Spirit and Soil: Looking Up While Looking Down
By Jean Golicz, Master Gardener and Mercy by the Sea Volunteer
Posted on
I was totally focused on harvesting the tomatoes, sorting through the crop, deciding which vegetation to remove. It was stifling hot. The air was so thick that I felt as if I was moving in a dense liquid. Suddenly, the heavy silence was interrupted by the voice of my fellow gardener. “Look up!” Thinking I could ignore the directive, I lowered my head closer to the earth. “Look up!” came the persistent call. Obeying the command, despite my desire to quickly finish my task so I could escape the heat, I looked up and there above my head was the most glorious sunflower I had ever seen.
The spiritual harmony of completing an earthly task while enjoying the light of a heavenly directive. It was the perfect moment of harmony between soil and sun. As the earth moves closer to the autumnal equinox, it is a time to celebrate the perfect balance between the rich darkness of the well-cultivated garden and the warm light from above. Harvesting crops, reaching deeply into the lush foliage, extracting deliciousness from the fields, tasting the last rays of sunshine in the ripest of fruits it is a glorious time. Taking time to look above with outstretched arms, our feet firmly planted in the soil, embracing with gratitude that which is the product of the dark and the light.
The perfect balance between light and dark can actually produce tomatoes that are less acidic. For example, according to the UCONN Extension program, “Tomatoes grown in the shade, ripened in shorter hours of daylight, or ripened off the vine, tend to be lower in acidity than those ripened in direct sunlight on the vine. Also, tomatoes attached to dead vines at harvest are considerably less acidic than tomatoes harvested from healthy vines.”
So enjoy harvesting all those late fall tomatoes and check out this article, “Is your garden bursting with fall tomatoes?” on storing and canning them.
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