June 2010
Oh, those weeds! This June (maybe because of our delightfully wet spring) the weeds have nearly taken over the garden. I was out in the herb garden scooting my wobbly weeding chair along the brick paths, frantically pulling out handfuls of bindweed and witchgrass when my daughter called on the telefonino (we use the Italian word for cell phone).
“I am just overwhelmed!” I wailed, “The whole garden's totally out of control.”
“Maybe the garden just wants to be wild this year, “ she appeased me.
Of course, that's it! Just change your perspective a bit, and a whole new vision of the garden appears. Suddenly my angst evaporated into fragrant green mist. The rigidly brittle “control” lenses on my eyes shattered in a tinkle of faery music, and before me appeared a lovely lush garden of green treasures.
The big wild burdock (Artium lappa) is already sending up flower stalks next to the tall spicy domestic lovage (Levisticum off.). All parts of the burdock are cooling, according to the grandmothers. We will add some leaves to our summer salads and enjoy its delicate purple flowers.
That witchgrass (Agropyron repens) with its creeping ivory-colored rhizomes was once esteemed by herbalists. Nicolas Culpeper wrote of it “.....'tis a remedy against all diseases........half an acre of it is worth five acres of carrots twice over.” It is actually a rich source of potassium and other vital minerals. Traditional herbalists use it to relieve gout and bladder irritations or cystitus. To make the tea, infuse one ounce of fresh, clean, chopped roots in a pint of boiling water. They say take it cooled, in wineglassfuls, with lemon and honey several times a day.
Next time I browse the plant nursery, I will pick up a flat of bright Mexican marigolds (Tagetes minuta) to plant near the bindweed (Convolvulus). An English researcher has found that the marigolds are lethal to the starchy roots of bindweed but have no effect on woody ones like roses or shrubs.
That clump of lambsquarters (Chenopodium album) is a wild relative of spinach, and it has more iron and protein than its tame dark green cousin. It also has lots of B vitamins and calcium. In fact, according to Audry Wynne Hatfield's little book How to Enjoy Your Weeds, it was a food staple of the Anglo-Saxons. Little lambsquarters leaves can be tasty in salads, and larger leaves make a healthy and beautiful bright green soup.
Ground ivy (Glechoma hederacea) or gill-over-the-ground, as we call it in our family, is sprawling all over the garden. It was once called alehoof because it was used in home brewing. Hops weren't used in England until the 14th century. Today the grandmothers recommend chilled gill tea as cooling and good for indigestion. Used as a lotion, the tea is soothing to sunburns and other skin irritations.
Our very word “weed” comes from the Anglo-Saxon word “weod” which simply meant all herbs or non-woody plants. They were used by our ancestors long before grasses like corn had been bred to have fat ears and long before fruit trees produced the large juicy fruits of today.
So this summer I am planning to sit in the shade more often with an icy drink. I vow only to clear the paths and rescue any cherished garden plants that look as if they are in real danger of being choked out by the weeds. I will remember that to our forebearers all plants were honored. Many of them were loved as food or medicine and many of them were respected as magical. This is the summer the garden wants to be wild.
May 2010
On May Day, the first of May, this year we had our first meal from the garden. Tender new lettuces and little crisp spinach leaves made the basis for a big ambrosial salad. Snow peas will be ready by the end of the month.
Actually, we nibble from the herb garden year round. Parsley is always green under the snow- ready to give us a few vitamin C-rich leaves for our salads or soups. Wild, weedy chickweed is green all winter here too. By the end of February tiny spikes of garlic chives are up and the first delicate lovage leaves are uncurling. In March the garden and the woods here in Harpers Ferry become abundant with dandelions, nettles, violets...
Someone once asked me, “You are an herbalist. What herbal supplements do you take?” My answer was, “None. I graze.” By that, I mean I pick a leaf here and there to eat as I wander around the garden or on my daily walks in the wild places.
Living herbs are intensely vibrant with vitamins, minerals and that mysterious quality called life-force. The longer a plant has been picked to dry or make a tincture, the more it loses. It may still have measurable alkaloids, vitamins and minerals, but an important part has been lost. The Asian concept of “chi” comes closest, I believe, to describing that energy.
Dandelion is a good friend of mine and a good plant to use as an example. Let's say you have consulted an herbalist or looked on an herb chart and seen that dandelion is good for your liver or as a diuretic, not to mention it is packed with vitamin C and A, potassium, calcium, iron, zinc and a natural fungicide. You could buy a bottle of little capsules of dried dandelion leaf or a tincture of dandelion root.. or you could simply pick a leaf or two every day from your garden or along your walk. There is a zing to those fresh leaves! You can feel the tingle on your tongue. You have a relationship with that dandelion plant, you see where it grows, you can feel and express gratitude for its power and beauty. It is your neighbor, growing right where you grow- drinking the same water, basking in the same sunshine, feeling the same breezes. As your neighbor, you know when that dandelion expands its family or begins to wither.
The grandmother herbalists say plant magic (medicine) works best when you take delight like the bees and little insects who hover over the herbs in the sunlight. Imitate the rabbits who so joyfully eat the leaves!
Of course, you should choose your herb nibbling areas carefully. Plants in your own garden are best because you know where they have been. Use common sense. Avoid wild herbs near the favorite neighborhood dog-walking spots and places where chemicals may have been used on them.
Do your homework in plant identification so you know how your plant allies look, so you get the right ones. There are really only a few wild plants that are actually harmful if you accidentally pick them, so you do want to know and avoid them.
Our culture in this time and place likes to commercialize everything. We seem to put greater value on something if we spend money for it. Let's recognize the free “nutritional supplements” growing all around us. Cherish the green!
May is the traditional time to celebrate the green. Once upon a time our European ancestors divided the year into simply winter and summer. Winter began at the end of October (Halloween) and summer began at May Day. We still dance around Maypoles and gather in the lilac and hawthorn blossoms.
Our own family is celebrating a joyous wedding this May, the time of new beginnings, when all the bounty of the green growing year is before us. Here is a beautiful old song for dancing around the Maypole:
Oak is the Sun Lord, Maiden is the May
Take away our pains and woes on this May Day
Oak is the Sun Lord, He will give us strength
He will take away our fears for the Summer's length
Hawthorn is the Maiden, She will give us peace
From the woe of aching heart, She will bring release.
Oak Lord and Maiden, Hip Hip Hooray
Round we go to greet them both on this May Day.
-Traditional
April 2010
Spring was in full bloom when I walked to the Harpers Ferry post office this morning. Cascading cherry trees were shimmering in delicate pink lace, and daffodils of all varieties were brilliant in splashes of yellow against the new green along the way. Forsythia was exploding into its one brief moment of golden glory before fading into that dull shabby bush for the rest of the year.
Tall tulip spikes with their buds still closed are the only real green in the herb garden now except for two glorious new bunches of burdock (Artium lappa) that popped up spontaneously. My first impulse was to pull up those coarse weeds, but something stopped me.
They are really beautiful with those curly heart-shaped leaves all clustered from the base like a fancy flower arrangement. And those rosy stems! I sat down on the ground with my face right up close to one of the vigorous little burdocks and really looked at its exquisite beauty.
It will stay in the herb garden this year. The old-time herb women, the grandmothers, said we should pay attention to who shows up where we live. Which plants just appear? They show up, said the grannies, to help us out with a problem we may not even know we have yet.
A healthy young burdock plant looks a lot like rhubarb – big, robust and almost tropical. Beautiful! It won't be until next year that it will sprout the shoulder-high flower stalks and then those burrs that tangle dog fur and stick to our pants legs.
I remember that we use burdock roots dug in their first fall at the dark of the moon when they hold the most virtues. Boiled into a tea or put up in a tincture, the roots are rich in iron, calcium, vitamin C and A – a good tonic.
But on this glorious April day I am more interested in those big wavy red-veined leaves that have volunteered themselves in our garden. I pick one after politely asking permission and then thanking it, and crush it on my hot-pink cheeks, the first sunburn of the season. It feels cool and soothing.
I know that fresh burdock leaf tea will help lower a fever, cool a fiery temper and maybe even slow some overactive cells from clumping into tumors. Sometimes just welcoming the wild free burdock inside our gardens can do the same thing.
“More in the garden grows
Than the gardener knows.”
-traditional
March 2010
It was drizzling rain and snow when I walked out to the point in Harpers Ferry this morning. Piles of dirty snow still blocked my way, but the river was rushing free and the moist air smelled like living green again.
March is really our first month of spring here on the Blue Ridge. Daffodil shoots of all varieties are an inch high now, and by the end of this month some of them will be blooming. Bright green chickweed (Stellaria media) appears from under melting snow to bloom in tiny white stars at midday.
But this morning the green plant that caught my eye throughout Harpers Ferry was English ivy (Hedera helix), richly green and vibrant with life despite our harsh winter of waist-high snow.
Poor English ivy is disparaged by professional horticulturists these days as an “invasive non-native” .....as are all of us who are not Native American. It is true that ivy came over with our European ancestors ---- intentionally as a garden plant or inadvertently as seeds stowing away in pocket lint. By now, though, ivy can claim a place in the Mayflower Society or the Daughters of the American Revolution, so for all practical purposes it has become a native.
Our village Tree Committee has declared open warfare on ivy, so I am anxiously protective of our thick and densely green ivy vine entwining the apple tree out back. The arborist who came last winter to trim branches from the red maple and apple tree told us that ivy is not a parasite and won't kill trees. It does however, he said, put extra weight on branches causing them to sometimes split off, and ivy holds fungus-loving moisture close to tree bark. We are keeping ivy away from the red maple, but the big apple tree and its equally big ivy vine seem to have created a healthy bond. Not a single ivy-covered branch fell under the weight of more than three feet of snow last month.
Ivy is a beautiful mainstay of my winter garden along with the boxwoods and a single self-sown holly. The secret to successfully including ivy in the garden is to prune it unmercifully and pull it out with gusto from unwanted places. Both the joy and bane of ivy is its vigor. We have chosen to let it grow freely in the apple tree where it now drapes as gracefully as the Spanish moss in our daughter's Savannah garden.
I have described the vices of English ivy, so I will share some of her virtues as well. Ivy is a sacred plant of sanctuary. Birds flutter and flit through the ivy in all seasons – finding protection and hidden places for roosting and nesting. Last fall when there was little food left for the bees I watched as thousands of honeybees quivered with delight among the delicate light green ivy flowers high in the treetop. Maybe they recognized each other as “aliens” from Europe.
Our own European ancestors paired the five-lobed ivy leaves as a Goddess symbol with prickly holly leaves as a symbol of the Winter God. Ivy was gathered to encircle punch bowls as protection from drunkeness. Revelers would tuck a sprig of ivy into their hats for the same reason. It is also the sacred plant of Bacchus who made a crown of it along with the grapevine, of course.
Brides and grooms in ancient Greece carried wreaths of ivy to symbolize fidelity. The custom of decorating homes with ivy at Yuletide was banned by the early Christian church because of its pagan association, but people so loved the ever-green ivy that the custom has survived.
An ivy leaf is the badge of the Scottish Gordon clan, and the wood was once a favorite to whet knives.
Nowadays ivy has fallen out of favor with herbalists who seem to prefer exotic and expensive herbs over the common everyday ones. Our great-grandmothers soaked ivy flowers in wine to “restrain dysentery.” The old English herbalist Nicolas Culpeper cautioned, “It is an enemy to the nerves and sinews inwardly, but most excellent outwardly.”
The Anglo-Saxon Leechbook of Bald (and more recently, the grande dame of herbalism, Maude Grieve) recommend tender new ivy leaves steeped in oil or soft butter to soothe a sunburn.
Hail to the poet's ivy crown
Singing green when all is brown
Sup to bees and abode of feather
In chillest wind or darkest weather.
........Alruna
February 2010
February begins with Candlemas or St. Brigit's Day, the Celtic feast of awakening called Imbolc. Townsfolk burn candles to celebrate, and country grandmothers would have collected and dried tall mullein tapers totraditionally burn to awaken the earth. Then they would brew the crisp mullein leaves into a winter cough remedy.
It is hard to think of awakening Spring even on this sun-bright morning because we have a half foot of powdery snow and the temperature is below 15 degrees F. But it is true that before this short month ends we will notice unmistakable signs of true Spring.
Already a little clump of tiny snowdrops are pushing up in my garden, and a huge drift of them are cascading down a wooded south-facing slope above the Shenandoah River. We are supposed to bring a small bouquet of them into the house now for purification.
One rosy dawn last week during January's ephemeral thaw, we were actually awakened by the nearly forgotten sound of birdsong. Then the next day temperatures outside dropped again, and the singing disappeared. It was a reminder, though, that the mid-month celebration of St. Valentine is the traditional day that our birds choose mates. That is why we celebrate mating as well.
Lupercalia in ancient Rome predated our Valentine's Day as the day to celebrate romance, and couples back then drew names from a bag to be paired for the festival.
If you are wondering about your own prospects for romance, put a bay leaf under each corner of your pillow and another under the center before you go to bed one night this month. Folklore tells us that you will dream of just what your love-life will look like this year.
Another way is to pick nine holly leaves on the third Friday of February at midnight and place them in a three-cornered cloth under your pillow. This charm will only work if absolute silence is kept between the moment the leaves are gathered and the first light of dawn.
You can also know that these herbs are said to be aphrodisiacs: Lettuce, pansy, wormwood, periwinkle, bay, marigold, thyme, marjoram, coriander, clove, cinnamon, ginger, rose, borage, watercress, artichokes, parsley, carrot, dill, anise and chervil.
A birch twig is traditionally given by a woman to a man as a sign of romantic interest. If she wants to discourage him, she gives him a hazel twig.
As the end of February comes 'round again we can be sure those birch twigs will be budding into catkins and the first hardy violets will open in protected sunny spots. It will be a good time to take an herbal bath. These herbs tied up in a little bag to soak in your tub will contribute to your good health: comfrey, sage, parsley and orange peel. Add lovage to make you lovable.
And......................”goats milk infused with violets, and there is not a young prince on earth who will not be charmed with thy beauty.”
-An old Gaelic saying about the bath.
January 2010
It takes a shift in perspective to love January. The temperature has been continuously below freezing for a week, with the wind chill near zero.
Last night the waning blue moon (the 2nd full moon in a month) shone in the window as we snuggled deeper into the quilts. Wind rattled old windowpanes and howled through the pine trees. As I lay there warm and secure, I thought of the old stories about the Wild Hunt – for the Wild Hunt surely was about this night.
The grandmothers tell of a large rich lady named Mother Holle who loved to hunt more than anything else. She had twelve beautiful daughters who shared her passion for hunting, and in the winter you could see them out every day in wild delight as they rode over the fields and through woods on big fine horses.
One day Mother Holle cried the fateful words, “Hunting is better than heaven!” Suddenly before their mother's eyes, the daughters' dresses turned into tufts of fur, their arms into legs – in a split second the girls were gone and twelve little black dogs with white furry collars danced around Mother Holle's steed. Away flew the Wild Hunt up into the clouds, betwixt heaven and earth where they hunt unceasingly – night and day-- to this very day.
On cold winter nights the Wild Hunt swoops down near villages, and wherever Mother Holle finds a street-door open, she sends in one of her dogs. Next morning the little dog wags her tail and does no harm except whine all the time – year round – till next winter when the Wild Hunt gathers her up again. So everyone must be careful to keep the great house-door closed tightly on howling winter nights.
I am glad our old door is locked as the Wild Hunt flies through Harpers Ferry tonight, shrieking through the big pines along the back fence.
Those pines are sacred trees to both Native Americans and Europeans. The needles grow in a circular shape like the seasonal wheel, the wood is soft but strong. It has been called the tree of peace.
Pine wood is one of the most prolific timbers which we use for our houses, our furniture, our musical instruments, tools, toys .......the list is endless. We make baskets from pine needles and dye cloth brown with its bark. We use pine resin in varnishes, sealing wax, on violin bows, in soap and to coat the insides of beer casks.
And pine heals. Our ancestors spread the resin on wounds because it is antiseptic. They chewed it for a sore throat and heated it up for a warm poultice to soothe aching muscles. The inner bark of white pine (our native pine here in West Virginia) was boiled into a cough remedy. The list of pine's healing uses is long.
But now I am comforted by the soft singing of the pines as the Wild Hunt has swept away toward another village. Soon daybreak will start to rise over Loudoun Heights, and I will get up. Down in the kitchen I will heat up the kettle for morning tea – waiting, like the grandmothers advise, until the hot water sounds like “wind in the pine trees” before I pour it over the black assam tea in my warm little teapot.
December 2009
Almost everyone loves December! All that darkness outside draws us together inside for feasting and inspires us to light up our houses and gardens with twinkling stars.
Driving or walking home at night in December is spectacular. There are garlands of fairy lights, menorahs of sparkling flames, creche's with spotlights on the holy family and shimmering solstice trees everywhere.
Santa may be re-named after St. Nicholas, but he is still also the old one of our ancestors, wearing his red or blue suit trimmed with fur and drawn through the night sky by eight magic reindeer named after thunder and lightning and love ---- as he gives gifts to us all.
We honor the evergreen as a reminder of the natural world's everlasting bounty. Pine, cedar, holly and ivy are green year-round here in Harpers Ferry. We bring them inside to surround ourselves with their fragrance, their life. They help us feel hope that even though most of the branches are bare and the plants are brown, new life will come again with the the new sun.
It always puzzles me why some people use plastic greenery – it has no life, causes pollution to make, never composts and eventually just fills up our dumps with more toxic trash.
Holly with its spiky green leaves and red berries represents everlasting life and the old God of winter. Ivy with its shiny five-lobed leaves and spiral growth pattern represents the ever-present Earth Goddess. Mistletoe which seems to grow magically without roots in the treetops was once called “heal all.” It protects the house from lightning and inspires love. Our ancestors took dried mistletoe berries as little pills to keep down high blood pressure. Don't try this at home, as “they” say.
Pine and cedar and spruce trees are the only green trees in the forest now, so we decorate them lovingly with lights and little things that we find beautiful. We are celebrating their persistent green life and the reminder that all the trees will turn green again.
We celebrate elves and gnomes at Yuletide because they represent the forces under the earth now that are at work invisibly; seeds settling in, bulbs starting to consider sprouting. Furry animals are hibernating in dens, frogs and toads in mud, and insect eggs or larvae are resting in the dark earth.
And then near Winter Solstice the sun is reborn, daylight begins to lengthen once more. We instinctively celebrate with renewed hope. Pope Gregory in the 4th century proclaimed the date of Christmas to be near the old Winter Solstice celebration to align with people's natural feeling of joy at the rebirth of light, the promise that the gift of life would green again.
We emulate that gift by giving one another brightly wrapped presents at this time of year. We feed the birds oily sunflower or thistle seeds and fat suet to help them through the cold dark time. We feed ourselves the rich sweet foods and drinks of the season for the same reason. The old December traditions are merry indeed! Bless us all.
Winter Solstice Chant:
Geese and standing stones and mist
Baying hounds and hooting owl
Sparkling stars and snow is crisp
Sun is born. Bring forth the bowl.
November 2009
We watched the full white moon rise through bare black tree branches last night while we were having our modest supper of hot soup in the kitchen. Now in November we have breakfast before dawn and even an early supper after sunset.
That exquisite darkness defines November as it pushes in from both dawn and sunset like a pair of sturdy bronze bookends.
Our ancestors thought of this darkness as the eve of the new year. The long sunlit days of last summer's fertility are setting into night, seeds are settling into dark soil and our thoughts of last summer are gradually fading into our night dreams where new visions for next year are only just beginning to gel. Roman inspired calendars mark midnight or daybreak as beginnings, but many cultures still count days from sunset to sunset.
November is one of my favorite months. It brings that sweet dark rest of completion. The garden is a gloriously messy tangle of old seed heads and angled brown stalks. Some of my garden plans came to fruition, some fizzled. I may bury a few daffodil or tulip bulbs now, but I never “clean up” the garden in the fall. There is too much happening out there for me to interfere. Gold finches are finishing up the echinacea and perilla seeds, sparrows with striped bonnets are scratching around the fallen catnip leaves looking for treasure and wrens are flitting in the silky clematis seed swirls. The baby groundhog who dug a den under the garage (and was adopted by the scare-crow ladies in the vegetable patch) is now as roly-poly as the pumpkins on the back porch. He waddles out for a last snack of violet leaves and lemon balm before his months-long nap. I awaken most mornings now to crows cawing back and forth from the crowns of town maple trees and sometimes to their thumping around on the tin roof. They are our expert recyclers, transforming almost any old discarded food into their cocky energy. I love the way they sit on the scare-crow ladies' straw hats!
So now after we hustle around a little in the shortening daylight, whether we like it or not, all of us spend more time in darkness. November is a quiet time with only that lovely gathering late in the month when friends and family gather to feast with gratitude on Thanksgiving. This time is a restful pause before the bright craziness of Yuletide lights.
May we all enjoy leisurely cups of afternoon tea as the sun sets early, long dark nights of sweet swirling dreams and cozy kitchen breakfasts full of promise in blue-dark dawns ---- before the onset of wild December insanity.
October 2009
This monthly column is late again. My dear son, who updates my website, has been reminding me for a week. The numbers on my calendar seem to have less meaning for me now that I am retired and have the freedom to consciously align myself to mother earth's own rhythms.
Yesterday I finally felt the urge to buy pumpkins and hang a bundle of dried Indian corn on the front door in honor of harvest time. Now there are two huge fat pumpkins on the front steps that will eventually be carved into sacred jack-o-lanterns and lots of smaller pie pumpkins on the back porch scattered in among the flowers and ferns.
All of this happened just after that glorious fat full moon this weekend, the harvest moon. As that moon began to wane, the sense of harvest, that energy of gathering in took over. October has finally settled in for me.
Almost all of us name October as a favorite month. It brings clear blue skies and brightly colored leaves along with its misty morning chill. Even though most of us don't depend on harvesting our own food or fuel to get us through the coming winter, we still feel that last burst of energy, an urgency to be out and about now. We want to scurry around like the squirrels hiding acorns, but we're just not as clear about the reason ---- our big human brains tell us its just that we love football or quick weekend trips to the country to view the foliage and buy apple cider from the roadside stands. We often don't recognize the deeper pulls, the ways we are so clearly a part of the earth and cycles of nature.
Then later this month we celebrate Halloween --- the “hallowed eve” of our ancestors. We intentionally scare ourselves silly with rattling skeletons and ghastly masks. Our children go from door to door dressed as roaming spirits, and we feed them rich, sweet life-affirming goodies.
On our deepest levels we are recognizing, enacting and celebrating the earth's cycles of life and death --- our own cycles of summer life, autumn aging, death and transformation in winter and new life again in spring.
It is that great beautiful wheel that continually turns in cycles, seasons and generations. We know it in our very blood and bones......and our bright orange harvest pumpkins, our scary old witch hats and in the delicious rich sweets we lovingly feed our children and ourselves.
A Traditional Acorn Custom at Halloween:
To see how faithful your lover is, place two acorns in a bowl of water.
If they float together, rest assured that your loved one is faithful.
If they float apart, well.....................
September 2009
September is the time of balance. At fall equinox on September 21, the old festival of Mabon, we take a deep breath of pause between the hot energy of summer past and the quiet time of frost to come.
The September garden is a tangled glory of blue morning glories and white autumn clematis twining through the climbing rose. Pot marigolds and coneflowers and wormwood are jumbled in an exquisite herb garden bouquet. Giant fig leaves and frothy southernwood branches sprawl over the brick paths without any regard for order.
It is cool enough now to sit outside at the blue umbrella table and simply savor the sweetness of the garden. The weeds have triumphed once again, and all my ambitious garden plans have either totally flopped, half-heartedly worked out or become more glorious than I ever imagined.
In any case, the garden and I have made our peace, come to an understanding, in my human quest to shape the plant realm and the green world's urge toward verdant wildness.
September 29 is Michaelmas, the feast day of St. Michael. I love this day when the purple asters (their old name is Michaelmas daisy) and goldenrod decorate our roadsides. Our ancestors said it was bad luck to eat blackberries after Michaelmas because Robin Hood had spit on them, but it was the best of luck to acquire a tortoiseshell kitten born on Michaelmas even though that “blackberry kitten” was full of mischief.
I love the old stories of St. Michael because unlike St. George who slew the dragon, Michael comes to a balanced understanding with the dragon. The dragon is raw chaotic energy like the element of fire in its unharnessed primal form. Michael represents the structure that brings random chaotic energy into form. Our wonderful world itself is created over and over again through that same delicate mystical balance.
Here is an old Michaelmas Spell for you to always have money in your pocket: Carry three leaves each of blackberry, bergamot and apple in that pocket.
August 2009
Here we are at the top of the year, early August, and we are already seeing signs of an exhausted summer. The roadside wildflowers and grasses are turning a little crisp and dusty. Vulnerable fledgling birds are flying around the garden on sturdy new wings. Tomatoes and beans are growing plump while some of their hard-working leaves are already starting to wither, their job of converting sunlight into next year's seeds (our vegetables) nearly over. That potential-filled urgency of spring and early summer is slowing into a rhythm of “This is it. This is it. This is it.” It is all downhill from here on out.
In our own little niche of nature, we humans are feeling that rhythm too. Those shiny new summer flip-flops are getting a little shabby, and our excitement over a really hot day has melted into a slow dribble of annoying perspiration. Some of us have already taken our summer vacation, and the rest of us may be packing for a respite by cool water crashing onto shore. But all of us are getting glimpses now and then of summer's end just over the hill.
And so our own small rhythms and cycles move inside the bigger rhythms and cycles of life around us and inside vast mysterious cycles beyond our
knowing. Somehow I am comforted by the fact that we are only getting one or two pears on the espaliered herb garden trees this year. Some years we get a bushel of pears when the cycle of temperatures and of rainfall are just right.
Our own life cycles, economic cycles and pear cycles all tell us one thing: Everything changes and returns again in a differently similar way. The very word “re-turn” speaks of cycles.
So this month our own family will sit out on a deck overlooking a blue bay of waves rising and falling in an ancient rhythm. We will return to eating summer lobster together, wiping blueberry juice from our chins and looking for tumbled-glass mermaid tears at the edge of the surf. Some greatly beloved family members have left our summer circle forever to become part of their own cosmic rhythms while the wheel of fortune has brought new and beloved additions to our family circle.
August is about savoring that warm fruition of the season, our very own senses making us aware of ephemeral summer and already beginning to anticipate the next turn into fall and football and colored leaves.
July 2009
July is the apex of the year. Midsummer has passed, the garden is a frenzy of growth, and the insects are in their glory. Friends visiting from southern California last week were mesmerized by our lightning bugs. And for our family it is Family Reunion time. My mother and father have passed on, but her big extended family still gathers at the homeplace every July. Now our own nuclear family has expanded to include our son's partner, and our daughter and her fiance are planning their wedding. Our little Family Reunion is for the end of July when all six of us are sharing a cottage by the sea. Is this a new July tradition beginning to emerge?
This is an excerpt from my book, Blackberry Cove Herbal --- my July gift to you.
“Yesterday on the third Sunday of July as usual, my mother's clan gathered at the homeplace on Mill Creek near Blackberry Cove for a picnic. It is that West Virginia institution called The Family Reunion. Kin from just across the field and as far away as Philadelphia pulled up the dusty lane to unload covered dishes and children under the great sugar maples shading the faded white house with its wide porch. For as long as even the oldest of us can remember, we've been eating potato salad together in this annual communion of re-weaving our visible ties while our hidden spirals of DNA bring forth new generations of babies with Great-grandmother's blue blue eyes.
Lunch is set out at high noon as usual. My mother Bessie's baked West Virginia ham is succulently resplendent, as always. There is red velvet cake, Aunt Gen's creamy pink jello pudding,and Aunt Lessie's great pot of green beans cooked to tenderness in bacon broth. The table stretches twenty feet. New generations have added Mexican dishes and exotic jewel-colored raw vegetables. In addition to the big jugs of lemonade and sweating pitchers of sweet iced tea, there are new little bottles of chilled cappucino.
In that lull after dinner, the oldest uncle, Uncle Ernie, presides from the lazy porch swing while my mother and her sisters circle their lawn chairs on the grass in a crone's council. They worry about my father out there clanging horseshoes for hours in the hot sun. He is still the undisputed horseshoe-pitching champion, sustaining challenge by a dozen knights – some as much as sixty years his junior. I hear them consider the possibility that a niece will get married this year, why a peevish uncle boycotted the picnic and how my own scattering of gray hairs has finally reached critical mass.
The rowdy school-age kids are down in the crick netting minnows and turning over rocks for hellgrammites. Up at the house a bevy of exquisite young cousins sit on a blanket stringing little glass beads for ankle bracelets and to twine in their shiny hair.
The teenagers are off in a pack exploring the barn and the icehouse and the vine-covered rusted Ford pick-up with 1959 license plates. The youngest of the kin is almost two. He is splashing in a melting ice chest and shouting “No!” at every opportunity.
Just before the food is laid out again for supper, the talk gets around to family history, as usual. Someone asks, “What year did Great-granddaddy Dennis die?” Uncle Ernie tells us, “We laid him to rest on Christmas Day 1942.” painting a vignette of loss and sadness around the printed words on a genealogy chart.
When the heat starts to ease after supper, a cousin of my generation organizes a car convoy to the old cemetery several hollows away, over a twisty road two inches deep in dust, because “some of the younger ones don't know how to get there.” We turn in at a farm gate generously nailed with “No Trespassing” signs, following the time-honored Appalachian custom that kin always have unquestioned access to the graveyards.
Someone has mowed around the crooked and nearly illegible eighteenth century stones. We move slowly among them. Some of us crouch down to read the names. We eat the blackberries that hang fat and juicy from brambles in the cemetery.”
June 2009 Column
June is all about roses, and the roses are more glorious this year than I ever remember them.
All of the rainfall and weather patterns must have come together this year for the roses delight. There are only a few roses in our gardens because while we love their royal scented beauty, we can't keep up with their needs. Our idea of pruning is to mostly let plants sprawl, and our method of insect control is to let the bigger bugs eat the smaller ones.
I just realized that all of our roses are climbers. When you garden on a small village lot, every inch counts --- including vertical ones.
The early David Austen rose, Constance Spry, covers one wall in the herb garden. This year it hung heavy with hundreds of huge shell pink roses as fat as softballs. The scent was intoxicating, and when the honeysuckle bloomed on the fence at the same time, the fragrances blended into a cloud of opium-den ecstasy.
A little later the old standby, climbing white New Dawn, bloomed along the herb garden fence intermingled with the sturdy red mystery rose upon which it was grafted. Apparently sucker shoots of the red rootstock poked up through the soil and eventually climbed the fence too. This year they are magnificent together --- deep rose red and icy white. Neither has much fragrance, though, and they are the only roses in our garden that will bloom on and off all summer after this initial grand show.
I love the ephemeral nature of June roses. For a week or two in June gardens belong to roses. Old roses clamber over ramshackle houses turning them into enchanted cottages. Trellis' creak with the weight of plump blossoms in every color. Ragged little after-thought patches of garden come alive with delicate pink fairy roses. And then one morning after a thunderstorm, they are gone. All we have left is the memory ---- and anticipation of next June. That makes their short June glory all the more precious.
Many years ago on a trip to England I noticed roses climbing in trees. Here at home we seem to abhor anything growing into our trees, so I was intrigued. Then several years after I had planted an apple tree in the dooryard, a rose catalog came in the mail touting “Paul's Himalayan Musk Rose, perfect for growing in apple trees.” I couldn't resist. The little twig arrived in the mail, and I stuck it in the ground at the base of the apple tree. For many years it curled through the tree but never bloomed. Oh well, in gardening there are always disappointments. Then one June morning I awakened to dramatic cascades of pale pink-white clusters of the most exquisite little roses. It was as though the apple tree had bloomed again in June. Now every June we wait excitedly for that grand morning when the apple tree explodes in roses.
When we moved into our old house over thirty years ago a scraggly, mildewy old rose was tangled in the yard fence. Our elderly neighbor, Mrs. Ramey, told me that a former mistress of the house had planted that rose right after the Civil War. Several years ago I took a sprig with its bunch of seven pink roses to Rose Day at the William Paca House in Annapolis, Maryland. An expert in old roses identified it as the “Seven Sisters Rose” which was indeed popular in the mid-19th century. Sturdy old roses live nearly forever, and for one rose-studded week in June the Seven Sisters are belles of the ball. For the fifty-one other weeks they are tattered old harpies.
Our ancestors not only enjoyed the beauty and fragrance of roses, they used them for food and medicine and magic as well. A simple tea made of a handful of fresh rose petals steeped in a cup of steaming water will bring new love into your life (not to mention lots of vitamin C), and throwing a handful of rose petals into your bath will make you more lovable. At the June breakfast table, Thomas Jefferson is said to have laid a rosebud by the plate of every little girl and a beautiful full rose at the plate of every lady.
May you have a June filled with love and roses.
May 2009
May is so exciting that I nearly forgot to write my monthly column!
Every morning between dawn and noon I have been out in the gardens trimming dead branches from last year, rearranging perennials and filling beloved old pots with colorful annuals. The most fun was creating three giantess scarecrows to stand watch over my new “vegetables in barrels” garden out back. Their bright flapping skirts came from the forgotten recesses of my closet and their fringed straw hats came from the Dollar Store. These huge Norns are dedicated to guarding against deer and other critters so we can harvest more than one or two slightly nibbled tomatoes ---- like last year. I set out the heritage tomato Brandywine in a half whiskey barrel filled with organic compost and coconut fibers. Beets are sown in another barrel and green beans in the third.
Tall peacock ferns have finally taken over the shade garden under the big apple tree where I planted a lone skinny one several years ago. Their flock of vibrant green plumes catch every breeze.
The big center boxwoods in the herb garden have completely burst over their encircling brick walkway this year, so we have to make a big decision: Will we trim them back or let them grow as big as they like and reposition the bricks? I am leaning toward letting them go! Plants and ladies of a certain age, I believe, should decidedly let themselves go! One big magnolia tree, giant boxwoods and several big pots of herbs on the bricks in dappled sunshine sounds like a manageable garden for my future dotage.
May is all about planning and hoping. Small flat rosettes of hollyhocks are towering stalks of colorfully robust flowers in the May eye. One pale spindly Brandywine tomato plant is a sturdy green vine dangling dozens of fat red tomatoes over the wire cage........in the eye of May.
May all our gardens be as beautiful and fruitful in August as they are in our May eyes!
April 2009
When I looked around on my usual morning walk down to the river, I saw tiny red swamp maple flowers and the delicate purple blooms on ground ivy in the wild places. Daffodils and early hyacinths were colorful in sunny village gardens. It looked like the same early April budding of Spring that I see every year.
I sowed a handful of parsley seeds last week, but they won't germinate for a while. Mountain grannies said those seeds have to travel to the center of the earth and back three times before they sprout. Tiny lettuce leaves are green, though, in the big pot where moonflowers and morning glories will replace them when it gets hot in June. I sow lettuce seeds when lilac leaves are the size of mouse ears, also according to the grannies.
But recently I have been thinking of changes in the green world......a bigger cycle of change than our predictable wheel of the year. Last week our little garden club listened to a delightful young speaker from a well-known conservation organization tell us how to make our garden more welcoming to native birds and butterflies. She said living in eastern West Virginia now is more like living in Maryland because of climate change, global warming. Then she handed out a long list of invasive alien plants that we should eradicate because they crowd out native plants. There on the list was my beautiful dark green English ivy which thrives in the warmer temperatures and in which my garden birds love to nest. There on the list was my bright burning bush at the end of the cobbles, and she said poison ivy loves this increased warmth. Oh, no!
Harpers Ferry is magical in late Spring when Pawlonia trees cascade great bunches of purple flowers. Those trees were imported from China in the middle of the 19th century. Now the Park Service has declared war on them because they are invasive aliens.
Then yesterday we drove up to Blackberry Cove cabin where along the way I noticed clumps of rugosa roses growing in damp hollows. They are another dreaded alien invasive on the list. Rabbits love their thickets, though, and even native birds eat their little rose hips (spreading them further, no doubt).
I was feeling quite anxious until I realized that unless we are Native Americans, we are all alien invasives. We have irrevocably changed the landscape. There just isn't any going back. And humankind has dilly-dallied for the last several decades (even though we knew the risks), so global warming is here, like it or not. Each species contributes to the natural world, and it looks like our major contribution is human hubris.
Scientists and environmentalists tell us that we can still save our water and clean our air, but climate change is already just that ---- change. Our grandchildren will know a different landscape, a different ecosystem.
In a new book called Heatstroke, author Anthony Barnosky tells us that although he loves nature as much as anyone, ecosystems of the future will be different. He proposes wildland reserves where evolving ecological interactives are the goal rather than protecting stable plant and animal communities. Interesting. Because of alien invasives as our world grows smaller and climate change because of global warming, different species will thrive. Mother Nature will always have her way.
Around here the parsley might germinate a little earlier or the Pawlonias might crowd out the dogwoods, but there will always be beauty in the green growing world. We may have to adjust our perception of it.
March 2009
March is coming in like a lion this year with a big snow storm and -6 degrees wind chill, so maybe it will go out like a lamb.
In any case, March brings Spring. It is actually the Vernal Equinox on March 21, the time of balance when the daylight and the darkness of night are exactly equal. Light begins to grow on March 22 until it reaches a zenith at Midsummer on June 21. Then darkness begins to grow until we achieve balance again at Fall Equinox on September 21. The great wheel of our solar year turns in perfect balance, an exquisitely predictable cycle of life-giving light and darkness, each in its own turn.
Balance is an admirable goal if we remember that it is not static, it is the fulcrum on the eternally graceful swing of change. Mother Nature herself teaches us the wisdom of those shifts from light to dark, dark to light, fallowness to growth and growth to fallowness. It is our nature, no less than that of the tiniest plant, to respond to the light and the winds of change by always coming back into balance before moving on.
In March we are poised on the brink of Spring, able to see down that road of light to summer. We feel the quickening like the birds who are busy with nesting, the violets who are springing up in every sunny corner. My grandmother said we should always eat that first violet blossom we see in March ---- no doubt to give an extra boost of vitamin C to start off the new season. Maybe her great-grandmother remembered that violets were also protectors against “wykked spectyres.”
I saw a rabbit in the newly greening grass across the lane the other morning, and it reminded me of the old connection between March and hares and rabbits. Here in West Virginia, repeating “white rabbit” three times on the first day of March brings good luck all month. I love it when the folklore of very diverse cultures meet in mysterious ways.
Our European ancestors venerated the March Hare at this time of year.
“All things that love the sun are out of doors,
the sky rejoices at the morning birth, the grass is bright and raindrops, on the moors
the Hare is running races in her mirth.”
-Wordsworth
Our Native American ancestors venerated the rabbit as the symbol for balance too. One story credits the rabbit with creating night and day.
Once Upon a Time, Rabbit and Owl were arguing over which would be better, day or night. They decided to have a contest and invited all the animals. Rabbit screamed “Day! Day! Day!...” and Owl hooted, “Night! Night! Night!...” until Owl slipped up and accidentally hooted, “Day!” Even though Rabbit won, she showed great wisdom by declaring that half the time should be day and half the time should be night in honor of the animals who loved night best.
And so all of life is balancing now, stretching out of that dreamy dark time of winter and uncurling into the light of a new growing season, new possibilities, new passions...
February 2009
This morning on the radio I listened to the annual report of that famous groundhog, Punxsutawney Phil, coming out of his hole and seeing his shadow – foretelling six more weeks of winter. Let's see, that puts Spring just about at the middle of March, near Spring Equinox and right on time again.
Groundhog Phil is only our latest (and purely American) twist on the ancient spiral of early February celebrations.
Now, at the beginning of February we unmistakably notice earlier sunrise and later sunset. Life-creating sunlight is returning. Ice and snow may still be with us, but over the next hill we can almost see the haze of green and smell the flowing water soaking into the ground.
On February 2 Catholics celebrate Candlemas with candle processions and special devotions to the Virgin Mary, and St. Brigid's Feast Day on February 1 is particularly sacred in places with a strong Celtic heritage.
St. Brigid simply replaced the old Celtic Goddess Brigit because even after they became Christian, the people couldn't give up their beloved Brigit the Light Bringer.
In my own Appalachian family we still use the word “brigity” to describe someone who is “full of themselves.” I like to think that word comes down directly from ancestors who venerated Brigit. Scholars say the word “Brigit” actually means “exalted one.”
Originally Brigit's festival in early February was known as Imbolc, the festival of milk, celebrating the firs lambs and the first flow of mother's milk that heralds life-bringing Spring. Goddess Brigit has three faces; the robust Mother of Summer, the Old Woman of Fall and Winter and the Young Girl of Spring. At Imbolc that youthful Brigit brings the giddy excitement in anticipation of Spring.
Every year on the weekend nearest Imbolc I gather with a few dearly beloved women at a comfortable old log lodge nearby. We celebrate Brigit by laughing together, renewing our friendships with old stories, cooking together, showing one another how to do crafts we've learned and singing together in lovely harmonies. It is a warm and joyous time inside by the fire while the world outside is still frozen – but on the threshold of Spring.
Brigit is the Threshold Goddess, the Goddess of Crafts, Goddess of Poetry, Goddess of Livestock, Goddess of Light ........ there are hundreds of stories about the gifts of Brigit.
The one our little group of women hold most dear is the story of Brigit's Cloak. Once Upon a Time young Brigit wore her tattered threadbare cloak to the old King's court. The King's young sons mocked her raggedy attire with laughter and said,”We will make you queen of all the land your cloak can cover.” At that moment her cloak began to sparkle and grow until it covered the whole country --- where she ruled with wisdom and tolerance and compassion.
We like to think of women everywhere spreading out their cloaks of wisdom, tolerance and compassion until the edges touch those of other women in one great cloak of love and understanding.
Even today in Ireland, the greatest blessing is, “May you go under the cloak of Brigid.”
January 2009
January begins at nearly the same time Yuletide ends. The last of the twelve days, the Eve of the Three Kings, has always been a special day of celebration in our house because it is the birthday of our own wonderful son, a king in his own right. There is always a cake, of course, and birthday gifts.
And so January is a good time to honor the magi and to reflect upon gifts. No matter what our religious beliefs, may we all set out on a similar journey in search of truth, bringing our own gifts to honor the wonder and the newborn light of hope.
By now our brightly wrapped holiday gifts have been given and received – and already put away.
On New Years we made "Resolutions." What do we want to change? What do we want in the coming year? There are certainly gifts we could list, but they may not be our true wants. True wants are rarely satisfied by pretty packages – they are usually immense needs that can easily be masked by little wants and yearnings. To consider our real wants, the things we lack in our lives, is often scary to face. Janus, that old God for whom January is named, has two faces; one face looks back and the other looks forward. He gives us courage to "face up" to the coming year.
And so January with pure crystalline ice and breathtaking wind pushes us inside – inside to the warm hearth and inside to ourselves, to the space of quietness where we can sometimes come face to face with the gifts we truly want. The frozen pause of January gives us time to perhaps reflect quietly on giving and receiving love, finding our spiritual joy, knowing the things we were put on earth to do. We can consider the gift of freedom from others' expectations and the gift of accepting ourselves as we are. The list could go on and on once we begin to see our real wants.
Tradition has it that by the end of January all the sacred Yuletide greenery should be taken down and burned. After St. Bridget's Eve on February 1, a cranky goblin bent on mischief will attach himself to every old leaf left in the house. So in January we use the dried up holly sprigs, crisp ivy garlands, mistletoe and curling magnolia leaves as kindling in the fireplace.
January is for cleaning out all that useless debris – stopping it right in its tracks, making space for change. Because under all that frozen ground of January, new things are slowly beginning to consider stirring. But not quite yet. Ideas are only taking shape and thoughts are quietly transforming, all held safely beneath the ice and snow.
January is the waiting time of unseen change. The glint of every frost crystal is a bright star to guide us safely over that treacherous icy bridge of change to a new year of gifts – when the time is right.
November 2008
The firewood rack has replaced the chairs on the back porch, and the apple butter kettle upstairs by the old parlor stove is filled with short fat logs. November is here, and we are ready to settle in by cozy evening fires.
In the past when we needed a fire every day of the year to cook our food, it was customary to let the fire die out completely in early November. Then a new fire was lit, symbolizing the clearing out of the old. A fine old ritual is to burn up, in that last fire, little scraps of waste paper on which we have written things we want to discard from our lives in the coming year. Then we peer into the flames of the new fire for visions forming in the year ahead. We can help shape the future by writing down on fresh slips of paper the things we want to start stirring in the new year and tossing them into that first fire of the season.
If you put cooled ashes from the old November fire in your shoes, you will have a lucky new year. You will also have dusty feet, but maybe it is worth it!
Lemon verbena and horehound bunches are drying the kitchen, the bay tree has been brought inside by a sunny window, and the potted rosemary sits in a deep windowsill. Another fruitful year has come to an end, darkness comes earlier in the evening now, and the sun rises later. Scorpio is the astrological sign of November, associated with the planet Saturn, whom an elderly English friend calls, “the unforgiving loveliness of wisdom.”
Our ancestors knew any personal issues not faced now at the year's end would have to be faced later at our ultimate end. This quiet November darkness is time for reflection before the new year begins at Winter Solstice in December when the light returns and days start lengthening again.
Thanksgiving is part of that reflection – a time to count our blessings. Families gather inside around a table piled with rich warm comfort food. Winds howl, and icy rain often rattles at the window. October's bright days have turned steel gray.
November is the pause of the year, that second between breaths. We have cleared out the closet and taken outworn things to Goodwill. We have washed windows and vacuumed up summer spiderwebs from the corners. Perhaps that is why we hold elections in November. Instinctively we are making space for new things – new clothes, new ideas, new aspirations. But they are all still just possibilities, still forming in the the exquisite darkness of November.
I planted three big bags of daffodil bulbs yesterday. Their dried-up papery outside protects and belies their fat inside potential. Down in the dark cold dirt of November they rest, settling in, silently letting small roots begin to spread. They are waiting until just the right time. Early next year on one bright spring day all the golden glory of those daffodils will fulfill their November promise.
Thanksgiving Blessings and Promise on us all!