The Garden Bounty ... not just for breakfast anymore

Today I'm really grateful for my garden. We are in the process of finishing up our first ever watermelon. I've been trying every year to grow them, but we plant too late, or we let the weeds overtake the garden, or something. Anyway, this year we were persistent, and it is paying off.

This is interesting too because this year fresh produce prices have skyrocketed. In today's economy what would have cost a couple of bucks last year is at least $5.00 this year. So, I figure we're pulling a good fiver out of the garden each day. While it is not a majority of what we eat (which is my goal), it is a substantial savings each month.

My thoughts when I said how grateful I was for the garden were not the savings nor the delicious produce being plucked daily. I was thinking of the other things the garden provides for me that make it easily worth my time.

Each morning I try to spend between 20 minutes and an hour working in the garden. I would go for an hour each day, but sometimes the day's activities do no allow this luxury if we have to work out of town for instance. I figure this is providing me with 3 things: 1) several minutes of sunshine each day; 2) at least some exercise; and 3) much needed quiet time without a phone or other electronic noise.

Many health enthusiasts have written of the value of the sun in our lives each day. We forget how important it is especially in this day and age when the sun is getting such a bad rap. This one activity alone has given me a lot of good benefits recently. Whenever I am in a funk, being in the sunshine can help pull me out of it.

I'm not sure how much exercise I am getting in the garden, and I'm sure I need to add more and different kinds, but for a person as sedentary as I am, those few minutes of weed pulling and raking and planting and digging is very beneficial. I promise to work some other exercise into my life.

I long for the simpler days when exercise was a part of life instead of something we have to fit into our routine. I would love to ride a bike, but from where I live, that would be not possible. (I'm still trying to figure out a way to make it work.)

The quiet time is very important. It is the time I reflect on all the things that have been bothering me, and I try to put them in the proper perspective. It doesn't take a lot of mental energy to pull weeds, so I can divert that to introspection.

I just thought of another thing that gardening gives me. I love the connection it gives me to the earth. I've started wearing gloves to protect my hands, but I love how it feels to run my hands through the soil. I love how it feels to pull the weeds up from the soil, how it feels like the soil is hanging on to them and doesn't want to let them go. I love the energy that is in the soil and in the plants emerging from it. I feel that the soil is as living an organism as the plants the grow from it and the animals that depend on the ecosystem provided by the soil.

Whenever I eat the produce grown in my garden, I feel like I take some of that energy into me. It is a transference of power. I like how that feels.

I have really been enjoying my raw foods lately, but tonight I had to go to a chicken place to buy food for one of my grandchildren. The addiction started working on me, and I wanted to eat some of the food produced there. I had all my tools in my head, so I was able to withstand it, but I was surprised how strong the urge was. Then I remembered how the ice tea commercials all still becken me even though I haven't drunk tea in 32 years. I don't think addictions ever go away. I think I am able to remember how crummy it makes me feel and how destructive a behavior it is. Still, I am always surprised by the intensity of the urge.

I heard an interview last week with Matt Monarch which talked about how much worse we feel returning to bad eating habits when we've been giving our bodies truly living food. He said we feel far worse when we go back than we did before we started as our bodies have given away their defenses since they are no longer needed. I think that is a very true principle.

There is so much different information out there on health and nutrition, I have been thinking a lot about correct principles. There are correct principles in all aspects of life, and the Holy Ghost will witness of all truthfulness. We truly do not know where to turn without it. Raw foodists use the term "resonate". They say if something resonates with you then you should integrate it into your life. Surely this resonating is His way of witnessing that we have hit upon a correct principle. So many concepts out there are theories.