A little over a month ago I posted about how I was finding music to be so powerful in my life in helping me to create the life that I want to live. In that post, I mentioned how I am doing a little personal project to help myself in developing attention and therein, feel more joy.
I’ve been doing this little project for about 6 weeks now and I thought I would share a bit about how it is going and some things that inspired it…. Several months ago, a quote from a gardening book was shared on the Mothers of Influence group and it really stood out to me because I was in the process of designing my garden.
“Because I planted flowers on such a grand scale, it was impossible not to notice all the good things the flowers were bringing to the table. It felt as though nature hit me right between the eyes with all it had to offer. I had expected a harvest of beautiful blossoms but never dreamed they were also the key to healing my garden, bringing in entertainment, and making gardening easier! The garden grew with less help from me with each passing season.
Chatting with gardeners through the years, I’ve learned that the benefits of flowers in the vegetable garden often haven’t been given chance to develop. Perhaps a large vegetable patch only had a small corner for flowers. Perhaps deadly pesticides were being used. Perhaps flowers were being planted in such a way that blossoms were present only sporadically throughout the growing season. These factors may cause the benefits to either vanish or just limp along. Adding a balance of blooming flowers to vegetables gives nature a chance to develop into something, and that something is spectacular!
I continue to grow both vegetables and flowers, hand in hand, sharing the same spaces. As I witness nature at work in my garden, it has become easier to walk away from pest problems. All the energy I had been using to resolve problems is now focused on learning more about how to help the garden in order to prevent problems.
Adding flowers to the vegetable patch and following nature’s lead is not a magic bullet. It will not fix your garden overnight, but it will heal a garden over time.” (Lisa Mason Ziegler, Vegetables Love Flowers, pg 19-20)
I loved this quote so much that I bought the book because I wanted to learn more about the power of adding flowers to my garden. I devoured the book and learned so much. One thing that stood out to me was how much the author stressed the importance of continually harvesting the flowers.
“It may be frightening at first to harvest as I recommend, but be assured: your loyalty to the suggested harvesting habits will reap a reward. The more often you harvest, the more flowers will be produced.” (pg. 40)
“What brought the garden to life and kept it blooming over the long haul of the seasons was growing flowers for cutting and then harvesting the blossoms on a regular basis. Constant cutting keeps the garden continually producing fresh flowers. Fresh flowers keep all the beneficial creatures happy in the garden. As it turns out, the life of a cutting garden is a perfect match for the life you wish to invite into the garden. This practice of harvesting flowers while harvesting vegetables brings another gift from the garden. The day will come when there isn’t room for another bouquet in your home. This leads to a new reward – surprising and delighting family and friends with the colorful gift of fresh, homegrown flowers!” (pg. 15)
When I read this, I remember asking myself “how can I harvest the flowers more in my life? What does that look like?” One of these things is notebooking. When I take the time to capture the gems from my learning and record them in my binder, I am harvesting flowers. In fact, I love that Marlene shared one time about how the word anthology means flower gathering, or a collection of flowers. I have had many instances where I have been able to share the harvested “flowers” from my notebooking with others.
Another way that I am harvesting the flowers in my life is this personal project of mine. As I mentioned in my post from a few weeks ago: “As I continue to create the life that I want to live, I have been jotting down notes in my phone of my little experiences and then putting little splotches of paint onto a paint by number canvas for each experience, as a visual reminder to myself that “by small and simple things are great things brought to pass”. Paying attention to the tiny details of the painting reminds me to pay attention to the tiny details of my life. Each day more of the beauty of the whole is revealed. As I paint, I listen to my phone reading these experiences back to me and it feels as if I am reading a letter from a friend telling about beautiful experiences from her life… only that life is actually mine. And all of this brings deep feelings of gratitude to my heart and mind.”
This has been such a fulfilling journey so far over these past several weeks. At last count, I had written down about 300 experiences… most of which are very little and would easily be overlooked if I hadn’t been paying attention. Some are only one or two sentences, others that really stood out may be a short to medium length paragraph. Lisa Mason Ziegler was right. The more I harvest the flowers, the more flowers are produced. She was also right when she said “Adding flowers to the vegetable patch and following nature’s lead is not a magic bullet. It will not fix your garden overnight, but it will heal a garden over time.” This little project hasn’t been a magic bullet (I didn’t expect it to be). I still have my daily anxieties, worries, weaknesses, mistakes, regrets, challenges, etc. But I can already feel my heart garden being slowly healed overtime. It’s amazing what happens when I just slow down and pay attention. Little by little, noticing and *feeling* the beauty around me is coming more and more naturally. And that is incredibly fulfilling. When I think back over the past few weeks, the moments that stand out are these moments of joy that came from paying attention.
I put together this little video to give a small taste of some of my experiences that I have written down over the past 6 weeks. I audio recorded my phone (Siri) reading these experiences, because that’s what I listen to when I do my paint by number. Siri isn’t the most expressive voice to listen to, and she mispronounces things and runs all the sentences together but its still amazing to hear her read them to me. I still feel the power of the words and relive the experiences in my mind. I paired her reading with video clips of flowers from my garden, ending each experience with some harvested flowers to symbolize harvesting the flowers in my life. And then at the end I made a montage of short video clips that I took throughout the past several weeks, several of the flower moments of my daily life.
