My son planted a no-dig garden this summer as part of his Senior Thesis for the University of Vermont (posted June 25, 2009). Today we stood in awe at a 6′ tall tomato plant (one of four) that have some 4-6 tomatoes ripening as I write this post.

The garden has done so much more than I ever imagined it could or would.

The sense of pride, care, loving kindness, and gratitude that flows from a little sprig of rosemary or a leaf of sage or an edible marigold flower is pretty palpable. It is as if we have added a family of sorts growing right in our backyard. I wander out there daily to just check in on the new seedlings (infants), the sprouts (childhood), emerging fruit (adolescence), mature plants (adulthood) and then their demise (aging) and ultimate death.

The diversity of plants, their various stages of growth, the problems (aphids/slugs) and hazards (heat, infection, underwater, overwater) all reflect a metaphor for the life of our family and all families worldwide.

On his balcony where my son ’starts’ his seeds, some plants were placed too close together and suffered from a widespread plague of pests. Separated, sprayed with an organic solution my son concocted, they came back vibrantly to life.

I know a garden has long been a metaphor of life yet growing it in my backyard made it ever so vivid. A garden has ups and downs like those of life that we each and all endure. And yet the garden is also a place of profound beauty, of nurturance, of peace, and of individual growth.

My son planted certain plants to keep predators away (marigolds for example) and he’s educating me on the ways to ‘harvest’ plants and the times to do so. A novice before this project, I’m discovering that I can care for ours now even without his direction (at least for a week or two).

He was away for a week and I found myself checking the leaves, feeling the soil, making sure our plants were receiving just enough water and space and were being cared for and harvested just the right amount. I found the care I used to give my children when they were young (now in college or living away from home) being transferred right over to the arugula and swiss chard. It is a useful substitution of sorts for the ‘empty nest’ syndrome many mothers face as their children move away from home.

And on top of all the love that has burst forth in honor of our garden, my other children and husband are attending to the produce and beauty it brings. Yesterday my daughter and son ate a peach off his peach tree and made pesto pasta from the basil. My daughter couldn’t get over how incredible the peach was, juicy and ripe from the afternoon sun, while the pesto pasta was vibrant and green with immediate freshness. She’s as sold as am I on the value of the garden, but my husband is too. He wasn’t up for eating the marigold while my son was gone (didn’t trust that I knew which one was the edible vs. decorative ones) but he cherishes its look and loves the arugula salads we make.

And on top of all this, we have 3,000 worms creating rich compost from our leftover garbage - in a worm compost on the side of our house.

I can’t wait to see how attached I might get to those!

I have something in common with Michelle Obama, a brand new vegetable garden in my back yard. Mine was started by my 21 year old son, home from college where he is majoring in Environmental Studies and minoring in Horticulture. For his Senior Thesis, he designed a sustainable vegetable garden in our backyard using a ‘no-dig’ method and is beginning to reap the harvest from his first crop. We have arugula, tomatoes, soybeans, kale, squash, sage, basil, rosemary, and others beginning to show the fruits of his labor.

Today we picked arugula and made our first meal from the garden, an arugula salad with mango, tomatoes, and pine nuts in an olive oil and lemon dressing. I have to say it was perhaps the best salad I have ever eaten - in my life. After eating this delicious lunch, that many restaurants in LA would charge $12-20 to serve, we looked up its nutritional content on the internet and discovered that arugula on a 5 point scale (5 being best) is a superfood of sorts, scoring 5 for nutritional value and 4.5 for fullness.

One of the most profound parts of lunch was that I could connect with its origins. We prepared the garden for planting (well ‘we’ isn’t quite accurate; my son did most of it with a little some help from his girlfriend, some buddies, and our gardener), but we (I and he) picked the arugula this morning, washed it, dried it, and created the masterpiece salad. For those of you that garden, I’m sure this is routine but I come from the school of buying my produce at the local grocery store so it really is a novel experience.

I see why growing your own food can greatly impact your relationship to food. When I saw the roots (literally) of what is found on my table, I felt a sense of heightened consciousness - a greater sense of connection between the planet and myself.

I’m just glad my son decided to create a sustainable garden for his college requirement. In the experience I saw him make something beautiful and life-sustaining out of a patch of grass. And now that we are beginning to eat the produce, I’ve discovered a new way to relate to the foods I often take for granted. Perhaps equally valuable, I’ve been able to help him when he wants my help and in that experience have a first-hand touch of the mother-child experiences that shift and change as our adult children build lives of their own.

Gardens are great metaphors for the changes we experience in life; from the growth of our children to the waxing and waning of work, family, and home experiences as we age. Having a garden in the backyard yielding food and changing with the seasons is another reminder of the constancy of change that is life. I love this reminder of our ‘changing nature’ every time I walk in the backyard. And, if I ever forget my role as a parent - to nurture and support but let our children change and grow in their own ways, the garden is a reminder. James Carse used the Garden as a Metaphor for this parent to child relationship:

A garden is a place where growth is found. It has its own sources of change…True parents do not see to it that children grow in a particular way, according to a preferred pattern or scripted stages, but they see to it that they grow with their children. The character of one’s parenting…must be constantly altered from within as the children change from within. –Carse J, Finite and Infinite Games: 1980, page 153.

I’ve read how small car sales, including hybrids and Smart cars, are declining disproportionately to larger less fuel-efficient models in this economic downturn. As gas prices drop it seems so too go our good intentions to buy fuel-efficient vehicles to help others and the planet. As I filled my Smart car with gas this morning ($10 for about 2-3 weeks of driving), it made me think how easy it is to be lulled into complacency. It happens all the time, especially when we feel anxious as in the current climate of financial stress. In times like this, we seek what we are used to, that which is most comfortable, that which we know well.

It reminded me of a lesson found in the Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge by Carlos Castaneda. In that book, Don Juan, a Yaqui shaman from Mexico tells Carlos (his student) that there are four enemies of Knowledge. The four enemies of knowledge are those challenges we must overcome to gain true understanding of ourselves and our place in the universe. To Don Juan these enemies are fear, clarity, power, and ‘old age’. It is the last enemy I’ve been thinking about lately.

What is the enemy of ‘old age’? Don Juan describes it as “This is the time when a man has no more fears, no more impatient clarity of mind, a time when all his power is in check, but also the time when he has an unyielding desire to rest” (p. 65; Castaneda, 1998).

Perhaps that last enemy might also be called becoming ‘complacent in life’. As I’ve passed the 50 year mark in age, I’ve noticed times when I’m quick to ‘give up’, accept things as they are, and let things go. In Taoist teachings, ‘letting go’ may lead to following the Way, a virtue not an enemy of Knowledge. There is a subtle difference between the two. With the former there is an abandonment of interest, a complacency to just let things go because they are too difficult or challenging. With the latter there is an acceptance of things as they are that brings with it a curiosity of knowing and a connection beyond a self-centered view. The former is what Don Juan called the enemy, a ‘desire to rest’ that seduces you to cling to comfort.

We face the fourth enemy of knowledge all the time, not merely in the later stages of life. It is what may make us cease to be interested in how our actions can harm others, or cease to be curious to discover, or cease to engage in the world, reverting to a self-centered comfort zone. Today our shifting behavior of reverting back to old buying patterns in the automotive industry because gas prices have dropped may reflect ‘complacency’, this fourth enemy of Knowledge.

Perhaps if we turn our attention to what we drive especially when gas prices are dropping, it might be a valuable reminder to not let the fourth enemy of Knowledge overcome us.