Today as I looked over my wild and weedy garden of abundance, I realized that I have been creating an herbalist's garden.
I am moving away from a farm garden, a garden where everything grows in rows. I have been casting off from within my psyche the notion of neat and tidy as being the goal.
As the seasons turn to the time of the harvest, my energies are turning toward the reaping of what has been cultivated this this year. This year I planted the vision of a cultivated garden, a garden created in the vision of my life.
My life as an herbalist is coming on twenty years. This seems like such a short time in relation to the plants. Susun Weed once told me that it takes seven lifetimes to become an herbalist. I am seeing more and more wisdom in this. To live with the plants, to be in relationship with them, to consider them everyday as part of my community is a joyful learning. Learning to be an herbalist takes patience and presence.
Right where I planted the squash and sunflowers, a clover began to grow. I let it stay there as I want to encourage red clover to be all over the place. I didn't know until it began to bloom that it was indeed red clover. So thankful.
I knew when I looked into the beauty of my garden this morning that my vision of cultivation has come to its peek for this season. That this year my work is to truly appreciate the space that I have, to know it, to be intimate with it.
I am discovering who I am from this garden vision. More and more of what I am supposed to be doing, fully and truly is coming through in my garden.
Each plant is teaching me its wisdom.
This has been one of the most challenging of transformations. I feel sometimes like I am disintegrating, emotionally and spiritually. My brain goes haywire sometimes and I can't seem to focus on what I "should" do. And when I step out into the garden and really look and listen, the plants are teaching me to be patience and present.
I leave this writing with questions.....what is next? who am I?
May it be in Beauty.
