Women's Hebron Retreat and Lessons from the Garden

Every fall I attend the Women's Hebron Retreat that is sponsored by my church.  It is a weekend of fellowship, study, worship and prayer.  This year the retreat was held at Callaway Gardens and the theme was In the Garden.  Being an avid (but not always committed) gardener I was happy to speak on the topic and I put together a session on lessons that I've learned from gardening. I thought I'd share it with you.

Lessons Learned from the Garden

I do believe that there is a reason that growing things is mentioned so frequently in the Bible.  It was of course a fact of life that people in that time lived much more closely to the earth and the seasons.  Today as we are far removed from the hands that create our food and as we travel and live in insulated spaces, we can be unaware of seasons and the growing of things.  However, I think that there is a truth to be found in growing and nurturing plants that transfers to life itself. 

 Here are a few things I've learned in my garden:

• Whenever you start to grow something a little dirt always comes up first.  Isn't this true?  Step out of your comfort zone, start a new project, forge ahead on a new relationship and there is always that resistance.  Expect it.  Plan for it. Move forward anyway.

• Before you start, make a plan.  Anyone who has read my blog knows that I'm big on setting goals and planning.  It is essential.  In the Parable of the Sower, do you wonder why many of those seeds didn't grow?  Lack of planning.  :)

• Don't forget to fertilize.  People, like plants, won't grow if you don't nourish them.  You can't plant the same crop over and over in the same soil and expect positive results without fertilizing and allowing the soil to rest. 

• Don't get stuck in drought mode... Recognize the abundance in your life.  In Georgia there have been several seasons of drought lately, some worse than others.  This year was the opposite--we had an abundance of rain.  Too much really.  Despite the weather conditions though, there is often an unrecognized abundance not only in gardening but in life.  Recognize the riches that we all have and practice gratitude.

• Be open to possibilites--Expect surprises. Every year I have plants that volunteer and grow without any effort on my part.  One year an enormous watermelon vine took over my garden, seemingly without any produce.  Imagine my surprise to find a small watermelon hidden away in the middle of a rose bush that it had invaded.  Life is full of possibilities but sometimes we have to stop and smell the roses (literally) to find them.

•  Gardens follow the Law of the Harvest, not the Law of Pinocchio.  What we plant we reap... eventually in the right season.  We live in a microwave world where people expect to reap the benefit of their endeavors immediately.  That's not the Law of the Harvest, that's the Law of Pinocchio.  Every time Pinocchio lied his nose grew longer, right away.  That made for a great story, but most of the world doesn't operate that way.  Be patient and expect the results of your efforts in the right season.

• Expect to encounter obstacles-  Life is full of them.  Be a great problem solver and a non-stop learner instead of a loser.

• Enjoy the process- I spend a lot of time working in my garden but I also spend time just sitting in my garden and enjoying the beauty of it.  If you don't take time to enjoy it, what's the point? 

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Life Lessons From The Garden: Dead Heading Is A Good Idea

I am a gardener at heart and have always loved a garden of any kind.  I love flower gardens and vegetable gardens. I love structured, everything-in-it's-place gardens. I love gardens that are lush and wild and out of control.

I'm a learn-as-you-go and do-what-seems-like-the-right thing to do kind of a gardener.  This means that I don't really read up much on HOW to garden so much as I just try it out and see how it works. Here's an example of what I mean: for years I didn't even know what dead-heading was much less that it was a necessary part of gardening. If anything, I thought it had something to do with The Grateful Dead rather than gardening.  I've since learned that it's important to trim dead flowers off plants so that they can put their energy into producing new ones.  Not only does it make the plant look better, it ensures new growth. 

Dead heading is an important concept for life as well as gardening. I've been taking a hard look at what I'm doing that is productive and worthwhile and what I'm doing out of habit that takes my energy and does not produce results.  Do you have things like that in your life?  This means that I am eliminating old things and making way for new. Just like in gardening, I'm trying out new ventures and doing what seems like the right thing.  An example of this is a recent addition of a destinations column that I'm writing for Sixes Community Living magazine.  It seems like a great opportunity to write AND do something else I enjoy which is experience new locations and activities. In anticipation of writing the monthly column, I visited the Atlanta Botanical Gardens to see the current exhibit, Imaginary Worlds:  Plants Larger Than Life.  It was  one of the most incredible exhibitions I've ever seen of mosaiculture (another new word that I've learned). There are nineteen extraordinary living sculptures made of up over one hundred thousand plants.  It was so unbelievable that words can't do it justice so let me share some amazing pictures:

 

 

Each one of these creations was first built with steel and covered with a special fabric before throusand of plants were inserted one by one into the sculpture.  It is a mosaic of plants!  Aren't you just blown away with these creations?  I was and so was everyone else visiting the garden.  Here's the lesson learned though:  If I hadn't tried something new, I wouldn't have been browsing the internet looking for what was happening at local gardens and I wouldn't have found this exhibit.  It happened because I dead headed old unnecessary tasks out of my life and took on something new and challenging.  Writing a column on destinations is the perfect excuse to explore and discover new things.

What about you?  What do you need to eliminate from your life?  What opportunities are right under your nose that you could uncover?

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Is the Obstacle in your Path a Decoy?

Apparently the reason that I planted a garden this year was to feed the neighborhood deer.  They are loving my garden.  The trouble is, I'm not loving them because they have totally killed some of my plants.  I planted a couple rows of beans which came up and were looking quite healthy.  The next day I looked and the deer had eaten them down to a single stalk.  They missed a few, but came back the next day and finished them off. Same thing with my lilies which are gorgeous when they bloom.  Here's what they look like now:

The deer have kept my tomato plants and roses trimmed down to nubs and my squash haven't fared much better.

 

I have been contemplating several fixes including a fence (too expensive), noisy pie pans fluttering in the wind (not enough wind apparently) and even chopping up Irish spring soap which I've been told will keep them away.  So far every time I think they've moved on to greener pastures, I come out to find that they have decimated some other crop.

This morning while drinking my morning coffee on my back deck, a deer sauntered up and stood staring at me.  I thought it would be a good time to explain that they have an entire forest to eat and could they PLEASE leave my garden alone.  The deer just stared at me and then bounded away.  I don't think I made much of an impact.

My New Plan

 

I'm trying out a new plan though.  While visiting Gibbs garden, I discovered they use a decoy of a coyote to keep deer away. Put out by Montana Decoy Co. it is an actual photo of a coyote which is on a stand.  I ordered it immediately.  When it arrived, I put it together and set it by my front door, ready to take it out the next time I headed to the garden. I don't know how effective it will be with the deer, but it worked really well with my dog.  She took one look at the decoy and immediately began growling and snarling at it.  She paced the floor and I believe she would have attacked it had I not removed it from her sight.

Are There Decoys in your Life?

I got to thinking about how often we as humans are waylaid by decoys in our own lives.  We see a decoy and we think it is the real thing.  We anticipate that something won't work, that something is holding us back or that there is an obstacle ahead that can't be overcome.  What if the obstacle isn't real though?  What if like my fake coyote it's a decoy and if we ignored it or walked around it or even right through it we could accomplish our goal? What if we focused on our goal, our intention instead of the boulders in our path? 

I've set a lofty goal for next year.  I plan to retire from school counseling so that I can pursue my passion for writing, speaking and coaching full time.  There are a lot of decoys in the way:  money, ability, self-confidence and mindset.  Can I recognize them for what they are?  Can I work around and through them?  I believe I can.

What about you?  What is a goal you'd like to achieve but you think there are too many obstacles in the way?  What if they are really just decoys?  Are you going to let a decoy hold you back?

Just an aside:  Luckily deer can't read and this post was definitely NOT written for them.  I am hoping if you are a deer, then your answer to the last question is "YES!"

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