I’ve often wondered why my thumbs and fingers are a deeper shade of green than other peoples. Gardening comes so naturally to me, it’s just effortless and easy for me to grow organic food… but I’ve noticed this isn’t necessarily the case for my clients and friends!
I put it down to angels and the power of intention. This isn’t as quirky or as hard to prove as it may appear to be at first glance. My gardening technique involves practical researched knowledge, hard physical work, and an internal lightness of touch. An openness to nature and God. An ability to listen. An awareness of how my own spirit is connecting with the living plants that I am nurturing.
Also, I’m acutely aware that plants are closely related to people, more so than I’d ever imagined before spending time in the garden. They’re sensitive to our moods just as we are sensitive to theirs. Appreciate the unusual shaped leaves, smell the enchanting fragrance, taste the delicious fruit and the plant will enjoy you right back.
Take these artichokes, for example.
Artichokes are basically big, bad thistles, huge enormous thistles that have massive thistle flower buds that taste amazing when steamed and drizzled with olive oil! Being weeds at heart, they grow very well without much input from the gardener, withstanding bad soil and irregular watering without drooping or producing less chokes.
However, nasty infestations of black bugs, aphids, earwigs and other creepy crawly and wiggly pests are standard issue for artichokes, because anything we like to eat, pests like to eat. This is the rule of the garden, period, which is why edible plants are so much trickier.
If it tastes nice, you’re not the only one that wants to eat it!
So it’s spooky that artichokes that don’t get any love from a gardener grow big but get blighted, but artichokes in the same garden that get high quality love beamed at them on a regular basis, including love up close, and love from afar… well, the loved chokes don’t get buggy. They stay strong and healthy, their own defenses protect them, and their prized buds remain unscathed and waiting for us to pluck and enjoy.
Call me a little bit witchy-poo, but I have tried this. Even more profound was an experience I had last year with a potato patch.
The heirloom potatoes planted in this particular garden were a rare and more vulnerable variety known as Stellar Blues. I spent a lot of time looking after this garden, it’s a very special place and I felt a deep connection with this land. But the potato patch was tended by an eleven year old girl named Stella. She felt a deep connection with the potato patch, in the way that only children can.
Anyway, she came and visited the potato plants as they grew pretty much every day, spending a little moment to dream by them and just check in to see how they were doing. May I add that this little girl was a very special person, a talented musician and someone who has a rare quality with younger children. So her attention and love is particularly good.
The potatoes new it. There were no bugs. There were no diseases. And they went crazy, sprouting immense tons of foliage, and later on, buckets and buckets of blue potatoes.
More potatoes than I have ever seen come out of a potato patch! More tasty! Tons of them!!
It’s all a matter of high quality love and attention… that’s what makes plants and people flourish.
Please let us know what you think by leaving a comment...
Like this page? Please link to us and let the world know!
This was posted on Tuesday, March 22nd, 2011 at 4:15 pm by Ysanne Spevack. To link here, use the permalink. You can follow any responses to this post through the 
RSS 2.0 feed.
RSS Feed for Ysanne's blog
Bookmark this page