2019, landscaping in progress.      

   

2026 – settled and sunken earth…

I’ve been looking at feelings of powerlessness this morning. What is power? Are we ever truly without it? These pictures are not about my garden but about life, about all the things I feel are out of control. When that “no control” feeling comes, it’s the inner contraction and negativity that really stops me, and creates a blockage of energy, much more than any external force.

For 55 years I’ve had a vegetable garden, in the early years, a huge one (30x 60)  from which I canned and fed our family all year. I loved those gardens. Sunchokes ten feet tall shined over everything and the tubers, under hay bales, were fresh and delicious when dug in February!

Last year for the first time, I couldn’t get down on the ground to plant and weed. This April I built (with help) a small raised container and started many seeds in my kitchen that we put out in late May. I had a few each of special favorite treats like lemon cucumber and loved eggplant and squash varieties.

               My walker & wheelchair-inaccessible raised-bed  vegetable garden. Plants and weeds!  Grasping!
Posts hold very effective fishing line that keeps the deer away (and hold clotheslines to dry clothes)
Those squash plants ARE full of flowers and just now bearing small fruit!

In 2018 we did some remodeling of the house to make it wheelchair accessible for Hal. We removed two separate interior steps, kitchen to dining room, dining room to back deck, and the above new dining room and raised deck were added so he could get outdoors. As contracted, the builder brought in the necessary truckloads of dirt and then sod to create a gentle slope from the end of the deck out into the yard, so Hal’s wheelchair could be brought out under the trees and to the now small vegetable garden. At first, it worked perfectly. He loved to watch me in the garden. Then, gradually, the dirt settled. This summer neither of us can get into the back yard. Frustration.

(a footnote here that a loving, longtime, out-of-state sangha friend has offered to come visit in the fall and help to resolve this for next year; Maybe a ramp or 2 outside wood steps big enough for walker/wheelchair?  Thank you!)

I used to imagine and create; sculpture and so much more…There was a knowing, “if I can imagine it, I can build it.”  Part of the difference is aging, of course. I simply have less strength and energy. But part is a diminished sense of trust in my power to envision and co-create. That loss is not just aging. Instead of stepping ahead with joy, I hold back? Is it grief? Anger? Fear? In meditation I come to all of these. Fear of what? Is there a natural letting go as we age, looking ahead beyond this world. But I’m still very much of this world and there’s so much that asks loving attention. Yet I feel the diminishment in flow.

Meditating in bed this cool morning under the covers, I observed an emotional or energetic  layer (unsure which word is most accurate) almost like a blanket, a protective layer I’ve drawn around me through the years,  wishing for some invulnerability. The bedroom was cold and when I got back in bed to meditate, I turned the electric blanket on low, just a soft heat. I became aware of the part of me that wants to be warm, comfortable, free from struggle. Don’t we all? And life does seem to involve struggle.

What is struggle? Creating a 12-foot bronze sculpture commission was energetically hard work, but not a struggle. I was filled with joy as I worked! The hours flew by. And there was never fear or anger in the work, just occasionally physical exhaustion, when it became hard to give it all the energy it asked. The sculpture was a joyful expression, not an opponent, even when it was not smoothly taking shape.

Powerful woman (free of doubt)  with welding torch! Working on sculptures,1968-89

Co-raising three sons; founding Deep Spring Center, twenty feet up repairing a leaking roof, cutting down a dead tree with my chain saw: similar creative effort needed. Challenging but free of grasping. Meditation gives me the phrase “effortless effort.” I can see that things like my restricted access to my garden or to the lake swim area as I described last week, the pain in my body and “fixing” that pain, are often met as  “overcome “ not “co-create”.

My intention for this week: to be more mindful of when I shift from an open-hearted state of co-creation into one of contracted effort. What fear or pain, that is not being invited into my heart, is behind the unbalanced effort. What allows it to release?

In the weedy vegetable garden, the first small  baby squash appear
In the accessible top-garden, well-weeded and mulched Cosmos blooms!