Learning About Interbeing in the Garden

 

Lately, I have taken to going to sit within the circle of the community garden in the park next to my house.  I sit on the lower cedar log that is part of the “container” that holds the soil in place.  This brings me to eye level with the tomatoes.  I can glance down at the kale or up at the corn.  This point of view brings me into the diversity of the garden physically and visually.

The community garden is built in a circle and has a wide diversity of plants within this circle.

I have been bringing my sketchbook, colouring pencils and a black fine tip pen with me.  One way of being totally present in the moment is to draw what is around me.  Particular attention must be paid to shape and colour and I see things that would have otherwise been missed with a cursory glance.  There are many, many shades of green around me, too many to accurately depict with my four green colouring pencils, but I do my best.  The curly kale is a bluish green and the dinosaur kale is a greyish green beside the grey-white sage that contrasts beautifully with the fuscia coloured flowers beside it.  The new corn leaves are bright green especially when they are backlit by the sun.

I picked the end off of a carrot top and took care to draw out its intricate design of feathery leaflets. Outlining the drawings with the thin black marker makes the shapes pop off of the blank page of my sketchbook.  The calendula and nasturtium seeds that I got from the local Seed Library have grown and are now flowering in hanging pots at the sidewalk side of the garden.  I celebrated their beauty by drawing them.

Calendula flower

 

As I moved from one plant to another, noticing the different shapes and colours I began to feel like just another species amongst many.  There were no other humans to compare myself to.  My age, size and shape no longer mattered.  I was just one of many sizes and shapes.  A white Cabbage Moth fluttered amongst the plants and landed on the soil from time to time, perhaps looking for minerals.  A bee arrived at one of the cucumber flowers seeking pollen.  The toad that only comes out in the evening did not make an appearance except in my memory.

I was no longer the gardener, the caretaker, the one who watered, weeded and harvested.  I was the one who admired, the student, the youngest sibling in an ancient family.  As I sketched the Three Sisters; corn, beans and squash that have been grown as companions for thousands of years here on Turtle Island by Indigenous Peoples, I became aware of my interbeing with all of these plants.  They magically turn soil, water, sunshine and air into food that I will eat.  All the elements will become the plants and then will become my physical body and on the cycle will go.  

I feel at home and at peace in the garden.  I can experience the moment and my interconnections, my interbeing as Thich Nhat Hanh would say.  My hope in helping to co-create this garden was that the Three Sisters could teach us how to grow community.  And so, I go and sit with them, listening, drawing, paying attention so that I can indeed learn from them.  I watch the strong tall corn hold up the weakly-stemmed beans.  I imagine the bacteria in the nodes of the bean roots absorbing nitrogen from the air that will later be left in the soil for next year's corn to feed on.  I delight in the squash setting off on its meandering journey, setting down roots every now and again and shading the soil from water evaporation and the growth of unwanted plants.  I ponder my role and responsibilities as a human, as a youngest sibling and I delight in my place in the cirlce of the garden, in the circle of life.  The plants are excellent teachers and I am learning to learn from them as I silently sit at their "feet" where they transition from stem to root.

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/The Three Sisters; corn, beans and squash have been planted as companions for thousands of years on Turtle Island by Indigenous Peoples such as the Haudenosaunee.

t seems that I have to understand who I am in this community of beings so that I can take that knowing into the community of humans.  I need to be rooted in that knowledge before I set off on my meandering path discovering my interbeing with others of my species.  I may be a senior adult but I am a novice at understanding my interbeingness, at understanding community.  Luckily, I have wonderful teachers.