The Horse Tale

I wanted to address something that has been coming up a lot recently, and that's Fear.

Fear is absolutely a natural feeling to have after the year we've experienced. Sitting alongside loss, grief and sadness, Fear has been the overriding - and often constant - companion these past few months. The seeds of Fear have been sown and carefully cultivated - using many methods - over the year's four seasons and just like an unwelcome, invasive plant in the garden that goes unchecked, it threatens to entangle and strangle other life and growth.

Maintaining a healthy balance of a successful, flourishing ecosystem depends on an awareness and knowledge of your environment, how it impacts you and how you impact it. Many highly invasive plants have incredibly attractive features and sometimes it can be tempting to feel that we should let them be - after all, who are we to say what should and shouldn't grow?

Well, let the wild take care of that - it is better equipped and has a long lived wisdom on how it deals with unwelcome guests - because we must be the gardeners of own landscapes. Gardening is the human curation of our environment. It is controlled by us; we choose what to plant and nurture, removing what is undesirable to us. And in these environments, there are sometimes seeds that unexpectedly blow into our gardens and settle there, unplanted and unplanned. Some seeds are welcome surprises, others are unexpected guests who outstay their welcome. Fear has blown into our lives, camped out in our emotional landscape and has stayed so long, we are now too afraid, too worried or too polite to ask this unwanted guest to leave.

As a Holistic Horticulturist and Earthworker, I have an admiration - sometimes grudgingly - for those plants that have incredible survival methods. In horti terms, they are considered 'thugs', a coarse but apt term used to describe a plant which is a very quick grower, overtakes a space and is hard to fully get rid of, even when uprooted. Sometimes we can't fully eradicate them, but we do learn from them. One of these plants, which induces much swearing from many gardeners and raised fist shaking toward the sky, is Equisetum arvense, commonly know as Horsetail or Mare's Tail. I find this plant fascinating as it is so incredible in its survival methods. It puts out underground runners so that it can pop up anywhere it likes, appearing like a green skeleton of a small tree. Its main genius however is its ability to replicate itself even more when you try to remove it. It's almost a horticultural landmine; try to unskillfully remove it and it breaks and scatters itself into pieces, which take root and grow other plants. A lawnmower is this plant's friend.

Without insight of its habits and how it spreads, we have unwittingly created a bigger problem to control. But when we get to know Horsetail - find out its lifespan, how it roots, how it grows - then we can manage it. We might never be able to remove it entirely but we can work with it, and we have gained a great deal of knowledge in the process. Like many plants that are considered weeds - plants, just like any other - Horsetail is a wonderful herbal remedy. It's used in herbal medicine to support our genito-urinary tract and with its high silica content, it's great for skin, hair and nails. Perhaps this is why it is gifted to us so much. Perhaps we should look at Horsetail less as bothersome weed and more as a useful medicine, if we take the time to understood it and work with it, not against it.

If we want a healthy emotional balance that has room for everything then Fear, like Horsetail, cannot go unchecked. It will take over if not properly understood and managed. In time, every space in our emotional landscape will be overtaken with it, preventing other seeds of life - like joy, contentment, laughter and love - from gaining ground and flourishing. To control Fear, we have to understand it. What are our feelings of Fear rooted in? When did it begin? What makes it grow? What keeps it in check? What can we learn from it? How can we use it when it appears?

It's time to go with the seasons - welcome the light in, let it show you the shadows and teach you why they're there. And then, gently but firmly, let's get digging.