Morning Glory Meditation

Every year, as spring begins to blossom, I push the base of a wooden trellis into the fresh dirt next to our little stoop. I watch as the small seedlings from the previous autumn poke their way through the earth and unfurl. I weed the bed and water the small beings reverently. As the vines grow, thin and spaghetti-like, I teach them to move towards the trellis. They grow thicker, covered in short fuzz. The leaves grow bigger, shaped like hearts. The larger they get, and the deeper the color, the closer they are to budding.

I spend each morning in a gentle meditation, wrapping the sweet vines around the trellis, and watching them catch on over the days, until they wind themselves, in and out. The trellis is the loom where nature and I create beautiful art together. As the weeks pass, the vines become a green wall, offering us a sense of privacy; our nature guardian.

When the buds first come, they are tight little spirals, growing bigger each day. When I can see the color threaded through them, I know they will open the next morning and it will be a morning treasure hunt to see where the early blooms have hidden themselves.

The flowers are full and thick and brilliant at dawn, staying to the shadows. The beautiful heart-shaped leaves act like umbrellas, extending the lives of the blossoms by shading them. At mid-morning, the blossoms glow with a luminescence that makes them seem otherworldly, as if tiny portals are opening from within the heart of the flower.

This is my favorite time of day to be in the garden, to be sitting on the stoop with a book and a notepad, stirring my own creative juices in their wake. I watch as the bees frolic and pollinate, leaving tiny dustings of pollen on the petals. I watch as the light fades from the petals.

As the day lengthens and the sun climbs in the sky, the morning glory blossoms grow weaker, their petals more translucent. The softening flowers tear easily and stick to the leaves around them. By mid-afternoon those that have survived curl in upon themselves. At dusk, the day-old flowers drop unceremoniously to the ground below.

Every day in the world of the morning glory is a new beginning, a new life. Their beauty doesn’t last because nothing lasts. The nature of life is that it ends. That is the magic of the morning glory for me. They are dead when dark descends, but tomorrow, there will be life again.

In the fall, when the garden withers, small buds of seeds are left behind on the browning vines. They will dry and shrink and loosen their eggplant-colored seeds into the ground. There, they will slumber through winter, waiting to emerge come next spring. So even in their seasonal ending, there is hope. There is always hope. But for today, under the last of summer sun, there is still beauty and joy.

[Originally published August 14, 2013; new photos.]

The Magic of Ferns

In September of 2011, we suffered flooding in my town so badly that our area made the national news. For one night, my neighborhood was cut off on all sides by water. It was heavy in the air. We were saturated with it. Hours before the river levels crested and then fell, I walked the nearby park to find it littered with fungus of all kinds. Many of them I had never seen before and haven’t seen the like of since.

In the aftermath of all of that moisture, one little fern frond sprouted in our yard, just before autumn walked in. The following spring, it reappeared, a handful of fronds. There was something about it that felt like a gift. Ferns are sacred to my household. Ferns and birch. Even my landlord seemed to know to mow around it without having to be told.

For the third year the gentle fiddlehead has returned, a small gang of curls waiting to unfurl. And it speaks to me. Every year I am reminded of the moments that follow painful growth and great change. The stretching out into new spaces. The discovering of new edges. For me the ferns are a promise of possibility, a promise of hope.

Sometimes we need to have symbols. We need totems or guides that mean more to us than what they are. It’s how we move forward when the world seems determined to hold us back. Some days are harder than others, and the darkness chips away at the hope you have managed to hold onto…

Most days are good. Most days are blessed. But we are all human, and we all have days, weeks, months where it just feels like bad news after bad news and sucker punch after sucker punch. I wonder how my ancestors did it, how they found the courage to keep waking in the morning and going about their days when the future seemed so intangible.

On those days I turn to nature. I go with gratitude to our small garden and I put my hands in the dirt, pulling weeds and tending to the growing things. In the working of the garden the world of rushing traffic and ticking clocks slows until it flows invisible around me, air that cannot touch me. There are just hands and the dirt and the sun warming us. The world I am in narrows. My breath slows. My heart grows lighter.

The fiddlehead ferns dance in kind. They allow me to watch their emergence into the world above ground. They appear, coiled in protection as they shield themselves while they discover their new edges and the feeling of air against raw skins. When they are ready, when they are matured, when the time is right, they open themselves to the sun. They turn their fronds to the light.

Morning Glory in Meditation

Every year, I push the base of a wooden trellis into the fresh dirt next to our stoop. I watch as the small seedlings from the previous autumn poke their way through the earth and unfurl. I weed the bed and I water them reverently. As the vines grow, thin and spaghetti-like, I teach them to move towards the trellis. They grow thicker, covered in short fuzz. The leaves grow bigger, shaped like hearts. The larger they get, and the deeper the color, the closer they are to budding.

I spend each morning in a gentle meditation, wrapping the sweet vines around the trellis, and watching them catch on over the days, until they wind themselves, in and out. The trellis becomes a loom where nature and I create beautiful art together. Over time, the vines become a green wall, offering a sense of privacy.

When the buds first come, it is a morning treasure hunt to see where the blooms have hidden themselves. They are tight little spirals, growing bigger each day. When I can see the color threaded through them, I know they will open the next morning.

The flowers are full and thick and brilliant at dawn, staying to the shadows. The beautiful heart-shaped leaves act like umbrellas, extending their lives by shading them. At the right time, mid-morning, the blossoms glow with a luminescence that makes them seem otherworldly, tiny portals opening from within. This is my favorite time of day to be in the garden, to be sitting on the stoop with a book and a notepad, stirring my own creative juices in their wake.

 

 

I watch as the bees frolic and pollinate, leaving tiny dustings of pollen on the petals.

As the day lengthens and the sun climbs in the sky, the morning glory blossoms grow weaker, their petals more translucent. The softening flowers tear easily and stick to the leaves around them. By mid-afternoon those that have survived curl in upon themselves. At dusk the day-old flowers drop unceremoniously to the ground below.

Every day in the world of the morning glory is a new beginning, a new life. Their beauty doesn’t last because nothing lasts. The nature of life is that it ends. That is the magic of the morning glory for me. They are dead when dark descends, but tomorrow, there will be more.

In the fall, when the garden withers, small buds of seeds are left behind on the browning vines. They will dry and shrink and loosen their eggplant-colored seeds into the ground. There, they will slumber through winter, waiting to emerge come next spring. So even in their seasonal ending, there is hope. There is always hope. But for today, under the summer sun, there is still beauty and joy.

Summer Solstice, Sunning Stones

It is the first day of summer. Gardens are growing, blackberry blossoms are opening, and strawberries are ripe in the fields. The green is unfurling into splendor and its heraldry is prompted by the longest day of the year, the Summer Solstice. The natural world around us still holds that yellow-green hue of energy and growth.

In my childhood, summer meant the arrival of my Great-Grandma Elsie, who we called Grandma-from-Florida. She spent every summer with us, sleeping in the small spare room with the white chenille bedspread. I have memories of sitting in her room in the morning while she dressed, running hands over the raised pattern of the bedspread that only she used. Summer for us meant Great-Grandma’s sweater sets and culottes. I remember my fascination over how she put on her knee-high stockings every day before slipping on her sandals.

Elsie was born on June 21, 1904. If she was alive she’d be 107. The way her face lit up when we enjoyed the first fresh strawberry shortcake of her visit was a joy that could outshine the sun itself. Every strawberry I eat in-season tastes like that memory. It tastes like Elsie’s joy.

Summer was family time and the warmth that comes with it. Summer was the wild abandon of playing fantastical games with neighborhood friends for days on end, called to enjoy the heat while we could. We were like moths dancing around the sun.

The ancestor work that I do is as much about the living and the now as it is about the ones who came before me. Those layers of memories that I am lucky to have of what family means, with both my blood family and the chosen family I build around me, are the energy source that propels my genealogical research into uncovering the ones who came before. And I do it all so that the ones who come after will know the names and the stories.

Family matters. It’s not always easy or painless. We’re not all lucky enough to have it in our formative years. But finding it, creating it, birthing it, is at the core of what we do and how we survive.

When I think of that feeling, that energy, I think of the futhark runes Cen (aka ken or kenaz) and Sigel (aka sowilo or sol). Cen is the internal warmth and fire. Sigel is the sun, the outer heat. Cen is the heat of the hug that you give and receive when you are truly happy to see someone. It is the inner sun. The inner warmth. Moving from your internal hearth fire outward. Solstice is the perfect time to recharge your inner joy, using the heat of the sun above us, at its height as an energy source.

Make yourself a simple talisman for carrying that energy into the waning days of the year. Place a stone outside, where it will catch the rays of the day. It can be a special stone that has other meaning for you or it can be a stone you find in your yard or at the park. Charge it under the full height of the noon light and leave it outside until dusk finally sets in. As Solstice officially begins at 7:00 pm today, I will be setting my stone out tomorrow.

 Keep the stone inside your house during the year, in whatever room becomes your hearth, your nesting space. My stone becomes my talisman through the winter, through the other solstice with its longest night. When I have need, I hold it in my hands.

Beneath the cool exterior lies a flicker of heat. I can close my eyes and feel the warmth of the summer sun caressing my skin. I can hear the laughter of children at play. I can taste the juice of fresh, ripe strawberries. I can see the joy on Elsie’s face and I know she walks with me still. I know the ancestors stand with her and I know they stand with me from longest day to longest night and back again, turning on the wheel as the living world moves forward.

Crossroads: Spring Equinox

A crossroad is a place where two roads meet, where two planes intersect. It’s where dark and light find neutral ground. Where balance is born.

At the Spring Equinox, our days and nights are of equal length. We have successfully survived the short days and long nights of winter and we can smell spring in the air as we head towards the longest day of the next Solstice. For my practice, the Equinox is symbolic of the crossroads. It is at the point where they meet, where the breathing world joins with the spirit world. It is the place where the gateway exists. That gateway lives inside you.

We have the chance to touch the other side without walking through it, as the point of balance floats over our land like fog, obscuring lines and blurring edges. We stand in the tipping point, the grey space. Equinox is a time for feeling and reflection, a chance to catch our breath before moving forward. Around us, the world is waking.

Outside my kitchen window the flock of sparrows that winter in a wayward bush fill the air and the day with cheeps and chirps and silly songs, as they take turns at the bird feeder. They warm their wings in the sun and carry twigs and hair and roughage to fortify new nests for new life. After such a mild winter, my tiger lilies have sprouted early in the spring warmth and have risen four inches from the soil. The peppermint has begun to bloom and stretch and already must be chastised into staying in its corner of the garden bed. I spent Equinox morning enjoying the sunshine on my skin and the smell of warming grass in the air.

Sensation blossoms full as bulbs prepare for birth. My hands long to touch skin, fur, scales, dirt, worms and seeds. The soft breezes carry hints of fragrance and perfume across my senses- I may not know where from, but I know what’s coming. The wild is waking, heralding its return in the creak-clacking of the grackle’s birdsong in the morning sun. If you quiet yourself you will hear the sounds of creatures stirring.

            I have begun to shed the layers of winter, to cull my home of clutter and items unused so I might pass them on to others in need. The winter altar has been cleared of its evergreen bowers and turned over to spring with purple flowers. The windows will be opened and the house will be aired. The floors will be swept free of dust bunnies and house gremlins. The garden will be planned and the necessary seeds will be ordered.

            The world outside us is waking. And the world inside us is stirring, too.

            In mythology, at Equinox, Persephone rises from the Underworld, from her home with her husband, and in return her mother Demeter allows the trees to bud and flowers to bloom, her grief abated. Inanna resurrects in her sister’s domain below the earth, having passed through death to attain knowledge, and she returns to the world changed. Stories of transformation, of spiritual alchemy. It is the time of doorways, gateways, thresholds and promise. What dream do you bring with you from the darkness? How will you manifest it into reality in the lengthening days?

Strawberry Jam

I remember being little in my mother’s kitchen in the summertime while she made jam. It was hot out and hotter in the small room painted with a 60’s orange and yellow gloss. But the house smelled sweetly of strawberries. The bright red berry is the perfect metaphor for the season. Fruit that takes so sweet and so good and whose time passes too quickly, and then is gone again. It’s fitting that it blooms only for the longest days of the year, and then fades into a memory of what freshly ripened strawberry tastes like.

It’s a blessing that store-bought jelly was new to me (It’s also amusing that in my college days I stood in the grocery store not sure what the difference between “jam” and “jelly” was). I loved the shelves of canned goods gathering dust from where they sat in the basement workshop. Our dirt and gravel basement was a liminal space in my childhood, still part of the house but also part of the earth beneath us. It was the place my father built things and the space that held our pantry, and the way the centipedes and mice got into our home.

As a child, when asked to retrieve tomato sauce, applesauce, or jam from the basement, I was always caught between terror at creeping down where the centipedes lived, where the 10’ to the shelves momentarily became a vast expanse, and the gratitude for the temporary reprieve from the heat. It was always cool down there, where the centipedes lived, in the basement that smelled of gravel dust and wood.

I work at deepening my connection to the natural world with my practice. Every year I make plans for the things I want to do that are not currently part of my normal life- like gardening and canning. While most of my relationship with the natural world has taught me to slow down, when it comes to growing your own food you have to be patient, yes, but you have to be prepared for your own burst of energy and dedication when the crops are ready for harvest,

Summer is a busy time for me and each year, it has long passed before I have realized my window to make fresh jam has also passed. It’s a common excuse I find myself saying when I don’t get around to doing things by hand, that I was too busy and time got away from me. If I were a nomadic caveman and I wanted to eat, finding food would be a priority. The fast pace world we live in is no excuse for not taking care of basic needs.

It might be more convenient to buy jam in the grocery store but that jam would have been picked by my hand, chosen by my hand, cleaned and hulled in my kitchen and then cooked on my stove. I know the ancestry of my jam, from the farmer I met who planted the seeds and nurtured the plants, to my hands, to the bellies of my family and friends. How great a gift is that?

Picking

I carved out a two-day window for strawberry picking at a local farm, amused with the thunderstorms that poured down before and after, and the black cloud that sat above us during. Thanks for the shade, Mother Nature. It was overcast and wet, but clear as we drove in.

Crows lifted out of the field in a small cloud of feather and air, dangling plump red strawberries from their beaks as they flew for the tree line and the river just beyond. The rows of berries were brilliant with crimson color as far down the row as you could see. I barely had to move, there were so many, which allowed me to be more selective. Lifting up stalks of fruit, it was easy to pull them off the stem with a gratifying and crisp snap. We made quick work and came home with much more than the 2 quarts I needed for jam.

Jamming

I hulled and mashed what I needed for the recipe and barely made a dent in the berries I had cleaned. It was easy to take another half-hour and hull a bunch of strawberries to be frozen, so that if the jam came out well, I could make another batch later this summer with our fresh/frozen berries.

I have never made jam before, and it might bear mentioning that I am not the most competent cook, but I am learning. Being in the kitchen is like being in a foreign land where everyone speaks a language I have no translation for: “quart” and “blanche” and “rapid boil,” etc. It seems unnatural that I struggle so hard to learn to provide my body with nourishment, which is why it has become a large part of my ancestor work. I used the recipe on the Pectin box and followed it exactly.

You know what, mom? You were right. Making jam was far easier than I anticipated. Jars and bands were washed and waited in a steam bath in the sink so they would still be hot when I needed them. Actually cooking the jam only took 20 minutes. The aroma wafting through the house was delicious, like the best quality of a hot sticky summer day. I used a water-canner I scored at a thrift store and 10 minutes later, pulled out the jars to hear them sealing with a metallic ping.

After only an hour and a half of cooking, I have enough jam to get my family through six months. Another batch of jam made with the strawberries I froze means we can have enough homemade jam to last us until next summer, when the strawberries will be ripe again. And I will be waiting. Waiting to make jam again.

The Food We Eat, the Food We Grow

Summer is here and the heat is setting in. These hot days keep us present in our bodies and in our lives even as they seem to lengthen time as we walk through our days. In reality they are gone all too quickly.

Outside, our garden of tomatoes, cucumbers, two different beans, as well as herbs and flowers is growing. We do a lot with the little bit of yard that we have and are grateful to the landlord who encourages our use of it. There is something about the action of waking, going out to put my hands in dirt, weed and water that prepares me better to greet the rest of the day. I am caretaking this land and nurturing these plants so they will grow food for my home and my body.

Growing up, we didn’t always have a lot of money, but we ate better and healthier than I did on my own in college. I grew up on fresh farm meat, and my mother grew the same vegetables along the side of our small lot home as I do at my apartment now. We always had real tomato sauce for pasta, homemade applesauce and jam. I was very blessed.

Somewhere, I took it for granted and lost the connection to what I put in my body while I sat in my ignorance of all-things-kitchen and the ever popular "I can't do that."

I couldn’t help but realize, in the midst of my genealogical research, how quickly our lives move now as compared to the centuries of generations before. Just four generations ago, all of my people were farmers or farm laborers, dependent on having a relationship with the earth that many urbanites can’t imagine. But I can. In that realization, I remembered that I could imagine it and that I had known it.

It’s in our blood.

Five years ago I didn’t believe I could cultivate vegetables in our brick-fill apartment lot. My idea of gardening was putting seed in the earth and leaving it alone to see if nature would win out without my interference. I preferred sitting in the ‘me’ that was known for killing cactuses, and using as a shield for why I couldn’t be a gardener.

One day what I heard was me saying I can’t grow things, can’t give life to something else. I was mortified to realize that I what I was manifesting was I am not a nurturer and cannot be one. Gardening became a healing balm for my spirit as well as one for my body.

Fresh food tastes better to my body and makes me feel better in it. When first out on my own, I was used to going to eat something frozen or fast food to ease the hunger that never seemed to be sated or satisfied. My body always felt like it was yelling at me for something it wanted in a language that I couldn’t quite understand.

I get it now. It’s the difference between buying a waxed apple from the grocery store that’s been refrigerated for months until it crossed the country versus picking one fresh off a tree and biting into it. If you’ve never plucked an apple from a tree, you don’t know what an apple really tastes like. If you’ve never fed your body fresh food full of vitamins and nutrients, your body doesn’t know how much it needs and wants it.

I live in a small city were we grow our own vegetables along the front of our house to help sustain us through the summer and early fall and ease our pocketbooks. We are doubly blessed to have two different farmer’s markets near our home, as well as plenty of local farms with u-pick services within a twenty minute drive.

It connects me to my ancestors, those who founded cities and first broke farmland, when I go out into my front yard and pluck ripe vegetables from the stem, pile them in my skirt and bring them inside to wash and prepping them for meals. It helps me understand why the kitchen is the hearth of the home, the heat in the winter months and the spice in the summertime, with all the love that goes into growing, nurturing and preparing sustenance for our families with our hands, our sweat and our energy.

Starting Small

You can start as simply as purchasing a tomato plant from Lowes or Home Depot, or a greenhouse or nursery near you, and put it in a large pot. You’ll need one of those little metal cages as well- when the tomatoes begin to grow the plant gets heavy. What I have learned is that they need water to grow and then, once your plant is full of green tomatoes, they require sunlight to turn yellow, orange or red so find it a sunny spot on your patio or stoop. When the fruit is ripe, it will pull easily from its stem with a gentle, but firm, tug. And, something else I learned, is that green tomatoes left in a windowsill, will ripen in the sunlight.