It is officially fall now, and the trees are turning and dropping leaves... the sun rises later and later each day and follows a lower path across the sky throwing long lovely shadows that speak of colder weather on the way. Nights are cooler. Days can be, too. But there are still a few shorter blasts of bright summer-like days that make the colors dazzlingly brilliant and fill autumn hearts with honey-light-warmth. Ahh.
It is time for me to put the gardens to bed... ALL of them. No more squash. No more cukes. The tomatoes and potatoes were trashed by late blight. I am finally over mourning about that one.
Acceptance is ongoing for gardeners. In the spring, we want the weather to be warmer, cooler, wetter, drier. We want the seeds to sprout faster or slower. We wish the compost was hotter, drier, wetter, ...more this, less that. In September, toward the End of Things, we want the summer harvest to go on and on... and on and on... and on. Accepting things as they are, whatever that may be, is challenging. But gardening has a way of insisting that we do just that... accept what is.
Nowadays, in the fall, we must accept that another season is over. The more energetic of us will get invigorated trying out new extending devices... high tunnels, hooped protections... anything to defy the fact that Mother Nature is telling us the Time Is Up for growing food. OK, OK. Some things can still grow. I have leeks, spinach and broccoli out there, and they just chuckle as the nights grow colder and the days shorter. But, my days of processing and freezing goodies from the garden is over!
In the perennial beds, acceptance takes a different form. I really love that flower and want to grow it THERE! ... but the soil and sun conditions just might tell a different story, a story I don't particularly like. Then again there are those WEEDS that just keep pushing up no matter how much mulch, .... no matter how much pulling or digging is done. I experienced it both ways... not getting what I want, and (yep, lots and lots of this one...) getting a whole lot of what I don't want. I have taken a pretty laid back attitude toward what grows and what doesn't. I know I am supposed to have a PLAN... all nice and neat on graph paper... with overlays for the different times in the season early-mid-late. My garden is more a mix of what I want and what happens. There are some plants that have been moved around and about, trying it out over there after it didn't work over here... sometimes giving up on it altogether. It just wasn't meant to be!
Acceptance in Spiritual Practice
Lao Tsu, an ancient Chinese sage, said it well: Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don't resist them - that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like.
Many of our most troublesome tendencies arise when we cannot accept what is.
Denial ain't a river in Egypt, and much of the world seems to be suffering from it. Denial, that is. Denying reality, fighting reality, forcing and wrestling with reality. As I accept and flow with the changes in my gardens, I find I can more easily accept the changes that occur in the rest of my life. I can live in the present and put down the burden of fretting over past mistakes just as I have put aside the disappointment of no tomatoes and no potatoes this year. I don't choose to worry about next year's crops; they will take care of themselves when the time comes.
That seems to be true of most of my so called "problems". My life, like my garden, is a mix of what I want and what happens. I learn to accept what is, and Let It Be.
That seems to be true of most of my so called "problems". My life, like my garden, is a mix of what I want and what happens. I learn to accept what is, and Let It Be.
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