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 forage through deep time! “Once all knowledge was the knowledge of a flower.” OLS 3.16.19 Each Spring We Bloom Again It never grows old, this …
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 of living on this planet we share. Comprehending that flowers are created out of the fire-food of the sun only truly happens in my heart, …
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 they held something much older and wilder as well. They had a story to tell. Generations of stories, I was to learn, pulled up from …
Continue reading Wildflower Medicine for the Land – a Story of the Once-Was Town of Douglas, WV
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 to pull on the threads of its significance. At first, we just blessed him, and pulled him into the edge of the woods. This was …
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 large orange and black beak that looks too heavy for its head to even hold up. The bottom beak is longer and bigger than its …
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 break in the tree canopy. While her flowers are dainty and small, there is no mistaking the rose family scent wafting through the sunbeam. Previously …
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 years old, and origins likely 140 million to 250 million years ago. These flowers lived with the dinosaurs, but having no bones they left only …
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 would not, and thereby I hear a voice larger than myself, which I long for so very deeply. And I think everyone does in one …
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 simply meant plant. More precisely, a name given to a beneficial plant, as in the opposite of a weed, like milkweed, knotweed, ragweed. So, motherwort …
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 cats are, and common garden sage or salvia officinalis is one of the best. It has become quite comfortable in the kitchen garden, willingly giving …
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 berry brambles so thick you can’t see through them, the cucumbers and sunflowers and beans all intertwined, tomatoes spilling over the ground because the suckers …
“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, perhaps it was a generational thing, but I heard it over and over. Recently when I asked my 92-year-old aunt what she remembered her grandmother …
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 deep awe and wonder that I couldn’t speak. The sheer number of these flowers astounded me. With sunlight in the early spring air coming through …
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 to do list, arranging priorities. I always think if I can just get one more thing done, THEN I will feel spacious and free to …
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 left the gate open all night, and a rabbit got in. We have lots of rabbits in our yard, and they sniff around the edges …
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 ostentatious or excessive display of pity or concern for others”, and it has even become a political term. Most people want to be known to …
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, yearning to be sucked into the wet earth. They are longer every time I visit, visibly showing their increasing fervor for the brackish back bay …
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 formal living room and drink eggnog made with real whipping cream and sing Christmas carols. Over the mantle of the fireplace, a very large portrait …
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 these flowers completely undoes me. I swoon. I want to spend my afternoon right beside them with their elixir wafting over me. I close my …
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 her grace.
Waitingin that still space,between the rising and waning,waxing and setting.Waitinguntil the heartbeat of the earthreaches up into her corewith its raucous, teeming, wild, ragged beauty;its roots crackingthe hard stonejust enoughfor her to begin softening intowhat wants to be bornin us,through us,and for us.Again.
Trusting the Knowing In the teeming forestthey standembodied in shadow,the ones who know,holding the wisdom of generationsthat is imprinted in my bones.They are intuition,myself, but not only myself;Love, Beauty, Sophia,They meet me in the quiet placeswhen I am stilland when I ask.May the blessing be thatnow and againI set aside my fears,I trust their voice,and …
Bringing Forth Beauty Awakening,I standbetween the cocoon of the night,and the unfolding of the day,connected by my rootsto the vast aching beautythat is Creation herself.And while my rootshold me and nurture me,they also release meto see beyond myself,to see the blazing sunin the dying leaves falling to earth,feeding my roots,bringing fortha Beauty so brilliant,that in …
Dancing with Trees The late summer heat shimmers on my leaves, my sap pulsing and throbbing in my limbs, Beckoning to you in the breeze, come dance with me. Set aside your trembling, look deep in your heart. I have been waiting Standing strong for you Feel my sacred life in your bones. Come dance.
Trees Dancing with Me Until I found your buried rootsI had forgottenthis dance of lifecoursing in my blood like sap.Your strengthstands tallwinter after winter,hardened to the cold.Yet at your core,you dancewith an undying firesustained by rootsreaching down to our ancestors.This dance,holding strong your heart,my heart.It is enough.
The Edge of the Moon The endless music calls from the dark green depths Softening the edges and absorbing the burning brightness from the day. The incessant voice of the wind tickling, nudging, pulling, generating the desire to dive in the ancient waves to dance in the light of the moon that gives me her …
Dragon fire licking the edges of the night, igniting in me Ancient Wisdom. Illuminating radiance prancing between trees, stars and my heart. Sacred matter and sacred spirit forged by the light of the moon.