Garden Learnings (vol. 3, no. 5)

Here are a few things I’m sharing this month:

1. Question(s) I’m living with:

  • “What she’s offering is a little song, offering the capacity, with fairly harsh questions, to ask yourself, what am I creating? What am I doing? What am I sowing? In what way am I corresponding to the way that the future is seeking to evolve in us, with hope, through questions? It’s a song of self-examination, a song of interruption, and a song of a hoped-for accountability.” – Pádraig Ó Tuama (exploring Marilyn Nelson’s poem “The Truce”)

2. Quote I’m considering:

  • “One of the most important resources that a garden makes available for use, is the gardener’s own body. A garden gives the body the dignity of working in its own support. It is a way of rejoining the human race.” – Wendell Berry (The Gift of Good Land)

3. Poem (really lyrics) I’m pondering:

The Only Way by Mark Erelli (ht the email signature of my friend Felix Bivens)

So I won’t tell you what to believe,

I’m too young to be so cynical, too old to be naive,
But if every action breeds a reaction
Let this be mine:

I’m gonna love

I’m gonna believe
I’m gonna dream
I’m gonna roll up my sleeves

And give everything until there’s nothing left to give.

That’s the only way that I know how to live.

4. Something inspiring:

  • Homegrown National Park a movement “catalyzing a collective effort of individual homeowners, property owners, land managers, farmers, and anyone with some soil to plant in…to start a new habitat by planting native plants and removing most invasive plants.” (ht my friend Mark Herring)

5. The blog’s still on hold as I write my Rewild School book. So, here’s a song that “feels like what long summer days feel like” (ht Holstee):

If you’re reading this newsletter for the first time, you can read previous issues hereview lists of poems, questions, quotes and songs I’ve shared before here, and subscribe here.

Thanks so much. And, have a great day! – shawn

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