By Linda Wiggen Kraft, Healthy Planet Green & Growing Editor
In this season of giving thanks, take time to create a special way of thanking your garden. A ritual that can be part of each Thanksgiving season is the planting of seeds. Not the seeds of plants, but the seeds of thanks. These are seeds that are created with your thoughts and feelings of gratitude, hope, love, wonder, awe and all that a garden brings to your life.
This month is a perfect time to create seeds of thanks. Gardens are done blooming and producing. It is a time of pause, where the balance between garden growing and garden resting takes place. It is like the pause between taking a breath in and a breath out. That pause is a quiet time of peace that is the perfect time to gather thoughts and feelings.
Gathering these thoughts of thanks can be done in many ways. One way is to find a quiet place to sit and write down memories of your garden from the just past growing season. These memories can be season by season, month by month or in any order. They can be short, only a few sentences, or long as page upon page. They can contain the joys and the frustrations. There may be some clearing out of thoughts that don’t feel grateful, but most often underneath those feelings is a heart opening that will let you feel and express thanks for all a garden gives. Let your memories take you to a place of grace, where you feel the connection to creation, Creator, nature, the garden and all the life of the garden.
These written memories can become actual seeds that are buried in the ground, or words carried by the wind to blanket your garden in a web of gratitude. To create seeds from some or all of the written words, tear the papers into pieces, put into a glass or ceramic bowl and cover with water. Roll the pieces into seed-like balls. Find a spot or spots in the garden to bury these seeds, letting the energy of thanks spread throughout the garden. Instead of planting seeds, the written words can be read aloud or through the silent voice of your heart. Read them to the garden letting them settle into the garden covering it with thanks.
Linda Wiggen Kraft is a landscape designer of holistic/organic gardens. She is an artist and creativity workshop leader. Her ceramic jewelry and pottery are available online and at www.gardendistrictstl.com. Find out more, subscribe to her blog and Instagram at www.creativityforthesoul.com Call her at 314 504-4266.