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ENGAGE IN DIALOGUE AND REFLECT

Ask your local plants for advice or insight and reflect on how you might learn from their lived experiences. Here are some examples:

“a garden doesn’t shout into the void, it stays put and complexifies. It quietly grows” - Max Anton Brewer

“A garden can create ‘finished products’ but not immediately, and not without showing the in-between steps first” - Charlie Trochlil

"If we pay just a little bit of attention in a garden, we notice that it's constant, this sharing." - Ross Gay

If we want to model our lives off of gardens, we should orient towards being community gardens and being communally tended to. We should treat ourselves as a consistently evolving landscape, growing for the sake of growing, not towards completion. We should develop and become out loud and publicly, not in isolation. Occasionally, we must partake in the tedious act of weeding potentially harmful aspects of our lives to make room for growth. We don’t need to try to be useful – by participating in our ecosystem, our existence becomes a beautiful part of a dynamic web of life.

Ok, now go say hello to your local trees, grasses, flowers, stones, and more!