Lessons from the Garden: Being with Berries

ALANDA GREENE is picking blackcurrants in her garden. Reflecting on the nature of these tiny fruit helps her see the importance of valuing everyone and everything, of being in tune with Nature, of interconnectedness, and of Mitakuye Oyasin.

- ALANDA GREENE

The cycle of seasons has circled again to the blackcurrant bushes where berries have turned from green to bronze to glossy blue-black. And again, in this steady and rhythmic process of picking, these berries offer understandings. My mind quiets enough to be receptive to insights. My tendency is to move along quickly with tasks. The garden cares little for my inclinations about efficiency and speed. It requires that I adjust to its rhythm. It is much wiser than me.

This morning, with a twig broom, I swept the stone patio and was reminded of Zen monks tending the gardens around temples in Japan. I used to think the slow care with which they swept was about their practice, like the walking meditation where each moment is attended to in awareness. The sweeping probably is about this, but today I understand that they also sweep slowly because this kind of sweeping just doesn’t work if done quickly. When I try, which I did repeatedly today, feeling time pressure and wanting to get this patio cleaned and get on with other things that need doing; when I try this way, the pine needles, the dried catkins, the cones, the papery leaves just get stuck in the cracks and in the broom. The debris that covers the gravelly parts gets mixed with bits of gravel itself, which is not what I want. Sweeping slowly and lightly allows the ends of the twigs to nudge the bits of litter along without carrying a lot of what needs to remain.