Words from the Garden

Years ago, in grad school, I was an intern at a community garden. It wasn’t a typical one, this garden program belonging to the university and shared by other organizations utilizing the land for their own classes. Being a learning garden meant there was experimentation happening with new or different ways to plan and grow a garden. 

I had just read “The One-Straw Revolution,” where author Masanobu Fukuoka is growing rice in Japan. His philosophy was to plant the rice in such a way that no weeding was necessary. It was a no-work plan. I was enamored by this idea and wanted to try it. I set out in my own little corner plot to plant veggies and leave weeds alone. Well, after a while, it just looked like an abandoned plot and I was asked by my advisor to pull the weeds out. She didn’t want the seeds blowing over into my neighboring garden beds where individuals had worked hard to get their veggie only gardens producing. I understood her reasoning but felt defeated. I really wanted it to be a success. 

Earlier this spring, I had a friend over with her kids to play in the yard. She looked over at my garden and said, “so you decided not to plant anything this year?”. I replied confirming, with a clunk of heart down in my stomach. I had a lot going on in the garden, it was just hard to see it. You had to know what you were looking at. But it is not a veggie garden. I have fruit, flowers, a couple trees, and herbs, all growing companionably with weeds. 

If you were to look at my homeschooling, you might say I work much the same way there as I do with the garden. We learn things, the kids are working on some curriculum some of the time, but otherwise I educate in a looser, more creative and community based manner. My homeschool is not set to a clock like plants in nice rows. I don’t always know what we are going to work on in a given week, as I might not know what is going to pop up in the garden. I like to scatter seeds and then forget about them and be surprised when I see something of interest happening. Much in the same way, I offer ideas, inspiration, and an interactive environment to my kids and wait for them to catch something and then we roll with it. 

To me, curriculum is like a nice seed catalog. I love when they arrive in the mail. I pour over them, and then they sit on the shelf while the information integrates into my body and I take action from a place of inspiration. Each day is different but lives within a basic pattern of our habitual routines. Yet some days you see a great leap – like a new sprout, a flower blooming, or a plant making fruit. Suddenly the kids are reading, skip counting, or cooking their own oatmeal (hallelujah!). 

My garden isn’t exactly “no-work”. However, I am more relaxed about the weeds and maintain a healthy balance of work and letting them grow within reason. As long as the flowers are happily blooming and the berry plants making fruit, then I am satisfied. And more than satisfied I am delighted.