Gardening to Life: Sore Muscles, Lilies, Artichokes and Metaphors

this article first appeared in the Island Word, spring, 2006.  It is one of our favorites.

The long days have arrived, and Monika can be found every evening in the garden, until long after Serena has declared it to be “dark” and gone to bed. For Monika, the garden is a long-awaited joy, a place to renew her spirit and to use her senses as she delights in the new life all around her. With a new yard to play in this year, Monika is thrilled with each new plant to show itself. The hummingbirds are back, providing aerial displays while they rival over the bright red feeders that Monika puts out for them. There are more than a half a dozen Mason Bee houses on the lot, already stuffed with the pollen and larvae packages that will be next year’s early pollinating brigade.

Oddly, this is not Serena’s favorite time of year. Her NIC students have left; some for summer jobs and some off to university. For four long months, no one takes notes when she speaks. Her admiration of gardening is mainly from afar, and we have decided for the most part that this is a healthy compromise between hurting herself trying to help, and withdrawing in pain and humiliation. She loves the metaphors of gardening—compost into flowers, roots going deep into the soil, buds opening, fruit ripening, and the endless, comforting rhythm of the earth’s cycles. But when Monika calls eagerly, “oh, come smell this!”, Serena’s sinuses fill up instantly and she sneezes. Recently, Serena returned home from a conference to find 2 yards of bark mulch that needed moving to make way for the 5 yards of fish compost on the driveway, which, in turn, needed spread before the delivery of next winter’s wood by the following Tuesday. She tried valiantly, but after three days of hauling, four chiropractic visits, ice packs and massage, she is recuperating and next year’s wood is still on the driveway (atop 3 yards of fish compost). Meanwhile, who can she complain to? Monika is in garden-heaven, and she leaves her cell phone on the kitchen table when she goes out.

Allergies notwithstanding, it is safe to say that everyone needs a knowing connection with the earth. Serena remembers a friend she met in college who had only lived in cities, and who, as a child, had assumed that the whole earth was paved, with small holes in the pavement for things like trees, and larger holes for parks and farms. Once, Serena’s Mid-western brother picked up a visitor at the airport from Los Angeles. Driving home, the car air conditioner masked the sound of cicadas and locusts outdoors. But when the two men opened the car doors, the one from Los Angeles dove to the ground for cover, having heard what he believed were sirens from all directions. Serena’s family tells these stories with an air of pity for the city folk; how strange to know so little! How do they live in such a world?

Of course, we now know that we carry the code of all of nature within our own cells, and that our bodies are the landscape of a complex community of living things, mostly microscopic. So, while we may dream of “getting away to nature”, in truth, we have never gotten away from nature. But being connected and knowing about that connection is not the same thing. Knowing about our connection to the living world gives us important opportunities to become more resilient, smarter, and richer spiritually.

Take the garden, for instance. Plant a rose under a cedar tree, and it won’t do well. Nor will wishing make a plant change its characteristics. A cabbage will be a cabbage, even if the planter wanted it to be a rose. And if a person were foolish or naïve enough to ask the plant, “what’s the matter? don’t you care about what I want you to be?”, the experienced gardener would reply, “Find out what kind of plant it is, and what it needs.” The gardener learns to choose plants that are a good fit for the environment that she can provide: daisies and sun flowers need sunny places, but violets like some shade. He also learns to adjust the environment to the plant. If our hearts are set on fragrant lilacs, we add lime around the roots to neutralize the Rain Forest acidic soil. Children come into the world believing that it revolves around them, and that wishing and making things happen are one and the same thing. But no amount of denial will make a lilac grow well in acidic soil. Gardening gives wonderful lessons in “it’s not about you”. This is both liberating, and frustrating. But if you want healthy plant, you have to start with what it needs.

Assessing a school child’s learning style is not that different than figuring out what kind of plant you have and what it needs. The tools are different, of course, but the attitude of wonder, and the questions, “who are you, and what do you need to shine?” are the same. Relationship counselling is often like gardener apprenticeship, where the participants learn to better recognize and honor the nature of one another, and to facilitate growth in its own terms. People are more flexible than plants and most animals in their ability to change environments to suite them, and to change themselves to fit in the environment. And this is a double-edge sword; it can make it very hard to discover a mismatch of person and niche, and to identify the changes necessary to achieve a more healthy and lovely expression of “true” identity. A human “lily” may be well disguised as an “artichoke”, and may have valid reasons to hold on to the ruse. Therapy is still guided by that old adage that people flower best when they are offered an atmosphere that allows for self exploration, and that lets them feel that whatever “flowers” they harbor inside are going to be welcomed as a gift to the world. As self-knowledge of one’s inner garden grows, the counselor can help to teach the right “fertilizers” and tools needed to continue its care.

Meanwhile, the heat of the afternoon has passed, and it is time to go outdoors again. There is fish compost to spread, and wood to stack. The landscape that is our bodies needs stretching and exercise (Serena’s needs an allergy mask). If the column is short this month, blame (or thank) the back yard for calling to us.

Why we raise Mason Bees

This article first appeared in the Island Word in spring, 2012.

It’s late March, and the kitchen table has been taken over once again by bee houses. There are containers of small black cocoons crowding the refrigerator. We hope no one mistakes them for beans. Here at the table we gently pry bee cocoons from the tunnels that they share with mites and predators in our wooden Mason bee houses.

When things start blooming, we will put cocoons in a small cardboard box with a quarter-inch hole for the new bees to emerge from, and we will put this atop a nesting box with clean tunnels for the females to return to. The newly hatched female bees will close off the back of each tunnel with mud, then bring pollen and nectar supply and then lay an egg, then a mud wall to form a cell for beginning another new bee. Another pollen and nectar plug, an egg, more mud. Another pollen supply, and egg, a mud wall…until the tunnel is full. Over the summer the eggs will hatch, the larvae will eat and grow, and by September new cocoons will be spun with next year’s bees inside.

Mason bees are one of thousands of species of pollinating insects that are wild and native to Canada. They don’t make honey, sting, or work cooperatively in hives. Where honey bees are valued for their long and versatile pollinating season, native pollinators are equally important for their very efficient and intense work of pollinating, each species covering a shorter and more specific season of blooms. They are part of the intricate web of co-evolved, inter-dependent and mostly invisible-to-us life that sustains our own presence on this planet.

Like most smallish critters, the bees are part of the food chain and thus have a low natural survival rate. Even our coddled and protected bees cannot escape being food for predators. We control the presence of pollen mites but in some of the cells, the mites eat the pollen supply first and the mason bee larva starves. Others still fall prey to parasitic wasps before they get the chance to take wing. One year we awoke to the toc-toc-toc of an eager woodpecker mama who was systematically emptying our bee-houses of their fat larvae, while her enormous fluffy-but-incompetent youngster stood by with open beak.

This year Serena actually suggested we might pass the supplies and knowledge to someone else, and get out of the bee business. Our lives seem so crowded now with our private practice, our sandwich-generation family life, and the encroaching aches and pains of age. We have little time for human friendship, does it make sense to keep up with this one-more-thing hobby?

But our bee hobby is another kind of friendship, and it has worn its way deep into our lives. To hold a cocoon while the bee hatches, cleans itself, poops and takes to the air (all within a minute) is to witness an intimate and thrilling thing. It shows us there is more than one kind of intelligence in the world, and that feelings akin to joy and purpose may not be unique to the human animal. Survival and reproduction behaviors must just feel right and good to the animal, no matter how small, or they wouldn’t be done. And life would stop. Is it possible that joy is all that marks the difference between energy conversion machines and life forms? Perhaps our capacity toward wonder and awe is not an accident of evolution, but rather a key component that motivates us to keep life going a little bit longer; until the next generation can pick up the job. We will protect what we love.

Economists make much of productive labor, which produces a surplus of goods that can be hoarded, stolen, traded, bought, or sold. Honey bees are one of the rare animals that engage in productive labor (they can be induced to produce more honey than they actually use, and we can speculate that this innovation allows them to ‘trade’ the excess honey for the protection and care of a bee-keeper, which in turn increases their own survival success).

But most critters stick to reproductive labor, and much of that labor is wasted, so to speak, on youngsters that merely end up as food supply for some other species. Our bees just copulate, gather pollen, lay eggs and pass on; provided they don’t get eaten first. It’s a way of life that doesn’t conquer anything, build any empires, leave any monuments, or discover anything new. It goes in circles and doesn’t get anywhere. Yet there is probably something glorious about diving into a blossom full of pollen; a moment of joy in the life of a bee.

This is a difficult time in the Patterson and Grünberg home. Our much-loved son is making choices that are difficult to accept but impossible to prevent. Serena’s relationship with physical pain frustrates her passion to get out and change the world. Monika’s German Mutti, our Oma, is recovering from radical cancer surgery. Everything changes, and we never do know what next year or even next week will bring.

Because we were children of the cold war, we spent a lot of time in our youth thinking about what we’d be doing when the nuclear holocaust came. The disasters we fear now are less dramatic, more personal: a child losing its way, a parent suffering, our own eventual and inevitable deaths. Still, like gardening, making soup, comforting friends, or listening to a child’s day, protecting and raising mason bees is one of the things we’d like to be caught doing when any size of holocaust comes down.

On a day when all seems lost, Nature doesn’t say, “Write a great novel. Get famous. Build a monument to outlast your short time on earth.” Nature tells our bees to “emerge when its warm enough. Have sex. Find a nest. Collect enough pollen and nectar to feed the egg. Lay an egg. Build a little wall, and start again. Sometimes, sit in the sun and warm yourself. Our bees share this with us. Raising bees might not stave off disaster, but it does stave off depression.

To be quite honest, getting that great novel written would be a comfort, as well. Serena is a poor, impatient Buddhist at heart whose ability to accept the Zen of life only goes so far. And that is precisely why we aren’t giving away the bee boxes this year. We need the practice.

Animals as Teachers

This article was first published in the Island Word in the Autumn of 2004.  Since then, the one-eyed mongrel has passed (see Goodbye, Mr. B) and been replaced by Molly the Border Collie and her partner in mischief and literary works, Frost. 

Serena has been sleeping with the window open these past two months, so that she can hear the salmon run in the creek. “They are my new teachers,” she says. “They are teaching me not to be afraid of the end of life. I love how they spend this time facing the current, having sex, giving every ounce of their being to both the beginning and the ending of life. I love how they will leave their bodies behind to nourish the fry. I love how they carry nutrients from the ocean to the inland, year after year, century after century; the circle of the whole thing moves me.”

Animals have been our teachers many times, and continue to be. Monika had a spaniel-border collie cross who, for sixteen years, followed faithfully at her heels. Wherever Monika went, there was her Arrow. As Monika moved through her twenties and her thirties, Arrow went from bouncing puppyhood to settled adulthood to, finally, the bittersweet enthusiasm of a geriatric dog, still willing but less able to play.

There are so many lessons to learn from a love that lasts all of one’s best friend’s life: how to receive unconditional love, to return loyalty, and to be faithful in the day to day duties of care. Then, there is the way that love can sweeten as the loved one changes to be more beautiful, if not to the stranger’s eye, then to the eye of the one who knows, and adores, the spirit within. Monika laughed, and cried, at her old dog’s tottery gait and horrible dog breath. But Monika held Arrow gently through her last breaths, and she grieved strongly afterward. Now, many years after, Monika smiles when a dog reminds her of her Arrow.

Serena’s current dog is a one-eyed, twelve year old mongrel who used to jump six foot fences, but now no longer moves fast enough to threaten even the neighborhood raccoons. He injured his eye last summer, swimming in the Puntledge, and he was having so much fun that he didn’t notice the accident when it happened; he just came back and barked for a another stick to chase. Serena’s physical pain threshold is low, and she is amazed at a dog who, as she says, “is not Mr. Sensitive”, but will plunge into ice cold water any time of the year. Together, they are a pair: one who can’t smell worth a darn, hates the cold and who feels every bump, sliver and scrape; one who feels no pain, sees only half of the world, and can smell a raccoon trail at 50 yards, two days after the raccoon has passed. Different strokes, different abilities, as they say.

The Comox Valley’s Therapeutic Riding Association, which has for many years brought children with disabilities together with horses, has recently begun a program for children and teens with behavioral or emotional challenges. There, it is horses who do the teaching. We can just imagine the emotions that the young people must have as they befriend and learn to ride the horses. Large and powerful, horses are also grazers and herd animals, whose nature attunes them to the slightest hint of threat and tells them to run when frightened. In a world full of computers and video games, horses are refreshingly and undeniably alive. In a complicated world of peers who can be cunning and cruel to children with differences, horses are straightforward in their communication; once you learn what to look for, you can know exactly what the horse is feeling. Attention, empathy, patience, impulse control, gentleness, physical balance, self awareness and courage are just a few of the lessons that come with this program.

Another colleague, Wendy Kotilla, has developed the Youth and Ecological Restoration Project, which takes teenagers outside to observe and restore natural habitat. Wendy helps teenagers to stretch their awareness of the natural world, and to experience what it means to belong to, and to be a part of the earth. She says by that standing in the creeks and by learning from local people the teens develop a strong sense of place in both the natural and social communities.

Our relationship with animals is not a luxury. Humans have always lived closely with animals, both “domestic” and wild. Both Monika and Serena are the granddaughters of farmers, whose interdependence with the animals included raising them for meat, milk, eggs, and wool. These grandparents of ours had very different relationships with the farm animals than we have with our beloved pets. But even animals raised for food have a right to be free from cruelty and indifference. Every well-raised farm child learns to take responsibility for the well being of animals in their care, even if only for a short life time.

At our counselling office, Monika keeps mason bee houses just outside the window, and children and adults love to check on the developing larvae in their glass-topped nests. With the bees, the whole cycle of life is just a year long, and the adults spend most of their short lives looking after young that they never see. For children who have lost their parents, the bees have a particular lesson: that they, too, fit into the cycle of life and have been nourished by the love of someone, even before they were born. The bees also remind us adults of our responsibility to a future that we will not see, and to the descendants who may not even remember our names, but who will certainly be affected by our actions now.

Back by the creek, we keep one ear tuned to the salmon, and to the schoolyard on the other side of the creek. People of all ages come to watch the fish. Children need to be taught how to treat the salmon and other creatures. Without these lessons, children don’t know that their curious poking can hurt. They don’t know that rocks thrown in frustration at innocent animals release a malice into the world that fixes nothing, and can ruin everything. These moments by the creek are teaching times. It is vitally important to the children, as well as the salmon, that the lessons learned be respect, kindness, and a sense of awe toward living things.

One recent morning, we heard the familiar shouts of children by the creek, and went out to check on our wet, defenseless teachers. Usually, a reminder of “you know not to bother the salmon, right?” is all that is required; children are quick to assure us that they are “just looking”, and we join for a few moments in the hypnotic joy of watching the water and the fish. But on this morning, more than a dozen children were lined up along the banks of the creek, and we were worried. But when we got close and heard what the children were shouting, we smiled. They were watching the fish like you watch a favorite sports team, encouraging them on and cheering like mad whenever one leapt the weir to land in a higher pool. They were telling one another about the spawning, and the fry that would be there in the spring. They were in awe at the size of the Chum, some three feet in length, and at the power with which they fought the current.

We wanted to cheer, too! For the salmon, who made it back to their birth stream to start the cycle again. For the teachers at Puntledge Park School, who were back in their classrooms after the hardship of an autumn teacher’s strike, and who have taught these children not only creek etiquette, but also joy and respect for the salmon. For the children, who will carry a sense of the beauty and drama of the salmon with them as they travel far from this creek and from this day. For the full face-into-the-current and zestful experience all of it—life, death, renewal, courage. It was one of those moments that is like a prayer, when everything sacred seems to be present and washing over us.

Animals are teachers of the deep lessons. Death is a part of life. Everything changes. Embrace life with enthusiasm and zest while it lasts. Love our fellow travelers—human, canine, equine, piscine (that’s fishy), domestic and feral. Watch out for their well being, and appreciate what they give in return. Grieve them well when they pass on. Try to leave a nurturing legacy behind us when we go.

Good-bye, Mr B:  Losing a beloved pet

This article was first published in the Island Word in February, 2006

He was a thirteen-year old, one hundred pound, ill behaved mongrel. He had paws like saucers, a coffee-table height tail, and as much torque as a pony. He didn’t like to “heel”. Ask, “would you like a bath, Barkley?”, and he would lay down like a protester in front of a tank, refusing to be moved. He once walked a picket line with a sign that said, “Dogs for fair play”. He loved to swim, run, chew sticks, and sleep. He liked his kibbles crunchy and his balls bouncy. He threw himself into river currents and ocean waves without hesitation. He sometimes hung out at the office, a benign presence and live lesson in stress management. He wasn’t always a good dog ( “Bad dog” was his middle name), but he sure knew how to have a good time, and he threw himself into play like there was no tomorrow; just this one, fabulous, delicious day to be savored.

A few months ago we wrote about the lessons that animals teach. A few weeks ago, we experienced another of those lessons. Barkley had been sick, and we tried to help him get better. But on a Sunday afternoon, he gave Serena a pained look from his bed that seemed to say, “it’s time. Please help me to stop hurting; help me to die.”

It was hard. One evening soon after, we took him out to Merville, to a place where we all loved to play. Under a full moon, he rallied to chase a rabbit for a few paces, then sat and savored the smells and the lovely night air. We humans took turns digging the hole where we would return, the next day, to place his body. In the morning, we gently helped him into the car for his last car ride, then sang to him and told stories while Dr. Ken got ready to help. As Dr. Ken gave him the injections, Serena held Barkley’s big head, which got heavier and heavier, relaxing into sleep and then death.

As we write this, it has been two weeks since we buried our pal, and each of us has had hours when the tears rolled, unchecked, down our cheeks. Some days we feel sick, and some days we want to fill the empty space with chocolate brownies (Serena) or pizza and chocolate (Monika). Serena has been misplacing keys, sweaters, coffee cups, and her glasses even more often than usual. Monika lost and found her purse more than once, and continues to double-check her schedule every evening, having discovered several double bookings just in time. At times, we feel proud of the gentle and caring job that we did to help Barkley in those last days, and relieved that his passing was an easy one after a long (for a dog) and happy (for any being) life. Other times, we feel devastated, or just inconsolably grumpy. Energy is low. The house is messy. Tessa, the other dog in the household, is grieving. She didn’t eat for days, and looked mournfully at his empty bed (until she appropriated it as her own). Say his name, and her ears prick up, looking around, smelling around for him. This is what grief looks like; this is what grief feels like.

Some readers may be thinking, “but it was just a dog”. Others might think, “oh yeah, I know just what they are talking about.” Serena, herself, tends go back and forth, asking, “am I making too much of this?”, and then, coming back to her more sensible self, accepting that grief is a normal process that no amount of denial is going to sweep away. In some ways, it is like the flu. You cut back on expectations, try to take good care of your body and soul, and ride it out. The only way out of it is through it, and there isn’t much of a roadmap to tell you how long it will take or what the journey is going to look like. Even if one has grieved before, each loss is different. One may leave you contemplative and introspective, another retching with physical pain, and yet another alternating between relief that a hard task is over, and an emptiness that can’t be filled.

Losing a pet is different in some ways than other kinds of loss. First, there is the uncomplicated, unconditional love that a pet gives. Barkley never got his feelings hurt just because we chose the wrong words to explain something (it was “blah, blah, walkies! Blah, blah, I love you, Barkley. Blah blah, hungry?” to him). He didn’t wonder whether he was still attractive or getting fat, and he didn’t look at us that way, either. If we spoke harshly, he went under the table, but he was quick to forgive and make up. That kind of simple acceptance, that comes without conditions, and doesn’t even rely upon understanding, comes only from pets.

Second, there is the pet’s utter dependence upon us. If the pet is in pain, or confused, or unhappy, it can’t solve it’s problems itself. And if we can’t fix what is wrong, the pet still looks at us, asking for help, trusting that we know best. Decisions about helping an animal to die are terribly difficult, but the choice often lies in our very human hands. Ambivalence and guilt may haunt us. Even harder is when a pet is lost, and we don’t know how or where it died. When possible, it is up to us, their human friends, to make the arrangements for a gentle death, to decide what to do with the remains, and to try to mark their memory in a fitting way.

Third, we must grieve our pets while life goes on. Children have to be told and comforted, and helped to grieve in their own way. Some colleagues and friends may, but many probably won’t grasp the depth of our loss or make allowances and give condolences. We may feel apologetic or embarrassed about grieving a pet, guilty about making a fuss and at the same time perhaps guilty about not making enough of a fuss. Without community rituals and shared understandings of how to mark a pet’s loss, we are on our own, making up rituals and comfort as we go.

Sometimes when we grieve a pet we are grieving for more than the pet. Other losses can come back to us full strength. Losing Barkley brought back to Monika the loss of her own beloved dog, Arrow. And Serena, remembering all of her years with Barkley, was drawn back to some of the hard times that he saw her through. She missed the little girl, now an adult, who picked out the puppy with the big paws. She remembered the comforting snore at the foot of her bed, as she got used to being a single mother and learned not to be afraid of being alone in the dark.

In the end, we remember once again that it is important to love. It is not required that the loved one be large, good looking, noble, or even human. A one-eyed, ornery, happy mongrel will do nicely. And when he is gone, so is the reassuring snore, the soft, soft muzzle to stroke, the big, protective-sounding bark, the sympathetic face, the absolutely delirious greeting every day after work, the most forgiving and patient and straight-forward friend Serena had.

So, Good-bye, Mr. B. Good-bye, Barkley “Bad Dog” Patterberg. Thanks for everything. We hope that you are happy and pain free, romping around somewhere.

Monika Grünberg, R.C.C. and Dr. Serena Patterson, R. Psych., are the humans who make up Grünberg Patterson Counselling and Psychological Services. They can be reached at 339-3269. Articles and other information can be found at www.grunbergpatterson.ca.

Guest Column:  Mollie the Office Dog

Wag, wag, sniff, sniff! Nudge. Pardon my informality, but that’s the Border Collie way of saying hello! It’s been a crazy week here at our house, what with house renovations and Serena’s return to her college teaching gig. There is drywall dust up my nose and sawdust on my paws. But with the humans sacked out and the computer standing empty, I thought I’d lend a paw with the monthly column. Today, I am sharing with the human world my five top rules for having a good life.

First, everybody should have a best friend. I have five of them. There’s Frost (named on account of her grey mottled fur), Serena, Monika, and two human pups, T. and G. One pack, 16 legs. Whether one actually speaks to one’s best friend, nuzzles them and sniffs them well, or simply makes soulful eye contact is a matter of personal style and, I suppose, breed. Some are more vocal than others. But eye contact, coming when called, warmth and grooming are essential. Choose your best friends wisely, bond with them well, and be a loyal companion.

Second, everybody should have a job. Frost and I share the challenging task of keeping our humans in a tight circle (good herding stock helps!), pre-washing the supper dishes (before the dishwasher), announcing visitors, and catching any balls that are thrown. In return, our human friends feed us, take us for walkies, snuggle us, brush our fur and trim our nails. What they do with the rest of their time is a mystery.

I have the additional responsibility and honour of being the Office Dog at Grünberg Patterson Counselling and Psychological Services. There, my job is to warm the couch between clients, and to be the Intense-o-meter for feelings. When the feelings get big, I carefully place my head on someone’s knee and give them the soulful eye. If they reach down and rub me behind the ears, I stay put and they feel calmer. When people are angry or very anxious, I may nudge their paw, just to be sure they notice. Sometimes I will make sure that Monika is paying proper attention by putting my paws on her lap and my nose in her face. This is not considered the best of human manners, but direct communication is a canine specialty. We dogs will occasionally lie about when we last ate (about a week ago, I think…hey, is that kibble in your pocket?) but never about feelings.

Third, go for walkies every day. Swimmies, hikes and runs are even better! Move your body joyfully and with wild abandon! Get outdoors! There is nothing worse than not being able to move your body, unless perhaps it is being unable to move your bowels. Either way, walkies are the ticket. Even if you are feeling stiff and sore, it’s best to go outdoors and do what you can.

Fourth, enjoy good food and good scents. Some recommend a raw diet, others vegetarian or vegan. At our house, we’re omnivores. Kibble, rice, cooked veggies and frozen raw chicken necks (chick-cicles!) make my tail wag and Frost go round and round in happy little circles.

Finally, sleep indoors, preferably where you can smell your loved ones. Long sleeps or short naps, it helps to pass the time and to recharge the love batteries.

That’s all, folks: it’s a beautiful Autumn day and there are balls to chase and organic matter to roll in (please don’t tell my humans; maybe they won’t notice!) Next month, they’ll be back to the usual human-to-human advice, and I’ll be at their feet to remind them of the good things in life.

Mollie is the Office Dog at Grünberg Patterson Counselling and Psychological Services. She can be reached via email at grunberg@grunbergpatterson.ca, or at the office at 156 Manor Drive, Comox.