29. How Does Your Garden Grow?
Gardening at root provides wisdoms for living, many of which can be harvested for the purpose of parenting and education.
For starters, it’s all to do with the soil! The best long term sustainable gardens have the richest soil – living self-regenerative soil! Just as Mother Nature intended. It takes artful science to establish such soil, especially if you are starting from non-arable conditions. It requires patience. But the rewards are bountiful.
It is all to do with what happens underground. You can’t see it directly. But in time, you will see the results in the health and beauty of your garden.
Remember this is an analogy for parenting and education.
Contrast the beauty of organic gardening with the industrial agriculture model:
- Organic methodology combines plants that enhance each other and enrich the soil, providing natural immunity.
- Industrial agriculture plants one crop with the idea of maximum yield, consuming the soil completely. So the plants are vulnerable to disease and thus have to be chemically and genetically manipulated. The soil is dead, thus the addition of thousands of tons of chemical fertilizers which end up in the planet’s water systems ultimately.
- Organic methodology requires patience, timing, indirect and passive care. It is still work, just work of a different nature.
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- The industrial model demands instant results, is extremely aggressive, expensive and high maintenance.
- Organic methodology thrives on variety and diversification.
- Industrial agriculture is anathema to the principles of diversification.
These are general comparisons, but they serve as good starters for the purpose of this analogy.
So now the question:
What kind of “gardens”do young human beings thrive in best?
~PAZ
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