A Time for Everything

In the garden, there is a specific time for everything: for planting, for harvesting, for pruning, for fertilizing...And if you follow the biodynamic system and adjust your practices according to the moon, then these times are further subdivided into planting times for root vegetables as opposed to those that grow above ground, for trees that fruit as opposed to those that don't, etc etc.

An awareness of these natural cycles is something that we have grown further and further away from as we have changed to living in cities with 24 hour a day electric light and artificial heating and cooling systems and yet we continue to be governed by these ancient patterns although we are not always consciously aware of it.

The modern urban myth is that we ought to be equally productive seven days a week, 52 weeks a year and if we're not then we are simply not trying hard enough, we are not real 'pro's'. No allowance is made for the effect that seasonal variations, declining and increasing daylight hours or the waxing and waning of the moon might have on our watery bodies. We may believe we are living in the digital era but in fact we are still very much the inheritors and the product of the preceding industrial age. This is obvious when we look at our ostrich-in-the sand approach to the earth's finite resources but perhaps less apparent when we look at the prevailing cultural values regarding our ability to work productively.

So it pays sometimes to wander outside and look the landscape. Is it green and blossoming or is it going brown and dying back? Are the days long and light-filled or are they short and mostly quite dark? And if we are feeling a bit more sluggish than usual, can we see a counterpart in what's happening outside? Likewise if we are full of beans, is it 'pathetic fallacy', a coincidence or something more when we notice that the weather is also bright? Are we really some sort of mechanised beings that can churn out creative ideas to order and paintings by the yard? Or is there perhaps something more subtle at play here? Are we perhaps more children of the moon than we would like to believe?


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad