Early yesterday morning, I finally saw the deer that I suspect has been eating the flowers and vegetables I've been trying to grow. She (I think it is a doe) meandered down the sidewalk, and stopped to munch on the hostas that are in front of the house I've been living in this year. As she started to amble into the side yard, I quietly opened the front door and walked out onto the porch, and she turned toward me. Her limpid black eyes were completely unruffled; we just looked at each other appraisingly. I smiled, and greeted her, but then made the gentle request (yes, aloud!) that she not eat any of "my" flowers and vegetables. As I did so, I could feel the energetic dissonance -- if this is a "yes"-based universe, as I believe it is, then asking anyone not to do something is the same as inviting them to do something. Sure enough, she turned to go further into the yard. I went through the house to the back porch, and saw that she had meandered around, munching here and there. The loud back door hinge finally spooked her, I guess, and she ran off. When I walked the circuit a little later, the tops of two tomato plants had been eaten off. In previous weeks, a geranium and an impatiens had lost their flowers...I've relocated them and they seem to be coming back, but the tomatoes are a goner.
It's funny, I'm very sensitive to some criticism I've received about not being "into" gardening or the out-of-doors generally. How can I claim to be about the Goddess/Gaia/Mother Nature if I don't like getting my hands into the dirt or taking long hikes? Well, I don't know the answer to that. She takes many forms. I'm a Goddess-oriented American woman who would prefer to live in an English abbey or cathedral town, studying medieval manuscripts and singing choral evensong. I don't get it any more than anyone else, but that's the way it is, the life I haven't yet been able to create. The dozen or so flowers and vegetables I bought at the farmer's market were gardening on my terms, on a tiny scale, near the back door of the house. Spots of brilliant color, and a few veggies and herbs for later in the summer. These plants were pricy this year...they were only "mine" to the extent to which I spent money on them. But in the end, I wasn't surprised that my efforts to control Nature (in the form of this gentle but hungry doe) were unsuccessful. If I say that Mother Nature needs to do Her thing, then I need to walk my walk and talk my talk. I don't own the house I am in, or the ground under it, or the plants around it (whether I "bought" them or not) or the air around it, or the rain that falls on it, or the sun that warms it. This doe has as much right to these lush plants as I do, as does the little bunny out there this morning, eating the weeds between the sidewalk stones.
I know how fortunate I am...Nature doing Her thing has upended the lives of the people of Kentucky, say, in a far more extreme manner, and more and more of us are facing such cataclysms. As they take place, there is no time for philosophizing. But it will be interesting to see whether there will be a tipping point, where we all start to give the natural world the respect it so richly deserves. Where we stop trying so hard to be in control.
