On the wild garden. Studies of inner and outer landscapes.

What would your life look like if you organized it around generation?

Around expanding the life and energy within you so that it blooms and spills out all over your surroundings?

What happens when you organize your environment around what makes you feel alive?

There is a risk when we hear this question to think, ”What kind of Zen lamp or doodad can I buy to make me look like I’m relaxed the way the Instagram pictures look?”

What I am talking about is more subtle than Zen doodads.

What if, like tending the soil of a garden, we nurture the floor beneath us, sinking into this basic practice of nourishment so that everything, whether a purposely planted tomato or a volunteer hollyhock, flourishes as a result.

I have a special love for this particular sort of garden.

It’s the wild garden. The volunteer garden.

The serendipitous “I-thrive-here-because-here-is-where-I-thrive” kind of garden.

Where I live in the fecund Pacific Northwest, we have a year-round growing season.

Moist, temperate rainforest, moss establishes itself with equanimity on car bumpers, lawn ornaments, and the sides of trees.

Vegetable seeds from two or three seasons ago frolic and sprout like grand or great grandchildren around the bottoms of ancient tree-like kale that have survived winters to bloom, drop seeds, and then finally topple over from the weight of their upper leaves.

Borage, fennel, artichokes and wild hollyhocks, evening primrose, and feverfew dot our backyard, seeds carried by wind and birds.

It’s a cacophony of the unplanned.

What does your life look like when you organize it around generation, around what naturally grows when your earth is well tended?

This is the soil we dig into when I work with you.

Our environments feed us.

They tell us what is real and possible, and set us up for success, joy, and pleasure in that possibility.

This is true whether we are dealing with bricks and mortar, or fields and flowers.

Finding the soil that feeds you and then seeing what grows when you are fully fed goes far beyond the Zen doodad or Instagram-ready post. 

You may find that the tree you dreamed about having, the well-respected one, the one that gave you safety, the one that your parents liked -- or the one that they hated and therefore you liked -- does not grow particularly well in the landscape you inhabit and in which your roots naturally grow. 

Take a moment. In what landscape do you fully nest? And when you are nourished like that, what grows?

It may be a bush, or deep moss, or some weird plant that no one has ever heard of and no one knows what to do with. Or it may be something common and conventional that you always judged as boring.

But it thrives. It grows with ease. 

In what landscape do you grow?

The value is the process of growing. The adventure is seeing what grows.