Aaron Michael Working With Volunteers

 

Our roots as human beings are of a world that lived in harmony with the Earth and in community, working and sharing with others.

Many people, myself included, share a vision of a world where we all live this way once again. In a universe where all is one (and all is love, some may say), the past is the future, so it is up to us now to be the best, most authentic versions of ourselves to realize the world we wish to create.

Reflecting on my company, Earth Love Gardens, the mission has always been about allowing us to connect authentically with ourselves, with each other in community, and with the earth. I find the story that shaped my life, and Earth Love Gardens, is fun to share and often inspires others to follow their hearts.

If we could all return to the simplicities of life, I believe we would have heaven on Earth.

Realizing my Truth

I became aware of the concept, and my truth, that I am love, we are all love, and that everything is love in 2018 when Matthew Silver, a performance artist whose message is love, visited Boulder that summer. Ever since, I have been repeating the mantras “I am love” and “I am living from the heart,” and palpably making sure I feel it, almost every morning so I would never again forget.

That same summer, I felt inspired to start weeding neighbors’ yards for the greater intention of providing bare, fertile earth to grow food, connection, and community. Inspired by newly realizing these amazing concepts and putting them to work, you could find me dancing in a client’s yard while taking a little break from the landscape maintenance.

We are love and the earth is here to support us? This is all we ever really need—this is bliss! I wanted to share this message and feeling with everyone; thus, I started my company, Earth Love Gardens.

Food, a Language of Love

Food is a universal language of love. People of all walks of life eat, appreciate, and connect around good food. That fall of 2018, I started making raised garden beds for people, providing everything they needed to grow. Being originally from Florida and now living in Colorado, I thought it was crazy that people could garden for only a little less than half the year here. Thus, I also provided the installation of cold frames, and later hoop houses, season extenders added to the garden beds that allow people to maximize their time out in the garden growing their nutritious, delicious foods longer throughout the year.

Following my Heart and Believing in the Vision

Since 2018, I have been consciously following my heart and seeing where the journey takes me, including some amazing places that I never could have imagined prior. In 2019, Earth Love Gardens had a booth at the Colorado Garden Foundation’s Colorado Garden and Home Show in Denver. They loved what Earth Love Gardens was doing and gave us a booth right at the front of the show—and we were a hit.

The Colorado Garden Foundation loved what we were doing so much that they also recommended us, and have every year since, to all of the Foundation’s statewide nonprofit organization grant awardees for their community garden projects.

One of these awardees was the Audubon Rockies and their Habitat Hero program certifying yards as bird and pollinator-friendly. I had the idea of designing and creating new gardens to meet the guidelines of the Habitat Hero program and they loved the idea, so they made Earth Love Gardens a partner. Ever since, the Audubon has been connecting us with impactful projects, such as the Boulder Public Library’s Native Plant Demonstration Garden and many more amazing community gardens.

My mission of connecting community through the earth was being realized, and I owe it to listening and following the calling of my heart.

Boulder Public Library’s Native Plant Demonstration Garden

Caring for the Earth

In connecting with the Audubon Rockies and the Habitat Hero program, I also learned of the importance of creating habitat for pollinators and birds. Insect populations have been declining around the world at alarming rates, some figures showing up to a 70 percent decline from the last few decades. Birds, which feed on the insects, have also had their population numbers decrease greatly. We do not know the repercussions of a world with such increasing biodiversity loss. Some figures say that a third of the food that we eat is thanks to pollinators, which include bees, butterflies, hummingbirds, and many more species that pollinate the flowers of foods.

This is why conserving habitat, which also includes diminishing the use of pesticides as much as possible, and creating new habitat with native plants is important. Not only for the health of the ecosystem, but for the health of people as well, as humans are inextricably part of the ecosystem. And it is a beautiful thing to create beautiful habitat for the benefit of the planet!

We are Nature

There is countless research that shows the benefits of being connected with nature. I am sure anecdotally you can prove that being out in nature is good for you too. This is because we are a part of nature—we are nature. Human beings have evolved for millennia with the natural world around us and it is simply unnatural for us to be disconnected from it.

When out in nature, I listen to the inner calling that tells me to take my shoes off and have my bare feet on the ground. I have also had some of the richest, most fulfilling days by respecting when I feel I want to go to sleep at night. After all, our species evolved without lights and through our brain’s melatonin we naturally become tired when the sun goes down. In respect to living with the rhythm of the seasons, fall is a time for letting go of what does not serve, winter is a time for resting inward, spring is a time for excitedly starting to grow, and summer is a time to enjoy the fruits.

Eating as healthy as possible with my delicious morning fruit smoothies and lunches made with Colorado-grown chili peppers and sweet corn has taught me that the simplest things are life’s delicacies. Alas, being around other heart-centered people, in community, continues to facilitate important life lessons, like being the truest version of myself, supporting each other, and engaging in opportunities to have fun!

As I have also learned, living from this lens of coming from the perspective of the heart and the earth is part of indigenous wisdom, of people living in successful, sustainable ways that have worked for millennia. We have much to learn from indigenous knowledge and wisdom if we just listen.

Greenwood Academy School Community Garden

The World we are Creating

Circling back, the future we are creating is one of innate and successful ways of the past. These simple ways have worked for human beings since evolution, and it’s only the relatively recent straying away from that in our society that has caused so much disconnect and disarray, both on a social and ecological level.

As I see it, the solution is as simple as living not from our minds but living embodied, coming from our hearts. From here, we live in a place of love, connection, authenticity, joy, and warmth—all the good things.

In our physical form as human beings, Earth provides for us as we provide for her. What a blessing we have received to be able to exist on this planet that provides so much for us but asks so little. Through appreciating what we have, in gratitude, and connecting within ourselves and with each other in community, and in harmony with nature, we can live, simply, in heaven on Earth.

Want the rest of this convo? Find it here.

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