Mythbusters - Talking to plants - part2

the sound is a bit off but interesting to see the results

Talking to Plants...




So I'm not nuts!!!

some good ideas from overseas

something different from New Zealand

 That's far enough for one day

 I found a pretty blue flower

 the Calla Lilly bulbs came from a friend/neighbour 

This pretty dahlia was found the first summer after having pulled out a massive shrub












(Lowen, H. personal communication,  October 19th 2011).

Affordance Part 3

Aesthetics ‘V’s Ambience

My trusted New English Dictionary (2001), states that aesthetics is ‘a branch of philosophy concerned with the study of the concepts of beauty and taste’. It has the potential for a person to express a sense of beauty, for me it was the way I changed the setup of my garden, over the years I have ripped out an old clothes lines, moved the firewood storing shed, put a fence and gate in to create a laundry/veggie garden area, cut down a massive tree, created lavender garden, and pulled out every plant in one corner of the garden to start again. I can change the aesthetics to suit my mood, by gathering the equipment for working in the garden, the result of the work, or just leisurely walking around with pruning shears in hand on the looking for rouge branches. 

My New English Dictionary (2001), states that ambience is ‘the atmosphere of a place’. So how does this affect gardening?  hmm… quite a lot really, it seems to me, the very being of the experience of gardening, for without the ambience of the garden when I moved in, I felt it was ‘a lost garden’, over grown and un-kept, it lack life, bright flowers and a happy disposition, I would have never started reshaping it. Through my efforts I have brought sun, wind and rain to many plants that have long been over shadowed by the massive tree. Even though the garden is still a work in progress I feel that it now has that happy disposition, even with all the weeds!

New English Dictionary (2001), Harper-Collins, Glasglow.

Affordances Part 2

In this entry I will look at two more of the affordance’s that are prominent in my activity; they are ethics and communications.

Hagedorn (2000) states that ‘touch is one of the first means of communications which humans experience, and it remains deeply significant throughout life’. This is so true, as I stated in my first entry I started garden when at the age of 12 and this form of communication with the land has stayed with me all this time and I should image until my last days on this earth. Gardening is a very tactile way to communicate, one that gets over looked I think, on reflection I realise that I do this type of communication when I do my occupation with mindfulness. Communication is with the friends that I scrounge plants from to the people at the garden centres where I get the fertiliser and dear I say the garden itself as I work in and around it. Communication can be limited when working alone – hence way I talk to the plants!

The ethics in this setting is looking very sampling at the good and the bad, the burden and joys. The burden of gardening has to be working outside in the cold keeping the section tidy, the cost of equipment, plants and the on-going cost of mulch, fertiliser etc, and the outlay of physical effort.

The joy is seeing healthy plants and lovely flowers, not too much scent in my garden due to hay fever, the sense on completion, having created something wonderful for me to look at with a sense of pride and having people comment on how the garden is coming on.

Interesting how gardening is both a burden and joy, for if I don’t work on it in regular bouts it then becomes a massive job, either way I enjoy working in the garden.

Affordances

Affordances have many components communications, aesthetics, spiritually, connections, morality and health. Christiansen & Baum (1997) stated that affordance is ‘anything which the environment can offer the individual which is relevant to the role challenge and can facilitate role competence’. It is the person’s perception of the environment, along with their effectiveness to produce competence’. As cited in Hagedorn (2000). I will look at spiritually and connections;

Working in the garden gives me a sense of spirit and gives me mind organising time and the fact that my garden gets tidied gives me feedback and reinforces my feelings of well-being. So in a way I conditioned myself by the way I engage in my garden and it affects my human condition, my health and well-being. 

While I’m working in my garden with mindfulness, I gain a sense of connective-ness; connective-ness with mother earth and through this I connection I end up connecting with Grandmother of whom I have never met, she had died many years before I was born. Some year’s back I was planting a lavender garden in the house I then lived owned, my mother was visiting and I was showing her what I was up to with the garden (connecting with her) and that brought back memories for my mother who then informed me that my Grandmother had loved lavenders as well.  So now where ever I live I aim to have lavender in my garden, either as a single bush or a whole garden, to connect spiritually, with the history of the maternal side of my family, my mother, grandmother.

I feel that spiritually is 'in' connective-ness and mindfull-ness; below in a poem that reminds me to be mindfull when in the garden

My garden of Prayer

My garden beautifies my yard

And adds fragrance to the air...

But it is also my cathedral

And my quiet place of prayer...

So little do we realise

That the glory and the power

Of He who made the Universe

Lies hidden in a flower

Helen Steiner Rice

Christiansen, C. & Baum, C. (eds)(1997). Occupational Therapy enabling function and wellbeing. 2nd ed. Slack: New Jersey.

Hagedorn, R. (2000). Tools of practise in Occupational Therapy. A structured approach to core skills and processes. Edinburgh: Churchill Livingstone.  

Steiner Rice, H. (1986) Prayerfully, poems of devotion. London: Hutchinson & Co Ltd.

Ergonomics

To unpack my activity so as to find the simple-ness of task I’m going to look at it through the heading of Ergonomics, Ambience, Affordances and the Practical Consideration.

Ergonomics

So what is ergonomics? Good question, my New English Dictionary (2001) states that it is ‘the study of the relationship between workers and their environment’. Now I’m thinking that that has to be this whole degree, that’s a new way to look at it. What really surprised me was that ergonomics is more than just setting up a work station to be comfortable. Let’s look at what ergonomics is through Occupational Therapy eyes.

Christiansen & Townsend stated that the goal of ergonomics is to improve the fit between people and their working conditions while improving safety, productivity, comfort and efficiency. How does it relate to gardening?  I think it’s all about perception and the meaning of the place or places that we as humans inhabit. In my humanities essay I stated that “Humans have the right and privilege to change their place of being”. Lowen, H.D. (2010). I was without thinking referring ergonomics, changing the fit of my environment and improving my place of being, my home, along with the ambience and aesthetics.

I studied the relationship or fit between myself and my garden, safety, productivity was not a problem, I wasn’t going to do much with it other than look, or so I thought until this paper. Let’s use the framework of POE and look closer;

Person – my garden very much lives on a time factor, if I don’t have the time to spend with it mindfully I don’t go there. ‘Mindfullness’ is about being in the ‘moment’ which can affect the desired outcome.

Occupation – I can pull a few weeds, mow the lawns or get stuck in with digging, pruning, trimming, planting, and feeding the plants.

Environment – I use my own back yard, that way no-one can see what mess it really is.

Christiansen, C.H., and Townsend, E.A. (2004). Introduction to occupation: The art and science of living. (2^nd ed)  New Jersey: Pearson Education, Inc. 

Lowen, H.D. (2010) Humanities Essay, Otago polytechnic, BT132001

New English Dictionary (2001), Harper-Collins, Glasglow.