Foraging in America

It is my pleasure to share Steve Tallamy’s Monthly Article “Foraging in America.”  We had a wonderful visit with Steve and are very grateful for his presence in our lives.

Happy Holidays Everyone from Living in Courage!

Foraging In America
Many of you will know that I have just come back from the colonies having spent a wonderful week with Debra and her wonderful husband Cody (even if he did drink my beer!) at their home in Laguna Beach, California and I would like to take this opportunity to thank them both for the wonderful time they gave me – Thank You Debra and Cody.

Although we did many lovely things together and I met a whole host of amazing people out there one particular morning will stick in my memory for a long time.  Debra and I walked into town to get some breakfast using the back streets and side roads away from the main coastal highway and along the way we stopped now and again to graze from people’s garden produce.  (Debra assured me that we had permission to do this but I’m not quite so sure!)

Debra and Cody are part of the Transition Laguna Beach scheme encouraging and helping people to grow their own vegetables and herbs, so there was plenty of foraging to be had and the peppery tang of the Arugula (that’s Rocket to us Brits) was definitely a hit with me and my taste buds. This walk into town enhanced my belief that everyone should be a part of a scheme such as Transition Laguna Beach.  Not only do you get to produce great tasting healthy food but it brings the community together in a wonderful spirit of kinship, and the exercise and fresh air does you good as well.

Foraging is fun and free and as you can see you don’t have to set off on a major expedition to do it, it can be done right in your own backyard, or someone else’s come to that!  Waste ground (I’m sure most of us have some of that close at hand) can be a great place to forage as Nature soon fights back against neglect and usually the first plants to take a foothold are herbs of some variety or another.  Most plants that we call weeds because of their rampageous habits are either culinary or medicinal herbs, but always make sure that you know what you are gathering is not poisonous or that the ground has not been contaminated in any way.

It really gladdened my heart to see a town being returned to Nature.  Connecting or re-connecting with Nature is the purest form of spiritualism I have found, it has to be, it is all around you, it keeps you alive and it brings so much joy to all of your senses that you just have to embrace it.  Small steps such as this trigger off an avalanche of positivity right around the world.  It’s the everyday folk like Debra and Cody, you and me (Yes YOU!) making small contributions that is creating an ever growing light at the end of the tunnel for the preservation our planet, and seeing this growing light Mother Nature will respond in kind.  And that’s a promise, trust me I know.

Thank You Everyone.

Steve Tallamy

http://www.stevetallamy.com

Visit Steve at – http://www.ukecoproducts.com/

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Autumn Regeneration

Here is October’s monthly post by Steve Tallamy. Happy Birthday to you this month Steve! No better way to celebrate the beginning of fall than with a birthday. Steve has been such a source of inspiration for me over the years.  I am grateful to be his friend.

Autumn Regeneration

I love the month of October, to me it is the month of regeneration, a time for renewal after the heady days of summer. It also heralds the arrival of autumn here in the northern hemisphere which gives me a good reason to go into the garden and really get in touch with Nature (not that I need a good reason to get my hands dirty).

This time of year the earth is still warm and with the autumn rain it is damp enough to regenerate those plants that have yielded of their best throughout the flowering season. Many perennials can now be dug up and divided; giving the opportunity to take away the dead and decaying parts and to replant the young fresh new growth which is already developing.

By doing this you not only increase the plants winter survival rate but you get a lot of new plants for free, each with the soul of the original Mother plant living inside them to share with family, friends and neighbors. What better way of giving and sharing your love of Nature could there be?

Another reason for me loving October is that it is my Birthday! But I don’t look upon it as a celebration of my birth some 58 years ago: I look at it as a time of regeneration, just like it is for the perennials in my garden. I can chop out the dead and unwanted habits, thoughts and beliefs and give the new knowledge and consciousness I have gained over the past months a chance to grow and expand. To me the best thing of all is that it gives me the chance to share all of this with my family, friends and neighbors, like giving them a new plant I can give them a new and stronger me, I can share my expanded self, my ever growing love for Nature and Mankind with everyone in my life..

If more people took some timeout to regenerate themselves (and it doesn’t have to be in October or on your Birthday, any time will do, but the sooner the better), this wonderful planet we all share will soon become the place that in our hearts we all truly desire it to be. Why not give me the best Birthday present I could wish for and pop into your own garden of life and do a little regeneration. Not only will you make me happy, you will be giving your own survival chances a big boost and those of your loved ones and Mother Earth too.

Steve Tallamy @ Living in Courage Online

http://stevetallamy.com/

http://writeforyoursite.co.uk/

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Making Friends With Nature

The theme of Debra’s Newsletter this month is Friendship and whilst reading it I was reminded of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s line from his poem ‘Youth and Age’ that, “Friendship is a sheltering tree.” That makes me feel a warm glow growing inside of me, the same glow I feel when I am amongst my true friends.

The other friendship that gives me that feeling of warmth is my connection with Nature, a simple connection that helps to keep my feet on the ground and my head out of the clouds. It helps to remind me that I am a cog in the machinery life and of the whole grand scheme of things, so I need to be in sync with Nature to enable me to do my share of the work in taking care of the World I live in not just for myself but for everyone else and of course for future generations to love and enjoy too.

Whilst out walking the other day I watched a young family enjoying the countryside; taking for free what Mother Nature had provided for them, foraging for blackberries, elder berries, wild garlic and hazel nuts. The kids were having so much enjoyment and were amazed and thrilled at what their parents were showing them. I wished them all to “have a lovely day,” to which the young girl replied “Oh we will, isn’t Nature wonderful!” A tear came to my eye as I walked away thinking to myself that if more parents did things like that with their kids I could rest assured that our World was in safe hands.

That little girl had found a friendship, a friendship that will live in her heart forever. I can’t think of a better way of introducing kids to Nature than by taking them out into it, whether it be the back garden, a local park, the woods or even the seashore and letting them see it, feel it, hear it and taste it (under supervision of course) for themselves. Give them the freedom and opportunity to make a lifelong friendship with Nature; you could just be saving the World!

Steve Tallamy @ Living in Courage Online

http://stevetallamy.com/

http://writeforyoursite.co.uk/

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Trusting In Nature

Here is my friend Steve Tallamy’s monthly article (August 2010) for Living in Courage.  Thank you Steve, I love this article!

The Article I Didn’t Want You To Read!

A few months ago I started to write an article for Debra to share with you here but after rereading it on more than one occasion I didn’t think it good enough to grace her wonderful website. So I stuck it my Work In Progress folder with the intention of reworking and fishing it another time. I didn’t want you to read it as it was!

Then Debra insisted (she can be quite insistent, have you noticed?) that I read the ‘Ringing Cedars’ series of books by Vladimir Megre about ‘Anastasia’ and her dream of changing the world and mankind back into a state of purity. I won’t harp on about the books here as Debra has featured them in her newsletter this month and I have been mentioning them non-stop.

Suffice to say here that once I started to read the ‘Anastasia’ books I couldn’t put them down; there was so much to think about in each chapter that I couldn’t wait to get started on the next one. As I read each page I began to realize that the article I had written, the one I didn’t want you to read, bore an uncanny relationship to what I was reading. So bearing in mind that the following is not the finished article (excuse the terrible pun – I’m English) here is what I didn’t want you to read.

Trusting In Nature

By now you will know that I have a great love of Nature and a passion for gardening. But I am what my family and friends call a ‘lazy gardener’, to which I always reply, “I’m not lazy, I trust in Nature and what she wants to grow will grow and what she doesn’t want to grow – just won’t grow, simple.”

You see when I sow seeds or buy a new plant I don’t read all the instructions about what kind of soil it prefers, how often it should be watered and fed, when it should be sown or planted; Hey, you don’t see labels hanging off the trees and bushes in Nature do you! I don’t do any of that, I just find a vacant piece of soil and sow the seeds or plant the plant, that’s it.

What I do spend a bit of effort in doing is to find ‘heritage’ seeds and plants, the old varieties that over the years and seasons Nature has nurtured and naturally given an advanced immune system and survival instincts. These to my mind are so much more likely to mature given the growing methods I use than the artificial hybrid varieties, plus of course it helps to keep the life-line going for future generations to grow and naturally develop.

My theory is this, if you love and trust in Nature she will do all of the hard work for you, she will supply the sun the rain and the natural goodness for the plant to grow, and grow it will, if she wants it to. If she doesn’t then it won’t, trust her and don’t plant those types of plant there again, try something different and see if Nature likes that one better. The thing that annoys people the most it that despite them spending a fortune on special feeds, fertilizers and composts, spending every waking hour feeding and watering, pruning and weeding, their plants often than not fare a lot worse than mine.

Don’t get me wrong, I do water my garden from time to time and hoe up a few weeds but I don’t make it a chore. I love and trust in Nature and she responds in kind.

The End – Sort of!

Well that’s it, you’ve read it now, and if you have read any of the books in the ‘Ringing Cedars’ series you will see the connection. Love and Trust is so much better than chemicals, artificial fertilizers and man made hybrids, not only in gardening but in every other aspect of life too. The big bonus is that we already have both of those components love inside of us and they came free of charge …use them daily, they create miracles!

Why You Should Be Writing Articles and Blogging About Your Business
and Find Out How I Can Help You To Succeed at -

http://stevetallamy.com/
http://writeforyoursite.co.uk/

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What Is The Nature Of Things?

This post is from my wonderful friend and monthly guest writer Steve Tallamy.  I love the powerful connection Steve has to Mother Nature, as well as her beautiful gifts to life.  Steve is an excellent writer.  I highly recommend Steve if you are looking for someone to write articles for your blog or business.  Contact him at at this link – Write For Your Site.

What Is The Nature Of Things?

We often use the term, ‘it’s not in my nature’ or ‘it’s in their nature,’ but what does that really mean and what is ‘nature’?  I looked the saying up and the general consensus was that it relates to ‘the fundamental qualities of a person or thing; identity or essential character.’

So, if that’s the case to my way of thinking it means that ‘nature’ is in all of us, which begs another question.  If ‘nature’ is in all of us, why are some peoples ‘nature’ good and some peoples not so pleasant?   My theory (more of a fact than a theory) is that the not so pleasant folk have lost touch with ‘nature’ whilst the nicer ones like you and me are connected and in touch with it, but in touch with what?

Nature!  The nature that is all around us, the nature we are all connected to and a part of – True Nature. It is in us all, we just need to connect with it, cherish it and hold onto it.  That is what ‘the nature of things’ means, it’s not a thing, identity or essential character. They are all ‘ego’, totally different things to ‘nature’ altogether.

True nature is in our heart, it’s our soul, our inner-selves and that is what we have to be in touch with and be connected to.  Being in tune with the nature that is in our hearts, appreciating the simple beauty in the things around us, living in the moment we are in and truly touching, smelling, feeling and seeing it that is the true nature of us all.

Unfortunately many of us have forgotten how to do be in tune with ourselves and miss so much of what is all around us.  We try to dissect and understand too much about anything and everything; let’s face it if mankind were bumble bees we would get up every morning, look at ourselves in the mirror and panic, saying, “I’m too fat, my body’s the wrong shape, my wings are too small, I can’t possibly fly!” and go straight back to bed and worry about it until we got up and went through the same ritual the next morning.

These words from Walt Whitman and ‘Leaves of Grass’ sum up how I feel we should be approaching and connecting with the nature within us:

“I exist as I am, that is enough,

If no other in the world be aware I sit content,

And if each and all be aware I sit content.

One world is aware, and by the far the largest to me, and that is myself,

And whether I come to my own today or in ten thousand or ten million years,

I can cheerfully take it now, or with equal cheerfulness, I can wait.”

So take a leaf out of the Bumble Bee’s book of life and accept yourself, others and everything around you for what they truly are, don’t try to fathom the world out, enjoy and appreciate it and be in touch with your true nature.

Why You Should Be Writing Articles and Blogging About Your Business
and Find Out How I Can Help You To Succeed at -

http://www.stevetallamy.com

http://www.writeforyoursite.co.uk/

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The Neglected Garden

My friend Steve Tallamy is a guest writer here at Living in Courage. Steve has written “The Neglected Garden” from the heart.  Steve is a nature lover who is very connected to Mother Earth, and her beautiful kingdoms. I look forward to sharing his articles once a month, which are sure to be filled with wisdom, humor and guidance.  Visit Steve at http://stevetallamy.com/

http://writeforyoursite.co.uk/

The Neglected Garden

We have all seen that piece of wasteland in our neighbourhood that the developers get their hands on to turn into luxury flats that no one in that area could possibly afford to buy.  Or we have taken over a new home where the once beautiful garden has long been neglected.  The first thing we or the developers do is to bring in the troops to dig, burn and spray to indiscriminately clear the land of everything that once grew there. Come the spring the land is barren, no colour, no scent, no shape or form.  Except if you look close enough the shoots of those deep rooted tough old thorny brambles and thistles.  These hardy plants (they are plants, not weeds) survive and will flourish again, multiplying year upon year.  Even if we build our new homes or construct new gardens on top them they will eventually push their way through in their desire to live.

These words came to me not when building a new home or giving my garden a makeover.  They came with a brand new awakening from inside of me.  For years I have been on the path of finding the real me, to make a better life for myself, a life of happiness and love with a good chunk of financial stability thrown in.  After beginning my new program of healing, things are become clearer day by day, slowly but surely, bit by bit, I am learning more and more about myself. Now,  I see my former self as that neglected garden, the troops as the many so called Guru’s I have listened to and believed; the digging, burning and spraying are all of the self-development books and videos I have read and watched.  I turned myself into the barren landscape of no colour, scent, shape or form, having stripped myself not only of the unwanted plants but the ones I needed to keep but didn’t recognize. Of course the brambles and thistles of my deep rooted fears now had plenty of room to flourish; choking me with even more self-doubt than ever before and without any shape or form to build upon, my soul became a neglected wasteland again.

The lesson we can all take from this is to look at our gardens before stripping them bare, seek out the beauty, the shapes and forms of our lives that we love and enjoy.  Do this before we clear away the brambles and thistles, nurture the roses and fruit bearing trees and come springtime there will be a balance in our garden and more harmony in our lives.  But never forget to prune and feed it from time to time or the wasteland will return stronger and more powerful than ever before.  Having a love and respect for Nature is having a love and respect for yourself, for you and Nature are one.

Steve Tallamy

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