User Login |
Weekly ReflectionsWeek Nine Reflections: Garden as metaphor?
This week’s topic rounds out nicely with the previous reflection about “Who gardens?” If virtually anyone who has a connection with the land we live on, if for no other reason then the beauty it gives us, then they are gardeners. A garden could be physically the plants within the soil. But it can also speak to us in a metaphoric way – it could be the thoughts and ideas that become planted within our minds. Therefore the mind is a garden. The nourishment we put into our bodies are the fertilizer for our body garden, which our lives grow from. Our children could be our garden. If a forest is a garden of Mother Nature, and each tree is capable of producing offspring or saplings, then our children compose a garden that needs care, tending, and shelter to grow into the forest some day. All life on this planet is a garden, either literally or metaphorically.
In relation, gardening can be looked past it’s strict definition and used in metaphorical ways. Any parent is a gardener who tends to their children just as a forest (and all it’s inhabitants) tend to their saplings. This is a clear example of gardening metaphorically. But most of all we are all gardening all the time. When we make choices as to what we are going to put in our bodies and how we choose to tend to our minds, we are consciously gardening our lives. Each one of us are gardeners to our bodies, gardeners to our plants, and most of all gardeners to our planet.
Week Eight Reflections: Who Gardens? As I traversed through these last eight weeks, thinking about gardening and gardens, my perspective has changed on the subject. Although taken out of context, and viewed more at its metaphoric meaning, Fields That Dream says that those who garden are those who make a connection, raising children to have values of hard work and respect for the land, and/or revolt against globalization. In this interpretation of gardening, a gardener could virtually be anyone. Anyone who makes a connection with the Earth through either digging and planting, or simply enjoying what beauty nature brings them. Anyone who has children that they have raised to have respect for the land that brings them nourishment and enjoyment. Even someone who feels that we should keep the way that nature intended the land to be used, not in a big corporation’s hands. All of these people are gardeners – making an impact on the Earth that we call home.
This planet is our home, our hopes must “take root in healthy soil and sprout for generations and generations to come.” (Fields That Dream, 179)
Week Seven Reflections: Are there good and bad gardens?
This week’s reading of The Earth’s Blanket brought to the surface an interesting point of the interconnectedness of all parts of a forest, rivers, and shared lands. In “Everything Is One” Nancy Turner writes about Tom Reimchen’s findings within British Columbia. “While observing bears at night, he saw them catching salmon from spawning streams on Haida Gwaii and along the central and northern coast of British Columbia. More importantly, he recorded the bears dragging carcasses of spawning salmon into the forest and leaving them, partially eaten, on the forest floor. These carcasses, he found, were actually helping to nourish the growing trees of the coastal rain forest. He discovered that a heavy nitrogen isotope called 15N, which is usually found only in deepwater marine ecosystems, occurs in their wood. This shows that the forest has benefited from the salmon fertilizer introduced by bears.” His work was a vital foundation laid to show the importance of salmon spawning up through their natural habitat, but it also demonstrates the connected needs of the forest to the river and the life that connects them together.
Nancy Turner’s main subject throughout the entire chapter is “Everything is one…complex webs that connect the past with the future, the ocean and rivers with the land, the plants with the animals and the people with everything else are breaking down.”
In connection with Nancy Turner’s perspective with this weeks topic of reflection, all native ‘gardens’ are connected. From the rivers to the forest, from the ocean to the prairies – each ecosystem relies on the next. Each ecosystem also relies on that of animals to maintain its natural garden. The only bad gardens are those not cared for and looked after – such as the logger’s ruining the river beds by leaving their logs in the river.
Week Six Reflections: Why do gardeners garden? (Changed topic to Gardening & Sustainability)
This week’s reading of The Earth’s Blanket gave some interesting perspectives on how humans can interact with Mother Nature in such a way that they can aid to her survival. The immense discussion about how fires actually help nature was new and interesting for me. They discussed the fact that fires can help nature in many ways, including:
In addition to understanding how to work the land, they knew how to work within the rivers and seas. The book mentions how careful the natives were in caring for the salmon populations. They would make sure that not all the salmon were caught each year. Leaving the young, or enough to repopulate the rivers next year. Even polluting the rivers, where the salmon ran, could be punished by death. This discussion about how humans aid nature changed my perspective about how hunters and gathers are actually farmers. They must work with nature, aid nature in her growth, and use her harvest in helpful way. Since they tended to their lands to reap a better crop, this leads me to believe the hunters-gathers were the first farmers in existence. After all, they knew how to work with the crops better then any modern farmer today. The native way of caring for Mother Earth is truly gardening meeting with sustainability. Week Five Reflections: What is a garden?
Please define a garden. Is a forest a garden? Is a city a garden? Is the Earth a garden? Is ‘hunting and gathering’ gardening? Sometimes? Why or why not?
The following are definitions by two popular sources that define the word garden:
A garden is a planned space, usually outdoors, set aside for the display, cultivation, and enjoyment of plants and other forms of nature. The garden can incorporate both natural and man-made materials. – Wikipedia
-- Webster’s Dictionary
It is interesting to me to see the variation in the definitions – one defining it as a planned space, the other incorporating a more natural space into it’s definition. Using these definitions as a garden this could mean that a forest is a garden. This space, sometimes planned, or designated, is used for both display, cultivation, and enjoyment. The only way that a forest fails to follow the above definitions is that it is not a planned space where people or animals have intentionally designed the area. The design was left to nature in many cases. Earth in modern times is certainly a garden. We as people play a role in developing and altering its landscape. Many of its land and water spaces are planned or set aside for a specific reason. All of the land and water serves a purpose for either people, animals, and/or plants. Earth’s resources are vital for all life on this planet, whether planned or not. A city is certainly a garden – from the parking lots as a cement garden to the planned plots of land designated for beautiful flowers. This example only fits the above definition depending on the bias of the people viewing the city’s beauty. Hunting and gathering is not truly a form of gardening considering there is little intentional planning in the process. In this case the person relies on the forest or their land, which is a garden, to collect their food. Besides the fact that it is food cultivation, it does not formally suit the definition of a garden. Week Four Reflections: Garden Purposes List as many purposes you can think of that gardens could serve. What types of qualities might a garden have in order to serve these purposes? Give examples, if you know of any, of gardens that serve these purposes or have these qualities. Referring back to my second reflection, I pulled down the list of gardens that I included within that reflection and pondered the purpose of some of these gardens. Here is what I came up with:
Regardless of the qualities of any garden, they should serve the individual to the fullest extent of their interests.
Week Three Reflections: TEK W What does TEK W mean? What do you think are the implications of TEK W on mainstream perspectives on gardening? What do you suppose gardening might ‘look like’ within the context of TEK W? TEK W is defined in Nancy J. Turner’s “Traditional Ecological Knowledge and Wisdom of Aboriginal Peoples in British Columbia” as: knowledge of ecological principles, such as succession and interrelatedness of all components of the environment; use of ecological indicators; adaptive strategies for monitoring, enhancing, and sustainably harvesting resources; effective systems of knowledge acquisition and transfer; respectful and interactive attitudes and philosophies; close identification with ancestral lands; and beliefs that recognize the power and spirituality of nature. TEK W relies on the knowledge and wisdom developed by native peoples to live a more sustainable life. It is the native’s inherited understanding of how to use what’s near them to keep nature alive as well as assist nature in its work. If we used TEK W in our mainstream perspectives of gardening, the land have around our homes would be more productive and adapted to the land’s needs. This would provide better quality food and land, better quality plants that require less pesticides and herbicides. This more organic way of gardening would result in less soil erosion and degradation due to massive amounts of animals leading to severely compacted soil. If we gardened more towards the context of TEK W then we would garden more to/for the landscape rather then to “keep up with the Jones’”. Our gardens would need less water, have better quality plants, and have multiple functions within it (i.e. for food and beauty simultaneously). Week Two Reflections: Garden Types What types of gardens are there? List and describe as many different types of gardens as you can. Give examples if you know of any. Outside of the typical residential flower garden or a fruit/vegetable garden, I had a difficult time coming up with ideas of garden types. With the help of Wikipedia, I discovered some garden types that I've seen or heard of, as well as some that are new territories for me. Those that I recognize include:
Some that were unfamiliar to me, yet notable for those new to them as well include:
I must admit the Pizza garden seems the most appealing to me, for there is nothing better then great Italian food, but having an herb garden that keeps everything in good working order is important as well. This research certainly peaked my interest into the world of possibilities we have for functionality and beauty simultaneously. Through this discovery of garden varieties I connected with Gretchen Hoyt in my reading of Fields That Dream. Her discoveries of gardening at about the same age that I am now, going from housewife to a farmer’s wife, her connection with the earth in moving from the city to the county. These are all concepts that brought me into Gretchen’s story and made it a story of my future. Week One Reflections: Cultural perspectives on gardening Explore the cultural context of your own perspective on gardening. Explore perspectives of both the modern US mainstream and your own family heritage or ancestry. Are you aware of any ways in which a garden or gardening is viewed or practiced differently within different cultural contexts? Gardening is to make landscapes beautiful, due our duty to earth and our faith, and to put food on the table. My family’s heritage reflects this U.S. mainstream as a look into the past will provide. My Grandmother and Grandfather on both my mother’s and father’s side were farmer’s in small town Iowa, where gardening was a function of both income and self-sustainability. Corn was a staple of both finances and perseverance, yet there were a few rows of the farm reserved for other crops for the family. Grandma would use what she needed each season, and then can the rest to use for the long winter ahead. When my mother and father married in their early twenties, they moved to California where they began exploring their own ideas of gardening. My mother still planted some plants that would be used at the dinner table, but they were not in neat rows and they did not reap any financial benefits outside of our table. There were many parts of the garden that were simply used as beauty, from the planter in the front to the evergreen tree in the back. Now that I’m raising my own family and have my own yard to landscape, I find that I tend to have the same pull towards beauty and functionality. My yard is a constant work in progress but I still have a few flowers planted for beauty and a small herb garden to make my cooking taste delicious. Ironically enough I continually have a pull towards gardening more for self-sustainability then for beauty. Growing many of my family’s food interests me and pulls me in a strong way. It seems as if my interest is similar to what Bob and Pat Meyer (in Fields That Dream) experienced early on in their farming adventures. Start small and grow big. Knowing where my food comes from and that it’s nourishing my body, not poisoning it, is becoming more important then ever before. The dream of many acres with greenhouses to grow my food in year round is the same dream that many have to live on the water or have a view of the mountains. The only thing that stops me is not knowing where to begin and how to make the process work. That part of my history is lost and now I must start it again to trace back to my roots.
Suzanne Robinson
categories [ Reflections ]
login or register to post comments | printer friendly version
|
<!--[endif]-->