Everyone wants to get out and play in the dirt! It’s a refreshing feeling. Like when you were a child, you used to have fun mudslinging with your friends, laughing away at how silly each of you looked covered in grime. You knew how your mom would feel when she saw you, ordering you into the bathtub.
Maybe human nature is trying to recapture the simplicity of our childhood play days? Walking through the neighborhood, I notice more homes with cultured gardens. They have raised planters in the yard, balcony vegetable patches, and urban rooftops brimming with patio gardens.
We’ve weathered a storm and now chose to take back our power to grow our own. The bliss of planting tiny seeds and watch them sprout gives us a comforting feeling. The vitality of Life!
Soil is safe to touch. There’s no need for social distancing. Soil makes you feel better because it’s filled with probiotics and good biology that heal you physically, mentally, and spiritually. It’s natures’ genuine pharmacopeia to mankind.
There’s a transformation with a garden. The transformation is our physical development and the plants growing in soil. We liberate ourselves from confinement, as our relationship with soil lifts our vail of consciousness. We always knew about soil, and we knew what to do with it, but it’s through gardening that we’ve come to appreciate our natural connection.
You can be certain that the affection you deliver in cultivating growing plants is mutual, as you see them climbing upwards to sunlight. This satisfies our human need to nurture, as that plant is looking up at us. Like a parent child relationship. You take pleasure in keeping it safe, giving it food to grow, and watching in amazement when the child does well. In this case, your plants are your children.
The serenity of sitting in the garden just looking at the greenery, with aromatic fresh blooms smiling back at you in appreciation, feels satisfying. It’s like spending time with dear friends. With a turbulent world affecting everyone, the garden becomes a sanctuary to mind and spirit.
Our ancestors have called it “earth magic”. In nature, we can be sure of the land. It’s the natural synergy among the elements that work together to provide a secure structure. The wind dry’s, while the water quenches thirst, and fire navigates passion that moves the spirit in soil to produce a verdant garden. And then there is life, our very roots are created. It’s almost biblical, as we all grew from the garden of Eden.
It’s your soil that produced this, you just had your hands in it, to till it the right way. You were the creative director and manpower that supported the soil, enabling life-sustaining nourishment and fragrant beauty in your garden. Doesn’t this give new dimension to the notion of regenerative agriculture? Who’s helping who? Isn’t soil helping you to regenerate your senses and lift your spirits so you feel human again?
Commercial Farming is the business of growing food to feed the masses. Though we understand the connection with soil – commercial business has dismissed our divine connections through a supersize me concept: “get big or get out,” thus deploying heavy machinery for farming that hinders progressive quality soil.
The winds of change blow a new normal towards us, as we strive for regenerative agriculture, our soil, in turn, helps rejuvenate humanity. With the rooftop gardens and patio planters visible, the dust of soil breath life unto us again as we make our way back to the garden.
"We are stardust, we are golden, we are billion-year-old carbon, and we got to get ourselves back to the garden."
- Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young: Deja-Vu Album - Woodstock
It’s been about 50 years since the mass gathering of 400,000 people in the garden at a farm in New York. Woodstock was the perfect location.
People came from everywhere because they were frustrated and angry. The music played in the garden offered them hope for tomorrow, just like pictures of rainbows hung in our windows today; reminding us not to abandon hope for better days.
Martin Luther King was preaching at the footsteps of the Whitehouse. Humanity fighting for integrity back then too. The cold war was ending, where we lost lives, like we did today, to an invisible harsh pandemic.
"That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind."
Neil Armstrong - The Apollo Mission
50 years ago, we reached for the stars, and touched the moon. Today we’ve launched our probes to Mars, but yesterday’s social events continually linger over us like a mysterious Deja-vu.
We chose a garden then, like we do today, because our natural connection to our soil raises humanity through sustenance. We need our garden, it’s our home.
The important point we may have neglected to consider in years past, is our relationship with soil is reciprocal, and what we put into it, we surely will get out of it. If we pillage our forests, which are the lungs of the Earth giving us oxygen, how will we breath? If we deplete our soil, and trade-off on synthetic replenishments, we will be lacking important crop nutrients which feed us. If we dismiss the importance of our soil, we will not have the ground to walk on, and dwell no more in a garden. -Our beautiful blue planet Earth, our own back yard!
We can revive our living soil. We believe that it will take the contribution of our global village to make this a reality. Join us as we learn from soil scientists, and experts on our journey, as we advocate for soil consciousness, which is pivotal to our health, our climate and is our legacy for future generations.
