A Springtime Reunion

By Frank and Vicky Giannangelo
Giannangelo Farms Southwest—
Registered New Mexico Organic Gardens

As much as there is a hectic constancy during the spring and summer growing seasons, during the winter, at 7,300’ in the clean New Mexico air, there comes a stillness of gardening activity that provides a time for regrouping and reflecting upon ideas, plans, and directions.

Our house, with its continuously bathing wood heat, becomes a hibernaculum entered into hurriedly and left reluctantly. Snow melts from the warmth of a late morning sun and then in evening freezes the layer of sand deposited from a millennia of sandstone cliff erosion, turning the landscape into a shiny brick.

The summer’s garden is thought of only when slicing carrots or onions for soups or when cutting up one of the winter squashes. Jars of air dried spices decorate the lowest shelf of the wire rack. Ristras of dried chiles hang on the wall awaiting their destination in spicy winter meals.

It has been said that failure is a perfect opportunity to look at one’s self honestly, and it seems for the gardener that there is always ample opportunity to do this. Those crops that grew in abundance the year before, now just won’t do what we expect of them. But, our expectations also have certain basic needs, just like plants seeking sun, nutrients, and water. If what we want to happen is to come to fruition, it’s necessary to direct energies in that direction.

In the garden, as in life, there are three basic principles—fact, idea, and relationship. There are certain facts that must be acknowledged: plants deprived of water will whither and die and neglect will allow weeds to overcome tiny seedlings. There is no garden without personal effort. A gardener soon accumulates a list of these physical realities, often noticing that these plant necessities also apply to ones own life. And, once acknowledged, we gain a confidence in these universe mechanisms and can work within these energy pathways that exist as natural elements in our lives. The more we resist finding creative ways of aligning ourselves with these energies, the poorer grows our garden, and our selves.

There is a need for an adept adaptability—finding natural creative solutions for the differing environments within which we find ourselves, or our plants. In our 30 years of gardening experience we have had the opportunity to grow in hard clay, sandy, and loamy soils. Each time we have had to use different methods and new solutions to bring about good harvests.

Being inside during much of the winter months allows time for reflection, a freedom not easily available during the busy spring and summer when we are focused on more immediate needs, such as watering. With the hot New Mexico winds and sun, carefully monitored watering is a must. Often we hear people complaining about the time it takes to hand water, so they install timed drip irrigation or sprinkling systems. We enjoy watering by hand.

Even though we have gardened on a fairly large scale, (at times being open 7 days a week to the pubic, servicing restaurants, resorts, and farmers markets), we have tried to maintain an individual beauty in the garden. It is only by hand watering that we have the time to view, assess, and appreciate each plant, and determine its individual needs as seen within the garden as a whole.

“Beauty, art, is largely a matter of a unification of contrasts, and variety is essential to the concept of beauty.” We sometimes tend to think that each person is the same even though we know that everyone is unique. Each person or plant is at a different stage of growth and maturity with different needs for that moment that will provide the growth for their fullest potential.

Time spent in a garden allows one to practice focusing and recognizing individual needs. It is an acquired skill that once practiced in the garden can be applied in our lives with equal benefit.

In the garden there grows an abundance of more than just food. There is a connection between the soil (the physical), a conscientious plan (the spiritual), and its execution (the mental). The relationship between these elements becomes evident when the most basic of human associations, that of providing food and sharing the bounty of one’s labor, reflects the fruits of the spirit (goodness).

What bonds of strength are established at a farmers market when someone buys that bundled bunch of shiny red radishes that will surely bring conversation and comment at an evening meal or a lunch on the patio with a cool summer salad? What neighbor turns away a gift of food, energizing in its freshness, bringing health and a feeling of well being? A gardener doesn’t grow only for self, or profit (although it is an honest earning, a satisfaction hard to come by these days).

Everyone desires to be in harmony with the physical, mental, and spiritual aspects of the universe. The rapid march of invention and progress has, within recent history, veered and broken ties that gave us identification with our place and compatibility with cosmic progress. These lost connections have increased the difficulty to proceed toward goals of the future, those greater than our present selves.

\We have put the garden “to bed” for the winter. Seed catalogues accumulate in our post office box in town, often crammed in tightly because we don’t go often to collect the mail. Each year seed companies send out ever more sophisticated advertising with glossier paper, brighter photos, newer and better hybrids. A few retain a studied, nostalgic feel. The chasm between their seeds and our garden is wide.

For us, growing is “growth” but for seed companies, as Marshall McLuhan has noted, “All advertising advertises advertising.” Even so, one can not help but see the catalogs and think about the next growing season: what is to be done the same way, what is to be changed, and with what new ideas. So much of the garden is based on a logical analysis of what is needed to provide the basics. Plants don’t grow by themselves and neither do we. Our nutrients are creativity, progress, and that inner knowing of what is the right direction.

Master Fwap, a Tantric Buddhist teacher, speaks of our having a “second attention,” one that is outside the structures of logical analysis. This second attention depends upon careful timing, and rapid, accurate adaptations within the mind. For us, planting and harvesting take on a realization of the “right moment” followed by frenetic activity. It is as if a propitious moment has snuck up on us, and we turn around to find it within our grasp. Then, with a trusting belief we act, using it to its greatest expression and advantage.

Spirit is receptive, material is reflective. This spring, when the moon is right, the weather says “take a chance,” and an archaic call stirs within us, we will re-establish a harmonious relationship with the universe in the garden—a reflection of the realities of truth, beauty, and goodness—and we will grow.

The Giannangelos believe that sustainable organic gardening can serve as a medium for creative expression and spiritual growth. Visit their website, www.avant-gardening.com, for information on organic gardening, their workshops and teas, and “You Can Grow!” instructional organic gardening CDs.

Photos courtesy of Giannangelo Farms Southwest located near Raman, New Mexico.