Crack Yourself Open (constant reassessment)

Crack yourself open and let everything spill out. Don’t be hesitant, just let it go. Personal health or garden restoration, it doesn’t matter where you begin.

Here on Long Island in New York we have a number of choices. Choices as to what we can wear, what foods we can eat, what religions we can practice and based on the website you have chosen to engage yourself in PLANTS to CHOOSE from. The number of choices and garden types we have available to us here in New York, especially Long Island, can be overwhelming. This opportunity, like all the others in our lives need to be considered carefully and with great thought. DO NOT GET TOO WORKED UP BECAUSE IT ISN’T BRAIN SURGERY.

I went out and had a bottle of water with a friend of mine who had some interesting insights into the notion of opening yourself up to opportunities and change. Let me begin by demonstrating my wish for everyone out there to have a happy and healthy Holiday/New Year. Now that I have said that, it is down to business. People, better defined as human beings are designed to ask questions and wonder about the unknown. With this great ability that we have at our brains synaptic tips, we loose sight of so many things around us while questioning that which we have never experienced. This is where I want to begin today. I will be bouncing between our gardens and the lives we live as they apply to the choices we make. WELCOME TO MY MIND!

Our garden spaces are set, defined by the surrounding buildings and existing older plant material. It is true that some of the older plant material can be moved, removed or restored to a different size but that doesn’t give us a universal, conventional space to work with. Our garden spaces are still heavily defined by the buildings and hard-scapes in-bedded  on our properties, so where to begin? I have written it before and I will write it again, take a very small spot (as little as 1′ x 1′) and dig into it. The spot hopefully is near a high traffic area on your property that you can expand as you begin to develop a feel and confidence as to your needs, wants and knowledge of plant material.

People are very similar to properties in regard to how we are set in our ways. What we know and how we feel, all based on our previous experiences. All this knowledge, that controls what may occur in our lives, means little if we don’t better ourselves each go round . That may be a reality for many people out there EXCEPT it isn’t completely true. It is true we have been imprinted by previous experiences and these previous events have shaped our lives up to this point and we need to continually better ourselves but this alone does not define us. I have learned it is our ability to learn, our ability to change our mind, our ability to see things around us we may have never seen before that makes us unique and special. We can change and alter our own personal landscape. Like all things in life, IT TAKES WORK AND CONSTANT ATTENTION, to continually improve ourselves.

I can’t help but reference the movie Being There with Peter Sellers,”life is like a garden, dig it.”  I don’t need to be funny or simple or obvious, because it is anything but. The amount of digging we need to do in our lives to cultivate our relationships, especially as we get older, can be  back breaking and unforgiving. Anyone reading this must knows that without a demonstration of appreciation of the people around us we risk losing those people. There is a whole world filled with people out there willing to give of themselves to get what you have or unfortunately, what you had.

We mustn’t  be afraid to crack ourselves open and put a renewed effort into seeking fulfillment and happiness.

We give of ourselves in so many ways to make so many others happy it is time to turn that effort inward. As you consider planting a new plant or designing a new piece of land consider the process. How much thought goes into the plant choices, how much effort goes into soil preparation and then watering needs. Finally how much effort is put into how much space will be used for this new explosion of life. All these choices, all this effort must be put into what we do everyday with the people around us. The people closest to us, the people we value the most. When you crack yourself open it is important to know who we are doing it for. We are doing it for ourselves. As we become healthier and stronger, the relationships around us have the potential to be healthier and stronger.

Know that in the beginning, the middle and every step along the way as we tend to our gardens and ourselves, we do it for the betterment of ourselves and then the world around us.   Good luck on your journeys to enlightenment.   🙂 today and always.