That moment, the moment I heard the message. A whisper in my ear during meditation, a cultivated garden is harder to grow than a wild one. It clicked. My heart knew a truth I carry.
Cultivating a garden here in DC for the past 6 years is a joy and challenge. I wonder on all the reasons to do this work and why am I even dedicated to growing plants in DC. The desire of growing the garden one way and then watching how the garden decides to grow stimulates a longing to observe and learn from the land. There are the areas of the garden that need focus, demand more attention, and consistency and then there are areas that want to be left alone. I sit observing where water goes naturally and how the microclimates of the garden exist. Creating a bond with the land.
I plant the garden with care but also a sense of abandon because I never know if a plant will actually want to live there in my garden. Therefore, I plant with a sense of detachment to the outcome of the plants choice.
There is so much joy when I notice something I planted actually comes up after a year or so laying dormant — as if a period of gestation had to occur and it rises in perfect time.
Eternal Moment
by: Jan Bettes
The similes of growing a garden and my life are not lost on me. I think of the seeds I planted in the garden as a metaphor for my dreams planted. The gestation period that gives rise and fall to dreams coming to fruition. Each having their own rhythm of time, that if I observe with objectivity, I see the path before me clear on how my arrival to the present moment is based upon decisions I made up until this point. The moment of arrival blooms when all the right environmental factors exist to create birth.
And then I see it, a new plant in my garden!
Hello dear friend, I have been waiting for you to appear, I am so blessed to get to know you and understand your arrival. Whispered from my lips to the plant.
I see the soil is disturbed enough so a wild thing like me can grow now. I’ve been waiting to see this side of the garden. Interested in learning from me? The seedling replies.
Evening Primrose Seedlings
Photo by: April Rameé
A sense of how there is still a wild in the garden causes me to laugh with delight, while my own heart opens to the wild woman within — A metaphor of the ever-growing capabilities of a cultivated garden to contain wild surprises.
I am in life to discover– that wild.
See, for countless ages people have written about their garden as a representation of their body, soul, spirit, essence, and there is a reason why.
A cultivated garden does contain a certain wildness as things once forgotten appear. A sense of wild contained in the proper alignment. The element of surprise creates a sense of excitement ensuing that the reins of control can be relinquished.
I relate all these thoughts to my wild heart. The part of me that yearns to travel, discover the unknown portion of the world that has yet to be discovered by her. This wild lives inside the cultivated garden of myself in DC. A place I love and a city I cherish for the amazing people of the world I meet. The melting pot of existence in DC proves to me the harmony that can exist in the rest of the world, within my garden, and within my life. All types of species living side by side sharing the natural rhythm of the Earth. I am here to see this radiated out into the world. Not the politics, not economics, THE HEART. The heart of people who agree to accept the difference of all. I believe in us all. Big up to the wild within you.
I am ready to learn from Evening primrose (Oenothera biennis), the flower of silent love—A plant blooming at dusk into evening offering sweet messages as the sun goes down.
Pliny said, “it is an herb good as wine to make the heart merry… Of such virtue is this herb that if it be given to drink to the wildest beast that is, it will tame the same and make it gentle.”
Bring in the gentle nature to my wild heart within DC.
In the language of flowers evening primrose symbolized silent love. The flower essence is recommended for people who suffer from feeling rejected or unwanted. Such people tend to avoid close emotional contact, intimacy, and committed relationships. Evening Primrose can heal the feelings of rejection and being unlovable and enables one to be more open emotionally and to form deeper relationships.
Traditionally evening primrose was valued as an edible wild plant. The seeds were used as food by the Native Americans in Utah and Nevada and young leaves were enjoyed in salads. As a biennial in the first year it grows a fleshy root which was boiled as a nutty-tasting vegetable
I leave now with a poem that was inspired by this plant growing wild in my garden and movement through ecstatic dance in my hometown DC:
There is a place and a time where we are one.
Souls united.
Free to express, wild….
We lay as lions in a pride,
Blissful under the sun.
An ocean in the distance laps waves
of salty moist air in our direction.
There is a place and time where we are one.
Connected in passion.
Blooming as an orchid,
Suspended in the air.
Tangled roots knotted in tantric touch.
There is a place and time where we are one.
Living the expression of memories.
I miss you in this space
Haunted by your ghost in the flesh.
There is a place and time.
But not here.