Healing for the Earth, Day 26: Gardening for Health

"And forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair."—Khalil Gibran

Hello fellow Earthlings,

Let me be the first to announce: I AM NOT A GARDENER.

Yet, 2020 seems to be the year that we step out of our comfort zones and do new things and wear different hats.

So today I put on the gardening gloves found in my parents' garage and grabbed a bucket and some gardening tools and went out in the sun and toiled in the Earth.

It felt good to get my hands dirty after having to keep them so damn clean with this virus. It felt good to get a little messy and talk to the 91-year-old neighbor over the fence about how he keeps his apple tree pruned in order to have a good crop of apples.

When I came outside to the garden, I think he was surprised. He hadn't seen me in months in the yard. I just don't hang out there. I tend to walk straight to the beach and hang out in other places on my walks.

He was gardening too and other people in the neighborhood were also gardening and some were walking their dogs and riding their bikes. It was a beautiful day!

"I'm a bit of a hermit," I told him.

"Actually, I am too," he said.

And then, "Do you sleep in? I never see the blinds opened."

I was a little embarrassed, but I rarely open the blinds on the side of the house that faces other houses. I only open the blinds that look out on the golf course. I guess I like my privacy out here. I like to write, and work on my class and do my own things. I enjoy exercise, but I'm not a big neighborhood socialite. In fact, most of the neighbors have never seen me. I'm sure they see my car and wonder, "Is there someone there?"

But today, like a bear that finally pokes its nose out of its den, I made an appearance in the hood. It felt good to be out in the sun working in the yard and talking to the neighbors. I saw a hummingbird and bees and a raven and a few eagles way up high. I would toil for awhile and then sit on the bench in the sun and then toil some more. I managed to fill a huge bucket full of weeds, but there's lots more to do. I feel like this may be a new activity for me as the weather starts to get nicer and warmer. Who knows? Maybe I'll even sit out on the deck in the sun and read! Whoa, now I'm really venturing out of my comfort zone!

I'm fortunate to be here at my parents' house. I'll be leaving here in May. I've enjoyed it so much. After living here for nearly 5 months, I've decided that I want to live on the Olympic Peninsula. My body and spirit love it out here. I love the spaciousness and all the hiking and nature and water nearby.

I don't know where on the Olympic Peninsula I'll land next, but wherever it is, I know I'd like my boyfriend to live with me and I'd love to get a cat. I hope I have nice neighbors like the ones here and I think I might just have to create a garden!

Do you like to garden? What do you like about it?

Healing for the Earth, Day 4: You are an Important Thread in the Web of the EARTH

Good evening fellow EARTHLINGS!

How are y'all on this fine evening?

 I made a little video for you.

 Perhaps, at this juncture in time, you are feeling lots of different emotions. Maybe you are feeling lonely, sad, helpless, afraid or just plain nervous. Or maybe you feel happy to have a bit of time on your hands to just BE. Or maybe you feel overwhelmed or underwhelmed or overstimulated or under-stimulated.

Whatever you are feeling, I want to tell you that YOU ARE IMPORTANT! AND you are right where you need to be doing just what you need to do, even if you don't think or feel this way.

Today I hit a bit of a wall. I've been alone for a week. All my friends are on the other side of the pond in Seattle, a ferry boat ride away. I'm out here with all the wild animals and Native Spirits, but I miss my community and actually giving hugs and looking into my fellow Earthlings sweet eyes. We are all in this together, aren't we? Now is the time to let go of the grudges. Now is not the time to judge or debate or disagree. Now is the time to come together (THINK WOODSTOCK ONLINE....lol....now there's an idea!) Now is the time to honor yourself deeply for all your foibles and to tenderly, lovingly sit with that part of you that might need some love.

It was a little bit more of a productive today. I got a lot of work done for my job at the college. I taught a class online this winter and now my skills will be needed to help teachers start the spring quarter online, as we will not be starting any classes in the classroom due to the virus.

Around 6pm, I thought I need to get out of here and get myself to a beach! It was a beautiful day ALL day, but I felt like I needed to get work done. The sun was starting to set, so I grabbed my silver-blue puffy jacket and slipped on my red boots and headed out to Jamestown Beach. The tide is always way out this time of the evening and I was excited to have my boots on this time because I wanted to walk out in the tide pools. The birds were going nuts. They were cackling and cawing and tweeting and twittering with joy, it seemed, to have this all-you-can-eat shellfish buffet right there on the sandbars. An eagle landed in a huge pine tree at the edge of the shore and made its gorgeous call out to the world from its perch. The sky was streaked with lines, reminding me of threads—white puffy cloud threads going in all different directions.

I thought, we are all threads, each one of us so important to the whole and it reminded me of the quote by Chief Sealth, for whom Seattle was named:

"Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect."—Chief Seattle, Duwamish

You are important, each one of YOU! Remember that. You are on the EARTH for a reason.

Much ALOHA to all of YOU! Keep on keeping on and love each other. You are doing great!

Love,
Katherine