The pleasure of breaking off crisp full broccoli heads is easy to understand. Perhaps cutting a few hands full of baby spinach leaves to go in a salad is understandable to most also. There is a bit more work involved in harvesting the rich green parsley before it bolts and is gone for the hot summer. It is spread in a broad pan to dry on my sun porch before going in a jar for the kitchen. These few things have come from my garden today, planted among ornamental plants, but more beautiful to me than the bright faces of pansies. This far some could understand, even if it is very easy to buy parsley already in a jar.
But how to explain that sometimes the clear water in my dishpan from rinsing store bought berries is poured into a watering vessel to end up watering my atrium plants instead of going down the sink. How to say why I cut up the stems of the harvested parsley and toss them back on top of the garden mulch. Why do I bury the apple core and strawberry tops and other green trimmings in the garden soil to draw earth worms to my garden? These tiny gestures from a one person household cannot make any real difference to our mother Earth. This way of enjoying my tiny yard makes sense only because it makes me the gardener happier. Living intimately with my garden feeds me in a fundamental way, far beyond the little tomatoes forming there. I am thankful to have a garden again for this first Spring in my new home.
The Gaia theory developed by James Lovelock seems fundamental to understanding our Earth to me. Google it to read Wikipedia’s short explanation of our interconnectedness in this beautiful design as Lovelock sees it. I have enjoyed two of his full length books. e
