Essay - We Are the Land

Scientists have learned how to trace where a person has lived by the constituents of their bones. People really are a part of the land. Food grows up out of the soil, capturing its nutrients and marrying them in their metabolism with the rain and the power of the sun into living matter. Then we devour and digest their life, directly or through the intermediary of animal flesh, and make it into our own living bodies.

I doubt that the tracing technique would work very well for modern Americans, who import our food so that we can eat in perpetual summer. Our food is no more indigenous than we are. And visa versa. Consider the power in eating only food grown nearby.

And what if, for generations, we had lived on that same land, cultivating it, gathering from it, then planting our own spent bodies back into that same ecosystem. Our ancestors would not just be a litany of names and dates arranged on a certificate of pedigree. They would actually be living in our bones. Our genetic heritage would be fleshed out with the same raw materials used by our predecessors. What real groundedness that would be!

No wonder indigenous people know that we do not own the land—the land is us. That land is the matrix of our truest heritage. What we do to the land, we do to ourselves and our ancestors.
--By Terra

Essay- Learning to Thin & Prune

I have always loved the tangle of a garden gone wild—no boundaries, no empty spaces, filled with flower, branch and leaf. I have enjoyed throwing out seeds, letting plants grow where they will. They knew best the conditions that allow them to flourish. And I didn’t have to decide. Not surprisingly, my life has been this way too. I go with the flow, allowing circumstances and those around me decide what will happen in my life, grow in my garden.

One way to look at it is that I am very adaptable and appreciative.

Another way to look at it is that I lack will power and vision for my own life. Even my houseplants have had free rein.

But finally urged on by my husband’s fear that my plants would overrun the house, I have learned to cut them back and trim them to the size and shape that I prefer. They continue to flourish under the rulership of my scissors. I’ve even been able to get rid of plants I don’t really want anymore.

Having a vegetable garden this year has given me practice at thinning things out, so that beans and greens will grow to their full potential rather than be stunted by being too crowded. This seems to coincide with a new knowing in me of what I can prune to make room for new growth in my life. I am trimming those gnarled, twisted and barren old branches back, saving the growing ends to sprout into new plants that I might keep or give away as gifts. And I’m thinning out my activities—making choices about what I want to be bigger and more fruitful in the garden of my life.

by Terra