“You can fix all the world’s problems, in a garden. You can solve them all in a garden. You can solve all your pollution problems, and all your supply line needs in a garden. And most people today actually don’t know that, and that makes most people very insecure.” Geoff Lawton

I think the beauty of this quote is the idea of the garden as a world. Or of the world as a garden. In the permaculture system there is a harmony, a diversity, an interdependence. There is the necessity for problem solving that relies on lateral thinking and the interweaving of form and function. Everyone and everything is a giving, everything is part of a feedback loop. The feeling is a flowing, circuitous feeling.

Sometimes we spend alot of time just sitting in front of screens, and this is a kind of energy vortex for me. I can end up feeling very disconnected, very dissociated, sluggish and un motivated. It’s kind of a necessity because there’s admin, and there’s the business of working out where the next bag of feed is coming from and there’s the guests who make bookings and require customer service, and there’s the bucket tasks (the enterprise that *is* bucket, which is an evolving thing…), and the fact that the only way I really know how to make money is through multimedia production and related activities, so the screen is a kind of necessity.

 Today was one of those days. I had promised myself a gardening day, try to finish some of the replanting and make good use of some of the ENORMOUS amounts of cowshit that Maybe produces. It was not to be, so by the end of the day, I was feeling kind of woo woo, out there, space case, just somewhat not of this world…

By the time animal feeding had finished it was well after half 6, and the sun was sinking, moving towards twilight. I grabbed my seedlings and headed to the garden beds, Jimmy Jack, my gardening assistant in tow, biting at my gloves, the dirt, the seedlings, and conveniently digging holes to drop delicate baby plants into. If there’s one thing that will settle my spacey head (I’m very Vata for those of you who know what I’m talking about… it can blow out…) it’s dirt. Under my nails, fingers deep in the red composted earth, I can begin to feel a sense of calm, a sense of reconnection. I can begin to know who I am in the world. Earthing, grounding, whatever you call it, it defuses the electricity that humms like a high song in my ears and head…

So I often think of that quote.

The other thing which I find quite relaxing (and Charlene speaks about this pleasure too) is "herding" or walking with the cows, from one place to another. In an earlier post I spoke about sensory fields and points of balance with regard to human/cattle interactions, and how subtle those communcunications can be. We have our special stick, which is just right and very long. We never use it to hit or spank her with. If anything we touch her with it lightly, kind of stroking, on her flank or her stomach.

Mostly we use it to kind of "feel" the edges of her sensory zones, her personal space, and guide her subtly, moving the stick in the air around the edges of these zones. It’s a quiet time, walking Maybe back to her night time paddock, just walking with her, in her rhythm, not speaking. Just wandering, cow-style, across the pasture towards home.

Vx