Gaia: How to Get Happy From Your Garden and Help Mother Earth Thrive As We Are Part of Her Body
Heal the soil, let the soil heal you
10 years ago when we first moved to our current home, I’d never lived anywhere more than five years, with an average of two, maybe two and a half. Our front lawn was slightly hilly, covered in grass and perfect for swinging around young kids and letting them play tag. Our top soil was non-existent. Under a tiny layer of fairly fertile dirt was industrial beige God-only-knows-what - sand? Artificial rock? I have no fucking idea. It looked identical to how those gaping holes look in Mother Earth’s body downtown where there is huge construction underway for more buildings. I deeply wish they’d turn some of those office buildings into home-buildings instead of all this construction, but it’s not within my control. So I will return to what is: my yard.
10 years after we moved in, 6 years after I let my grass die and nurtured space friendly to nature as well as to my family of humans - with herbs, trees, sunlight, stumps, wildflowers, bees, squirrels, bunnies, birds, an elderberry and a lilac bush, two young magnolias I bought for 49.95 a piece online, worms, dragonflies, sloths, moths, butterflies and many insects I don’t even recognize…we have a deep layer of top soil that makes me smile.
It has grown in a natural symphony with our very human life. One year I couldn’t bear to cut down a Christmas tree, so we bought some kind of conifer in a pot. I planted it outdoors, right next to the driveway, and with a little extra love the first year, it took root and is flourishing greatly! I think it’s a juniper, but I’m not sure. See, I really am not expert. I just love my garden-yard because I love our Earth. Along the ways, with my husband’s help I created a stump circle, then a line of stumps along the perimeter of the yard facing the sidewalk and street…then stumps were added as seats or just for fun and to add to the whimsy and wildlife. It’s always fun to watch them decompose and then scoop up some natural mulch and add it to something living that can benefit from it. Several of my stumps have come from trees I have watched undergo their transition. It deeply hurts to watch trees cut down, however it was an honor to send love to the trees and support them in their transition and then to host their stumps as part of the continuing festivities of the cycle of life. Often our stumps naturally shroom out after a good rain, and the mushroom are fascinating to observe!
Last year, my neighbor disposed of some ferns and I replanted them, especially for my husband, who loves ferns deeply. I thought they died, but my intuition was that I shouldn’t throw them away or give up, but to hold space for the miraculous. This year, I was delighted to find three healthy ferns exactly where I’d planted the ones I was sure had died! Several years ago, I watched a butterfly carrier its dead mate that was stuck to its wing all the way up to heaven…or at least an extremely high branch. The miracles of life and death and resurrection are all part of the garden.
As we see so much of our old world decomposing - and many elements of it indeed that need to decompose - it can be depressing if we do not realize the soilutions are right at our finger tips: Nature is so resilient when given even a little bit of love and space to work with….we can start where we are to nurture ecosystems that support the whole and that also support us. We don’t have to be parasitic; we can be symbiotic with Grandmother Earth.
There are many tools available for us to live in harmony without the need for war, exploitation or extractive industries.
Free energy is a true option. I’ve posted previously on the Generic Air Gen model that uses nano pores and infinitesimal amounts of moisture, developed by scientists at UMass Amherst.
Mycoremediation can be used for everything from purifying run off water to helping clean up ecological damage from oil spills.
Just as energy can harm the human body, as well as fish, birds, dolphins, whales and the environment as a whole - whether its experiments from Alaska or wind power or other sources, such as excess EMFs or sonics from military planes and I’ve posted on some issues around that - energy can also benefit, uplift and heal. Intention can bring upliftment. We can open to new vistas of wellbeing within ourselves, our world and our interrelatedness with all life. There are certain frequencies that can work in beneficial ways, but we can also simply put ourselves in a high vibrational state by entraining with Source, with our own oversoul, with high vibrational flowers and flower essence and with Nature Herself.
As we heal the soil, the soil can support literally grounding these higher frequencies.
As we are mostly water, as we work with the water frequencies, as shown by Maseru Emoto, we can we heal our bodies, which then are easier conduits for healing the earth.
For those interested in how we can heal the soil, check out how mycoremediation is being used by grassroots movements here.
As we heal ourselves, we heal the earth; as we heal the earth, we heal ourselves.
Did you know that playing in the soil can lift you up and help you tap into a greater state of wellbeing? From Forbes:
One meta-analysis of the research, published in the journal Preventative Medicine Reports, found that gardening has a wide range of health outcomes including reductions in depression, anxiety, and body mass index, as well as increases in life satisfaction, quality of life, and sense of community. Results of another study showed that gardening increased life satisfaction, vigor, psychological wellbeing, and cognitive function. Further research on gardening found it improved life satisfaction and mood. Digging in the dirt really does lift your spirits. The digging stirs up microbes in the soil. Inhaling these microbes can stimulate serotonin production, which can make you feel relaxed and happier.
Is it possible we feel better when we spend time in our gardens and in the soil because we are meant to be a part of these ecosystems rather than isolated in germ-free kitchens, breathing antiseptic air? I believe the earth is alive, holy, our home, our mother and friend. I believe we can thrive best when we reconnect with her…we feel more…ourselves. Yet also more expansive beyond our little human egos and worries. We reconnect with wonder, childlikeness and awe. We feel our interconnection with the natural world and with the energies that are so alive within it.
I first heard of the Gaia Hypothesis, which is the idea that the earth is alive and self-regulating when I found the work of Lynn Margulis as an 11 year-old homeschooled kid. I was figure skating hardcore at the time, training with the Russians, as they were called, although looking back, I think for the most part, they were Ukranian, and I can’t think why it was normal for the figure skating community at large to simply call them, “The Russians.” But we did, and no one seemed to mind. We were just there to skate. I got Oksana Baiul’s lessons when she was hungover. I wanted only to take lessons from Galina, but Bob, who was the director, I would describe as a less well known and less successful version of Larry Nassar, seemed to have his eye on me. He later settled with another skater who sued him, who always back when I was training, seemed to get the spot light and the solos and I wondered why…she was a good skater, but it didn’t make sense. As an adult I understand what happened there. I only noticed the flattery and the interest in keeping me all for himself when I would prefer my lessons with Galina, but my mother watched the way he placed his hand on the inside of the diamond shaped hole in the back of my skating dress and instantly knew. Her mother bear instincts, so often overprotective, in this case were exactly on point, and she saved from from all that before it ever began. And so I was free to take lessons with Galina, with the only backlash being that Bob was the only one we knew who “cut” tapes for the music of each program back before digital editing was a thing available to us, and he made an intentionally poor music edit. When I gently mentioned that it has problems, he said, “There are choices and there are consequences.” Indeed, after a year of intensive training with olympians, and a follow up year back at my home rink with another coach, I decided to call it quits. I wanted to skate to share my joy with the world in a sacred way and there simply didn’t seem to be a healthy context to do it: It was either flirt to success and flirt with eating disorders in the competitive world, or Disney…not great choices. Still, I’ll never forget getting to share the ice with my heroes, Yekaterina Gordeeva and Sergey Grinkov, whose kindness and love and beauty were something truly special to behold. Nothing snobbish in them, ever. And while I was training, I was doing very little in the way of traditional school studies and instead of writing a 100 page sequel to Tolkein’s Lord of the Rings and nerding out on Lynn Margulis, who along James Lovelock founded the Gaia Hypothesis - the view of an alive world that is self-regulating and whose totality of wellbeing is inseperable from our human welfare which is a world view that most indigenous people understand to be true, with their own words.
“Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself”-
~Chief Seattle
When we nurture the life in the soil, we benefit the whole, and we benefit ourselves. Antibiotics, chemical agriculture and the like have disrupted countless ecosystems, including the one in our gut. Yet, the soil contains microbs that offer a sense of wellbeing and can help us rebalance. Spending time with the soil can heal us and uplift us both biochemically and psychologically through being in beauty, absorbed in the present moment, inspired to feel the wonder at catching glimpse of a bird taking flight, or a tiny shoot miraculously popping up where it seemed there was nothing but the richness of soil the day before. In nurturing the soil, or spending time appreciating the bounty of nature in a local park or woods, we can remember our place within the ecosystem, and that our conscious role must work with rather than against nature if we are to thrive as both nature and Creator intended, since we are all part of the same ecosystem.
Living within Mother Earth’s body, we are sovereign, beautiful, divine beings who in my understanding are not meant to control her but to honor, love and cherish her. One of my goals in the upcoming few years is to pull of my driveway and turn it into a living space for ecosystems to thrive in beauty and in peace and in joy. Already wildflowers, milkweed, dandelions and other green-growing life has cracked the concrete and begun growing up threw it! A friend was once struggling with how to deal with the immensity of oppressive forces in the world. I told her to be like a wildflower that is soft, yet is capable of busting up the concrete by following the beauty way.
Instead of using harsh products to reduce weeds or other unwanted growth in our gardens and agricultural areas, we can work with nature to bring balance, so that life thrives beautifully.
I found out about Dr. Teruo Higa when I reading a book about water by Masaru Emoto, who showed that our intentions, language, prayer and music have the capacity to heal toxic water and to create very aesthetically pleasing geometries within the water, especially in response to love and gratitude.
Later I looked up Dr Teruo Higa’s work and was so enriched! Higa learned from experience that chemical agriculture is harmful to both the environment and to human life. He developed EM as a way to support agriculture to be effective, yet working in concert with nature rather than against her. Another approach he championed is the use of Power of Bokashi - fermenting our waste instead of just composting, since this expedites the breakdown process and makes it more alive and useful to the ecosystem to which we return it. As conscious beings we can choose to harmonize with our environment and express our potential with reverence for the living being that hosts so many diverse organisms as part of her one body, or we can be a cancer cell that lives on overdrive, without regard for the wellbeing of the whole. If the earth is a living, conscious being, and we are cells in her body, we all have a function! We all have something to contribute to this larger, living whole - and it’s not up to Davos to tell us what that is, but instead we have a beautiful opportunity to connect with the wisdom of Mother Earth in her organic state and her Divine Soul Essence. We are a child of heaven and earth…souls with bodies made of stardust, soil, water and light. And I believe we are here to create bridges of heaven and earth in a very natural and organic way. Becoming a harmonic tender of Gaia’s garden is t’s about how lovingly we can co-exist with Mother Earth, with joy and gratitude, instead of a desire to control for our own ends. Think about the difference between a love relationship and an abusive narcissist. That’s the difference between True Earth-Loving and Davos false agenda that it pretends is about earth friendly approaches. True Earth-Love rests on the sacred, mutual harmony and symbiotic resonance of co-creative abundance versus exploitation, control, domination and subjugation through technologies that disrupt and harm the natural song of Creation and the webs of life, whether military sonar or pesticides or things done to the bodies of living organisms to alter them without in ways with unforeseen or perhaps even mal-intended consequences. The real patriarchy hides behind the pretense of pure intentions, yet pushes its agendas using fear, rather than love. It studies propaganda and what will work get its aims done with the consent of the people, but it has no interest in the full Truth – only bits and pieces of it that replicate out of control like a cancer cell that, like a virus that can hide in a latent stage, has infected every expression of the political spectrum, along with corporatism. The answer is a healthy immune response that is able to reclaim the sovereignty of our one humanity...the unity of humanity that also honors each individual’s sacredness with the larger whole. Everyone is unique as an expression of the One. We all deserve to be free, without trampling on the freedom of others to be who and as they wish, so long as they are not violating or exploiting others.
So what can we do?
Consider the natural beauty and resilience of nature! If we leave her alone for only a little while, She rebounds. And yet we do not need to eliminate humanity or reduce the population, so much as we need to change our relationship with her. The earth can support many trees, because trees give back to nature! When trees shed their leaves, they create a natural supply of nutrients that form the basis for all life to thrive. When they give off oxygen, they support all who need it to breathe. How can we be part of our own ecosystems in ways that contribute rather than merely extract?
Whether you add EM to your soil or add a log to your yard, you are beginning the process of supporting a self-sustaining ecosystem that includes YOU to prosper in harmony. Grow some of your own herbs - esp perenniels that keep coming back!
Plant milkweed - the butterflies love it and rely on it to lay their eggs and it’s the only food for newly hatched caterpillar babies!
Refuse to use chemical fertilizers and chemical pesticides. Decline anything GMO.
Learn about Power of Bokashi and see if you can feasibly implement it!
For my family, adding stumps to the yard and a little mycelium transformed a little yard into a vibrant ecosystem with bees, butterflies, bunnies, birds and so much more! If you’re worried about your young kids having a yard to run around in, consider agreeing with a neighbor on having one person keep a “lawn” that can be shared and the other having a front yard garden that can be shared for observing critters and growing herbs, flowers, berries and other yummy food in a way that only adds to the ecosystem and doesn’t disrupt the soil.
Seed bombs are another super fun and relatively easy way to feel connected to the joy of spreading something beautifying and nourishing to the whole of life.
Consider the following, which you can do with kids - your own, with a class or with little ones you know and love as an aunty, uncle, nanny or neighbor.
Make seed bombs. Set your intention for a peaceful world, that we may stop bombing one another and instead who love and support in ways that nurture life! You can plant seed bombs on the sides of high ways, in your garden or send them to a friend who’s going through a rough patch. The wildlifetrust offers instructions:
https://www.wildlifetrusts.org/actions/how-make-seed-bomb
It is to the Source of All Live that we may surrender and to no one lesser who comes saying, “Peace, Peace, let’s health the earth,” yet who actually believes that humans are soul-less hackable animals.
A simple garden is a profound at of solidarity with the True Interconnectedness of All Life. By finding ways to help bring balance to the ecosystems of our own yards, and voiding seeds that have been tinkered with by men who think they are gods. If offered the opportunity to do so, we can encoure our neighborhoods to forego pesticides and either pull their weeds, let them grow our use a citris based weed killer, or use natural soil based bacteria mixture that can combat parasites,. We can take back the world and return it to sovereignty from exploitation and to a state of wellbeing one yard at a time.
Gaining ground, we can heal the soil by adding a stump hear or there, enriching the soil with compost and with mycelium that form naturally symbiotic relationships with the roots of trees. Write songs about these things that can be like a friendly, benevolent ear worm. Learn about the medicinal uses of invasive species, and consider finding ways to encourage your community to harvest and use them rather than spray them with harmful chemicals. We can be the “competitor” species that balances out these over-growers that can take over if not left in check. We can benefit from them while eliminating excess! Once I met a pair of grad students tending the arboretum where I live. I asked what experiments the university is involved with conducting in this space.The grad student pair told me that mostly they are testing different chemicals to use to combat invasive species. They told me The Gates fund a lot of this work and they bias the results. This is how we often get scientists saying x y or z thing is safe, for humans or otherwise, whilst objective science not allowed to arise from unbased studies. Years ago I had a tree in my front yard that was regularly injected with a chemical medicine to treat it for its own infection. But every time they injected it, the bees would die or become sick en mass around my house. A few would crawl, half dad to my door step. I was an energy healer, so I would offer them healing, and some made a come back. When I emailed city council to ask them to stop spraying my tree, they told me the treatment was safe and limited to the tree. I told them what I saw with my own eyes and that made no dent in their conclusion that research had shown it was safe and would not harm humans or pollinators or the ecosystem. Now I understand why they thought this! Eventually they simply sent a crew to cut down the tree.
From there on, the bees around my home stopped dying, and while I grieved for the tree, I was glad for the decision in this case. I have several young trees I’ve planted that are growing up very nicely: one Christmas-tree-in-a-pot that I planted outdoors after the holidays and two new magnolias, as well as a natural baby of a tree whose name I don’t know, which has been hear since we moved in ten years ago. In the time we’ve lived hear, I’ve seen mono lawns give way to an increasingly diverse array of front yard expressions, often ones that offer a welcoming environment to pollinators. My yard is not the only one within a few square blocks radius to have a stump circle. Another family that has one also noticed how their stumps, combined with their compost really brought the ecosystem within their own backyard alive.
And lots of people, compared to the past, let their dandelions grow or pull them by hand. It turns out that many invasive species are medicinal, including dandelions. Every spring, instead of going on a juice or smoothie cleanse, I eat my yard. I eat sage and dandelions and violets. And I feel so good!
I’d love to see all of us start to grow more food forests in our front yard. I’m hoping to plant some fruit trees this fall. In the mean time, I take time to walk barefoot and bless the earth, to plant seeds with my kids, to love on the Farmers at the Farmers Market, who often go under-appreciated. Bees, food, love, soil, water, light. These are all connected. Today my husband and son went out to support some local musicians we know who were playing at the Farmer’s Market. I had already had enough at our early morning stint at the FM, so I stayed here for some quiet time to write. Sometimes we need to get out there, sometimes we need to have that quiet space to be, breathe, create in our own “zone.” Then we can rejoin the joyful activities of life, such as the tacos and tamales and family reading we shared, having chosen to opt out of TV for years now. This has created space for our creativity to thrive! My son even wrote a song called Hugging Trees, Unity and others, which, if you hang around my blog for long enough, you may even hear.
What could you do to use your creativity in ways that add to the joy and peace in the world?
And for fun: Black Elk on becoming childlke: