Gardening is truly like putting this room together, below, by
Miles Redd. Intentions for this room, and a garden are the same. Beauty, calm, introspection, learning, amusement, stewardship of our interior thoughts, connection to larger realms, focus, and oh my the anticipation of being at this table and knowing that whether 15 minutes or 2 hours, each will pass as the same, it would be easy to forget lunch hasn't been eaten, yes, a room like this is a proscenium, just as a garden is.
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"Every garden needs a desk.", said Susanne Hudson.
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Quick assignment. Say Susanne's 5 words, above, aloud. Next, do the Johnny Cash thing, 'Meditate on it. Then you'll understand.'
Pic, above, here.
Reading an education article almost 2 years ago, one of the experts said reading/learning from a source backlit by light from a computer screen/cell phone goes to a different brain region than reading/learning from a paper page lit by natural light. Fascinating.
Pic, above,
here.
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Epiphanies. Moments of intuitive enlightenment. Are the hunt in my garden, and they arrive, unbidden. Do you partake? Have you already been this intuitive about your garden? Perhaps it's better to ask, "Have you been this intuitive about a garden?"
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Oh dear the nattering palaver about a garden's sun/shade, how to dig a hole, mowing properly, and worse, chemicals & etc.
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Nope, a garden is not about any of those things in the previous sentence. None.
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Focus. Mental focus. From playful realms to partaking its energy, & love, to assuaging even the deepest loss. Need to make a major life choice? Major. How will you go about it? I know to go into my garden, phrase the question mentally, set it aside, in faith to G*d, trust the freedom of letting go-letting G*d for at least an hour, then poof voila, seemingly without thinking, an answer. Heads-up on the life choices that have fear as a component, I've learned to beat fear by asking, "What would I do tomorrow if I were not afraid?"
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A friend, we were in a circle of like minds in a group Lois put together, casually said, "I do my best thinking while sweating." Wow, a floodgate opened, 'Me too, me too, so harness it girlfriend', I said to myself.
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Gardens aren't what garden centers sell. Look at the top pic again, and know it is exactly what gardens are. Yet more.
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Redemptive beauty. Abiding. Places of joy, grace, not a place to work digging holes, shearing lawn, though if those things are done they are the gift of washing-the-servants-feet. Stewardship. Focus, mindset, choices. A garden is long threads of time. Opposite to tv, internet, cell phone, cacophonies.
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Focus, comes to you in a garden, you don't have to go to it. More, you get the trinity of focus,
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Focus matters enormously for success in life and yet we seem to give it little attention.
Daniel Goleman‘s book,
Focus: The Hidden Driver of Excellence, explores the power of attention. “Attention works much like a muscle,” he writes, “use it poorly and it can wither; work it well and it grows.”
To get the results we want in life, Goleman argues we need three kinds of focus: inner, other, and outer.
Inner focus attunes us to our intuitions, guiding values, and better decisions. Other focus smooths our connections to the people in our lives. And outer focus lets us navigate in the larger world. A (person) tuned out of his internal world will be rudderless; one blind to the world of others will be clueless; those indifferent to the larger systems within which they operate will be blindsided.
How we deploy attention shapes what we see. Or as Yoda says, “Your focus is your reality.” , from Farnum Street,
here.
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I'm fortunate my gardening began before cell phone/internet. I know what a garden harnesses. I know how diminished my garden is with my cell phone/internet. About 2 years ago, I had a more fabulous than normal afternoon, beyond 4 hrs, they felt like a vacation, in my garden. Coming inside, discovery why. Cell phone on the kitchen counter. Whoa, or woe, that epiphany. Disclosure, I do carry cell phone into garden. Self-employed is a great excuse, perhaps Beloved needs me, or my ankle goes, or nefarious mr. timber rattler or, or, or.
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Way back in the 1950s the philosopher Martin Heidegger warned against a looming “tide of technological revolution” that might “so captivate, bewitch, dazzle, and beguile man that calculative thinking may someday come to be … the only way of thinking.” That would come at the loss of “meditative thinking,” a mode of reflection he saw as the essence of our humanity.
I hear Heidegger’s warning in terms of the erosion of an ability at the core of reflection, the capacity to sustain attention to an ongoing narrative. Deep thinking demands sustaining a focused mind. The more distracted we are, the more shallow our reflections; likewise, the shorter our reflections, the more trivial they are likely to be. Heidegger, were he alive today, would be horrified if asked to tweet. ", wrote Goleman.
Pic, above,
here.
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Farnum Street selections, above, from, The Impoverishment of Attention,
here.
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I'm impatient to take notes, put upon paper with hand/pen, on the new desk in my garden, from yesterday's
Sunday edition of Farnum Street. Ironically, my new garden desk is currently in Susanne Hudson's garden. Bought for a harvest table, custom made by a craftsman in Susanne's town, too long for my small van, Susanne will bring it next time she has a client near me. I know she's smiling each time she sees 'my' desk, knowing how excited I am to get it.
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Garden & Be Well, XO T
