Still Water: Weekly Reflections

Week 1

Saturday: Cultural Perspectives on Gardening/ The Garden as a Metaphor

I feel like gardening has to be in rows. This is modern US mainstream. I think my ancestors used to grow apples and potatoes in Irelend. And I'm not sure what they grew over here. Probably didn't have an apple tree. Probably more for-fun-gardening. My grandma told me about "victory gardens" she had one during the depression of WWII that made food for her. She didn't like corn cos it took up too much space with little yeild.

People garden less for pleasure in other countries and they probably don't have hired help to do their pleasure gardening. I odn't know hwat techniques they do use or practice differently.

The whole world is a garden so their isn't really a metaphor. The metaphor exists only because we as humans detatch ourselves from our environment with cement, virtual reality, all the luxuries that we have, remove us from the reality that we are all part of this changing and growing garden. Sure some parts of the garden are naturally unusable like the geysers etc. but even there a simpler garden exists, of microorganisms. A healthy garden is balanced and gives nutrients back, the bounty increases. An unhealthy garden drains nutrients without giving back. This garden produces at first but then it withers and turns to a wasteland. It still may be a garden or ecosystem but it is not at its potential. Humans seem to want to drain the garden. Our bounty is full now but already the balance is slipping. To continue to prosper we must find our place in the garden because it can't grow without all its pieces! And we're an (suppossedly) intelligent link!

Week 2

There are all kinds of gardens and most if not all are either man made or natural.

Some specefic kinds are:

a park garden

a preserve of natural land

rock and sand gardens, like those medtation ones with the little rake

veggie and herb gardens for food raised beds and organic

fruit tree gardens with rows of hazelnuts and almonds round shape trees

winter gardens of kale and cabbage and leeks under a protective clear sheet

tomato garden now filling with blite this time of year though there are still so many tomatoes

a cement square garden you know those that are in the city on the main streets of high pedestrian traffic, they are usually surrounded by a little iron fence

found gardens and gardens of found plants, like the one in the prarie plant restoration community service project

The use of plants excites me, the whole world is a garden!! Everywhere is a garden!!

 

Week 3 of Reflections

Traditional wisdom is information passed down through the generations. Thsi could be through family members or anyone with in a persons life that has the time to leave an impact.

As I read the Earth's Blanket book I am intriged by the stories. They seem like fables. And they are the sense that these tales pass on a moral but the moral here isn't about crying wolf, its more informative I notice. Yes, there are some morals represented here like stay close to your family, but more commonly and concentrated are the lessons about plants' useful qualities. For example, the story about the tree pitch in chapter two will forever remind me that fir trees are the cheif with the most pitch, valuable sap, and that cedar came last to the meeting and has not so much pitch at all. These stories are much more memorable than reading a text that say " the high concentration of pitch in the fir tree is highly consumable and sought after." Anyhow my point of all this is that information used to be passed down through word of mouth. Now we go to school to learn from people and books we don't even know and will probably never know again, at least most of them. Where is the community in that? All this moving around to learn and spending money, hey its not so bad except when I now come to realize all that is missing. Soon we won't realize what we're missing because it will be gone. I'm talking about the Earth silly. And we are the Earth so we'll be gone too but we won't realize it cos we won't be here... anyhow....I think it is no coincidence that when we started going to school, which has its own traditional knowledge, we also started forgetting how to take care of the land. It was the students who were needed to work on the family farm harvest that stayed out of school in late summer. It seems like we are going around in a big circle, going back to learning about the land now at progressive schools like Evergreen when we could've done that a century ago at home with Grandma. But this circle is a forced circle back to caring otherwise we'll be dieing. Maybe we need to not go in circles but rather make the schooling knowledge and the traditional knowledge one in the same, one line of straight progression towards positive change and love in the Earth. I can see it! Can you?

Week 4 of Reflections Topic: What is the Purpose of Gardens?

Garden serve many purposes. Essentially they are a place for life to exist. All the bounties of life can be experienced in the garden. All the purposes for life can be found in the garden. Gardens are th purpose for life and life is the purpose for gardens! If one feels sad and sees no point to life, a walk in a garden revitalizes the soul. This type of garden can be a house garden, a little herb and flower patch just out the back door. A family can grow a garden for food and this gives life, its purpose is for health and growth. This type of garden can be small, a couple rasied beds in a field or the entire field.

 



Reflections  due week 6:  Harvesting rituals, hunting and gathering, readings

 

This week I read Green’s medicine making chapters on dandelion tincture making and harvesting rituals.  I thought maybe I wouldn’t go about honoring plants that I harvested in the same way.  Maybe I’ll read that again some day and change my mind.  But I think that honoring is an important part of the life process.  Dare I compare it with prayer?  It’s like saying grace or “thankyou” for the food at dinner.  Take a second to think about what’s really going on around us.  This may seem silly but it may have some actual physiological and physical impacts on us. 

This week I also read in F.t.D. about Port Madison Goat farm on Bainbridge Island.  At one point the author quotes the lady farmer saying “maybe we’re crazy” referring to how much time they spend devoted to their farm and goats.  Well if they are, then crazy people should raise goats because their goat yogurt is by far the best goat product I have ever had.  My friend used to sell fruit at the Seattle farmers market next to the Port Madison stand.  We got lots of yogurt! After reading this story and relating the personal accounts that my friend reported to me about the Goat Farmer, I really think that their yogurt is so good because they care.  It’s not about money.

Today, the American Dream is to make it rich, who cares who ya’ plow over in the mean time.  Further and further we push the quality down and the quantity up.  Therefore the product is never going to be good enough, the goal becomes un-attainable.     If love were the goal, we’d already be there.  It is in the “thankyou” and the honoring that the goal is realized. Without honoring there is no realization of appreciation, without this realization there is no consciousness.  Without consciousness we are barbarians.

 

 

 

Reflections due week 7: Why Garden? Digestive system, readings, and the liver….

 

Why gardeners garden certainly defines the type of garden they produce.  The intention will allows show through true…eventually.  The Fields the Dream reading talks about all these different farmers, gardeners, workers on farms etc. Each has a different reason for gardening.  Maybe the answer is what are the reasons for not gardening? 

            Americans garden to make money, or at least in the agricultural business.  It is not hard to see the true reason behind our cultivation of the land because the land is depleting not growing.  Gardening is just another business. 

            This week we also learned about the liver and digestive system.  We learned that if the liver is not working the skin will take over its duties.  The liver of the garden could be the cleaning out of the garden, the removing of toxins, digesting of fats.  Mushrooms could be good filters of the garden.  We could also reduce the amount of toxins put into the garden by using organic practices.  The skin of the American garden is showing signs of stress.  Metaphorically the skin of the U.S. agriculture business is….

 

 

 

 

Reflections due Week 8: Good vs. Bad Gardens, camas and fescue, and botany

 

            The concept of good and bad has always been puzzling to me.  Here again the concept is presented to me I the context of gardens.  Immediately when I think of gardens that are drenched in weed killers and pesticides and petroleum based fertilizers, I think that they are bad.  It seems when something hurts another being that it is a bad thing.  It seems that when you help something out that is good.  Beyond this I really can’t tell what’s good or bad.  Even in these statements there are grey areas.  So I get confused and go outside to enjoy the simpler life.

            Camas planting was particularly enjoyable this week at the Forestry service.

            This week was the treasure hunt. I enjoyed paying close attention to nature.  Though the vocabulary wasn’t “good” for me I wanted to describe the leaves as “woobely” or slightly “woobely.”  Greatly woobely would be the yarrow leaves.

 

 

 

Reflections due Week 9:  Lecture topics, who is a garden/ green thumb, readings….

 

            This week Marja gave a lecture on the First Peoples gardening techniques that were over looked by the New World settlers.  The native people were certainly gardeners and they definitely ahd green thumbs.  The phrase green thumbs is definitely limiting though.  Its more like a green being that the First Peoples were. 

            I looked at the reserve books about fire burning and saw pictures about the change of landscape from pre-settlers to post settlers.  This was astounding.  The idea of fire is really a new and exciting idea for me. 

            I want my place in this world as I become closer to finishing college. It seems so crowded. It would be nice to make cedar mats or set fire to fields instead of pay off my college loans.   Maybe I can find a happy medium starting a native plant nursery like the one at the Nature Conservacy in Littlerock.

 

 

Last Reflections  Gardens as a Metaphor, Plant talks,  presentations, final readings…

 

            This class has been an opportunity for reflection.  I have thought about all the things I’ve learned,  how humans can be a part of nature not apart from nature, the prarie plants, high elevation habitat,  First Peoples traditional plant uses and knowledge; I want to apply all these things in my life to come.

            As I walked back to my car with, I helped a Native lady from a tribe or people speaking something that started with a “P,” I am not so god with remembering words, carry a sign from the crafts fair.  She told me how her aunt or uncle told her a breeze of the salty air at the beach will clear up congestion. She said she looked at nasal sprays and they are just saline, “Salt!” she said. “Like the salty air at the beach!”  This was my own personal traditional knowledge teaching. Thankyou!

            I feel a grateful for the interactions that I have had with First Peoples knowledge.  My ancestors were the first people here.  My blood gave the small pox blankets and condemned the fire burning.  My ancestors put up the fence.  I like to imagine that there was  a character in my family that drifted to the Native people’s villages and was fascinated as I am.  But that’s probably not what happened.  So now its my turn to do the work and I want to take the fence down.  Is it too late? Has too much knowledge been lost?  Has anything positive come of this New World settlement?

            My philosophy is gardening is life! As a woman, perhaps I feel an instinctual need to care for something, perhaps I choose the Earth to care for.

           

           

 

           

 

           

             

 

 

 

 

Erin Dowling
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