VEG GARDEN

Finally here is the garden story, created during 2016,17,18.

I didn’t want to set online those photos while I and it were in process, it was a different time in my life, recovering from severe car accident (someone was driving in the wrong direction, crashing me, frontal. Flexibility out of yoga practice and style life did protect me: no bone was broken, and I m alive, but...) 

As I was in an odd health condition, spinning head all time, vertigo, headache, soaring body all over... and as a new place, sized maybe 30x30m, was borrowed to me for free, place which was not a garden but a space left wild and desert, dry, used in the last 20years for storing waste stones and ground left aside when building new house (this is the way in the swiss Alps mountains: they dig and change the landscape in order to get flat space aka sort of terrace to build new houses), I took it as an opportunity to experience what has been in Findhorn.

I knew little about it, but had previous experiences in gardening, permaculture, and a strong intuitive connection with nature, plants, their life, properties, qualities, caracter, behavior.

So I began!

On the sides of this area I found very good soil: baby trees had been regularly cut trough years and were more or less advanced decomposing logs. I brought as less as possible material from outside. At that time I was having fun with spinning process out of wild raw sheep wool, so I had a lot of too-dirty-to-use-wool left which I put in the permaculture rows as well. 

Yes: unexpectedly I was alone most of tiem, and the land was far too hard to dig in general, so I didn’t. Instead I did build rows directly on the land, by layers. You can see it on the photos. 

Main of rows: decomposing logs, wool, veg fruits and veggies peels waste, cowshit or horse shit, and the soil I could find on the side. I covered it first with straw. Then I planted seeds, firstly mustard and buckwheat, to obtain green masses and volume, because I needed some, to cover more, and that was nurrishing the rows. By itself it was giving more and more then, freely.

I did all that without any use of machine. 

As much as possible I did follow and use the biodynamic moon calendar, and mostly sprayed all over herbal teas and infusions made of horsetail, nettle, and some personnal herbal tea which I would be drinking at that time... for me it was obvious that if I am eating something, I can share and give some of it to my “friend the baby garden” haha

Most of the time when possible, I worked in squatting position because of my spinning head condition. 

It was like a meditation. Seeing the garden rise out of nothing, I could watch myself left in pieces from the prior accident, collecting the very own pieces of myself, and rise again too. 

As the garden came to life, I came back to life too.

The first year, people around, passing by, thought I was crazy. Squatting posture, gardening on rocks... the farmer living in front on the other side of the road would not even say hello to me.

The second year, far further my expectations (which were none, I was only having some experiment) he crossed the road, shaked my hand and gave me warm congratulations and his consideration. 

The veggies, flowers etc were growing well and high. It was a bit chaotic, or better said> following its own nature rules.. many animals came, from insects to warms to little snakes etc a full life did install here, the music out of it was amazing.

What I loved in this mess is that out of the kitchen waste, the kinda veg, that year a pumpkin, (an other year, some watermelon, etc ) was the most abundant. It grew by itself, I didn’t plant anything nor expected it... what a beautiful surprise. And every plant and animal was saying “hello hello” smiling to me. I had no control at all and was rejoiced with that. 

Only I had to watch more carefully: the first time I saw some little snake, a slowworm, it was asleep in a row, under the green cover which I just took away to plant a baby plant.. I said “oops I am sorry to disturb, didn’t intend to embarrass, my apologies” covered it again as it was and found a different place for the baby plant I had in hand.

Then I learned that some people were visiting it when I was not there! There was a touristic small pathway about 100 meters above, from where walkers could see the place. And the drivers on the road could notice the changes day after day. 

Then few changes came. Water cuts randomly. Then the owner decided to borrow this land to someone else. But this person did not benefit of what I did: he first talked about, but then destroyed the whole place and every row, everything I had done. Animals, flowers, plants, all self generative, as in fertile circle, all that had disappeared at once. He came with big machines... 

But it’s ok. Someone had already come to me at that time, he was cycling around a lot. Owner of other pieces of land, he offered me to move to his place, to care of the fruits trees and creat an other garden. Much more peaceful. More natural. No road, no car, no viewers close to. Evened in some part to fit, no antenna signal at all, 3, 4, 5G free.

But this is an other chapter, an other history.

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