First Harvest

Ah, the beauty of summer! It is in the garden, for sure. A new venture for us, growing veggies, and it is already proving to be a most exciting responsibility. Exciting responsibility? Really? It struck me today as I crawled around on my hands and knees between the rows, picking fists-full of cilantro and fragrant basil, a shiny red pepper, a few gorgeous yellow pear tomatoes, and some pungent radishes -- every creation, every new endeavor is ripe with responsibility. But it is also abundant in its rewards.

With the new house last fall came the delicious opportunity for my inaugural vegetable garden this summer. Now I've been known to let the daily maintenance of things fall by the wayside if I have other, more intriguing interests to pursue. So as the cool of the spring gave way to longer days and a warmer sun, I wasn't thinking about responsibility. I was thinking about creating a masterpiece and getting those cute little seedlings into the ground. Weeding? Watering? And eventually harvesting and processing the garden's bounty?

Well, I figured, there had to be a garden before there could be a bounty to worry about. First things first. I managed to get most of the plants in the ground fairly early in the season. Gratefully, Mother Nature has lent me a helping hand in the watering department...thank you! But weeding and harvesting is another story.

I could have been meticulous with keeping the weeds down, bringing my inner perfectionist into play. After all, it was my first garden...shouldn't it look pretty? I must admit, I did go into this adventure with that fantasy. I imagined myself out in the garden every afternoon, putzing around, pulling weeds, whistling while I worked. Of course, I didn't realize I had this expectation about the garden until my back went out shortly after waging war on the buckthorn starts in our newly acquired woods. As I lay resting and healing, as days turned to weeks, the weeds in the garden got thick and unruly.

Knowing weeding was out of the question and that I didn't want the garden I had hoped for for so many years to go to seed, I got creative...I cut up big paper sacks to lay between the rows. Pretty? Not so much. But it got the job done. With my new endeavor came the responsibility to keep it up. There was no rule book that said how it needed to happen. Left to my own devices, I was my own expert, my own teacher. To maintain my creation in my partnership with Mother Nature, I needed to do my part...however I could.

So today, with a healthier back, I reap the first of many harvests from our backyard oasis and look forward to homemade pizza with pesto and tomatoes and peppers for dinner. As I create anew in my kitchen from the bounty of the garden, I can't help but wonder -- how often do we set aside the risk of a new undertaking because we are afraid it will be too much work? Because we aren't sure where to begin, or worse yet, how to maintain our vision?

What I know for sure is that the responsibility inherent in living a creative life full of risks and new adventures never tasted so good!//

Flowering Consciousness

Allergies aside, I absolutely adore this time of year. On my morning walk yesterday, the apple blossoms were poised to burst open at any moment. A few overachievers had already flashed the deep blush of their inner petals, permeating the air with a scent that stopped me dead in my tracks, nose raised skyward to locate the source. What joy to be led by a sense other than seeing or hearing! Those senses -- the usual suspects -- that we grow almost bored with because our experience of the world is limited by their slim range of capabilities. We begin to expect, in the habitual way humans tend to find comfort, that this is the only way...the right way.

Since my last entry, it's been a month of purging -- spring cleaning like I've never known it. Moving all the furniture, having carpets cleaned, rearranging, painting, sorting through the accumulated gunk, getting rid of what no longer serves us, making space. It feels as though the fog of confinement that a winter in Minnesota inevitably brings has finally lifted. And with it has come the openness and willingness to allow, sometimes through different senses than I'm used to utilizing, what yearns to be expressed -- and how.

The past year-and-a-half of writing from the intention of publishing has taught me many things, not the least of which is that that is not my preferred M.O. I want to create for the pure act of expression, the way it wants to come, sharing what it wants to share, living in the moment rather than being driven by external expectations, pressure and definitions of success. For now, I'm letting writing be what it's always been for me -- something that comes in cycles, its natural ebb and flow, pulling me in at will and setting me free when it's done.

I've always felt this way about my creative endeavors but have never quite allowed it. Being present to the process of creativity, to the now, I can be open to catching the scent of apple blossoms on the breeze and willing to follow wherever it leads.//

Peaceful Celebration

I completed the first draft of my memoir yesterday and sent it off for review. I had been sitting on it for a couple months, knowing that I had the opportunity to have it looked at once I completed it, yet couldn't quite manage to get it done. Jumping into it in fits and starts over those months, the task seemed too daunting, too hard, too taxing...all the things I tell myself for why I can't see a thing through to completion.

So I questioned it: why couldn't I get my manuscript done? Because the Saboteur told me I couldn't, that's why.

The Saboteur has been lording over me for more years than I can count, the fact that I never seem to finish anything. "Never" and "Always" being those exaggerations that the Saboteur is so particularly fond of to keep us paralyzed, under control, reigned in tight. Faced with the prospect of needing to finishing my manuscript, I was downright terrified.

Enter the Saboteur's partner-in-crime, Perfectionist. If the Saboteur gets edgy, if it thinks he needs reinforcements, he calls in his old pal for back-up. In my case, personally, this is particularly effective. Not only did I worry about whether I could "ever" get finished, I was convinced by the Perfectionist that whatever I did throw together would be crap. They give me the one-two sucker punch and sit in waiting, sure that my answer to all of this resistance will be "Why Bother?!?"

One of the things I vowed to do for myself this year is to question my assumptions. What is it that holds me down, holds me back, makes me careful and coming from fear? Listening to The Saboteur and Friends rather than my own wisdom.

Calling my hero, Courage, I found the guts to consider that as close as I was to finishing my manuscript, what if I just did it? Who cares if its crap? I mean, really. That's what first drafts are for; take a stab at it and see what comes next. Babies don't spring from the womb able to talk and walk; it takes time. And practice. And trying and mistakes and trial and error. Creative projects are just like children and deserve the time and the space to develop and grow and become, regardless of what others might expect of them.

The saying goes, we can do anything we put our mind to. I'd like to ammend that a bit: We can do anything we put our heart and mind to. The resistance we encounter through the mind isn't all bad -- it requires us to call upon the courage of the heart to continue on. We need both, in order to bring our best selves to our work. And to the world.

I have to admit, I expected some degree of fanfare when I clicked "send" and emailed my manuscript off to its reviewer. But there was none. Instead, there was a peaceful celebration, a content, satisfied quiet that let me know the Saboteur and his band of merry mischief makers were taking a break. If they're on vacation, it's all good. I'll take it.//