When you think about it, most everything in our life comes from plants.   The air we breathe has been expelled from plants after converting the CO2 expelled from us.  Most of the food we eat started as a plant.  Even the meat we eat originally ate plants.  Wine and beer and alcohol started with plants.  The clothes we wear, started as plants (not counting modern synthetic fibers.)  Starches, oils, fats, cellulose and waxes started as sugar.  We don’t always think about the role plants play in our lives, but they play a huge role in our homes in our lumber, basketry, rope, musical instruments, furniture and paper.  We may not all have a green thumb, and feel that we cannot keep a plant alive, but if one feels guided to connect with our roots in living in conscious harmony with our amazing planet Earth, it is a most worthy part of our ascension process to work together with nature.

Dr. Wayne, in his blogpost entitled Seeking the Great Spirit, wrote, “It’s all too easy to forget our connection to the natural world when we live surrounded by technology and the artificial constructions of our amazing modern life…The air, water, trees, minerals, clouds, animals, birds, and insects are all essential to the sacred web of life which we too often take for granted.”  When we spend time in nature, our connection with God, and our higher self strengthens.  It clarifies despite the fuzzy fog of other people’s problems, the illusions of chaos in the world, and anything that might cloud our path going forward.

Five years ago, when my husband and I were ending our four year RV life and looking for the place to set down roots, we had to compromise whether to buy a house in a development, or in the middle of nowhere surrounded by nature (guess who wanted the latter.)  We ended up in a little development surrounding a large lake, in a rural area, on a tiny plot of land… with a garden.  It works for us. You would not believe how much food I can grow on this tiny 1/3 acre patch of land.

First, the large garden takes up most of the back yard.  Then there are landscaped areas across the front and on an entire hill on the side.  Those were primarily filled with perennial flowers with a few fig bushes.  Too many flowers, really.  My first priority when we moved in was to install fabric weed barrier with mulch and thin out the flowers to give them space to thrive.  I gave them to my mail lady.  I still kept most of the flowers, just thinned them out.  We had an infestation of thistle that seeded themselves via the wind from the empty lot next door.  I fastidiously attacked thistle until it was eradicated.  Then, I was drawn to a book on edible landscaping by Michael Judd.  I began to steer my vision with a permaculture intent, and that drew me to creating a home backyard circle of sustainability.

Edible landscaping means just what it sounds like.  You substitute some of the non-food producing shrubbery for plants and bushes that produce things that are edible, like berries.  If you are going to eat from your own yard, it just makes sense to abstain from toxic weedkillers like Roundup and bug sprays like Seven and seek safer organic alternatives like those offered at gardensalive.com.

Permaculture, by definition, means the development of agricultural ecosystems intended to be sustainable and self-sufficient.  So, now that I was growing food in some of our landscaping, I needed to find natural organic ways to feed them that wasn’t going to break my wallet.  One of my first projects in this house was to dig a 350 gallon goldfish pond with a waterfall.  I just knew I needed it in an energetic health sense.  The beauty of this was that everytime I clean out the filter, I can use the yuck to feed my gardens.  The house already came with three compost bins.  Two small and one big.  Then I got worms.  No, not what it sounds like, I got a worm ranch from Uncle Jim’s Worm Farm.  Those little beauties break down our household scraps so fast, and they are happy to do it.

Change can be scary, but it is inevitable.  Deciding to do something differently brings it’s own learning curve, but doing so can enrich one’s physical and spiritual life at the same time, as well as teach our children for future generations of survival based on sustainability.  Right now, everywhere, there are new gardening movements cropping up, so to speak.  Permaculture, sustainability, polyculture, native planting, eco-friendly landscaping, companion planting, food lots and food forests, are all terms in an emerging growth of us going back to growing safe energy packed food locally, and there are more terms and technologies popping up every minute.  The last several years of warnings about large corporate farming refusing to be accountable for the toxicity in their practices that they have been passing on to consumers simply because it improved their bottom line, has led us to take matters into our own hands and grow our own food at home, safely.  New technologies and inventions are springing up (so to speak) for home yard food production systems like Flow Beehives, Chicken Tractors, Earthbags, Cob Ovens… ways to grow a never-ending supply of salad greens or medicinal herbs.

The difference now in this new energy is that we are not acting in survival mode, but rather because we are evolving spiritual beings connected with the Earth, to become better caretakers of her.  We have graduated to drop the illusions and focus on what is important.  As I heard someone say recently, this is the only planet you are born to, which you have to pay to live on.  As we evolve with the new energy, we can turn that completely around.  We really can.

I have had some of the most amazing spiritual growth quietly working in my garden.  It’s actually a form of meditation as I feel connected to the Earth, myself, my higher self, and God because God is in each and every atom that makes up nature.  If you do not have good soil, there are ways to grow above the ground like raised beds or growing in straw bales.  If you are feeling a pull to try it out, then use the Law of Attraction to create your own personal food lot.  Ask your higher self, your guides and helpers to bring you the resources and knowledge you need to do it.  Feel inspired, energized and rise to the vibration of the life-giving energy of plants.  More on the amazing benefits of working with plants in posts to come.