Eternal Thoughts from the Garden Divine

It rained hard last night and was actually cold. The sound of rain pounding on the roof woke me up and so did the breeze. The early mornings after a rain are the best. Everything is so fresh in the air and I wake up to the sounds of the earth calling. Rising out of the earth, the sounds of animals and birds flood the bush with their voices. I remember that sound from the yoga farm I stayed at with the kids in Argentina. How the sounds of twinkering animal voices pulled me from the twilight of dream sleep and into the outer world. My son said while on the yoga farm, "Hey, we don't fight so much here." True. How can one be upset when one is in the garden divine?

I pushed my freshly made bran muffins made with garden bananas onto the kids to some success before Tonio drove them to school. Then I sat down to meditation on the balcony over looking the garden. My alter is a wooden vegetable crate I brought back from Argentina. Some people bring back souvenirs from their travels; I bring back vegetable crates. It makes a nice little table. I have a bell, some candles and a picture of the shri yantra. I typically practice Buddhist style with no particular thing to gaze at, but I felt the desire to meditate on a yantra and that was the one that popped up to me. In meditation, just to sit is the work. To watch my busy mind take pauses and begin to grasp some strength and clarity that comes from the practice is enormous. I start to carve away a lot of clutter, a lot of chatter and weight of ideas. The fear has disappeared. The purity of the moment comes through and it permeates my being and prepares it for peace to enter. Yoga practice moves the energy of the morning, and it is all a sacred act to set the day straight with a foundation of deep anchoring in the body. And at 45, a regular yoga practice keeps me well, pain free in the body, and looking pretty darn good. And that is joyful. Things have been so joyful and peaceful since moving here. It is a shift of energy 1000 degrees. The bizarre drama of the past two months, even the whole transitional year in St. Croix, disappear as a closed book. Now I begin again. I will sit down to create an outline of my memoir after I warm up writing here my journal of the Queen of Bohemia in her St. Croix kingdom. With Tonio the shaman man/gardener providing food and wisdom. “This is my entertainment,” he says of gardening. It is my peace and healing. Tonio farms armed with a machete, digging up the soil and planting seedlings for a vegetable garden he cleared from the oregano brujo. He made a special area for my kitchen and medicinal herbs around the plantains he planted. He planted the shoots of lemon grass in a row, and parsley and lemon balm will follow. I'd like to plant tumeric and ginger eventually. We transplanted the racau, which is like cilantro, and it seems to be hanging in there. Tonio saved seeds from a passionfruit we got at a friend’s farm, and we now have passion fruit seedlings growing in pots too. He even saved the seeds from tomatoes I planted from seed that I got from a hardware store. They were so plump Tonio liked the variety and saved the seed. So that new generation growing in the garden now. The rain was good to bless and drench the newly planted tomatoes, eggplant, peppers and basil. “Gracias a dios,” Tonio will say, kissing his hands and lifting them to the sky. The unemployed should find such solace in doing such simple things aligned with nature. Why are we “employed” at all? Why can’t we all just hang out, do yoga, meditate, garden and eat well, dance under the stars, tell stories, make love, and worship the earth and spirit with each other? I don’t really need much else. When you are living on these types of places the whole world just drops away. It is profound. It really is a little piece of paradise, as eternity rests here in this moment in the garden. I really am creating a little yoga farm here. Starting with some herbs and kitchen vegetables. Transplanting fallen avocado pits that are sprouting into pots, doing a lot of yoga in between. Add it’s all yoga. On Sunday I brought the kids down to the garden and we prayed by the plantains. Prayed as a family for the first Sunday in our new home. We prayed for new beginnings and chanted Om Gum Ganapatayea Namaha, as I’ve been chanting that ceaselessly for days now. It is my refuge and now it is my reality. Amazing how mantra can transform your reality as it transforms your consciousness. Oh, the things you create. Watch out! I’ve been cooking with the eggplant and cabbage from the garden we picked before leaving the other house. Made a great quinoa Asian dish by stir-frying them all up. Tonio and I sat in the garden eating leftovers for lunch. He had never eaten quinoa before. I told him quinoa comes from South America and that the Quechua people ate it. It came down from the goddess, legend has it, and it’s a complete protein. Natives didn’t have any malnutrition problems until the Spaniards took over and destroyed their culture and forbade the worship of the plant. Now we worship her all over again. Worship the goddess, the earth, plants and food. We worship our bodies, our families and the deep love that springs from all of it. It’s hard for me to do anything else. My heart only wants to be in the garden, do some cooking and care for the kids. I teach an adult yoga class now for the teachers at the school. It keeps us all sane and fit. There is a science fair at school My son’s entry involves behavioral psychology. My daughter’s is about making slime with borax and glue. These types of simplicities heal me the most. They go straight to the heart - the heart of the family. All the home arts give me great peace and security. That bond and knowing that everything is going to be ok. Everything is perfect as it is and we are all here together, bonded in family, the garden and home in unity and in love.