December 20, 2016

1646 - The Garden Awakening with Mary Reynolds

55 minutes

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My guest for this episode is Mary Reynolds, the Irish author of The Garden Awakening: Designs to Nurture Our Land and Ourselves. In this interview our conversation focuses on how we can heal the land and ourselves by reconnecting with the stories of a place, and to acknowledge those feeling of the sacred. Through this process we become guardians of the land, responsible for the earth as much as we are for ourselves and our descendants. The land becomes a member of our family and connected to our community.

I'm not normally one to involve myself in conversations about the spiritual, but Mary's storytelling and personal experiences, as shared in the book and through her own words in this interview, spoke to me. The more that I connect to what it means to build community or establish a sense of place, these spiritual and religious overtones have meaning because of how much they matter to the people around us and to how those beliefs shape our interaction with the land.

I've also had experiences when hunting of hiking of entering a primordial space. An area influenced by man, and yet still wild. An animist moment with the other than human. I don't have words for it, as it is so far removed from what I would normally find in a reductionist mindset, but there it stands, something I wish to and need to explore further.

May you enjoy this conversation with Mary and may it awaken something in you, as it did for me.

Find out more about Mary and her work at MaryMary.ie.

Thank you to Earth Tools for partnering with the podcast. Earth Tools sells a complete line of walk behind tractors and implements for the small scale farmers, as well as high-quality hand tools for every home gardener. Find out more at EarthTools.com.

Also, thank you to everyone who makes this show possible, including the crew at Liminal Collective, for creating the podcast newsletter, and to listeners like you who donate or support the show via Patreon.

Resources

The Garden Awakening

Mary Reynolds

Masanobu Fukuoka and Natural Farming with Larry Korn

...more