A Bath for the Soul and the Seeds
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| Birth of a Community |
It was June when the idea went from dream to reality: A commitment by the group of four, a place to tend, donated by a landowner on Roland, and a grant secured from the island’s Farmland Trust.
After a few collective gatherings filled with the excited hype of beginning, and many preparatory tasks (which you can read about here and here) we set up a weekly watering schedule.
That Monday morning it was my turn to tend the plants at the garden. I woke early and walked over to the site, plucking some of the plump blackberries in the bushes on the way. The first task that day was watering the new seedlings we’d planted in the greenhouse the Saturday before. Dripping the water gently over the tiny squares of speckled soil where thin yellow-green threads shot up like flagpoles, their thin cotyledons airborne, I felt a rising discomfort in my body.
Holding my heart open, I spoke softly “Oh dear nausea. I see you and feel you.” With the gentle acknowledgement came the tears. This is grief, I whispered to myself, then let myself collapse into it, sobbing audibly.
“Are you okay?”, a voice asked, speaking to me through the glass. I had allowed myself to ignore. the landowner’s Gardener, now standing in a nest of downed branches, having pruned a tall bush thus allowing more light to the greenhouse.
“It’s grief, and I am letting myself feel it,” I shared, wiping my nose with the sleeve of my shirt.
“Good for you,” she replied, her reassuring words carrying neither judgement nor surprise.
As the weeping continued, it felt like something deep and inconsolable that would never go away. I let the tears run their course as I remembered the words of a healer whom I had worked with in Vancouver: “Tears are a bath for the soul.”
Newer to gardening than the other seasoned team members, I wondered whether it was the seedlings that had worked their magic on me. Passing by Peter’s house, another member of the group, I noticed that the front gate was open.
“How are you?” he asked, his hands freshly soiled from digging in his own garden beds.
“Peter, is it okay to cry with the seedlings?” I asked.
“Oh, yes, it’s okay” he hummed, in a soft, assuring voice. “They like any kind of attention.” There’s a good chance they were crying with me. We aren’t the only beings with feelings, nor the capacity for empathy.
Of course, I thought. How many times had I been consoled when hiking in the forest, communing with the spring flowers, or staring at the moon at night. As I hugged Peter, a gratitude filled my belly. “Oh, how lucky to be tending this new community garden,” I beamed.
As I walked away, noticing the colourful array of fruit on one of Peter’s trees, I wondered how many more reminders of our connection to nature and opportunities for consolation there would be.
Ahava Shira
September 4, 2023
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