With the seasonal shift to summer time, I see gardening as an invitation to the embodiment of the soul. Gardening is a practice of deep play and intentionality. Gardening as an act of devotion to Nature.

While yes, there are the mechanics and logistics of gardening.

How to do this or that?
Where and what grows here?
When to plant seeds?

These are the questions of our thinking brain. Important ones, but we as a society live so much from our brains that we can become disconnected from the nature within as well as outside of ourselves.

There was a time when I tried to garden from a more mechanical, science-based approach. The summer after I completed my Colorado Master Gardener training was my worst garden year ever. Before I completed my training, I had gardened in an intuitive, experimental kind of way. Gardening was the one space in my life at that time where I was embodied. Everywhere else I approached in a very typical academic way. So when the training happened, I started approaching gardening in that same academic way. I started thinking there was a best, right way to do things. That equaled a disaster.

So now even as I freelance for the Denver Post’s gardening column, I find myself drawn more to the deeper questions of gardening. In part because anyone can google how tos and come up with solutions and ideas. Instead I approach the column this way: what is happening right now in the natural world that sparks my curiosity? What am I observing that lights a fire within? What can I share with others about this?

When I view gardening as a form of deep play where I can get out of my head and into my body, I feel into the space. I notice how my body feels in that space. I see what draws my interest. From that place of embodied observation I can then go into reading and research mode or take action.

Deep play is more about the feeling you get from doing the activity rather than what the activity is.

Perhaps for you reading can be a way to become enchanted and entranced. If so, here are some books about summer and gardening currently in my book pile that are not the how to grow kind:

And here’s a piece I wrote about gardening this season and another article from last summer: