Magnolia’s Journey Out of Deep Time
This is a rather long essay, part of my upcoming book about our Million Year Love Story with Flowers. Settle in with a cuppa, and I hope you enjoy this…
The Rhododendron’s Dance
Their Ancient Song On a late July hike in the Appalachian Mountains, I was suddenly surrounded by an explosion of white blossoms on 15-foot-high bushes, and the air around me…
Born of Fire
Every time I think about how plants eat sunlight, I am transported out of my animal-body understanding of the world; and become more aware of the plants’ completely different way…
The Sunflower’s Journey
A six-part story honoring the Sunflower’s journey through birth, death, and rebirth. Part One: Glory in the Garden Watching the blue jays stuff their throat pouch with the seeds from…
Dandelion Dreaming
As a small child, I thought everyone laid on the grass with their dad in the yard to watch the clouds. I can remember feeling so special laying side by…
The Orb Weavers
Early one morning as I stepped outside on a recent visit to a friend’s farm, I was swaddled in the soft hug of a morning fog, feeling like I was…
The Honeysuckle’s Longing
On a recent hike in the woods, the smell of honeysuckle pulled me into old childhood memories so quickly it was as if I had stepped through a door. Coming…
Wildflower Medicine for the Land – a Story of the Once-Was Town of Douglas, WV
The niggling feeling in my body was so strong. Vibrant wildflowers were dancing around me as I walked, filling me with glee and delight, and yet I had a sense…
Flowers Are Our Maps
Note: This post was published on Facebook July 7th, and I am adding it to my blog belatedly. The references to Our Lady of Woodstock are one of a myriad…
Thoroughly Loved
Waking to the morning sun, her petals thoroughly sprinkled with pollen, Bee Balm radiates satisfaction like she has spent a night with a mythic lover. Opening her blossoms to the…
Our Stag and the Winter Solstice
What does it mean when you find a dead 11-point buck deer in your backyard 7 days before the winter solstice? It took me a few days to even begin…
The Big Red Seed
The audacity of the red seeds stopped me, and I couldn’t take another step. How could a seed be THAT red? Solid, bright fire engine red. Pure unadulterated red if…
The Forest In Between
On a recent visit to my favorite forest and stream, just past the autumn equinox, the feeling was one of satisfaction, of waiting, of being balanced. An in-between time, quiet. …
The Glorious Wild Ones
The late summer wildflowers - wild being the key word - they tug at my soul. They are not the carefully tended beauties in my garden, and they are not…
The Sunflower Matriarch
The giant sunflowers are the matriarchs of my garden for sure. And I daresay, they are an archetype of a flower’s journey for the entire flowering world because they are…
The Song of the Mountains
On a one-mile hike out to Lindy Point in Blackwater Falls State Park in West Virginia in late July I was suddenly surrounded by an explosion of pink tinted white…
Wandering into Wonder
In my experience, wonder is so intricately tied to the magic of miracles. A dictionary definition of wonder is: “a feeling of surprise mingled with admiration, caused by something beautiful,…
Skimming the Surface for Trust
My very favorite bird on the Florida coast is the Black Skimmer. They are strikingly black on top, white on the bottom, and have a large wingspan and a very…
The Great Warrior Rose
It is quite magical to come upon a blooming rose bush in the middle of the forest with a shaft of sunlight shining on her sweetly scented flowers through a…
Magnolia – Ancient Crone of Flowers
The magnolia flower is OLD. I mean really OLD. She is thought to be one of the “most primitive” of the flowering plant families, with fossilized specimens around 95 MILLION…
Not Matching
The creative process is a funny thing. The most intriguing thing for me is that it allows my intuitive self to step in and suggest things that my logical mind…
Motherwort – Another Many Handed Mama
What’s in a name? Sometimes everything! Wort is an old-fashioned word used in many plant names like lungwort, bladderwort, spiderwort, and it is from the Old English word wyrt, which…
Smelling the Remembering
Some herbs have been cultivated and used for so long by their human companions, that they are part of the human family, so to speak, rather the way dogs and…
The Mighty Pregnant Mustard
I like my garden best when it gets rather wild, with the plants spilling over each other, finding their own space, going to seed, rabbits burrowing under the comfrey, the…
Say Nothing At All
“If you don’t have anything nice to say, say nothing at all.” How many of us have heard this over and over growing up? Perhaps it was a southern thing,…
Extended Family Indeed!
When I came upon the sea of mottled green and purple leaves with a chorus of delicate yellow flowers bowing their heads, my jaw dropped open and I felt such…
Through the Veil and Back Again
As I drive to our city park that has forest trails in its valleys, my mind is paying attention to the road, checking off mental notes on my never ending…
Rabbits, Fear & Our Heart’s Desire
One minute I was Mr. McGregor. The next minute I was Peter Rabbit… I have a garden that is fenced to keep out the deer, and one day recently I…
Bleeding Hearts
The term “bleeding heart” has become quite a derogatory term in our culture and refers to one who feels “too much”. Dictionary.com says it means “a person who makes an…
Marshmallow
What is it about that white fluffy puffy sticky pillow of sweetness that we call a marshmallow? I have lots of childhood memories, squishing marshmallows between my fingers, seeing how…
The Great Mother Oak
When we were kids, we would play several car games on the way to Myrtle Beach each summer. A favorite was who could be the first to spy the big…
The Ribbon
Have you ever wanted to go on a pilgrimage? Following in other pilgrims’ and ancestors’ footsteps sounds so romantic, noble, sacred, ancient even; with the idea that at the end…
Wild Salt
I am standing in the dense fog, at the edge of the ocean, as the wind is blowing the wetness into every part of me, seeping into my skin, clothing,…
Breathe
I love watching their arms reaching down for the rich brown, wet, primordial muck at the edge of the bay, their fingers outstretched with dark brown tips almost like nipples,…
The Sword
In the Victorian era of the language of flowers, the black or burgundy color Dahlia flower symbolizes betrayal. Black Dahlia’s symbolism is extremely strong and has been present for centuries.…
Waiting
When I was a young girl, we always went to my grandmother’s house for Christmas eve. She had a lot of magical old-fashioned decorations and we would gather in the…
The Scourge of “Normal”
Another chemical explosion in our valley greeted me the morning of December 9th, 2020. Another wake-up call. In the past I have been lulled into thinking we no longer have…
Unconditional Love or Bust
I can’t carry a tune. Or so I have been told, ever since my voice cracked in the Christmas Chorus performance at church when I was young. And since I…
Nature’s Weavers
I think my earliest memory of huge jungle woven vines is from a Tarzan movie. Traditionally spiderwebs are more closely associated with weaving, but for me it is the wild…
Weaving the World
Have you ever woven potholders on those little square metal looms with the stretchy colorful loops? When I decided I needed potholders a few years ago I ordered a kit…
The Taproot
We have had a flowering bush called Clethra for years that flowers with these rather unremarkable white flower spikes made up of lots of smaller flowers. But the fragrance of…
The Dolls Are Talking
After a discussion on dolls in Perdita Finn’s Take Back the Magic class recently, I remembered a doll I have of my mothers. A lovely Effanbee doll about 18” tall…
On Dragonfly Wings
Usually, magic drops in quite unexpectedly. I had just finished spreading out a white row cover over a bed of kale in my garden, when a red-tailed dragonfly dropped onto…
I Almost Stepped on a Turtle
It has been a long time since I have run across a turtle here in our backyard forest - an adorable ordinary box turtle of medium size, with those amazing…
Songs of our ancestors
Do you remember the first time you heard the ocean in a seashell? When I was a young girl, I remember visiting my grandmother who had these large shells, that…
Drinking Moonlight
A lush jasmine-like fragrance wafts onto the evening breeze as soon as her petals open, and I am transported to another world like Alice in Wonderland where the flowers talk…
One Bite at a Time
Fourteen days to feast day and night on your favorite food? Party time! Your only food, the food your mother lived her whole life to find for you, laying her…
Just Be Still
Stillness and serenity. A welcome balm, yet how often do we allow ourselves to fully relax into them? Recently, I stumbled upon a wide still stream, having little idea of…
IT STARTS HERE
August 15, 2020 Mary Kerns Have you ever had a day – I’m sure you have – where you realized the way you looked at a little part of your…
Accepting
Accepting Emerging from the wood,and the ancient sea, Embodied Beautybringing an offering from the root of time-A seashell, an acorn, a flower.Today’s offering,a giftfor us to acceptand be held in…