Archive for the ‘Green Healing’ Category

18 May

Hope Grows in the Garden

Posted by DOGKISSES in Green Healing, health, hope. Tagged: , , , , .

Horticultural healing

Horticultural Healing

Green Healing Days

I hope the little Squash grows well.  I believe it will.  With that said, I must tell you that I am so tired, I can’t write much of a post, but I simply had to share something about yet another, Green Healing Day!  I’m actually quite amazed at the opportunity I have in my volunteer work.  I had no idea that my time in the gardens, and with the people I’ve met, would offer me so many blessings, but it most certainly has! 

When I have more energy, I’ll tell you more about what makes this Squash special to me.  Perhaps by the time I can write another post, the Squash will have grown a lot more. 

Today, while I was taking a photo of it, the petals on the flower were a little wilted from just having been watered.  Just before I snapped this photo, the wind blew gently and the petal opened for me.  It was like that flower posed just for my camera.  I’m quite sure I’ve turned into one of those people who talk to plants. 

That’s all for today.  Thanks for visiting Dogkisses’s blog.  I hope that you too have some ‘Green Healing’ days!

16 May

One Green Healing Day!

Posted by DOGKISSES in Green Healing, healing, health, horticulture therapy, mental health. Tagged: , , , .

Today, I’m practicing accepting the moment.  My other options don’t look good.  I have a lot on my mind, some of which I simply don’t know what to do about.  I’m taking a break from trying to come up with solutions, at least for a little while.

I’ll take another break in a few minutes, with my pretty, insect-hunting four-legged companion, Ruthie Mae.  She needs me, and I need her. She let me know today how much she loves me, and how she misses us spending more outside time together. 

She walked over to me, as I was rubbing Tiny’s belly, which he loves of course, and put her paw in my hand in the sweet way she has always done,ever since the first time she introduced herself to me.  Ruthie does have good manners, even though, she doesn’t use them a lot of the time.  She looked me in the eyes, as if to say, hey thanks for loving us, and then she gave me a soft little kiss on my hand!  I promise you she is one of the sweetest dogs in the whole wide world!

I’ve regressed.  I meant to talk about butterflies.

I’d like to share a photo of the beautiful butterfly that I was friends with today. 

Beautiful Butterfly

A Green Healing Moment!

I make a lot of garden friends in Horticulture Therapy.  First it was the lizard, then the ladybug, and recently my son spotted a lizard by the bog that had an orange throat, and of course, butterflies!  I love the butterflies, but I’ve noticed that I do love all my garden friends.

I must go check my books of butterflies, my favorite of which is, BUTTERFLY GARDENING, FOR THE SOUTH, by GEYATA AJILVSGI, if I can find it.  I have nature guide books, but let’s find out what Geyata has to say about this amazing and beautiful creature.  

ZEBRA SWALLOWTAIL (Eurytides marcellus) 

Family: Papilionidae

Size: 2 3/8- 3 1/2 inches

Range: All 

 Flight Time: March-October 

Broods: 3, possibly more  

Overwinters: Pupa

Though the Zebra Swallowtail has bright striking colors, when it goes to rest in the shade, it gets a little darker and blends in with the environment. 

I know one thing this butterfly likes, and that’s drinking from Asclepias Tuberosa, commonly known as Milkweed, which is a nectar producing flower, but is also the plant that Monarchs lay their eggs on.  Milkweed is the only plant Monarchs use to lay their eggs on.  Something in the plant makes the Monarch poisonous to prey.

I once dreamed I was a Milkweed plant.  I was happy and lived in a great large field with many others like me.  But, that’s a story I’ve told in this blog.  Ruthie Mae says I don’t have time to give you the link.

That’s it for today.  The sun has gone down, and my girl needs a walk.

Thank you for visiting Dogkisses’s Blog! 

30 Apr

Green Healing ~ Horticultural Notes

Posted by DOGKISSES in Green Healing, health, hope, mental and emotional health, Photos. Tagged: , , , , , .

And the beat goes on…

life in the gardens

Quietly and Softly

soft and cheery, from Mother Nature.

Colorful Communications

We always begin Horticulture Therapy by gathering in a circle to share plant news.  This time together is good, interesting and takes us in many directions.  We often visit our past of garden or plant memories and look to the future with hopeful or creative garden dreams and ideas.

Last week I arrived just in time to hear another participant sharing his idea for a creative planting container.  The young man was more engaged than usual and when he smiled and became excited about what plants to choose and where he would put his new container, I felt like I saw the heart of horticulture therapy.

I like to call these times Healing Happenings, which are moments in time when hope or happiness fills my heart and mind.  I’m not talking about everything being right or all problems being fixed.  I’m talking about a little piece of time when worry and stress take a back seat and the beauty of life emerges.

healing horticulture

Sweet Peas make Smiles

Personally, ‘healing happenings’ include moments when I enjoy what I imagine most Mothers do, which is seeing our children, no matter what age they are, smile and be happy.  They’re also moments when I feel that my family will be okay.

a view of the big picture helps us stay hopeful

Therapeutic Gardening

“Drop by drop would make a lake.” (Azerbaijani proverb)

There is always hope in a garden.  We hope it grows.  We hope it rains.  We hope to have a good harvest of food or lively blooming flowers that paint our world pretty.   I’m sure hope is part of why it feels good to work in a garden, whether you have a large field or a modest arrangement of containers on your porch.  Each day you have hope.

there is hope

The Intern in an early Garden

And then, there is faith.

We hope the garden grows and have faith in a plentiful harvest.

new lettuce and a few sprouted carrots

“When I’m in my garden, life’s troubles crumble away with the rich black soil between my fingers. I’m fully in my body, out of my head, my worries banished. My garden is my church, my time there sacred.”  (Garden your troubles away, by Amy Koran, PsycheScoop).

our garden grows

lettuce and carrots growing

As always, I hope you too will have some ‘Green Healing’ moments.

Thank you for visiting Dogkisses’s blog.  Please feel free to leave a comment.

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19 Apr

Volunteer Work

Posted by DOGKISSES in Community, gratitude, Green Healing, health. Tagged: , , , , , , .

“Few things help an individual more than to place responsibility upon him, and to let him know that you trust him.” (Booker T. Washington)

Spirits thrive in the dirt

Volunteers starting the Bok Choy garden together.

Beautiful Rainbow Chard is thriving.  We harvested the large outer leaves this week.  Our bed of lettuce and carrots are coming along well and the Bok Choy is gorgeous!  I’ve never grown or seen Bok Choy growing before, so it’s exciting. 

I have a special affinity for the Bok Choy.  Transplanting the tender babies into larger pots was the first vegetable we planted when my son and I started volunteering in the horticulture therapy program.

Participating in the group is fun and therapeutic.  I like being around and working with the other volunteers and enjoy the little things I become aware of, either during our activities or after I get home and have time for reflection.

Watering the gardens throughout the week, which I recently enthusiastically agreed to do, with help from my son, is rewarding in several ways.

The plants, especially the ones in containers and young crops need water.  I need something to do outside my personal life.  The responsibility makes me feel proud, gets me away from the challenges and hardships I’m experiencing and, the work brings immediate visible positive results.

“Sometimes you can feel the plants take a fresh breath of air after you give them some space and water,” the horticulture therapist remarked after we recently transplanted several leggy tomato plants.

I hadn’t wanted to work with those plants on that day.  It was cloudy, damp and a little chilly outside.  I was sleepy and tired.  I’d wanted to stay inside the big open educational room and make something out of dried herbs or take cuttings from the scented Geranium. 

I’m not sure of the moment when my lack of enthusiasm changed, but I soon became engaged with the plants and other volunteers in the group.  I enjoyed helping a young man continue the project after a plant broke when he had taken it out of the pot.  Helping him felt good, but I think it was after we were finished and I looked at the plants that I realized how my frame of mind and mood had greatly improved. 

I was moved, literally, to walk closer to the tomato plants.  They looked so happy!  I wanted to touch them.  It was a good feeling.

My son tells me he loves the group and it’s clear to me that he benefits from it, as well as from the time when we go on our own to water.  

“This makes me happy,” he told me the other day, while watering the lettuce and carrot bed.  Our day together had been terribly challenging.  We were not happy campers.  We almost didn’t make it that day, but we both knew that going would help us.  Plus, we knew the dirt was dry and the plants needed people to water them.  We got there just in time before the gates closed.

Seeing my son smile and hearing him say he’s happy is a sign of wellness, even if it’s brief in our notion of time.  This piece of time gives me hope.

The natural positive effects of working with plants is healing to our mind and body.  Having a sense of belonging and an awareness that we have something meaningful to offer a community is big medicine.  I strongly suspect that having more days filled with meaningful and rewarding work could reduce symptoms of ‘mental illness’ and heal wounded spirits. 

It’s hard to know whose on the receiving end of our time volunteering.  I know I’ve said this before in my earlier posts about our Green Healing days, but I am truly grateful for this opportunity.

Thank you for visiting Dogkisses’s blog!  Please feel free to leave a comment.

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15 Apr

Green Healing ~ Imagining Nature

Posted by DOGKISSES in Green Healing, health, Nature, Photos. Tagged: , , , , , , .

the white flower shines

If I could be a plant, I’d fancy being a ‘May flower’ that surprises people walking by my home.  I would most enjoy living under the shade of the great green leaves.  I could have a private life, having just enough neighbors to chat with after a light rain.  I’m quite sure that if I was a May flower, then the other Mays and I would sing our stories and have a wonderfully cheery life!

nature strikes white

If I wanted the sky to see more of me,

under the sun

a pretty Pitcher plant I’d like to be.

quite cheery

How wonderful life would be if I was medicine to make people feel better!

healing hearts and lifting spirits

If I was a Lavender plant, people would say ooh and aah and, how lovely you smell.  I’d take pride in soothing minds and spirits.  And Sage!  I would cleanse their homes and make the turkey taste good! I could be a Pineapple Sage and people would make me into tea.  I’d live best by the doorsteps where my fragrance and delicate red flowers would remind my people that I await their return.

for what ails you

There’s so many choices of flowers I’d like to be!

plant people

look there!

I know of a garden that has a good life.  It isn’t very large, but it’s medicine is big.  People gather ’round the rolling mounds of rich dirt to learn and grow.  If ever I was a garden, then that’s the one I’d surely be.  I’d grow yummy green Chard and pretty purple Cabbage, make friends out of strangers and whisper sweet secrets to the good kind humans who come to take care of me.

is such a special place to be

Thank you for visiting Dogkisses’s blog.  Please feel free to leave a comment and I hope you too have some ‘Green Healing’ days!

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6 Apr

Green Healing ~ Over and Over

Posted by DOGKISSES in Green Healing, health, horticulture therapy, Nature. Tagged: , , , , .

in the garden, over and over

Crimson and Clover

A short day in the garden continues to be rather taxing for my body, including my brain, but is still very much worth it!

We start a new project each week.  We’re growing beds of Bok Choy, Lettuce, Carrots, a container of Sweet Peas, and we each have a potted assortment of Cacti that we took home.

We take care of the gardens planted last year; the beautiful robust Chard, Thyme, Parsley, Sage and I do believe, some Rosemary too, along with a spontaneous flower garden.

We harvested the wonderful Cabbage plants and next week are going to share a meal together.

after the harvest, we nourish our bodies

Cabbage ready to eat!

I love being in the open air, seeing smiles evoked by simple little things, like a bug or a bloom.  I also love seeing my son engaged, smiling and enjoying nature.

Being around people who are kind, understanding and who don’t put others in a box or see them as diagnoses, but instead as individual human beings with something unique to offer is a blessing.  I wish it was the norm, but I don’t think it is.

Even though I feel great fatigue after the class, I’m able to experience the ‘Green Healing’ as I sit quietly recalling the beauty of the flowers or interesting plants we saw, my son’s smiles and the often moving interactions with the other volunteers while we worked together.

Our visits to the greenhouse are always exciting as well.  Plants change from week to week and there’s usually something new along the path during our walk.  I love that!

people and plants

in the greenhouse

The patch of Crimson Clover (above) where the ladybugs live is thriving with beautiful blooms.  In honor of these awesome blooms, I’m sharing the song via YouTube.

This is an original short version, by Tommy James And The Shondells, as heard on WABC AM radio when it was a hit in 1968.

Thanks for visiting Dogkisses’s Blog!

‘Green Healing Days’ feed from Flickr

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29 Mar

Green Healing ~ Heart and Soul

Posted by DOGKISSES in Green Healing, healing, health, mental health, mental illness. Tagged: , , , , , .

Image of pretty lilac woodland Phlox blooming

Woodland Phlox

I saw my son’s heart while we were working together in the gardens yesterday.  It was beautiful!  Some people have a green thumb, which I believe my son has, but he also has a green heart.

I saw it when he watered the beds where we planted tiny carrot and lettuce seeds last week.  And of course in the bed of Bok Choy.

in horticulture we thrive

BoK Choy coming along

I saw it when he pulled a few weeds from our special bed where the little lizard used to live.  (I guess my cute little friend went on to some greens without gardeners).

one spot so powerful!

Our Special Therapy Garden

I saw his spirit shining when I later looked at the photos I took during class, which included the potted Cacti he made during the first class.  That pot continues to show me his spirit.  It grows on it’s own.  It’s easy for him to have this potted plant, which isn’t the case for all of us.  Some of us have a hard time keeping them alive, much less seeing them thrive without effort.

in horticulture, we thrive

Easy does it...

The horticulture therapist and I had a chance to chat a bit after the earlier week’s class.  My son didn’t feel like going that day and I had gone alone.  “He has so much heart and soul,”  she remarked.

People often say that about my son.  I often forget to remember what is right, when sometimes it feels like a lot is wrong.  It’s easy, I guess, to focus on what I can help change or make better, than it is to spend time being grateful and enjoying all that is okay and good.

working in the beautiful Mother of the therapy gardens

Heart and Soul in the Garden

My son is a quiet person now.  He doesn’t engage in conversation the way he did growing up, which was enthusiastically with almost everyone he met.   This change has been very difficult for me to accept.

Psychiatry suggests that his frequent silence is a symptom and I must admit that ever since he was diagnosed with a mental illness, I believed this was true.  I’ve believed many things that today I am seriously questioning.

I believe my son has a lot to say.  I believe he has been silenced for a long time.  I believe in the right environment he could and would thrive.

Times are changing in the mental healthcare arena.   There is a new language used to talk about madness.  We are finally starting to acknowledge that matters of the heart matter.  The spirit and soul of a person matters.

I’m glad to be alive and a part of the conversation.  Honestly, I didn’t think I would be.

I dream of access to healing and rehabilitation centers, and organizations created to help people who live to a different beat have meaningful work and be able to make valuable contributions in community.

I don’t know if my dreams and hopes will be realized in my life, but a new conversation has begun!

Thanks for visiting Dogkisses’s blog.  Feel free to leave a comment and I hope you also have some ‘Green Healing’ days.

smiling at you

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22 Mar

Green Healing ~ from lizards to ladybugs

Posted by DOGKISSES in Green Healing, healing, health. Tagged: , , , , .

lucky little lady

Beautiful Lady and Morning Dew

How brave a ladybug must be!
Each drop of rain is big as she.
Can you imagine what you’d do,
If raindrops fell as big as you?
~Aileen Fisher

The little lizard who captured my heart a few weeks ago didn’t make an appearance in the gardens this week.  I missed him but on our way to the greenhouse we spotted the pretty little ladybug living in the patch of clover. 

I’m a volunteer in the horticulture program, but I sure do get a lot out of the class.  I feel good when I can help someone, even in the smallest way.  It makes me feel useful.

I took photos of the students working yesterday, and although I’m not a photographer, the abundant sunlight and pretty gardens naturally make good pictures.  The images depict what may only be known by those of us participating.  I hope they will serve as a reminder to the students of the good times and ‘green healing’ we’ve had together.

I feel a bond forming in my heart for the students.  I care about them.  They are very special people. 

Something happens while we work together in the gardens.  Something that I don’t feel like I have the right words for yet.  Personally, my heart and spirit is lifted and nourished.  Based solely on my observations, I believe this good energy flows through the other students as well.  I hope so. 

I am most grateful for this opportunity.  It is a blessing.

Thank you for visiting Dogkisses’s blog!

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