Miss Muffet

Greetings! I am very excited about this blog entry. I feel that it might be the most important one I have done yet. Ok, to update everyone, a little while ago, I started getting strong urges to be outdoors more, to be with plants more, and to grow my own food. That led me to the gardening adventures I've been having in my backyard. I recently created my first real vegetable garden. This is what it looked like a few weeks ago:

Here's what the garden looked like a few days ago:

Very exciting! So exciting that I decided to create another garden:

Since I don't really know much about gardening at all, I figured it might help my chances for success if I equipped myself with some knowledge. On this quest for knowledge, I've come across some things that have made a very strong impression on me. I will proceed to share those things with you.

A friend recently lent me this book that looked exactly like the kind of gardening techniques I am interested in:

The book is a self-titled Seeds of Change book. From it, I'm learning about Bill Mollison who is a major advocate of permaculture. He defines permaculture (whose "name is derived from permanent agriculture") as "the conscious design and maintenance of agriculturally productive ecosystems that have the diversity, stability, and resilience of natural ecosystems. It is the harmonious integration of landscape and people providing their food, energy, shelter, and other material and nonmaterial needs in a sustainable way." I thought that was a good definition of permaculture. In Chapter 2, I came across the following quote by Mr. Mollison, "The American lawn uses more resources than any other agricultural industry in the world. It uses more phosphates than India, and puts on more poisons than any other form of agriculture." The authors go on to say, "Incredibly, lawns use more equipment, labor, fuel, and agricultural chemicals than all large-scale farming in the United States, making it the largest single 'agricultural' sector. Despite this, only some 10 percent of lawns are ever used." Reading that made me feel good about what I am doing right now.

Low and behold, as it turns out, the chapter right before "Raw Spirituality" in the book The Raw Food Gourmet by Ms. Gabrielle Chavez (see the blog entry prior to this one) is "Gardening in the Raw"! And what a treat for me that chapter was to read!!!! Ms. Chavez talks about "gardening conciousness" and makes the completely profound point that we are all gardeners! Her words blew me away when I read them:

"As long as we live on the earth, we inhabit nature. We constantly affect nature; nature responds. In this sense, are we not all gardeners, albeit mostly unconscious ones?"

HAH! INDUBITABLY!

"In cultivating a gardening consciousness, along with some simple practices, we humans reclaim a gift that was always ours: harmony with the natural world, including the natural world in the garden of our own bodies."

Words cannot describe how deeply I identified with these sentences. And what a poignantly beautiful concept: the garden of our own bodies... Once again, I felt the words of Ms. Chavez gently pointing me the way towards greater joy and communion with my Beingness: via intimacy with plants and Nature. Just as I suspected. Yes. I am discovering some answers in this soul-searching campaign of mine.

I would like to share a few more thoughts by Ms. Chavez: "If you are already a gardener when you come to a raw eating consciousness, rejoice. Everything you do in the garden will enhance and support your new lifestyle. If you have yet to see that you are a gardener, let me introduce you to this healing, grounding, symbiotic part of a raw life....As you go about whatever garden practices you choose, I invite you to open your mind and heart to the possibility of friendship with all the beings of nature, from elemental beings to spiritual beings. As human beings, we have the potential--some would say the necessity--of taking our place in this larger ecology of life."

Thank you Ms. Chavez.

Here is a photo album of my recent garden pictures and some self portrait shots:

Garden Photos and Self Portrait Shots

Today I had 1 coco/Bmax drink, 3 green salads with orange juice/anise/salt/hemp seed oil dressing, 1/2 avocado, 1/4 c soaked pumpin seeds, 20 oz of sweet tea, and 2/3 cup of ground walnut/pecan/cacao/agave nectar mixture

I was talking with my mother on the telephone today and before we hung up, she said, "Goodbye, Miss Muffet." I was like, "Miss Muffet?" And she said, "yeah, I've been reading your blog. You know, little Miss Muffet sat on a tuffet eating her curds and whey...wait...what's the nursery rhyme - the one about a garden?" I said, "Ah, yes. Mary Mary quite contrary how does your garden grow? (pause) But you can call me Miss Muffet if you want."
I LOVE YOU, MOM!