I feel the speeding up, the airplanes have returned, the traffic now heard accompanied by the annoying buzz of weed-whackers out beyond the peace of my gardens. This year, grounded in my home since March. Being an Herbal star has fed my soul these past twenty or more years. Being loved on the road by so many incredible hosts and students eager to learn in such beautiful places on The Mother. At home in April May and June for the first time in twenty years, no packing, flying, arranging, laundry and repacking with visits to kids and grandkids in between. The closet full of suitcases is unopened. The huge drawer of travel necessities forgotten.
These months I have gardened and watched and loved each new day seeing my beloved plants grow and bloom. Overnight wonders of change and beauty. Bloodroot and Goldenseal, Solomon’s seal and Lungwort. Flox and Foxgloves drooping weighted by blossoms and blowing in the winds. Boughs of Elder flowers in their umbrellific glory. Hops growing yards in a day, raspberries taking over the universe. Wisteria and Climbing Hydrangea cascading, sharing petals to adorn my hair. Yarrow is showing up everywhere with Nettles jumping all boundaries. Cleavers will be needed this year, it is present in every garden! Figwort flowers are so incredibly delicious and such a contrast to the scent of their leaves! Black and Blue Cohosh are taller than ever before. The Shad and Hawthorn, Ginkgo, Redbud and Linden resplendent even after trunks being twisted and torn by last summer’s Microburst.
What? A small tornado in MY garden? Mother Nature is having her way with us. She is upset and there were consequences, we are all grounded! “You will prune and cut out the dead wood!” she spoke. Pruning and letting the light in was that message stated years ago, a lesson from most loved gardener Win Mulry as he walked my overcrowded, over planted land. I have slowly spread two yards of organic loam and compost, in equal parts, across the gardens as I completed dividing and weeding and simply appreciating what I already have gracing this land I caretake. Every day a new joy presents the wonder of Nature as I offer my hands to the Earth. Fortunate beyond belief.
Isolated at home, me and Luca Pickle Starlight, my manly part Maine Coon, and Jaime visits most days to learn the practicalities of running this practice. How fortunate to have my Jaime walk through the door all gorgeous and modern with hair shaved on the sides and back and long curls from the middle, maybe purple or turquoise until Covid hit. Prayers answered, “Give me a serious person worthy of inheriting, earning the practice through hard and earnest work, becoming the honored recipient of my beloved herbal practice”. The five to ten year plan of letting go and moving onto the next exciting chapter of my existence here on Earth. (With her own special flair.)
I have reflected on the men I have loved and more importantly reflected on myself. I have a dear friend who has encouraged me to grow beyond known expectations and allowed me to experience a vibration of being within myself I knew existed yet had not felt. No one has been a better mentor in this timely exploration of myself. Cracked open, sometimes raw, reaching exquisite bliss in the exploration of being. The limits of expectation and possibility encouraged through suggested thoughts and shifts in my filters of perception. I have become the person I want to love.
Now the societal buzz has returned. I crave to remain in the deepness of my studies, my PHD in Margi. I see now that all those years of flying away to get love kept me from knowing what I really want. It took this radical halting of everything I have known to be a source of love, my teaching, my family’s hugs, to be removed, cancelled, delayed, distanced or postponed to truly see myself. Yes, I am a good herbalist, author, mother, home caretaker and friend, but am I happy? What is it I really want?
I choose my beloved, my equal, my thought provoking, generous, secure, brilliant passionate man, head on his pillow next to mine, or my head on his beating big heart, arm around me, strong and steady, confidant and already manifest in his own dream, intertwined around this incredible human body I have abundantly filled with vibrant, fun loving, intellectually stimulating, passionate and super ready to be his devoted life lover, asking me how my day was.
Plant the seed and it will grow.