Seeds of Intention

By Gail Allen

Planting seeds of intention this time of year, is usually sometimes hard to remember what the world looks like when it's in bloom. When the ground and the trees are bare and brown, we forget the green that's coming. 

My grandma loved her plants. She had regular kitchen gardens, with the normal vegetables and fruits we ate all year long. She had pots of herbs and African Violets that lined the kitchen windowsills. Poinsettias that she knew exactly how much dark and light they needed to turn red for December. Other hard to grow plants scattered throughout the house,especially in the winter. She had her flower gardens that she absolutely tended with the most love and care every single season of the year and that brought her so much joy. She worked in these gardens in the spring tending delicate buds, summer watching everything unfold in all it’s glory, fall planting bulbs under pansies and winter cabbages, and winter, transferring the most fragile inside, and covering the more hardy on freezing nights.

This time of year is when she had the most fun, I think. This is the time when she started planning. She'd spend whole evening's going through seed catalogs, finding plants she’d never even heard of before, or never tried to grow. She start mapping out where she wanted to plant what, based on what was grown they're in the previous years, what would need the most water, and what would be mutual beneficial to be grown next to one another. I don't think she was ever surprised to see the garden in full bloom because she had seen it in her head so many months before! 

Life is often in the same way. What we want for tomorrow, we need to start preparing for today. Sometimes, that's easy to see. We know that we have to go to school this amount of time, fulfill these requirements, to achieve this result, for example. But then...what happens when we get there? What's the next step? 

We live in a very goal oriented society we're told to achieve happiness, we must do this fill in the blank whatever thing it is. And often it does feel good when we reach that goal. But then what? Do we feel we have to find another goal to achieve? Another garden to plant? When is it enough...just...enough? When do we switch from trying to achieve to just trying to be? Being the best human we possibly can as opposed to doing as much as it's humanly possible...or trying to do even more than that. 

Might that have started off a noble goal to nurture our relationships by putting the time, energy, and attention into them that we might similarly put into our careers, education, or other accomplishments? Being ethically and morally responsible for this beautiful earth we live on and its resources? That's always our goal here. Noticing the little things. Being more mindful of our actions. Perhaps it is being present in your relationship including your relationship with you! You are the only one who will ever live in your body or your mind... shouldn't you be your own best friend? Do you have the audacity to give it a try? What about showing compassion to all living beings... including and starting with yourself? What about working on your own healing and self- growth? That takes an enormous amount of audacity! In the end, let's all watch our gardens grow... Heal our traumas and come to see all of our beautiful flowers and plants into fruition!

​