The Garden As Mother

The crystalline beads hang just right, so the sun can seep into each drop and gift tiny rainbows to those curious enough to stop and notice. I pluck them like wet berries and rub them on my face. I sit next to the thriving patch of Catnip, to continue my morning meditation.

Receiving the hypnotic frequencies of pollination, I get cozy in the warm, purple blanket of buzzing and birdsong and pick a few bee-less flowers and leaves to steep in my tea. I take a sip and ponder plants as an ancient art: how each one has a unique medicine written into its code; how each gardener acts as a conduit for this harmonious coming together of aromas, flavours, tones, and textures; how each bird and ant and butterfly dances in unison with this timeless song.

The truth is, the depth of a garden’s teachings goes far beyond what the mind can comprehend. Rather than trying to understand it all, I choose to humbly observe the unfolding beauty.

As I savour my last sips of tea, I gently gather bouquets of peonies that have grown too heavy for their stems, pluck some flowering feverfew that has grown along the path for a tincture, collect fallen rose petals from the grass below, and fill up the bird baths with fresh, cool water. The backyard birds have graciously gifted us a hearty patch of sunflower shoots below the feeder, and I collect them for nibbling. Elderflower opens her welcoming palms to the sun, releasing the nostalgic pleasure of her sweetness. The flower beds are painted with the perennial hues of camellia, foxglove, ginkgo, columbine, rose, Japanese maple, and iris.

I look beyond the sun-kissed blossoms for what are widely known as weeds, and what I know as lunch.

Lamb’s quarters, chive flowers, dandelions, pineapple weed, miner’s lettuce, and purslane are on today’s menu.

I then head for the modest vegetable patch, which is no less enchanting. Where there is chard, there are caterpillars. Where there are strawberries, there are squirrels. And where there are hydrangeas, there is me.

A certain remembrance happens when one participates in the diverse conversation that takes place in the garden—one that is censored within our common, repressive agricultural practices, but one that awakens with ease once given the freedom to fully express itself.

In the kitchen, I prepare a salad with the edible weeds I’ve collected before heading back outside to find a garnish. I add the tiny white flowers of a bolted parsley plant, a few cheery-faced pansies, a handful of wild mustard, some surprisingly spicy nasturtiums, and blue cornflower. Afterwards, my beloved and I grab our baskets and the dog and head for the forest. We collect fresh oyster mushrooms from a decaying aspen, a jarful of early spruce tips to pickle, stinging nettles to stew, horsetail for tea, and oxeye daisy buds for capers.

Growing up with elders who gardened seeded my microbiome with the living bacteria of my homeland while nourishing the very beginnings of my food relationship. As a woman who has been blessed to grow alongside the garden, I feel a profound sense of reverence when I consider the journey of each ingredient before it landed on my plate. There is an undeniable responsibility that comes with understanding how the energy of the foods that I consume affects the quality of my own becoming; how food grown in a wilder environment programs my cells how to interact with their surroundings.

I feel a depth of gratitude when I acknowledge an animal’s life as sacred and when I am nourished with meat that I know was raised on biologically appropriate food, sunlight, and prairie grasses. I feel an innate connection to the earth when I embody the wholeness of vegetables and grains grown in biodiverse soil, praised by pollinators, and fed with living compost and rich mulch.

The garden teaches us that no matter how far we separate ourselves from nature, she will never treat us as outsiders, and that each time we step foot in the soil, we will be recognized by all as part of a larger, living ecosystem.