June: Cultivation, Gardens, Nourishment and Reciprocity, Heart

May 31

Resources:

1. This month and next month make sure you read the whole of Kimmerer’s Serviceberry (it’s short!) - Consider reciprocity in your relationship to plants, the natural world, your body. This month we will focus on Receiving and next month Giving but consider her whole thesis and cyclical nature of plant life and our potential relationships with the plant world.

2. Read any part of the Picking Sweetgrass section in Braiding Sweetgrass, especially Epiphany in the Beans, The Three Sisters and The Honorable Harvest chapters. Consider bounty, nourishment and the delights of the gardener and receiver of harvests.

3. You might consider reading Sue’s recommendation “The Garden Against Time” by Olivia Laing. This book is part memoir of reconstructing a garden in covid time and part opportunity to explore the history of gardens and some of the darker aspects of that history. These are 2 excerpts from this book which highlight past writers and creators obsessed with, and inspired by, gardens and cultivation.
Beauty and William Morris
John Claire and Reciprocity of Knowing

Audio Interview with Laing regarding the book

4. Janine Beynus on Reciprocity in Nature Article

PRACTICE SUGGESTIONS:
1. After reading the pdfs from The Garden Against Time - see #3 above, practice outside in a garden or natural setting. What occurs in this environment that could not inside? Can one touch that knowing and reciprocity that Claire talks of? And if you have the opportunity to practice outdoors in different garden settings this month, go for it. How does the individual site’s beauty become reflected in the practice.

2. Particularly for those of you who teach, jot down words you associate with gardening and use them in your own practice as you coax yourself into poses and in your classes. eg tend, till, dig, irrigate, root, stem, seed, water, nurture, expose, compost, weed, tendril, blossom, bloom, fruit, harvest, ……..

3. Consider your practice as a garden….what do you need to compost, rotatill, clear out…? what needs delicate timely attention? Can you enjoy your practice by simply lying down and smelling the roses and rest in the growth and verdancy around you?

BUDDIES FOR JUNE

CATHERINE AND MEGAN
SUE AND SANDRA
TRACI AND BONNEY
LYNELLE AND MARY

FROM GABRIELA: “I just remembered I wanted to share with you 4 artworks I did a few weeks ago after gathering organic stuff around the garden and river. While I was arranging the compositions in a sort of art meditation, I started to remember about all the forms and ideas we have explored in the Saloon these months....lily pads, vines, seeds, growing, water....movement... There's a little poem I wrote (which I'm not sure it makes sense in English jaja) that speaks a little of these cycles”

Río adentro

de agua dulce

todo brota,

fluye

y muere

FROM KARLA: Photos of her Serviceberry

“They have the consistency of a small blueberry. They have a little cherry flavor to them. They are sweet and good to eat fresh or would make a nice jam or tart.”

MP: "I’ll transfer these photos to July page when we get to delight in the Berry World”

Recordings and References for 6/8:

Practice: https://us02web.zoom.us/rec/share/oNGujuYrYAyedAFl8lidVBX0YO886CjX-dbEMicqlCnTdro6qJiWDeYnYxQH9HIc.sLZiv-aJXILcM1xa

Discussion: https://us02web.zoom.us/rec/share/au39KkYsCmQfKVQ6haWd2N4DUrVjtl9LZkDbgKyHyRmtbmdXtLZWFYC3SqhRZY3f.nEbtniTB9crL_sRW

PRACTICE RESOURCES:

Liz Powell’s Dharmette - Practice as Gardening - 8mins

MP - Belly Bum Bloom Vinyasa - Zoom 56mins - Active practice - Our GIT folks will have access to the Basics version of this theme but this is a bit more up tempo!

MP - Garden Metta Meditation - 25mins

Anushka Ferdandopuile - Cultivation: Skilful and Unskilful Intention - Dharma Talk 52mins

From Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Kimmerer - P126

” People ask me what one thing I would recommend to restore the relationship between land and people. My answer is almost always, “Plant a garden.” It’s good for the health of the earth and its good for the health of people. A garden is a nursery for nurturing connection, the soil for cultivation of practical reverence. And its power goes far beyond the garden gate - once you develop a relationship with a little patch of earth, it becomes a seed itself.

Kimmerer continues: “Something essential happens in a vegetable garden. It’s a place where if you can’t say “I love you” out loud, you can say it in seeds. And the land will reciprocate, in beans.”