It being Friday, I have just returned from the Waimarie Community garden, where I have been helping for the past few weeks. Today we had a visit to the riding stables, where we shovelled manure into bags, and then brought it back to enrich the garden soil . 'Experience your dream in beautiful New Zealand ' was ringing in my ears, as we returned with our pungent load. I only regret that I did not have a camera to prove how much I really was in it
Here is a bit more information about the garden.
The Hamilton Permaculture Trust promotes sustainable organic gardening in the city, and, together with the managers of the centre and volunteers, looks after this garden. It is open to all, and on Fridays those managing a psychiatric illness, either in the local hospital or within the community, come into the garden to help, to chat, or just to be. Produce from the garden is theirs to take home, and is also used to make lunch for everyone.
An old bathtub, aesthetically protected by recycled timber, makes an excellent wormery, and produces a constant flow of nutrient-rich liquid fertiliser from the plug hole. The dreaded plastic bags are used to scare the birds rather than choke them to death.
See banthebag.org.uk. for more interesting reading on this theme. Thanks to son Pete's weblog for this last link.
There is something special about this experience,and I have been trying to recognise exactly what it is. Maybe it is that for these few hours in the garden everyone has time; time to talk, time to be listened to, and time to get completely absorbed in what is being done. There is effort, there is intention, and most of all there is respect for the power of nature, working with rather than against it , accepting its timescale and not just imposing ones own.
Investing in expensive drugs provides valuable curing of symptoms; investing equally in such therapies also provides the slower and equally valuable healing.
Happy gardening!