how much our Earth is a sanctuary for our souls...

...As the gardener creates, so does the garden transform the inner life of its creator. The garden’s cycle mirrors our own growth, complete with floods, heat, drought, infestation; dying, resurrecting, blossoming, blooming, maturing, rotting; bounty, beauty, miracles.

In our deeper psyche we tend to our life’s garden of sorrows and joys. We pull out, cut back, dig up, bury, sow, support, and nourish hoping one day to harvest our life’s experiences into wisdom. Without all this soul/gardening work, our spirits are swamped under the weeds, our creative gifts choked, our true selves unable to flourish."

- Catherine Ann Lombard, "A Communion with the Earth: Gardening and Gratitude"