Lesson of the Pill Bugs

The first year of creating the garden, I put down alder chips in all of the aisles. I later discovered that I had made a wonderful habitat for pill bugs. There were thousands of them. I contacted an old island master gardener who advised me on ways to trap them. I couldn't imagine spending that much time and effort in what was clearly an insurmountable task. I felt depressed and was sure the garden would never be successful as a result of my error.

The garden made it through its first year, but the pill bugs ate the roots of young plants and seedlings. I found I had to plant things that had a more mature root system or choose things that the pill bugs didn't like. I resented them every time I saw them and really perceived them as the enemy.

In the Fall I made a 4ft high compost pile with the remains of the tomato plants. In the Spring I saw that the pile had mostly decomposed. When I started sorting through it to shovel out the compost, I saw down underneath the debris and in the beautiful compost, a whole community of pill bugs hard at work. In that moment I saw the connection between the pill bugs and the compost. In a flash I understood that of course, they are decomposers! That's their job and look what they are doing to help the garden. I suddenly felt grateful for them.

After that awakening, I never felt the old feelings for the pill bugs ever again. When I saw one, I felt grateful. What's really interesting is that there don't seem to be so many of them in the garden. They are there but we are now in a more harmonious relationship. All because, I believe, I experienced the shift in my attitude and understood them as allies and that we were working together to enhance the whole.

Lesson of the Raspberries

A friend gave me some of his raspberry plants and it wasn't long before I noticed that they were really struggling. Their leaves were turning yellow and I was advised to take them all out and burn them. I couldn't bring myself to do it, so I needed to find a way to work with them energetically to create the greatest potential for them to heal themselves. That's when I started asking for assistance from the raspberry deva. This was a big shift for me at that time. I'd never done that before even though I had taken a workshop with Dorothy MacLean, one of the founders of Findhorn in Scotland. I thought I needed to be more in tune or advanced in my understanding to do it.

Since I was desperate to save the raspberries, I figured that I'd go ahead and try it. Then I figured if I was willing to try that, then I'd call in the ancestors like the Native Americans teach. From there, I just started calling for help from all the sources of love from the unseen world that I could think of like the master teachers, friends, and garden guru Luther Burbank.

During this early healing work with the raspberries, I went to a Hawaiian Mythology book to find the meaning of the name makua (the name we chose for the stone in the center of the garden) and came upon the term "aumakua" which is their word for the guardian spirits of your family. I had already been chanting om(aum) for the raspberries, so when I heard the word aumakua, I knew an important connection was being made. So I began to include them in the group I was invoking. I would put my arms up to the sky to invoke this energy and observed that in this posture I felt that I was proclaiming a powerful gigantic YES! So I began doing that each time I did the invocation.

I decided to try Therapeutic Touch on the plants, too, since it felt healing when Anthony did it on me. So I would walk up and down the aisles allowing my hands to express my intention for clearing their energy fields of anything that would interfere with their healing.

In a few days the plants started to respond. Their leaves were greener and there was a subtle perkier feeling from all of them. I continued doing this each day when I was in the garden and by summer the plants ended up creating 12 ft tall arches loaded with lush red raspberries. Someone, probably Anthony, dubbed it "Raspberry Heaven" and that is what it has been called by everyone ever since.

The raspberries taught me to apply what I had learned to the garden as a whole. I began to stand at the gate in the morning in my “Yes” position and attune to the unseen allies that care for and love the garden. Afterwards I would walk around the outside of the garden fence, repeating the blessing that Anthony created: "In the Light of the Divine, In the Spirit of the Sacred, Shining Forth All Love". Back at the gate, I felt aligned with my intention and ready to enter the sacred space of the garden and be present to the needs of the living creatures within it.