{"id":479,"date":"2012-05-27T14:05:30","date_gmt":"2012-05-27T20:05:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/uucollective\/?p=479"},"modified":"2012-05-29T11:37:36","modified_gmt":"2012-05-29T17:37:36","slug":"give-it-all-away-wisdom-of-the-plants","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/uucollective\/2012\/05\/give-it-all-away-wisdom-of-the-plants\/","title":{"rendered":"Give It All Away! Wisdom of the plants"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

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These days, as spring turns to summer, the garden is insistent with one message:\u00a0 Give it away, or lose it all.<\/p>\n

Early in the development of a garden, it\u2019s about procurement.\u00a0 Picking out plants, choosing a place for them, seeing how they do.\u00a0 With the kinds of perennials I tend to favor, that is both fun and highly interactive.\u00a0 Many of the flowers in my yard have stories that go along with them about who gave them to me, stories that make them that much more beautiful.<\/p>\n

And now, as I go into the fifth or sixth summer of having turned my yard into flowers, herbs and vegetables, it is imperative that I give stuff away.\u00a0 If I don\u2019t, if I try to hold onto all of the abundance for myself, the whole thing will die.<\/p>\n

And so I join my local facebook group for perennial exchange and post regularly what I have to offer, \u201cBee balm.\u00a0 Rudbeckia.\u00a0 Strawberries. Grape thistle.\u00a0\u00a0 Dig your own!\u201d\u00a0 People come with shovels, apologetic about taking too much, and I want to tell them, there is no such thing as taking too much!<\/p>\n

I go to farmers\u2019 markets, see people paying $5 for rhubarb, $25 for a hanging basket full of morning glories, and though I want farmers to make a good living, still I want to whisper, \u201cI\u2019ll pay you to come to my house and take that same thing!\u201d\u00a0 I refuse to allow a friend I am there with to buy morning glory plants, my voice so sternly admonishing, you would think she wanted\u00a0 to eat kittens.\u00a0 I convince a friend into native foods to try to eat Jerusalem artichokes; I happen to have hundreds. I offer plants to neighbors who walk by and stop to admire, to friends planting gardens at their kids\u2019 schools.\u00a0 I plant lupines and ferns and hostas in pots from garage sales and sell them myself at a garage sale, to start others on their gardening journeys.<\/p>\n

There is so much wisdom, so much life, in what the garden is teaching me about giving it away.<\/p>\n

First, in order to give away what I can\u2019t use myself, I need to be in constant relationship with many people.\u00a0 Weeding and throwing on the compost pile is the simplest way to say goodbye to too many lupines and kiss-me-over-the-garden-gate plants; it is tremendously more fun to give them to people who will love them!\u00a0 When someone I can\u2019t remember ever talking to stops by and says, \u201cWe have been eating raspberries all week from the shoots you gave us,\u201d it makes my day.\u00a0 It\u2019s unlikely that a few people will want all I have to offer.\u00a0 I must diversify channels for the abundance to flow!<\/p>\n

Second, it\u2019s OK to change my garden, to simplify.\u00a0 The \u201ctall garden\u201d I loved turned out to block my neighbor\u2019s view of the lake, so now I have a short garden I love, with the tall plants elsewhere in my yard, and the yards of others.\u00a0 The vine that promised beautiful flowers turned out to be so vigorous it scared me\u2013dig that out and pass it on to someone who wants to cover an old barn!<\/p>\n

And finally, the most beautiful flower becomes a weed if it\u2019s growing someplace you don\u2019t want it.\u00a0 Along with aphids, beetles, early frosts, flooding rains, and sudden frosts, I get to arbitrate life and death in the garden!\u00a0 I am the creator of this plant haven so I also am given the power to be the destroyer\u2014to decide that vinca is, after all, not what I want, even though it is thriving in my yard, or that the fancy lilies simply get on my nerves with their showy blossoms; I prefer more humble snapdragons.\u00a0 For those of us who tend towards codependency and putting others before us, gardening is a great exercise in getting to put our own needs first!<\/p>\n

There are hundreds more messages I receive from the plants on a regular basis; I will be sharing these as they arise.\u00a0 One of them is \u201cTo everything there is a season,\u201d and today\u2019s season is about sharing and relinquishing the abundance of life in order to treasure what is particularly yours to treasure.<\/p>\n