January 28, 2022
I’m trying to make something be okay that is simply not okay. And it’s not going to improve for quite a long time.
I’m not talking about the world situation, although no doubt there are parallels. I’m talking about the Eugenia hedge in our front yard. Our next-door neighbor cut back four feet of it on his side, and what had been a gorgeous, natural visual barrier between our properties is now the Swiss cheese version of that. I’ve been reassured that it will fill back in, but there’s no timetable.
I’m not sure nature follows timetables. At least not the same way I do. Seasons, yes. Shifts and changes, gradual planetary warming or cooling, the Earth has her rhythms.
But will Gaia miraculously weave thick new growth into this hedge this year? Or even next? How long before the Eugenia has recovered enough to fulfill the function of blocking the view from the neighbor’s windows and property into ours, and vice versa?
This sneak attack on a shared landscape feature has left me angry and shaken and at a loss. Trying to convince myself that Eugenia is impossible to kill, as the neighbor put it, isn’t really working.
*****
On top of two years of being bullied by my own government, I’m being bullied by my next-door neighbor.
After a few days, I realized that that’s what it comes down to. I felt powerless, and in fact was powerless, to stop the destruction of this living property. It is his “right“ to cut back any living plant material that “encroaches“ over his property line.
Thus begins neighbor-to-neighbor acrimony. Pretty soon there’s a trip to small claims court and the lawyers have a go at it and dirty looks and snide remarks are exchanged.
I find myself baffled by this neighbor’s actions, not so much that he wanted to reclaim some space, but that he didn’t bother to inform us of what he was doing. He just did it, and we discovered the mutilation in progress.
Where was courtesy? Kindness? Consideration for another? And how hard it is to find those in myself, when being bombarded by the opposite.
*****
It’s difficult to envision a real-world balm for this. Perhaps some water during the summer. Compost or worm castings for nutrients and encouragement.
While the hedge trimmer was whining and a chainsaw hacked at the hedge saplings that had “encroached“ next door, I did remember to empathically address the hedge. I thanked it for its beauty and its radiant presence, and commended it for bravely thriving—without irrigation—for many decades of intermittent California drought.
I don’t know what it did for the hedge, but it comforted me a bit. I mentally promised to send the hedge Reiki energy and love, and perhaps bury a few moss agates when I dig in the worm castings in the spring.
*****
As Dr. Peebles recently told me, a tree does not see a broken branch as a problem. It sees it as an opportunity to send more growth.
I don’t believe much in coincidences, so I doubt that me getting that particular reading just a few weeks ago was happenstance. Even while the hedge trimmer roared, I reminded myself of the opportunity within seeming calamity.
I realize I have some mourning, some grieving, to do. This is a loss, minor on the radar of the world, but loss is loss, however insignificant another might judge it. Forgiveness is no doubt also necessary, for all the usual reasons. But I’m not going to rush into forgiving this neighbor for his discourteous deed. Rushing to forgiveness is surely no better than rushing to anger. Pushing to get past uncomfortable feelings does nothing but leave them buried, rocks in the sand that you stub your toes on later when walking the beachfront of your life.
I remind myself that I don’t know what miracles might be in store for all of us. Humans will reportedly have med beds to cure our ailments. Perhaps a Galactic energy wand will be available to regrow tree limbs and fill in decimated hedgerows with vibrant new growth. Physical Earth has been massively wounded at the hands of humans, and my neighbor’s chainsaw is that in a microcosm.
It seems likely that our Galactic brothers and sisters have all the technology and energies that we, and the planet, need to move forward into the whole and joyful New Earth. Together, for it behooves us to contribute all we can, healing is happening and will continue to happen, until, I believe, we won’t readily recall what healing means or that there was ever widespread need for it.
*****
When I look out the window and see through the hedge to the neighbor’s house, I can send love to the hedge. I don’t think there’s a barrier, a limit, to the reach of love, which means that whether I currently wish it or not, that love will flow on through to that house and to the neighbor. I can’t send out love and stop at the property line.
Good thing, too. Like the richest, most pungent and powerful fertilizer, Love works best when spread with a lavish hand.
