Living in Season With Life: Beginning My Journey into a Sustainable, Simple Life

Gray Hairstreak butterfly on yellow echinacea flower in my garden.

Every year I’ve been married I’ve been a gardener, searching for a way to connect with the earth around me. This time of year, the transition between summer and fall, marks fifteen years of this life for me. I started modestly in our little condo’s small, enclosed patio. Just spring bulbs and jasmine. The following spring, when the crocus and freesia emerged from the cold, hard clayey soil we could barely break with shovels, I fell in love. All the time they bloomed I’d get up, head to the second bedroom that overlooked the small patch, and stare at the colors. What had I done? Some part of me couldn’t believe my hands crafted something with Nature.

When the blooms were spent and withered back down to the earth I felt morose. We had not been able to get anything else but those few crocus and freesia bulbs to grow, and with soil so compacted and void of nutrients their bloom show was short. When they were gone, I had nothing but hard, dusty soil. I guess I felt tricked, strung along by Nature, in some way. That week of love quickly gave way to empty dirt.

Mid-summer harvest of tomatoes, tomatillos, long beans.

Early morning writing practice in an herb bed.

It would be years, nearly eleven, before I understood the cycle of life and understood how to accept the seasons of life. By then I had many gardening successes. We moved into our first home a short year and a half after the condo, full with the hopes of a family. The first thing I did that summer was plant a small vegetable patch. Our yard was beautifully shaded and mulched by an Australian Flame tree, tall and wildly stately, so the dirt was fertile. There was a mature peach tree, full of large, juicy peaches. A fig tree that scented the summer air and grew taller than our single-story house. And cannas I replanted from a co-worker's garden that took off in one breath, dotting our fence in orange flame blooms.

One late summer day my suegra came over and told me through Spanish, “In Mexico it is tradition for the young wife to eat the first fruits of the garden. It increases her fertility.” So I happily ate the first bite of cucumber, its cool water ran down my chin. Within little time, we were expecting our baby girl, and quickly after, our son.

I’d watch a Blue Jay on his daily visits, blue feathers cocky and skirting the wind rather bravely until he'd sit on the patio and watch Yael, me, and Michael in my belly. When we bought the house, the previous owner told us about him, told us that he would visit daily, and that he was curious and unafraid. I wondered about the Blue Jay as soon as we decided to sell and move to a house we could settle in and stretch as a family. He’d been an almost daily visitor the four years we lived in the house.  Would he miss me like I would miss him? No one spoke of a resident Blue Jay at our new home, or any birds. Truthfully, I wasn’t ready to leave the Blue Jay, and daydreamed about moving him along with us. 

The thing is, I had not learned to let go. I had not learned that life, like the earth, has seasons. Our lives have seasons. Our friendships and loves. And we are no different; we have seasons too. Our lives undulate.

Fennel seed saving.

Last of the summer peaches.

January 2010, I learned to let go. Granma flew away and no matter how hard I cried, bargained with God to give me one more day, she was in the wind. By Spring I found myself walking my garden, speaking to her, to God, trying to find my bearings in my new life. Make sense of days without Granma's voice. When I began the task of pulling up spent plants—vegetables that had nourished my family and me, brown tomato plants that once feed Granma green tomatoes, pea vines, and thorny squash bushes long passed—I learned how to let go. I had nurtured these plants, they had nourished us, and they were gone.

I began to think about Granma, how she nurtured me so many times while I was a sickly girl, how she monitored my anemia with quick looks under my eyelids and into my palms, the way she taught me to care for my husband, cook with love, nap mid-day, and how she taught me, “Everything is a phase,” when raising kids. I thought about how I began to nourish her the last years of her life, the quilt I made her she took back and forth to dialysis, it’s many bleach and medicine stains, our conversations where she’d ask, “What’s for dinner,” or remind me, "As long as you have small kids your house will never be as clean as you want it, that's just that." And there were the times I’d listen to her when she felt she couldn’t stop smoking or craving and eating cornstarch, though she knew both were killing her quickly. Or how she hated the toll the dialysis took on her once strong body, taking away her freedom, darkening her face in large patches, the way she'd lament to me, "Mama 'sho don't want to get up on that machine, but let me go shower and get myself ready." 

The season of our relationship had evolved. She nourished and nurtured my young body, I nurtured and nourished her aging body, mind. As I transitioned into motherhood, womanhood, she guided me, and I gave her love, nourishment as she transitioned into the final phase of life.

We nurture, we’re nurtured, and then we must let go.

When my plants reach the end of their nourishing time I mourn. Perhaps I see Granma in them, or perhaps I grow accustomed to them in my life. But, I’ve learned to see the exchange in energy. Love does not end with death; it changes form. My plants’ lives do not end in a season; their energy changes form as we consume them, they set seed, and are eventually reborn. Granma's cornbread, sweet potato pie, mac and cheese, and so on lives in my kitchen. Her feisty, quick-witted temper in my mouth.

I know all of this, yet this past weekend I found it hard to let go of my garden. Autumn clearing usually happens much later in the year, when the plants are obviously exhausted from a lifetime of giving, but we had to pull them earlier this year. As I pulled up the plants I could not help but feel like I cheated them out of a full cycle of life, like I too was loosing a season of growing. With all the house repairs we’ve been undertaking, we’ve had little time to care for the garden, and it feels like the entire season, if not the year, has gotten away from me.

E, working--pulling up melon vines in preparation for the new, raised bed.

Me, working alongside him, focusing on the weeds.

As I worked alongside E I reminded myself of life seasons. Soon, I began to see I’m not destroying energy, I’m changing it. The plants will get composted, the seeds saved, the beds reborn into sustainable plots able to nourish my family deeply, and long term. The cycle of nurturing and being nourished/nurtured in return is just starting again.

I long for a simple life. Little social media, more hearty conversations, silent mornings to write, cooking and dancing for hours in the kitchen, time to paint, weave, quilt again. Maybe simple isn’t the right word, but slow and thoughtful. Living in tune with life’s seasons. Nurturing, being nurtured, letting go of what is spent. Living deliberately.

Little lady watering the apricot tree, next to the Mexican Tarragon. (I'm just loving her ashy legs, colorful skirt, and long waves!)

Little guy watering the Meyer lemon tree. Corn, Mexican Tarragon in the foreground.

So I’m shifting my life, my gardening work, where I invest my energy. My garden work, my life work, my relationships will loosely follow permaculture/sustainable principles. I want a life that follows Nature, focuses on interconnections/relationships that build a healthy, balanced, sustainable life. I’m still defining what that means for me, but I know it is a simple life, a balanced, nurturing life that seeks to care for others, the Earth, and myself.

As I define what this means for myself, I’ll share. As I pull back from social media, I’ll share more writing, more deep, personal thoughts. In this way, I’m of service and not just noise in the world. I'm part of a cycle of nurturing, and being nurtured in return.

All Love,

Ki