Old Hall

I just left Old Hall early (I was meant to stay for two weeks) because I wasn’t enjoying it there. When I arrived last Friday the residents were all really busy getting ready for a ‘friends and family’ summer party. They were so busy in fact they didn’t have time to introduce them selves to the new ‘wwoofer’ or show me around the place. It was not a great welcome and as a result I felt completely ungrounded, it made me miss the friends I made at Gaunts even more than I was already. Kate and Wolf also arrived on the same day to volunteer so I did have someone to talk to, we decided to give the community residents the benefit of the doubt and put their lack of effort with the newbies down to the fact they were busy with their party. As the weekend progressed I began wishing they had told me about their plan as I would have chosen to come on the Sunday, if you’ve ever been invited to a party where you don’t know anyone you’ll know how awkward it feels. I did meet one lovely woman who was a friend of a resident and we had a chat about her edible garden in Wales and energy healing. She was the one person in the whole week I felt a connection with unfortunately she was only staying for the weekend. She sent me the Celestine Prophecy to read which my ex-boyfriend had leant me some years before but I hadn’t been drawn to read it at that time. It’s a book that describes a process for spiritual evolution interwoven with a standard adventure story. I’m only half way through but I really like the way it describes our connection with nature on an energetic level and reflects some of the experiences I’ve been having.

Anyway back to Old Hall, I could spend time describing the history of the house and how it used to be a monastery that one of the nuns escaped from many years ago etc but I don’t want to focus on that. It is basically a farming community so if you want to see the geese, pigs, chickens and cows, the vegetable patches and orchards and learn how to make butter and cheese it is a great place for that. The food as you would expect is lovely, really excellent organic food that again I was reminded has sadly become something that only the privileged few have access to. They are nearly self sufficient in vegetables and meat and have 8 cows to milk twice a day and this requires a lot of work so many of the residents work part time to pay their way. It is also very expensive to buy into Old Hall as it’s run as a housing association and each of the units are priced in relation to the local housing market and Colchester is a desirable commuter belt so only those with capital need apply. Starting with the positive aspects of my experience I did get to try out some new things like throwing heavy bales of hay around to make a hay stack, churning cream to make butter and making cheese so that was good and as previously mentioned the food was great but the people I found with a few exceptions (Thank you to those who did make the effort) to be a very unfriendly bunch who didn’t seem to have even basic manners with people they invited into their community as volunteers and not surprisingly this really put me off. The person I had been emailing to arrange my visit who apparently was the ‘wwoof co-ordinator’ didn’t bother speaking to me until day 4 of my stay. I heard various excuses that they were so busy, that they didn’t know who was who because of the party weekend etc but for me there was something deeper going on here and unfortunately I think it was just a bad attitude towards wwoofers. For some reason at Old Hall volunteering your time to support people who are privileged to be able to have land in living self-sufficiently means you are seen as some kind of serf, an extra pair of hands to be squabbled over to help them do what they need to do. There didn’t seem to be any recognition that people wwoofing might be wanting to learn more about community living like the structure, group decision processes, finances and other aspects of running one or be scouting for potential places to join or even that they may have skills and experience to bring that the community might find useful. I was left with the feeling that they saw so many ‘wwoofers’ come through their door they couldn’t be bothered making the effort to get to know them as they were only staying for a short time. Although understandable this attitude is poor, volunteering is after all an energy exchange and it doesn’t work if the energy is given out and not received. The memory of a feeling of goodwill, a friendly smile and a heartfelt thank you last a lot longer than basic needs of bed and food being met. If we are to successfully move towards a self-sustaining society that is not completely reliant on people working purely for financial reward then these subtle qualities of human communication will become increasingly important. If you are lucky enough to have people choosing to offer their time to support your project then expressing gratitude is really important, however many people pass through your door. Right I’ve got that out my system and now I’m off to Norfolk to visit a friend for a week before I travel to my next place.

Making butter pats in the dairy

Kate up to her arms in curds and whey

Community Living

I’ve just finished my first experience of living ‘in community’ at Gaunts House near Wimborne and as with all the other places I have visited so far I found the expectations I had were different from the reality. ‘That’s life then’ I hear you say so from now on I’m trying not to have any expectations at all and be the detached observer as part of my mindfulness practice, this is easier said than done but something that I feel deserves perseverance.  Community after all is just a word used generally to describe groups of people living together but beneath that word you find many different forms of complex human systems powered by emotional dynamics that are not always acknowledged by the people involved.  My short stay was enough for me to see they can be places of great intensity where the combined emotions of the group are magnified so there can be difficult times to navigate but I think everyone’s experience of Gaunts is the right one for them with the inevitable challenges being opportunities for self-discovery and growth if you choose to see them in this way.  Having said all this my overall experience was very positive so much so that I decided to re-arrange my trip so I can go back to volunteer at their summer gathering in August.

Gaunts lawn with beautiful sky and tree views

Plant Dowsing

I didn’t get to do as much organic food growing at Gaunts as I was hoping as there was a bit too much ornamental type gardening for me, although it was lovely spending time in their victorian walled garden. However towards the end of my stay I met Barbara, a friend of a resident who wanted to start growing food in her garden and luckily for me was very interested in permaculture design. I spent an afternoon in her garden doing some observation, needs gathering and coming up with ideas for her design. Barbara is a reiki healer and so one of the ideas was that the garden could be used as a healing space as well as a food growing space and I really like the idea of multifunctional plants and trees that provide food but can also be used in healing therapies. She also taught me how to do pendulum dowsing and gave me a book about the different types of dowsing you can do so I’ve been practicing quite a lot. Apparently you can dowse plants to ask them what kind of soil they would like to be planted in, how much water they would like and whether they prefer a sunny or shady spot. I haven’t tried this yet but have dowsed plants and the pendulum always moves in a circle when it comes into contact with the plants energy field, proof that we live in an energetic universe not a clockwork one as many people believed for a few hundred years. Barbara took me to Wimborne church to see the 24 hour clock based on the Ptolemaic system with the earth at the centre. A great example of the self-importance of humans who at the time thought they were the centre of the universe before Copernicus discovered the earth moves around the sun although having this knowledge hasn’t changed the attitude of self-importance and feeling we have the right to put ourselves before all other species on the earth. 

Wimborne church clock with earth the at the centre of the universe

My fellow wwoofers Alan & John re-building the greenhouse

Gong Bath

Gaunts has a lot of meditation and yoga courses running through the year but during the time I was there a ten day Gong master course to teach people sound healing with gongs was happening. Sound healing is a therapeutic practice that uses sound frequencies to bring people to a state of harmony and health. The college of sound healing who run the course use the analogy of a piano to explain how it works saying if a part of our body is out of balance we can retune it like tuning a piano with sound. If a piano is out of tune do we rip out the offending key or piano wire? but this is what we do to the human body with surgery. You can find out more if you’re interested www.collegeofsoundhealing.co.uk. So every night the whole community where invited to a ‘gong bath’ in the theatre where we would all lie on the floor and be immersed in a soundscape created by gongs, Tibetan singing bowls, shruti boxes and other instruments for 45 minutes. I found my first one was very relaxing and I drifted in and out of consciousness but other times I felt hot, itchy and restless so it didn’t feel quite so pleasant, though I was assured by the gong experts this was a good response as it meant I was releasing emotions. I really liked the gong group as they were so friendly and inclusive especially a Greek man called George who was always smiling. It’s amazing how such a simple thing can have such a positive effect on people. We were also taught the universal greeting which I really liked and have learnt the words to. There are also hand gestures to accompany each phrase but I’m still learning them, it serves as a timely reminder that beyond religion, race, politics and gender we are all one.  

Universal greeting

I offer you peace

I offer you friendship

I offer you love

I hear your needs

I see your beauty

All wisdom flows from the highest source

I honour that wisdom in you

Let us work together

For you are my own true self

In Lakesh Ela Kin “ I am another you”

The best thing about Gaunts for me, apart from the beautiful countryside the house is set in, was meeting others on their spiritual path who have also been drawn to this peaceful place. The small community of people living there full time is supplemented by a steady flow of wwoofers, employed staff and people coming for the various healing and spiritual courses held there through out the year plus the famous summer gathering which is the highlight of their events calendar. I met an eclectic mix of interesting people including someone channelling spirits to create paintings, an astrologist, a puppeteer and a harpist. It felt very good to be with my own kind (aka creative types) again after years in the corporate creative wilderness. All of this contributes to creating a unique atmosphere where people feel free to explore beyond the boundaries of their day-to-day lives in the company of like-minded souls.

Flow of life

When you’re not in flow with life you are in resistance, being in the flow is following your heart, forcing yourself down a path means resisting the natural life flow that carries us forward. Giving your energy to something you have inner resistance to but feel you ‘should’ be doing because of some conditioned belief is like putting your energy into a black hole, a life sucking empty void that once it has you in it’s grip can be very difficult to pull yourself out of.  I let the systems push me and accepted other people’s goals but each time I achieved them there was always the next one to aim for, eventually I realised the illusory nature of this, it was empty and completely unfulfilling to me.

Life is not meant to be a never ending struggle, the struggle comes when you resist the events and circumstances of your life, once you reach a place of acceptance of all that has gone before and is happening now you find freedom and a sense of peace in your heart that trust in life can grow from. When we live in fear of life our natural inquisitiveness and desire to discover new experiences diminishes, we create a safe place that we feel in control where we think nothing painful can disturb us but this is an illusion because we can’t escape pain forever. Closing our heart because of past hurt means we just have the pain of loneliness and longing to cope with instead. By creating a comfort zone that we control the borders of we may succeed in keeping pain out temporarily but we also block opportunities for life to bring the unexpected good things that would enrich our life and bring joy in our efforts to avoid the ‘bad’.

Sunshine and shadows

It’s like wanting the sunshine without the shadow, that transient form that as long as the sun is shining is always with us. We cannot live wholly without overcoming fear of our shadow self and accepting the need to sit in it’s shade sometimes instead of always trying to be in the light of positive feelings in our safe comfort zone. Trusting in life means opening your heart to all experiences that flow through it, just accepting whatever comes without attaching any specific meaning allows you to expand your consciousness and to accept events that in the past you would continually interpret to reinforce self-limiting beliefs.

A natural consequence of letting go of the fear is that your heart opens so you are able to send love into the field of consciousness where it’s received by others and returned to you. It may come from a different place than where you sent it or in a different form than what you gave but you’re heart will always feel it when it comes from the heart of another.  

Somerset Sky

I haven’t posted for a while because I’ve been in the Gaunts house community more of which later but wanted to tell you about Vallis Veg in Somerset where I was 2 weeks ago. Chris and Cordelia own 18 acres of land with a market garden in the middle used to provide vegetables for their box scheme. This was my first experience of a commercial permaculture project and like all noble paths it’s a challenging one. Needless to say they’re not in it for the money but because they believe small holding farming is the best way to support sustainable communities. Chris has done a lot of research into energy inputs and yields of industrial farming and organic farming to show the value of permaculture and organic growing and if you’re interested you can find out more at www.vallisveg.co.uk. They have applied for temporary planning permission so they can live on the site as they feel this will help to their business grow and make it more resilient. Educational school visits where children learn about organic growing and running more Permaculture design courses are other aspects of their business they want to develop. They also have some small allotment plots that people living locally can use to grow their own.

Vallis Veg Market Garden

Phacelia as green manure

Market Garden
What they have achieved so far is very impressive given that neither of them had much experience before they started their business apart from some wwoofing in Canada and Vallis Veg is now a designated permaculture demonstration centre. Chris showed me around the many design features including shelterbelts, compost toilet, chicken coop, perennial plot, pig made pond, irrigation system, poly tunnels and many other familiar features. He’s been experimenting a lot with green manures that help soil retain moisture, protect it from erosion and add fertility when they are cut and mulched. I did a variety of jobs every day from tying tomatoes in the poly tunnel, making compost squares to plant seeds in, replanting wind damaged squashes to preparing beds with compost mulch and planting calabrese in them. On Thursdays they prepare the veg boxes for delivery and I picked 18.3 Kg of spinach to put in them, it took quite a while. Having seen the realities of running a market garden it’s not something I would want to do myself at this moment in time even though it is great they’re providing affordable organic vegetables to their local community. It’s a lot of hard work that isn’t made any easier by the current economic climate and the competition from supermarkets even though where taste and health is concerned there is no comparison with their lovely freshly picked organic produce.

Strawberries fresh from the patch

For me the sky is the most beautiful part of Somerset, it seems so big I felt I could reach up and touch the clouds. My other favourite thing was my host’s strawberry patch in their garden at home where I picked delicious strawberries from every morning, it reminded me of childhood strawberry picking outings where we ate as much as we collected whilst picking and my mums delicious strawberry jam spread on brown bread with butter…yum!  

Feniton

Last week I was volunteering with the Phil Foggitt in Feniton, a small village about an hour away from Totnes. I really appreciated the warm welcome I received as it can be a little daunting to stay in the home of people you don’t know but the way I’m choosing to approach this aspect of my journey is with well known quotation ‘strangers are friends you have yet to meet’ in mind.

Travelling around and staying with lots of different people is definitely a good way of stepping out of your comfort zone and practicing living with an open-mind and heart as this is an important part of what I wanted to gain from this experience.  Phil is what I would describe as a conscious eco-soul who has many years of organic gardening experience and setting up sustainable living projects such as Otter Rotters, a community recycling project that makes a number of recycled products including compost and mulch. We had some good chats about the challenges of trying to engage large organisations with new ideas and I admire the way he has carried on putting energy into trying to get projects started even though he's had many frustrations along the way. It’s not often I’ve met people who actually ‘walk the talk’ but Phil is one of them.  

I’m starting to appreciate the multitude of different approaches to Permaculture practice as opposed to learning the theory. Phil see’s it as a useful tool he employs when it suits him as opposed to taking it on board as a life philosophy. He does a lot of re-using and recycling local resources for mulching including cardboard from a photographic finishers, carpet tiles from an industrial estate and spent hops from the brewery he works for. He’s devised a clever way of using upturned palettes to make portable raised beds and created microclimates by building walls and painting them white to absorb light so lots of examples of design principles in action.  

'Eco Soul' Phil Foggitt

During the week I got to try out some new gardening skills including riddling compost, potting on seedlings, planting leeks, making a mulched bed, making bamboo cane supports for peas and beans and making bunches of herbs for drying. Phil has recently made some raised beds at the front of the house where he is creating a mini forest garden inspired by the work of Martin Crawford who runs the Agroforestry Research Trust mentioned in my last post. He’s planted lots of shade tolerant shrubs including Oregon grape, Goji berry and Ground Cover Raspberry to see how they get on. The front garden was also home to Womble the guinea pig who I never actually got to see but I like her name so she gets a mention :). I’m guessing she is thus named in homage to the famous recyclers of Wimbledon Common that were so ahead of their time. I feel a bit of nostalgic googling coming on...what a great song! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZcVMrJ1EVAQ

Planting Leeks

Riddling Compost

Garden Therapy

As well as helping out in Phil’s beautiful garden I also worked on a couple of other projects he’s involved with at Otter Brewery and Barnfield Farm. The latter is a care home for people with learning disabilities based in the picturesque village of Luppitt. I enjoyed this project the most because I’m very interested in the idea of therapeutic gardening although I think garden therapy could help everyone, not just people with learning difficulties. I feel like my time working in gardens and allotments has been very therapeutic for me, a combination of being outside in the fresh air, physical exercise, the mental satisfaction of completing whatever tasks need doing and the reward of eating fresh vegetables. I find there is something very rewarding in the simplicity of this, especially after years trying to tackle the confusing complexity of corporate structure and operations.

Phil & Jamie protect the cabbages

Cloud meditation

After a day in the garden sometimes I would lie on my bed and look at the clouds through the skylight window. As I watched the clouds float past like thoughts in my mind shapes would form, a face, animal or an object but they disappeared as quickly as they appeared, a reminder of the transient nature of thought and how much freer one is by not getting attached to them especially unhelpful ones. Recently I’ve been reading about sun gazing, an ancient method of healing that originated in India about 2600 years ago with the teaching of Lord Mahavir of Jain. It works because our eyes act as light receptors as we gaze at the sun, allowing our brain the light it needs to reset it self and integrate various hormones by energising the pineal gland. Of course looking directly at the sun can be dangerous but apparently gazing at white clouds has the same effect.

I feel a lot more energetic because I’m spending more time outside rather than stuck in an office under strip lights, perhaps this is partly to do with the positive effects of cloud gazing. Cloud meditation gives me a deep sense of well-being that radiates outwards from my soul as I connect with the eternal life force of the universe. It’s an ancient feeling that I believe is part of the collective unconscious of human experience beyond this lifetime..

Meditating on clouds

If you fancy trying a spot of cloud meditation here’s some music for you to listen to as you gaze at the clouds http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KL9HXNQmBIg&feature=BF&list=QL&index=5. Also check out The Cloud Appreciation Society they also have some relaxing cloud music http://cloudappreciationsociety.org/

Knowing beyond the mind

Whilst meditating on the clouds I found myself processing something that happened to me in evening of the retreat silent day. I had what I would describe as a conscious experience of knowing beyond the mind. I was sat on a bench in the retreat garden and felt my consciousness expand out from the confines of my body to connect with all life around me, the sounds of the tree’s rustling in the breeze, the birds, the insects buzzing, the plants growing, there was a sudden movement to my left outside of my field of vision but it wasn’t just my eyes that registered this, it was beyond the five senses somehow I knew it was a bird before my mind named it. Finding the words to describe this is not easy as words are just symbols we use to communicate feelings and experiences to others, it didn’t feel separate from me but part of my consciousness. I recognise this is a knowing of the soul and I trust it above all else...

Real Live Permaculture

Last week I had my first experience of volunteering in a permaculture garden in Totnes. I’m staying with friends of mine here for a few weeks so it was great to discover a wwoof host in the town just a few minutes walk away. For those of you who don’t know WWOOF it stands for world wide opportunities on organic farms and provides a service that enables people who want to volunteer to connect with individuals, small holdings, farms and communities who are practicing organic growing and sustainable living and are happy to provide food and accommodation to volunteers in return for their labours.

The garden I was working in has been developed by Cathy Ashley over 18 years and has seen many changes. At the moment the main features of the front garden are annual and perennial beds, fruit trees, fruit canes and a salad bed near the house.  The back garden has a sunny seating area, a pond, a duck bath, a potting shed and a lean to greenhouse using recycled aluminium windows is planned next to a larger shed used as a living space. It was also home to ducks ‘Mocha’ and ‘Tahini’ who do a very good job of eating slugs, providing delicious duck eggs and fertiliser in the form of duck poo. Over the years Cathy has tried and tested many different permaculture, biodynamic and organic growing methods and so has a lot of practical knowledge about what does and doesn’t work. It was a reminder that it’s one thing to read about the theory and another thing completely to put it into action. As E. F Schumcher said in ‘Small is beautiful’

“An ounce of practical experience is worth a ton of theory”

After 18 years Cathy has a ton of practical experience she was generous enough to share with me. It was both inspiring but also a little daunting for someone just starting out on their permaculture journey, however as I wrote in an earlier post ‘a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step’ and it felt great to be getting some hands on experience of ‘real live' permaculture.

 Mocha the duck

Earlier in the week I spent some time sorting and bagging compost and after learning about soil ecology on my permaculture course from soil expert Alex Penn it was interesting to see how long it takes for things like egg shells, avocado skins and stones to break down. Apart from the worms, woodlice and beetles I could see wriggling about in the compost, there are also 1-16 million bacterial species per gram of soil making it an incredibly complex eco-system in it’s own right. Apparently a teaspoon of soil contains more diversity than the entire mammalian kingdom and has more inhabitants than there are human beings on earth- mind-boggling!  The fact that it takes 100-1000 years for 1 inch of top soil to be laid down means it really makes sense to have a compost bin in your garden if you are able as every little helps. Especially when you look at the rate of soil degradation world wide and the evidence that shows if we carry on our present agricultural practices it could all be gone within 200 years – a sobering thought when you consider the projected global population of 9 billion.

Soil health is our health
But rather than spending too much time focusing on the problem, Permaculture provides some practical solutions although the issue of how scaleable they are remains. However no till methods, mulching, composting and re-vegetation (eg: more plants less concrete) provide a way back to knowledge from a time when people didn’t have supermarkets to rely on for their daily sustenance. When you begin to think about supermarkets reliance on non-renewable energy it becomes a little easier to care about things like soil health and helping to create healthy soil by composting your green waste or if that’s not possible finding a community green waste service that can do it for you.


Two out of Three Sisters Guild

As I mentioned earlier the practical application of Permaculture is dependant on many factors and it’s part of the design process to look at whether they are limiting or can be resourcefully turned into a positive. This approach is at the heart of the design process and as someone who has spent much of my life being restricted by self-limiting beliefs is why it appeals to me so much. We decided to have a go at planting a three sisters guild and an apple guild using the resources we had already available in the garden.  Guilds are an excellent example of applying the beneficial connections principle as they mimic the natural co-operation of species in ecosystems based on their mutual interdependence. By grouping plants and animals together we can use their special qualities to benefit humans whilst creating habitat.

We did our own version of the popular Native American ‘Three Sisters’ guild of corns, beans and squash because we were using a pot made of tyres we only had room for two of the sisters namely the corn and the beans as the third sister squash, used to provide a living leaf mulch on the soil to retain moisture and suppress weeds would not fit in the planting space we had available. We also planted some of the apple guild plants around two of the apple tree’s after making raised beds around the trunks using bottles and old tiles. Apart from recycling and looking pretty, the other benefit of the bottles is the air inside them heats up and in turn heats up the soil. We planted peas for nitrogen fixing, comfrey for mulching in place and some daffodils in the outer ring to suppress grass competing with tree roots for nutrients. Cathy will add some plants that attract insects for pollination and act as pest control soon to complete the apple guild. I am really drawn to the idea of guilds as it embodies the idea of individual survival through co-operation that I think is so important for the human species now, rather than purely focusing on the dominant mind-set of competition. Of course in reality there is both co-operation and competition but somehow the competitiveness of species in an ecosystem is contained within the continuing co-operative evolution that has been happening for millions of years. By understanding the relationships within ecosystems there is a lot we can learn about how to improve our own relationships with each other and with nature.

Two of the three sisters, corn and beans are in this guild 

Cathy planting peas in the apple guild

In the Forest Garden
On Thursday Cathy had arranged for us to visit the Agroforestry Research Trust Forest Garden http://www.agroforestry.co.uk/ next to the Schumacher College.  Forest gardens are food production and land management systems based on woodland eco-systems but formed with trees (fruit and nut), bushes, shrubs, herbs and vegetables that provide a high yield of food using ‘low maintenance’ perennial plants.  Unlike monocultures in traditional agriculture, the concept of stacking (ie making use of vertical space) is used to create different layers of plants and increase strength and stability of the system through biodiversity. Although my plant identification skills leave a lot to be desired I was able to recognise current bushes and some herbs in amongst the many plants. One of the herbs I recognised was Lovage, reminiscent of parsley and celery in leaf shape and smell. It was used as herbal remedy for sore throats and upset stomach. The seeds, leaves and stems have a similar flavour to celery with a lemony twist and can be used in soups, salads and rice dishes. I like the look of this chilled pea and lovage soup, could make a nice change from gazpacho for a summer soup maybe?  

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/food-and-drink/recipes/chilled-pea-and-lovage-soup-1748109.html

This has set me on a path of researching other perennial herbs no longer in common use so when I find some tasty sounding ones I will share them with you..

Lovely Lovage

On Retreat

I just got back from a six day Buddhist meditation retreat at The Barn near Totnes and I loved it!  Apparently it is quite unusual as retreats go as it is not completely silent, we had one day of silence in the middle of the week and it’s quite a small group, just 10 of us in the community including the 2 co-ordinators responsible for running it. Our daily schedule included morning chores, three 40 minute meditations, working in the gardens and taking turns cooking a vegetarian meal for the whole community. What I really appreciated about it was the opportunity to connect both with yourself during the silence and with other like-minded souls in the intimate but open space that is offered there, all this whilst surrounded by beautiful wild plants and flowers and the hum of bee’s buzzing between them. I found myself reflecting on relationships in nature and how we can learn from them.  

The flower always looks happy, never stressed or anxious but waits patiently and trusts the bee will arrive in it’s own time

Patience and trusting in life are two qualities we seem to have forgotten about or lost faith in during this time of technological rush and instant gratification. The retreat week was the first time in 14 years I didn’t use my mobile or email every day and I realised how much using these has impacted on my perception of life. Having access to so much knowledge and opportunity for anytime, anywhere communication obviously has great advantages but unless we use it in a mindful way there is a danger of becoming over dependent on it and finding it obscures our natural intuitive abilities that allow us to listen to our inner wisdom, so important for us to tune into on a regular basis.  

The Garden of the Mind

The retreat garden had lots of broad beans, peas and runner beans in need of some support structures so my main job was using branches from felled beech saplings to make sticks to support the peas. At first I approached this as a practical task but after a while I felt I was creating a natural sculpture that I named the Pea Forest.

Whilst weeding around the peas I started to think about how mindfulness is a way to become aware of any negative thoughts that might otherwise take root in our minds. If they are not ‘weeded’ regularly depression can take hold, often these ‘weeds’ grow insidiously and we don’t see them creeping up to take over the garden of our mind blocking our natural positivity. Meditation can help keep these thoughts in perspective to maintain a balance in the mind garden. However as any gardener knows it is impossible to completely remove all weeds and a lot of energy can be put into this task that comes from a resistant state of mind. Weeds are only named so because people decided they were undesirable based on existing ideas of how a garden (mind) should look. The plants we call weeds actually have many beneficial properties to both humans and the eco-systems they are part of. For example nettles can be food, medicine and fertilizer for humans, insects and other plants. In the same way if we accept the negative ‘weed’ thoughts as part of a healthy and diverse ecosystem of the mind rather than trying to remove them, we can see they provide fertile ground for inner reflection and deeper insights into life from which new positive growth can emerge.

From the dark soil of my mind grew compassion, self-love and self-acceptance, the most beautiful flowers of the heart.

I recommend a stay at The Barn Retreat to you all…

http://www.sharphamtrust.org/page.php?id=3

The Pea Forest