2008

Gardening
CITY GIRL AND THE DOUBTING FARMERS

I was so excited when I first read the Perelandra Garden Workbooks I and II! I couldn't wait to implement as much as I could and co-create a garden.

I was dating a farmer at the time. Sean's family had farmed the area for at least sixty years and had utilized a large kitchen garden for about twenty years. In this particular year, the family had decided they would begin phasing out the farm by reducing the number of acres they were personally responsible for. And the garden area? Well, nobody seemed too interested in it any more. What an opportunity for me to try out the Perelandra techniques! I began ambitiously. I had a few flower essences to work with, and I collected several items for soil balancing. Sitting under a beautiful eighty-year-old walnut tree, I began connecting with the Overlighting Deva of the garden. (The walnut tree had stopped producing walnuts the year before and everyone wondered how much longer it would live.) I connected to the Overlighting Deva and asked if we could co-create a kitchen garden together. I got an immediate "yes." We were off to a good start, I felt. Continuing with the process, I understood that for the garden and the highest good of all, it would be best to begin simply, with only tomatoes, basil and peppers, planted in three large circles around a central area that would be filled in later.

Still using the pendulum, I went to a store and selected the kinds of tomato, basil and pepper seeds that were in alignment with the Balancing Garden. "The Balancing Garden"? When had that name appeared, I wondered.

At home, I planted the seeds under a grow light to give them a great start prior to planting them outside. When they were several inches tall, it was time to plant them outside. That's when I felt a bit overwhelmed. I had 97 plants and a very large area (60 ft by 50 ft) waiting to be tilled. I asked Sean what he thought. "Sounds like you need to till it," was his reply. Being a city girl, I wasn't sure how to go about this. He generously offered to do it for me. That still left me with 97 plants and a pendulum, my flower essences and a soil balancing kit. Thank God for flower essences! I needed the balancing and stabilization for what I was about to do. I began making a map and talking with the Overlighting Deva and the plant devas. "What do I put where?" I asked.

It turned out the tomatoes all wanted to go in the outside circle, the peppers in the middle circle and the basil in the inside circle. Using my pendulum I determined which plant to place where. At the end of the day, I could barely stand up — but I still had one more thing to do: I connected with the plants, soil and Overlighting Deva to balance and stabilize the planting.

Since the plants were pretty tender, we raided the recycling bins for plastic jugs. Cutting off the tops, we created containers to protect the plants — all 97 of them. "You don't know what you're doing!" said one farmer. "Don't you know there are deer all over the place? They'll knock down those containers and eat your plants. Then what are you going to do?"

I just kept doing what I was doing. Balancing and stabilizing.

The Overlighting Deva told me that the center part of the garden was to be a special crystal held in a log from the nearby forest and surrounded with marigolds. Looking around we found a sawed-off stump. I had been gifted with a single lovely large amethyst crystal that I now placed in the center of the stump. The energy felt awesome. Now we just had to wait for everything to grow!

Mulch would have been helpful in between the circles of plants, as suggested by the Overlighting Deva. Although I wanted to honor that, I found too much resistance in my boyfriend's family, which was indicative of some of our relationship problems as well. "You can't put mulch there! We'll have to plow it up and that will change the soil for what is going to get planted next year!" they said. Since it was their land and their concern, I had to let that go. I explained it as best I could to the Overlighting Deva.

I next turned my attention to balancing and stabilizing the soil and the productivity of the entire farm. I worked out a map with what I thought were the areas the family farmed. Sitting under that lovely walnut tree that guarded the garden, I balanced and stabilized the farm weekly. The first time I did this and went back to the house, the "lame" horse Dude came running toward me. I couldn't believe my eyes! That horse could barely walk, let alone run! Each time I balanced and stabilized the farm, Dude had the same reaction. He would run toward me to greet me as I came back from the garden. His lameness would dissipate for a time, and then slowly come back. At least he appeared to have some relief.

The farmers kept shaking their heads and watching me with my pendulum and flower essences and stabilizing kit. "Just wait," one advised. "The deer haven't found this garden yet. When they do, there won't be anything left."

"Not only the deer, but this is the worst grasshopper season I've seen," said another. "Whatever the deer don't get, the grasshoppers will."

I just kept doing what I was doing. I connected with the devas of grasshoppers and deer and any other insect or animal that might come by and asked if we could keep this garden from being touched until a time we mutually agreed. Maybe fall? I felt agreement.

The tomato and pepper plants asked for manure tea. "What is manure tea?" I asked. I was shown a picture of one- third manure and two-thirds water sitting in the sun. I asked Sean about that. "Oh sure," he said. "My grandfather used to do that. We'll use mule manure. It's not as hot as sheep or goat." I didn't have any idea what he was talking about, but it felt right.

So we got a huge plastic trash container with a lid. We filled it one-third of the way with manure and topped it off with water. It sat in the sun for a week. Then I began watering the plants with it. All of them loved it! They were growing quite rapidly now and no grasshoppers were to be seen.

One morning I went to the garden early and found deer tracks. But they were circling the outermost ring of the Balancing Garden. I never found any tracks inside the garden circles. And no plants were touched.

The farmers couldn't get over it. I kept balancing and stabilizing and doing energy clearings on the garden and the farm. The garden produced a bumper crop of everything. We had so much to give away! Everyone, even the farmers, said it was the best they had ever tasted, and they wondered how the produce was so large and tasty without any chemical fertilizer. I just smiled and kept doing what I was doing.

Then in October, we realized a frost was coming. We picked what we wanted from the garden, and then I turned it over to the animals. "It's time," I said. "Take what you want." The next day, the garden was completely trampled and eaten. I laughed when I saw that. "What happened?" asked a farmer's wife. I explained I'd given the animals permission to have at it. She just looked mystified.

Six weeks later, the family sat around the kitchen table discussing the harvest. One brother said, "I just don't get it, Dad. I farm right across the highway from you. We didn't have any strange storms or rainfalls on one side of the road or the other. We each had exactly the same seed and growing conditions. We used the same fertilizer. Our soil is the same analysis. Yet, your yield was one-third more than mine! I just don't get it!"

I sat there for a minute, frozen and thinking, hmm, I know I balanced and stabilized the farm.

I thought I included all parts of it. Could it be I missed some acres?

Privately I asked Sean where his brother farmed. On the way back to his house he pointed out the land.

I realized I had not included his brother's land in the balancing and stabilizing. And his brother had a lower yield than everyone else for no other obvious reason! Even I found that quite amazing.

The garden and the farm were not the only areas to experience abundance that year. As a beautiful side effect of my relationship with it, the walnut tree produced the largest crop of walnuts anyone had ever seen since they'd lived there!

— N.V. / P.R.S., Sedona, AZ