Creating Your Own Good Soil

Most of life isn’t a highlight reel, and that’s exactly why it’s worth paying attention. We’re leaning into a springtime metaphor that changes how we move through our days: creating your own good soil. For us, that means building life-giving rituals and practices of peace that are small enough to be real and steady enough to actually last. The payoff is bigger than it sounds: more calm, more gratitude, and more moments that make you feel quietly shored up from the inside out. 

We talk about everyday micro moments of joy and why they matter for mental wellness, spiritual connection, and a balanced life. This isn’t toxic positivity or pretending everything is fine. It’s a mindful practice of re-engaging your senses so you can experience the world more deeply, even when the day is ordinary. Think sunlight through the window, the smell of flowers on the breeze, a kind stranger holding the door, or a look on a loved one’s face you catch before they notice you noticing. 

To make it tangible, we share spring rhythms from our home and garden: prepping raised beds with compost, cleaning out herbs, setting up hoses, filling bird feeders, and even trying a quirky alpaca-fiber “nest helper” for our bird friends. We check on overwintered plants like a blooming lemon tree, troubleshoot a struggling lime plant, and talk container gardening plans, dahlias, spring bulbs, and a possible wildflower experiment for bouquet cutting. We also share details on our spring subscription box and mini meditation boxes, including guided spring meditations designed to help you slow down and feel present. 

If this brings you a little peace, subscribe, share with a friend who needs a gentler rhythm, and leave a review. What’s one micro moment of joy you want to notice this week?

To learn more, go to mycreateharmony.com 

Transcript

Creating Good Soil For Peace

Spring Garden Rhythms At Home

Citrus Blooms And Dahlia Hope

Quote On Spring And Renewal

Spring Subscription Box Details

SPEAKER_00 0:05

Welcome back to the Create Harmony Podcast. Let me tell you what you'll discover here. This is a space for finding your intentional rhythm. It's a space where we savor life's blessings and we use the gift of imagination as a way of listening to God. It's a place where we slow down, we celebrate small everyday micro moments of joy. And if you are craving a little stillness, some creativity, and maybe a gentler way of noticing goodness all around you, you are in the right place. So this is episode 163, and I'm your host, Sally Burlington. So for the past couple of weeks, we've been talking about the practices of peace and how to incorporate those practices as rhythms into your life. And so for today's discussion, we're going to talk about what I was calling creating your own good soil, because we're into the spring here and we're talking about garden metaphors. So, in other words, these are finding or rediscovering your life-giving rituals, things that make you feel good. And some of these are really small, often overlooked moments that quietly add meaning and richness to life. And they do not require a lot of planning, they don't require a lot of money. They're not your major milestones. And because they're quiet and subtle, they often get overlooked. And even like for me, I'm already in the habit, I'm already aware that I need to notice them, and I still often miss them. So finding deeper ways to connect with these everyday joys is the secret to a happy, balanced, peaceful life. Now, what types of things do we mean here? This means the small moment of laughter that you share with a friend, or you the feeling that you have when you open your eyes on a Saturday morning and you see the sun streaming in through the window. It's like the smell of flowers on the breeze in the sun springtime. Maybe it's a look on your loved one's face that you notice before they notice you noticing. And some other ideas are like a stranger holding a door for you as you pass, or away from a neighbor across the street when you're checking the mail. These are just your everyday micro moments of joy. They also might be things like rhythms that you do each season, rhythms that you do each week, things that you repeat that make you feel shored up and brighter and good. So listen, I want to live in a world where there is an abundance of everyday joys. And I suspect that we all want to live in that world. And not only do we all want that, but we can have that. It just takes time and attention to notice it. Now, before you roll your eyes, let me assure you that we are not talking about toxic positivity here. We're not suggesting that you should just slap on a smile in all circumstances and not feel deeply the feelings about what's going on in the world around you. This does not mean that you smile through all circumstances, not at all in any way. Instead, this is the practice of re-engaging with our senses to experience this big, beautiful world in a deeper and more meaningful day. Because most of our days first of all, most of our days are not awful. But also most of our days are not extraordinary. They're just ordinary. And at times that ordinariness just gets overlooked. We fail to notice it. We fail to notice those things that are gently guiding us back to ourselves. So we're going to talk about some ordinary rituals going on around here at my house as we are moving into spring in hopes that that will be an inspiration for you to think about your ordinary rituals or your micro moments of joy. So if you've if you've been here a while, you know that we talk a lot about gardening and plants. And you do not have to be a plant person or a gardener. You don't have to participate fully. You can just ride along for our journey as we talk about it because I really love plants and I love gardening. So in the spring, that's one of the things we really talk about. So we have a change of season here. We do have a a winter. It's not it's not a super harsh winter usually, but we do have a winter. So there's certain things we do to get things back up and running for the springtime. And we have a raised bed garden in the back corner of our yard. And last fall we took that thing all apart because it was having drainage issues, and I've talked about that before. And we had it reassembled and we had gravel put all around it and just really like got it up and running. So we have two long raised beds and one square bed that we are ready to plant in. But there's a couple things that need to be done in a little while. I'm gonna go out there and sort of clean up the the boards that we use to put the bed back together were from the first iteration and they're a little dirty. So they're gonna need a scrub up. I'm gonna get that all scrubbed up. And then we've got some bags of compost because we use a composting service where we put the stuff in the composting bin and they pick it up every couple of weeks, and then they take it and turn it into compost. So we we don't have to do that. And then we get to earn bags of compost from them. So in the spring, that's super nice. We've earned a certain amount by putting our sc food scraps and stuff in there through the winter, through the whole season. So I've got a whole bunch of bags of compost out there. I'm gonna go and kind of freshen up top off the garden because it's just got topsoil in there and it needs a little bit of nutrients to get ready for when we plant. We can't plant here until sometime after April 15th because that's when our frost warnings lift. So we're not quite to planting yet, but we're prepping. We're prepping everything to be ready for planting. So getting a little compost in there. We have some raised bed, a different section of raised beds for our herb garden. And what I usually do instead of cleaning that all out at the end of the season, I usually just leave it and whatever dies during the winter, I just let it die because some things will survive. So I'm gonna go out there today and sort of clean out all the dead herbs from last season, the things that didn't come back. I think that there are still some chives growing. Some years we get rosemary to stay from year to year, but I think our rosemary is maybe died back. We have a little bit of mint, so I'm gonna clean all the leaves out and the debris and just sort of get it freshened up, maybe pop a little compost onto that, get it all ready to go. Um I'm into birds because I like to watch the birds, so I'm gonna fill up my bird feeders. I also got one of these things, and this is probably some sort of Instagram hoax, but I saw it, and it's like a wire frame that's shaped like a heart, and in it is alpaca fir, and you hang it out near your bird feeders, and then the birds use that to make their nests. So I'll give you an update on that later. I'm not sure if that's gonna work, but we're gonna hang it, hang it out there today and and see if we can entice our bird friends to use that little fuzzy stuff in making their nests. Um, we also have to put away all of our hoses and that kind of thing so they don't freeze. So I'm gonna get those all out, get them hooked up. We have an irrigation system, but that is not on yet. So we're not really ready to be watering things, but we're at least ready that we can get our hoses out, get them all hooked up. And then I have a couple of things that I moved into my garage, a couple of plants that we moved into our garage that are not cold hardy, and it's not quite time to get them out, but I was I'm gonna check on them. One of them is a lemon tree. We bought a lemon tree last year and it's in a pot because we can't keep citrus out through the winter. But I checked on the lemon tree the other day and it is covered in blooms. Still no lemons. I'm not still learning how to grow that, so I'm not sure if we need pollinators in order to, you know, get some lemons going. But we do have a lot of blooms. It smells the smell is super fragrant and bright and light and citrusy. And then I bought a lime, a little lime bush as well. So the lime bushes, it didn't fare quite as well through the winter, so it maybe needs a little more TLC. There are a few leaves and blooms on it, but it's not looking as good. But that I'm gonna check on that, maybe water it, maybe give it a little fertilizer, have a couple of other plants that I put inside. And so they'll get a freshen up in there in the garage and get them ready for when it's time to get the garden growing. So those are all some some rhythms that I'm gonna do out there today to get things, you know, up and running. I've got a lot of containers. I'm a big container gardener. I'm not really a landscaper or like a plant something in an in the ground type of gardener. So I'm gonna freshen up all my containers, get those ready, get the soil in them, and kind of be planning what I'm gonna grow. I do love to grow dahlias, and I've ordered quite a few dahlia tubers this season. So, and I kind of have a love-hate relationship with dahlias because when I put them in there and then they grow, they look kind of weedy and bad. And I'm always thinking, do I want to grow this? But then at the end of the summer and early September, they bloom these glorious blooms, and I'm always thinking, yes, I'm so glad I grew those. So I've ordered some new dahlia tubers, um, and we'll see how we do with that. We'll plant those. I'll give you updates as as we're doing that. And I'm considering, I'm not real successful with growing things from seed, but I have been considering maybe growing some wildflowers. I planted a whole bunch of bulbs in one of the container, uh raise bed containers, and they're blooming right now. I've got some tulips in there, some white and dark tulips, dark purple tulips. And then I've got some hyacinth. So there's some bright pink hyacinth and some purple hyacinth, and they are growing and smell so good. And then some muscari all around the edge. And all of that is just spring glory. I am just enjoying. I go out every day and like take a new picture of it and just enjoy it and love it. But that will die back. So, you know, when we get through the spring, those bulbs are gonna die back. So I was thinking about just tossing a little bit of fresh soil on the top of there and maybe putting some wildflower seeds in there and just see what happens. I don't know. I feel like it'd be kind of neat if I could grow wildflowers and then you could go out and clip it for bouquets, but that's not something that I've ever done before. So you'll we'll learn together. We can all learn together, and I'll be working on that. So you'll get some more updates as those things are unfolding. But those are some of the micro rhythms that we have around here that just bring me joy, bring me peace, and make me feel good. And I just thought we I would share them with you. So for our closing today, I'm gonna read a quote from a book called A Little Book of Happiness. The beautiful spring came, and when nature resumes her loveliness, the human soul is apt to revive also. And that was said by Harriet Ann Jacobs. Or think about just micro moments. You maybe you're gonna um pay attention to that ordinariness and bring a little bit more joy into your day. I want to remind you that it's time now we had our winter subscription box. I talked about that a lot in the winter, but we are now shifting to our spring box. If you're not familiar with what the subscription box is, I believe last week, one of the last two episodes, we talked about it in great detail. So you can go back and listen to that one of the last couple weeks. But what it is in short is that we've partnered with a mental wellness boutique. They have all sorts of mental wellness items, journals, books, gardening items, uh, fits, all sorts of things to raise your well-being. And what's in the spring box are five guided meditations or a link to five guided meditations. You can listen to them over and over again if you want, and they're all spring related. So it's like a spring rain shower, or sitting on the porch and enjoying the view of nature, or being outside in a meadow with all the wildflowers blooming around you. So all of those are sort of experiential meditations that you get access to, as well as our springy cozy items that are in the box. There's a lot to enjoy there. If you want to know more about that, or if you think you might want to check that out, you can go to mycreateharmony.com and get more information. If you're not quite ready to subscribe, but you want to test it out. We do have another mini meditative mini meditation box. This spring, actually, we have two versions. One is more for kids, and it has a rainbow meditation in there talking all about the celebration of colors, and then there's rainbow fidgets and just fun, kid-like things in the box. There's just one meditation in that one. And then the other one is more steered towards adults, and it's called making honey, and it's all about how the bees in the hive are all connected to one another, and they're making this sweet, delicious honey, and sweet treat. And there's all honey and bee-related things in the box. So those are smaller, and you can just give it a try. You only get just that box, and you don't have to commit to a subscription. So you just might want to check that out. Again, mycreateharmony.com is where you'll find that. And we'll be back next week with some more everyday joys. And until next time, peace.