Do Nothing Gardening
I gave up gardening this year.... here's what happened.
This winter I made a habit of taking my morning coffee into the garden. Wrapped in my dressing gown, I’d step out onto the patio and breathe in the cold air. Occasionally I’d pull on an extra layer, wipe off the garden bench and sit for a while but mostly I kept things short and sweet. I’d take a few moments to be present to the stillness around me and then head back into the cosy warmth of the kitchen.
As the mornings lightened, I kept up my practice of bringing my coffee outside, lingering a little longer each day. I’d walk around the garden listening for the birds and crouching down to inspect the soil for any signs of green. The first shoots emerged slowly, over the course of a few days. I saw the tiniest speck of green and was so excited that I dug into the soil with bare fingers to see if it really was a shoot.
“It’s almost time to start gardening,” I thought.
Immediately my heart sank.
This made no sense to me. Usually, when I realise the time has come to make a start on the spring to-do list, my first emotion is excitement. I love my garden and gardening has become one of my core spiritual practices - an activity of presence and care that connects me to the flow of Divine presence and care. Whether I’m planting flowers or pulling up bindweed or staking raspberries, the slow practice of attending to just one task at a time draws me out of my anxious, preoccupied self and back into communion with what is here and real, in this particular moment. As my hands clip and scoop and dig, I feel myself coming loose from the grip of my thoughts and concerns. I open to being surprised by wonder and delight but even on a grey day when all I’m doing is clearing leaves and getting wet, I leave the garden feeling recentred. It’s an embodied meditation that leaves my hands dirty and my soul settled.
As I pondered my nonsensical resistance to getting started with my gardening tasks, I realised that it wasn’t so much that I didn’t want to begin those tasks as that I didn’t want to end my practice of being with the garden. I imagined myself busy in the garden and felt sad to lose the simple, curious, non-judgemental practice of presence I’d been cultivating since those dark mornings of midwinter. I considered the possibility that I could carry on with that morning practice even as I embarked upon the year’s cycle of tasks but, in my heart of hearts, I knew that once I started gardening I would lose some of my ability to look and listen. Instead of simply noticing what was happening around me, I’d be seeking out the next task. I remembered previous springs and realised that for all the soulfulness of my gardening habit, my capacity for being in the garden diminishes the moment I turn my attention to all that needs doing in the garden.
"What if I delayed getting started with the gardening this year?” I wondered. "What if I just keep going as I have been and see what it’s like to be present to the unfolding of spring?”