Sera Forrest
@wildheartedsera
Sera Forrest
A chief gladness of gardening comes from its dual nature, from how it salves our longing for making order out of chaos but also frustrates it. There is elemental satisfaction in the reminder that we can never fully control nature — that, in fact, any sense of control is a childish fantasy, for we ourselves are children of nature, made by the... See more
So, to create something truly alive and nourishing, we must be willing to immerse ourselves in the rich, fertile soil of our own humanity – the depths of our emotions, experiences, and connections to the world around us.
Steyn Viljoen • Beautiful, boring, and without soul 🕌
A garden, much like a home, is a blunt, bare-faced extension of the human beings who control it. If you are the caretaker of a piece of land, that piece of land will inevitably come to embody your behavioral and cultural values, albeit in an abstract sort of a way.
Garden Anarchy in L.A. - Wonderground
In 17th century France, the monarchy expressed its royal, God-given prowess through the total subjugation of natural ecology. Wilderness was reduced to clipped hedges, topiary, seriality and flatness. All hail king boxwood.
Wilderness and Garden-Making, Post-Internet - Wonderground
Following this logic, our brains reward a kept garden because it staves off wilderness, because in the wilderness there is death, and thus by keeping nature controlled and orderly, we keep death away.
Landscape maintenance is, therefore, an exercise of fear.
Landscape Maintenance and the Fear of Death - Wonderground
Gardening offers an endless supply of these kinds of "neutralizers for perfectionism," as Lamp'l called them. He confessed to being a perfectionist himself and knows firsthand that "pursuit of perfection is a waste of time—especially in the garden. So don't bother!"
Psychology Today • 10 Mental Health Benefits of Gardening
Things should be costly (either in materials or the effort we put in) because it proves love and sacrifice went into it — for the benefit of all.
Culture Critic • Tweet
If you consider yourself a technologist, here’s your imperative: build things that are unabashedly, beautifully tangled into all else in life — people and relationships, politics, emotion and pain, understanding or the lack thereof, being alone, being together, homesickness, adventure, victory, loss. Build things that come alive, and drag... See more
Create things that come alive
Define Your Way of Life
"But beware of looking for goals: look for a way of life. Decide how you want to live and then see what you can do to make a living WITHIN that way of life."
This is my favorite insight from the letter: Identify how you want to live, not what you want to achieve.
So often people focus all their energy on the summits—but
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