Mindful Gardening Newsletter No 42
Crossing into the New Year: Reflections, Raised Beds, and Mystical Inspirations for the Garden
Here is the first of this new year’s Mindful Gardening newsletter. I have decided that with each of these newsletters I will begin with a short list of bullet points so that readers can quickly decide if this content would be worth their time reading. Here is this weeks bulleted outline.
• Crossing the Threshold: Discover how the transition between the old and new year sparks reflection, garden plans, and a creative project to rename raised beds after mystical poets.
• Mystical Gardens: Explore the enchanting connection between spirituality and nature through poetic quotes that inspire a unique way to honor raised beds in the garden.
• A Year of Creation: Learn about the exciting writing plans for 2025, including two deeply personal and poetic Substack newsletters—Bringing Heaven to Earth and The Deep Heart’s Core—filled with storytelling, art, and spiritual wisdom.
• Moments of Presence: Relive the joys of New Year celebrations with family, heartfelt reflections on farewells, and the simple beauty of feeding birds amidst the winter landscape.
Mindful Gardening Newsletter No 42
This week we have crossed the threshold between the old year and the new year. It’s a time of reflection and invitation. It’s a time when there isn’t a lot of gardening done given that its icy underfoot. The New Year is a time of looking forward and I have various plans for the garden.
The Re-Naming of the Raised Beds
This week I explored the setup of the Airtable base provided by Steve from Steve’s Seaside Garden and Allotment. It’s a great resource and all credit for all the work that has gone into its creation. I see that in his database he gives his raised beds codes with which to identify them.
This set me to thinking about how I would identify the raised beds in our garden. Of course the beds would have to be named after the mystical poets from various traditions and maybe I would paint a quote on the raised bed from each.
Here are mystical quotations with a gardening reference, perfect for celebrating the connection between spiritual wisdom and nature:
1. Rumi (Sufi Tradition)
"Don’t be satisfied with stories, how things have gone with others. Unfold your own myth, like a flower blooming in the garden of your heart."
Raised Bed Name: Rumi’s Blooming Heart
2. Hafiz (Sufi Tradition)
"Even after all this time, the sun never says to the earth, ‘You owe me.’ Look what happens with a love like that. It lights up the whole sky and nourishes the garden."
Raised Bed Name: Hafiz’s Garden of Light
3. Rabindranath Tagore (Hindu/Bengali Tradition)
"Faith is the bird that feels the light and sings when the dawn is still dark. It awakens the garden."
Raised Bed Name: Tagore’s Dawn Chorus
4. Kabir (Bhakti/Sufi Tradition)
"I am neither in the temple nor the mosque. I am not in rituals or ceremonies. I am in the seed you sow and the flower that blooms."
Raised Bed Name: Kabir’s Seed of Being
5. Mirabai (Bhakti Tradition)
"My love blooms like a flower every day, tenderly opening to the light of Krishna’s gaze."
Raised Bed Name: Mirabai’s Divine Bloom
6. St. Teresa of Ávila (Christian Mysticism)
"Let us always meet each other with a smile, for the smile is the beginning of love, just as water is the beginning of a flourishing garden."
Raised Bed Name: Teresa’s Fountain of Grace
7. Rainer Maria Rilke (Christian Mysticism/Modern Tradition)
"If we surrendered to earth’s intelligence, we could rise up rooted, like trees in the garden of life."
Raised Bed Name: Rilke’s Rooted Wisdom
8. Meister Eckhart (Christian Mysticism)
"God is like a great underground river that no one can dam up, and the garden of your soul will flourish when you draw from it."
Raised Bed Name: Eckhart’s Hidden Spring
9. Omar Khayyam (Persian Tradition)
"I hide my grief in the garden of roses, where even the thorns whisper the secrets of the soul."
Raised Bed Name: Khayyam’s Whispering Roses
10. Emily Dickinson (American Transcendentalism)
"To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee, and reverie. The reverie alone will do if bees are few."
Raised Bed Name: Dickinson’s Clover Reverie
11. Ramakrishna (Hindu Mystic)
"The winds of grace are always blowing, but you have to raise the sail. In the garden, this sail is your devotion to the growth of life."
Raised Bed Name: Ramakrishna’s Graceful Winds
12. Lao Tzu (Taoist Mystic)
"Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished. Gardens grow in harmony with the Tao."
Raised Bed Name: Lao Tzu’s Flowing Garden
13. St. Francis of Assisi (Christian Mysticism)
"All creatures of our God and King, lift up your voice and let us sing, in the garden of creation’s praise."
Raised Bed Name: Francis’s Song of Life
14. Walt Whitman (American Transcendentalism)
"A blade of grass is the journeywork of the stars, and every garden is a galaxy of wonder."
Raised Bed Name: Whitman’s Cosmic Meadow
15. Basho (Japanese Zen Poet)
"Sitting quietly, doing nothing, spring comes, and the grass grows by itself."
Raised Bed Name: Basho’s Quiet Spring
These quotations weave the mystics' insights into the timeless cycle of growth and renewal in the garden, creating an enriching spiritual and natural connection. I have enough raised beds to allow me to have a separate raised bed for every one of these quotations above.
Maybe a fun thing to do for the celebration of my 75th birthday which is now planned for late May 2025 in order to try and have some decent weekend weather rather than in the middle of March is to have a weekend of painting these quotes on the raised beds. This will be something for me to research. Watch out for more information coming your way.
The Joys of Having New Year Visitors.
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Annie’s Sober January Video Diary
We were graced to have the lovely Annie and Adam visit for around five days. We got to usher in the New Year with some mulled wine, chocolate and songs. I felt so sad when they left. I always feel that way when one or more of the children we have in our lives leave Cordressagagh to return home. There is an emptiness where once their presence was.
It was a great holiday because we got to share gifts with so many more young children who have appeared in our lives this year and who brighten up the village with their Presence.
Also loved all the Zoom meeting that Bee arranged with her family in the U.S.A that included the lovely Hannah. There was also the re-union of long time friends who we met so many years ago when we lived in a Quaker based community in Bow in London in and around the early 1980’s when I returned from having been in India.
The Writing Year 2025
For this year 2025 I plan to continue sharing this weekly newletter Mindful Gardening but will be adding more video. I am waiting on a replacement selfie stick and tripod so that I can begin sharing more video content.
I have completed a new Substack newsletter which is fifty two weeks long at this point and is titled Bringing Heaven to Earth. It is something I have been wanting to write for a long time and I wrote it for the young man I once was who wanted to have some spiritual guidance when he was seventeen but without all the attendant guilt and the need to be identified as someone who was called “a sinner.” This will be launched on my birthday on 20th March, 2025. It includes a guided meditation script and journal prompts each week.
More about this Bringing Heaven to Earth newsletter at:-
https://bringingheavenonearth.substack.com/about
I started another planned fifty two week Substack newletter on New Year’s day. This is called “The Deep Heart’s Core.” This phrase is taken from my mother’s favorite poem The Lake Isle of Innisfree by the Irish poet W. B. Yeats.
Painting by George Russell (AE) Irish painter and mystic
It will have as its focus the journey to what Yeat’s called The Land of Heart’s Desire. This will be a journey through Irish blessings, storytelling, Irish poetry and song and also including some appreciation regarding art from the likes of mystic artists such as A.E who was William Russell and who was from Lurgan in the county of Armagh were I was born. The county museum in Armagh has some of his paintings as they do some paintings of my dad George Edward Cuckson.
Conclusion
Photo by Nikita Nikitenko on Unsplash
There’s not much happening in the garden this week other than the need to feed the birds twice each day rather than one time in the morning. The leafless trees are lined with maybe a hundred little birds. There is a little fearless robin who is always first to be at the table and is more or less saying “Hurry up you’re late.” As ever there is the blackbird that never seems to stop singing.
Birdsong
Birdsong brings relief
to my longing
I'm just as ecstatic as they are,
but with nothing to say!
Please universal soul, practice
some song or something through me!
Excerpts from the translation of Rumi by Coleman Barks. © by owner. provided at no charge for educational purposes
It only remains for me to wish all those readers, subscribers and supporters a New Year of Mindfulness and Presence and hope that in the various newsletters that are being unfolded that you might have revealed the magnificence of the Presence within you that is the Light of your own being (Hafiz).
Tony Cuckson - Cordressagagh - Ireland