After a late winter that languished on for far too long, it finally feels like spring out. I spent most of the weekend cleaning up in my shed and around my yard and prepping my raised beds for planting. I love my beds. And they also make me sad. Together they take up the same amount of space that I would have planted green beans in my former garden. I have spent a lot of time here, with this new more limited space having to dig through a lot of "what's the point" sort of feelings and battled some indecision and inertia as a result. But over the last few years I have shifted to more perennial planting around the yard. Lots of medicinal flowers and herbs. Food trees and shrubs. It is beginning to take on a bit of a permaculture feel and for that I am both thrilled and grateful. I also signed up for a CSA this year. For the first time since before I grew enough food for a whole season. It was a surrender of sorts. An acquiescence of sorts. So, this year I will grow greens and herbs in these beds. And some short season veggies..... maybe.
The most important piece though, is that I am growing things. That will become food, that will become medicine, that will become joy for the four of us and some neighborhood kids as well. The important thing is that my hands are deep in the dirt and that the very ground is becoming a part of who I am. My breath changes. My body relaxes. Even after digging and hauling for several hours. For really and truly I know of no better way to connect deeply to myself and my sense of place and my sense of purpose than by being in the dirt and life and potential of a piece of land. Even if it is this small little space I find myself in these days. The work continues to help me connect to the past, feel into the present, and vision into the future.