Garden meditation

While my friends in Aberdeen were enjoying nature and a few of life's good things in Templars Park, I was at home giving the kids their tea on the deck, and then spending a very contented hour or so tending to my plants.

Of course it is no secret that nurturing plants in our gardens has tremendous therapuetic and health benefits. Hundreds of thousands of gardeners down the ages have found immense satisfaction and fulfilment in growing and cultivating flowers, shrubs, vegetables and fruits. Intellectually I would sympathise - I get it - working with your hands, getting back to nature, to the soil, watching something develop from nothing with only a few readily available ingredients. How does the bean know to grow into a runner or a string? It is facinating.

Yet only very recently have I formed my own personal experience of working with plants. The area around my front of house deck has become overgrown these past 5 or so years. A number of plants needed to be culled, or ruthlessly pruned back. I was scared to start. I didn't know what to do , how to get "the eye" for what to lop and what to leave. Nor was I sure of the right time to prune. Why can't these plants just take care of themselves? Why do they need me to interfere?

But for a number of months I have been aware of the plants' need to be given a new lease of life. It has become apparent to me through my own feelings of guilt at having neglected them for so long - and through a awakened sense of that very enlightened philosophy about needing to look after your own garden first. How can I help others as a personal development facilitator if I don't look after and learn from my own?

(And already I feel myself slipping away with this thought - the inner critic or the parenting gremlin can have a great time chiding me about looking after my own, particularly my children - how much TV do I let them watch? how much fresh organic non-processed food do I get them to eat? Bla Bla Bla.)

But if we choose to surround ourselves with plants, with pets, with children even, then we have a duty to take care of them. And plants are so grateful for their care. We chop them and lop them and they reward us by springing back to life with renewed vigour, oozing gratitude and life. It's such a wonderful experience. And now I spend time each day strolling around my plants - Russian sage, Dutch Honeysuckle, Choisya, Forsythia, Fuschia, Wisteria, Magnolia, Hydrangea, Fern, Clematis, Lavender - just watching their response, observing how they are once again bursting into life.

So while Stillpoint connected in Templars Park, I connected here, through my plants, into the timeless realm of universal mind, free of personal anxieties, plucking out the easily yielding weeds from the stones and shaking off the pebbles from their roots.