Lessons in Slow Living
Last week I pulled out all my spinach plants. They’d bolted (begun to flower and go to seed) a few weeks earlier. I’d been harvesting leaves from the stretching stems nearly every day, but it had gotten to the point where the plants had toppled over and were no longer producing new leaves.
I could have pulled them all out and thrown them in the compost like I did with the bolted, bitter lettuce, but I wanted to save what was left of the good leaves. I filled a bowl and brought the last of the spinach to the kitchen to rinse, dry and freeze.
It was slow work. I don’t have a salad spinner so after I rinsed the leaves I placed them one by one onto towels. Soon after I started I realized it was going to take me a while to finish the project (and I’d end up with only about 1/2 a gallon sized bag full of spinach).
While I worked I began to wonder about time consuming projects like this. What is the monetary value my small harvest of spinach in terms of my time and effort? How cost efficient is it for farmers at the farmers market to sell their spinach and other vegetables?
a salad from my garden
While I was wondering I leaned in to the process. Instead of hurrying to finish, I slowed down. I imagined taking spinach out of the freezer long after the garden had gone to sleep.
We can be so removed from these sorts of tasks. Growing food. Processing it. Sometimes even preparing it. I know I’m often in a rush, hurrying to the next thing. But why is the next thing so important?
As a maker sometimes my projects take me many hours to complete. Do I question the process of crocheting a shawl or sweater? Of cutting and sewing a quilt?
Painting forces me to slow down.
Growing a garden teaches me patience.
Crochet, sewing, cooking… all of these ways of making remind me to S-L-O-W D-O-W-N.
I still need reminders.
Later that day I washed a load of towels and hung them on the the line to dry. It was the first time this year. It’s so much quicker to use the dryer when I’m doing multiple loads of laundry. Is my life really so fast paced that that’s necessary?
No.
And I don’t want it to be.
I want to live slow. I want to be present in the moment, even doing laundry or washing spinach. I want to listen to birds as I work. Feel the relief of a breeze. Catch the scent of flowers and herbs.
A slower pace is part of the reason Matthias and I moved out of the city in the first place, but even so it’s easy to get caught up in the rush of life.
I’ve been reading Ellie Beck’s book Mindful Thoughts for Makers. One of the first things she talks about in it is slowing down, especially our breathing. She writes “One of the downfalls of our modern lifestyle is the speed with which we seem to do everything, including breathing.”
Oh gosh, this is certainly true for me. I’m making (another) concerted effort to stick with daily yoga (something else that falls away when I’m “too busy”). I relish slowing down with stretching and BREATHING. But I’m also trying to pay attention to my breath throughout the day.
This mindfulness, this slowing down, this being present is so important. Especially now in these stressful times.
I’ll take all the reminders I can get.