This morning I sat with an ABC journalist – Sally Bryant, in my backyard and we talked about The Hungry Spirit Centre for Semi-Arid Sustainability.
It was, as it always is with Sal, a great yarn with lots of ebbs and flows!
When it came time for the inevitable ‘photo shoot’ in the garden, I found myself to be embarrassed, not because i hadn’t really done my hair or wasn’t in my finest or event that I didn’t have lippy on (I have LONG got over that as a worry), but I was embarrassed because we had just spent 30 minutes talking about food and sustainability and growing it and yet, she was going to take a picture of me, to be shared online, that was going to show that the garden wasn’t ‘perfect’and that it wasn’t ‘finished’ and that it was, to say the least, rough around the edges on what it has been in it’s glorious past.
WOW.
My feelings were of fraud and of ‘not walking the talk’ even though my garden is still producing and I eat out of it daily and it is a constantly evolving being (ie it’s summer and it’s bloody hot’) and I felt an overwhelming need to justify the scruffy appearance of the patch…I’ve been away a lot this year, I haven’t made the time…justify, justify, justify..
When I thought about it though – that’s kind of the point. We are at the beginning stages of the next iteration of our home and public space.
We are real people, living real lives, in a real environment.
The realness is what makes it delicious and beautiful and evolving.
Sal didn’t care – she thought what we are doing already was super impressive and she was excited by the future plans!
So, we took blank canvas photos and I invited Sal back, so that she too can be part of the evolutionary story – from red dust to food forrest!
It is so important to remember we are own worst judges/critics and that if we step into the truth of our own goals – others will step with us and see the forrest instead of the lack of trees!
That’s the point of The Hungry Spirit – to evolve the space with the input, energy and enthusiasm of the community!
