• About Me
  • One Willow Apothecaries

Woolgathering & Wildcrafting

Woolgathering & Wildcrafting

Tag Archives: spring

Spring Ephemerals + the Magic of Vulnerability

29 Wednesday Apr 2015

Posted by Asia in Earth Medicine, Inspirations

≈ 23 Comments

Tags

anemone, appalachia, bloodroot, blue ridge mountains, botany, dicentra, ecology, flowers, foamflower, hardwood cove, herbalism, iris, lady slipper, meditations, pedicularis, philosophy, pink lady slipper, relationships, showy orchid, spring, spring ephemerals, spring flowers, trillium, trout lily, violets, vulnerability, wild geranium, wild iris, wildflowers

Processed with VSCOcam with g3 preset

I walked through the warm woods barefoot to the cleft of hill overlooking the stream. Following the old worn way through the trees, the thin stitch of footfall over a soft quilt of pine-worn leaves. It was one of the first sun-warmed days of spring and I was opening my heart to finding something ephemeral and unseen.

All winter long I have watched the bare blue mountains behind my home like a card reader, hands scrying the mud and evergreen, imagining what might be rooted, precious as garnet, between the hard knobs of the trees. I studied the enduring leaves of beech like sheaths of papyrus, because I knew that they had lived for many springs and were intimately acquainted with what I was awaiting – the tender arrival of the woodland ephemerals. That rare breed of flora that flowers in the brief span of spring before the trees find their leaves. The plants that bloom, seed and cease before the rest of the world even sets out their green.

Processed with VSCOcam with f2 preset

Wild Geranium

Wild Geranium (Geranium maculatum)

In the deciduous belt of the earth, where trees sleep like Persephone and lose the entire crown of their leaves, ephemerals acts as heralds for the return of the growing world. They are akin to the dawn chorus, a kind of songbird that celebrates the re-awakening of a rich hardwood cove. Every spring in Appalachia we experience an eloquent succession of these woodland ephemerals, many of which blossom for the handspan of just a few weeks. Taking advantage of the slowly waking slumber of the trees, these flowering plants occupy a unique niche within the forest’s overall ecology. For most of the year, these plants await as roots. But as soon as the earth warms they begin their quick ascent to supply some of the first food and medicine of spring. In the time it takes for the maples and tulip poplars and basswoods to unfurl their leaves, these soil-dwellers go through the entire cycle of their above-ground existence, dying back to the roots as the canopy finally flushes to fullness.

Showy Orchid

Showy Orchid (Galearis spectabilis)

The first ephemeral always catches you by surprise, as mysterious and discreet as only true denizens of the underworld can be. You must attune yourself to the subtle, the unexpected arising from bare forest floor. Once your eyes catch their contours, however, you will notice that the flowers come in waves, as exotic and earthly as silk flags in the caravanning desert of early spring. Bloodroot, Hepatica, Spring beauties. Anemone, Trout Lily, Trilium. Temporary miracles. Each one, so gentle in petal, seems to be able to break even the hardest heart (and soil) wide open.

Anemone (Anemone quinquefolia)

Anemone (Anemone quinquefolia)

And so I found myself, on a spring-warmed day in April, out wandering with a heart that ached to unfold. I climbed up into the woods, letting my feet find the slopes of forest with the right cove of hardwoods, the perfect slant of light and bare canopy of trees. I had just returned from spending a long weekend with my new sweetheart and I was feeling that particular pang of tenderness and possibility that comes when a heart first decides to stir from a season of soilsafe hibernation. I was holding the tender petals of this inner ache to bloom when I first spotted them: an entire glen of bloodroot, curled in the palms of their own hands, rising to reach the sunspace of early spring.

Here, growing amongst the moss-laden roots of the slumbering trees existed an entire world of flowering beings where once there had only been winter-browned leaves. I couldn’t help but crawl in close, as awkward as a newborn fawn on shaky hands and knees. To be with them was to sip from a thimble-sized dram of spring’s most potent energy. The bourgeoning, the beginning, a blissful shot of sheer bravery.

Bloodroot (Sanguinaria canadensis)

Bloodroot (Sanguinaria canadensis)

Spring ephemerals are regarded as the lace glove of the flora world. They come and go as swiftly as a spring rain, often dying back to their roots in just a handful of weeks. Some spring ephemerals, like Trillium for example, can take upwards of seven years to even begin to bloom. There is a reason why such ephemerals are so rare. Delicate and scarce, their exquisite gentleness can sometimes be mistook for daintiness until you sit with them and ask them to speak.

Yellow Trillium (Trillium luteum)

Yellow Trillium (Trillium luteum)

In the heart of the forest’s own mythology, the story of spring ephemerals is a far cry from this picture of fragility. It is a tale of root-deep courage, otherworldly patience and the magic of vulnerability. Although the flowers themselves bloom for only a short breath of spring, their colonies flourish for decades. In fact, some Trout Lily communities are so old they predate the surrounding trees. Surviving, thriving and blooming in the short span between earliest spring and the first flush of the canopy, to be a spring ephemeral is to have mastered the art of divine timing and the life-generating strength of such open-blossomed vulnerability.

Processed with VSCOcam with c1 preset

Trout lily (Erythronium sp.), Pedicularis (Pedicularis candensis)

In our culture, we have a tendency to mark tenderness as weakness, but when a single bloodroot bloom can rock us back on awe-struck heels, we begin to glimpse the power of such exposed intimacy. Tenderness is perhaps the most potent form of bravery. It is the ability to open oneself, despite (as Anais Nin says) the incredible risk to bloom. To open, despite the danger of unexpected frosts and herbivores, the weather whims of spring’s mood and the negligence of passing boots. It takes unbelievable courage to expose oneself in such vulnerability. To say yes— to blooming, to loving and to living once more. Would it not be so much easer to stay quietly in our roots? In spring, the sun draws closer to earth, almost as if to say how much she believes in us, and we respond with a sweeping show of blossoming trust and the gift of our own transformational vulnerability. We bloom— not knowing if this is the right moment, or how the whole story will unfold— and this is how and where and when true growth begins.

Wild White Violets (Viola sp.)

Wild White Violets (Viola sp.)

There is a part of us that feels, acutely, that first wildflower bloom. That sharp acknowledgement of just how much bravery it takes to open oneself in such a seemingly empty place. How many of us have been protecting our hearts through a long winter’s sleep? How many of us have shrunk our tenderness down deep in the soil, like Catbrair roots in the cold winter sleet? When I sit with such ephemerals I think, perhaps, our hearts never needed to be roots. That’s what the soles of our feet are for. When we allow them to, our hearts can be flowers. Blooms that open in stunning vulnerability to the world, exposing themselves to all the possibilities of pollination and creation, to the sheer joy of radiating.

Pink Lady's Slipper (Cypripedium acaule)

Pink Lady’s Slipper (Cypripedium acaule)

Sometimes messages are simple. Often, the best ones are. Be brave. Be open. Bloom and offer the unbelievable gift of your vulnerability to this world. Say yes to the life that lives through you. Begin again.

This world is full of gifts. We must simply open our eyes and hearts and be willing to receive. Laying amongst the cupped hands of so many ephemerals, on a warm day in early-spring, I was being given the gift of yet another beginning. The opportunity to embrace a new opening. The brazen invitation to fall in love— with a new season, a new person, a new spring. I held my heart, tender from such invitation and felt at once as strong and vulnerable as dicentra leaves. I accepted the bliss of such brave transience and felt truly released.

Processed with VSCOcam with g3 preset

Foamflower (Tiarella cordifolia)

Squirrel Corn (Dicentra canadensis), Foamflower (Tiarella cordifolia)

We can only love now, bloom now, find ourselves in the now that happens between the first kiss of sunlight and the leafing of the trees. On my belly, a humble student of these most ephemeral blooms, I opened myself up to the daylight and welcomed in the tiny, thimble-sized tears of such ground-breaking gratitude.

Wild Iris (Iris cristata)

Wild Iris (Iris cristata)

Share this:

  • Facebook
  • Pinterest
  • Twitter
  • Email

Like this:

Like Loading...

Slow Spring

25 Monday Mar 2013

Posted by Asia in Appalachian Beauty, Earth Medicine, Inspirations

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

blooming, chickweed, crocus, daffodils, equinox, meditation, red maple flowers, reflection, seasons, snow, spring, thaw

red maple skySpring has crept into these mountains like slow rain. Soft and almost imperceptible, if not for the bright flashes of forsythia and cherry trees, the early Lonicera and pussy willows, the red maples with their tufted rings of tiny crimson blooms. If you Crocuslook, there are crocuses and speedwells flattened to the ground and daffodils opening in scattered groupings by sunny streamsides. It seems every hill is mottled in purple, dead nettle velveting their slopes. We’ve had several frosts arrive unexpectedly, like neighbors you’d almost forgotten about, until they show up on your doorstep demanding something. We’ve had to welcome spring in halts and bursts, fits and starts. Days where the birds sing from sunrise to sunset, nights where all is silent but the creak of ice on warming bark.

The day after the equinox I awoke to snow on the ground and the wind with all its gathered voices rushing through the valley. My neighbors had covered their blooming fig trees with blankets in the hope that their sweet summer bounty could be saved. Sometimes springs happen, sudden and simply welling from within, so tender and easily passed by. Sometimes even spring needs to be protected, loved, nurtured and spoken to softly—keep blooming.Daffodil bannerdaffodil & tulip greenssnowy tree

euphorbiaI’m reminded of a quote from Pablo Neruda, a man who loved the spring in all things, “You can cut all the flowers, but you cannot keep spring from coming.”

The greens are out and in abundance. Chickweed, day lilly and creasy greens, bittercress. Stinging nettle and cleavers beginning to catch the wind and passing skirts chickweed sceneof early spring worshipers. This weekend I sowed poppies and oats, broadcasting their seed across the tender tilled soil. I have such an admiration for these plants, the ones that grow in the early disorder of spring. The ones that love the occasional chill, the drama and exception of an impetuous thaw. We all could learn how to be better fed by such wild unpredictability.

I’m in the depths of preparing for my upcoming class on Spring Cleansing: Traditional Appalachian Herbs for Detoxification and Transformation. It has been such a pleasure. To study the procession of every new tendril, reading, daydreaming about walking with Tommie Bass in early April, falling in love with the early roots and shoots of spring all over again, thinking about flowers and flowers and unfurling all day long.

Red Maple Blooming

Red Maple Blooming

early spring house

Early Spring Home

I’m looking forward to posting some of the material from my class up on the blog. Sharing some of the subtler passions of this season, it’s slow materialization, sparse openings, fresh medicine— the sweet space given for reflection. What in me is budding and beginning? What in me is shrinking in unexpected snows? How long do I wait before the dare and pomp and pure bravado of blooming forth?

Share this:

  • Facebook
  • Pinterest
  • Twitter
  • Email

Like this:

Like Loading...

Afternoon Light/Poetry/Flowers

02 Wednesday May 2012

Posted by Asia in Inspirations

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

azeala, cherry blossom, czeslaw milosz, ee cummings, flowers, inside out flower, lady slipper, linda hogan, literature, love, pablo neurda, poetry, quotes, spring, wildflowers, woodland

I will let them speak for themselves.“I remember her
young, whirling, clovened by daisies.
I remember her, the hem of her skirt
anointing the high meadows.
Her hair
braided, unbraided
on the surface of the water.”
-A.Suler, “December Nights”

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain.has such small hands
-ee cummings “somewhere i have never traveled, gladly beyond”

“There was a time
when I had no need to sing
for the world itself
whistled through
the open spaces in me”
-A.Suler, “Before the End”

“The shed and its timber
have been torn down.
The nails bent like
grass after a storm.
I will not unbend them.

Somewhere on the lawn
there is a red cardinal
with its face tucked and searching
crimson and unsteady as a puddle.
An inkpot amongst the green.”
-A.Suler, “Phoenix”

“Somedays I want to roll the
whole of it
like a persimmon in my hands
crush out the seeds
and eat it live”
-A.Suler, “Autumn”

“Asleep, we pass though one another
like blowing snow,
all of us,
all”
-Linda Hogan, “Our Houses”

“you could chase all these things
but instead, you will gather them
and leave them
let them sit in the tall grass
let them fill
like jars left out in the rain”
-A.Suler, “For Owen”

“The purpose of poetry is to remind us how difficult it is to remain just one person, for our house is open, there are no keys in the doors.”
-Czeslaw Milosz

Share this:

  • Facebook
  • Pinterest
  • Twitter
  • Email

Like this:

Like Loading...

Love and Woodland Wildflowers

19 Thursday Apr 2012

Posted by Asia in Appalachian Beauty, Earth Medicine, Wildcrafting & Collecting

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

foam flower, forest, herbal medicine, iris, lousewort, love, moss, pedicularis, solomons seal, spring, trillium, violets, wild geranium, wildflowers, wood anemone, wood betony, woodland, woods

Lately, I have been a girl in love. Wildflowers are climbing over moss and besides creeks and in every ditch and gully from here to the highlands. It’s some kind of heaven. I always forget, every year, just how stunnily beuatiful these empheral moments of color can be. These flowers dissipate as quickly as the fog on the ground of a sunny morning. One moment they are there and the next, they are gone. Perhaps that is why they call them spring empherals. And perhaps that is why I love them so.

Wild Iris

Last week I went on my first true wildcrafting trip of the season. A carfull of botany friends and wildliving lovers packed into my car and drove out north to a spot I have heard much about, but had never visited before. Miles and miles on backroads and a forged creek later, we arrived.

Wild Bleeding Hearts

Trillium

There were wildflowers living in every crease of the landscape. It was thrilling! I walked with one hand out in front me like someone grasping at an apparition, and the other planted firmly on my camera.

Violet

Pedicularis & Bee

Pedicularis & Bee

There was one flower is particular, however, for which I searched. For a year I have been waiting to meet Pedicularis again. I cannot tell you how steadily I watched the slow progression from slate to blue to green with a sole heartug of wonder….”when will Pedicularis peek up once more?” This wild-haired flower is an important and profound medicine. There are people close to me who use this medicine daily for chronic muscular pain. For some, this flower can be a literal saving grace. A nervine, hypnotic, antispasmodic, and amourant, Pedicularis is one of the best skeletal muscle relaxants on the planet. Eat a leaf while you’re hiking and you will most liking feel as chilled out as this bee. This robust flower bursts from the ground in such an inconspicuous pomp and whorl. Once you spot it, however, it will draw you in hypnotized, humble, and spinning.

Sleepy in Heaven

This might be you in a bed of Pedicularis

Wild iris

Wild Iris

If you want to learn more about this incredible flower, please visit herbalist extraordinaire 7Song’s seriously wonderful monograph. He’s included pretty much everything you could ever want to know about Pedicularis. Awesome.

Below are two more beautiful spring medicines. Wood anemone (the shy and mesmerizing white flower on the left) is used for panic and anxiety attacks, migraines, and to help ease out of “bad trips.” Wild Geranium root (on the right) is an extremely astringent medicine that can be especially useful for those with IBD, Celiacs, ulcers, and diarrhea, as it helps to tighten the digestive tract.

Wood anemone

Wood Anemone

Wild Geranium

What more can I say. Is there anything more exquisite than spring flowers? They are born and live as eternally as fawns, wide eyed and full of purpose for just a few foaling weeks. I would happily settle for such an existence. Wouldn’t you?

Solomons Seal

Trillium

Patch of Violets

Foam flower and violets

Share this:

  • Facebook
  • Pinterest
  • Twitter
  • Email

Like this:

Like Loading...

Surprise! The Easter Bunny Came!

08 Sunday Apr 2012

Posted by Asia in Crafting, Domestic Bliss, Inspirations

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

basket, candy, chocolate, easter, easter basket, easter bunny, lantern, lollipops, passover, rabbit, spring, wish

Okay, so it was me. I couldn’t help it! I suprised my roommate and his friend this morning with an impromptu Easter Basket.

Chocolate, flowers, honey and lollipops. What more could you really want? Oh…and a wish lantern! Apparently you light a small flame inside this lovely paper creation and it will slowly rise to the sky. This evening we’re planning on pouring ourselves into the night with a bottle of wine, setting this delicate little globe alight, and watching as it billows up, up, and away with all of our new spring wishes…

The inspiration for this basket began with one little clay egg. It was perfect…. and isn’t that always how good ideas seem to sprout? With a tiny, delicate and perfect blueprint.

Happy Easter/Passover/Spring Everyone!

Share this:

  • Facebook
  • Pinterest
  • Twitter
  • Email

Like this:

Like Loading...

Flurry of Spring

05 Thursday Apr 2012

Posted by Asia in Appalachian Beauty, Domestic Bliss, Earth Medicine

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

blooms, calamus, change, comfrey, dogwood, flowers, garden, jump, mountain, palm reader, reinvent, risks, skip, spring, the fool, trees, violets

Spring has rolled in as furious and quick as a midsummer storm. It seems every tree is rushing into bloom. The perrenials are stretching up like lazy giants and wild edibles abound. It’s been shocking and soothing and something quite like madness all at the same time. (I turned my back for a minute and the grass has already grown so high as to be unmanageable!)

Dogwoods in bloom

This early spring has conjured up a blinding flurry of activity. The garden is siren calling me day-in day-out to start digging. We have plans to double the size of our garden beds, adding in borders of flowers, wings of herbs to surround the exisiting vegetable garden and excavating terraces of wild herbal perrenials up on the hill. Maybe you’d like to check out the “before” in anticipation of a mid-summer “after”:

The Hill: Dreamscape for a Terraced Wonderland of Herbs

Palm reader and blossoms in PA

Honestly, I almost feel as though I can’t keep up! I’ve been so busy with planting and planning, I’ve barely gotten out with my camera to capture the sheer emphemeral loveliness of this season. Just when you settle into the famailar site of one flower or unfurling, the whole scene changes before your eyes. Such is the way of Spring I guess. Yesterday, I took a couple photos around the house of some of my favorite returning medicinals. Some of these beauties have been planted in my garden, while others will always grow wild on their own. Sweet heaven.

calamus arisen

Holy comfrey! They're huge!

On top of all the gardening, growing, and dreaming, I have made a resolute decision to change my life. I’m determined to start up my own business. In light of this resolve, I left my old, very stable, job for a more flexible part-time position as a plant caretaker. It was a big decision, and not just because my income was going to be cut in half. It’s never easy to give up a sure-thing, no matter how unfufilled you feel. But, sometimes you really have to leap out into the unknown, let the future swirl uncharted, allow fate to sweep you up into her windy beginnings. When it feels right, go with it. Spring is all about the deep reward of foolishness. Every living thing is throwing itself into life with abandon. So I did too. This spring, allow yourself to bloom, change, begin again. You never know what you might find– those old promises of love and passion, opportunity, or just the ability to feel free.  I, for one, am chasing it all.

Share this:

  • Facebook
  • Pinterest
  • Twitter
  • Email

Like this:

Like Loading...

First Day of Spring!

20 Tuesday Mar 2012

Posted by Asia in Domestic Bliss, Inspirations

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

bees, birds, blossom, cherry, daffodils, equinox, mary oliver, nests, poetry, spring, spring cleaning, tree


Happy First day of Spring everyone! Today I am throwing open every window in my house. I am going to roll up the thick rugs on my bedroom floor, shake out every pillow, and walk in thoughtful circles around the garden. It’s spring! The birds have built nests in the elbows of the trees, the bees are busy encircling my house like a crown, and there are flowers flowers flowers everywhere! Let’s all agree– to drink in this day until we can drink no more. Cheers!

Such Singing in the Wild Branches (2003)

It was spring
and finally I heard him
among the first leaves—
then I saw him clutching the limb

in an island of shade
with his red-brown feathers
all trim and neat for the new year.
First, I stood still

and thought of nothing.
Then I began to listen.
Then I was filled with gladness—
and that’s when it happened,

when I seemed to float,
to be, myself, a wing or a tree—
and I began to understand
what the bird was saying,

and the sands in the glass
stopped
for a pure white moment
while gravity sprinkled upward

like rain, rising,
and in fact
it became difficult to tell just what it was that was singing—
it was the thrush for sure, but it seemed

not a single thrush, but himself, and all his brothers,
and also the trees around them,
as well as the gliding, long-tailed clouds
in the perfectly blue sky— all, all of them

were singing.
And, of course, yes, so it seemed,
so was I.
Such soft and solemn and perfect music doesn’t last

for more than a few moments.
It’s one of those magical places wise people
like to talk about.
One of the things they say about it, that is true,

is that, once you’ve been there,
you’re there forever.
Listen, everyone has a chance.
Is it spring, is it morning?

Are there trees near you,
and does your own soul need comforting?
Quick, then— open the door and fly on your heavy feet; the song
may already be drifting away.

— Mary Oliver, “Such Singing in the Wild Branches”

Share this:

  • Facebook
  • Pinterest
  • Twitter
  • Email

Like this:

Like Loading...

House plants: On Growing and Dying

06 Tuesday Mar 2012

Posted by Asia in Domestic Bliss, Inspirations

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

aloe, asheville, death, fittonia, fulfillment, growth, house plants, letting go, marginata, moving, plants, signs, spider plant, spring, the secret life of plant

This time last year I arrived in Asheville with just my pluck, my dreams, and every possession I could fit packed inside my car. Everything I needed to start a new life was crammed inside that vehicle. Needless to say, I had to be quite selective. I left whole wardrobes behind, not to mention all the various and beautiful pieces of furniture I’ve collected over the years. I bid adieu to many beloved possessions but, god help me, I would not leave a single house plant.  I was literally a driving greenhouse caravan.

By the time I left Brooklyn, my apartment had become a makeshift plant orphanage. I was working as a plant technician in Manhattan (taking care of people’s office plants and running my tail all over the city). Every time someone had a flailing plant on their hands they seemed to magically gravitate towards me, holding the sad thing out in two hands like a child that had broken a toy and didn’t really want to see it anymore. I took each one home. Plants that had gnats, aphids, mealy bug. Plants that had been underwatered, overwatered, ignored in an empty office for months. I smuggled home cuttings and offshoots and rooted them in soil. By mid summer, our apartment looked like this:

These plants were my friends. I watched them recover, grow, and flourish. I talked to them. They filled our small kitchen with green light, reviving us every time the city’s pavement buried us alive once again. When I left Brooklyn, instead of divvying up furniture or kitchen appliances, my roommate and I divided plants. I bid a tearful goodbye to those that were staying under my roommate’s sweet care and bravely moved on.

The hostel..and my songbird roommate!

When I arrived in Asheville last March I was homeless and carting and a dozen plants in the back of my car. I booked a room at a hostel and brought them in with me so they wouldn’t get cold at night. Then, I started scheming to find them a home.

It’s been a year now since I settled into the tiny, blue-chipped cottage on a winding road north of the city. It’s a quirky place. Built in the early 1920s, the walkways from room to room slant downward from so many years of foot traffic and we are outnumbered by the bees living in our roof by a factor of 500:1. But the kitchen is sunny and up until very recently, all the plants have been very happy.

Lately, however, something strange has begun to happen. Some plants, which have remained more of less dormant since the move, have begun to sprout new life! They are growing, unfurling getting bigger and grander every day! This ZZ plant is sending up a new shoot for the first time since it lived on a high shelf in my dusty Brooklyn kitchen! I cannot tell you the joy of watching this beautiful, ridiculously phallic-like, entity grow taller every day! I can’t wait until it unfurls!

Just peeking out...and now quite erect!

Other plants, however, have inextricably begun to fade. I can find no reason for the decline. They don’t have bugs, they aren’t being ignored, malnourished or mistreated. They are just….dying.

Fittonia in a sorry state

In his former incarnation this little guy was palm-sized and floating in a small tea light holder. Now look at em! The original baby was recused from a PR agency overlooking Central Park east.

It’s got me thinking. The deeper undercurrents of our life surface in so many ways. Our emotional and spiritual wellbeing is often reflected in the physical world. Anyone who has ever experienced depression or loss can attest that your mood affects more than just your mindsets. New research has even proved that a “broken heart” can actually cause cardio-distress similar to a heart attack. So, is it that far off to think that our physical surroundings, which we interact with all the time, could also reflect a change in our inward beings?

The infamous book The Secret Life of Plants marked the first time that anyone explored the idea that plants could be connected to us on an emotional level, responding to deep undercurrents of feeling. The research in this book suggested, not only that we communicate on an energetic level with plants, but that our connection with those plants that surround us is so profound that our own states of wellbeing affect the plants themselves.

Could my plants be telling me something about my own growth or small deaths? I think there is an unlimited amount of wisdom surrounding us at all times. There is so much to be learned from plants, animals, and the earth… as well as the environments that we have built up around ourselves. When something strikes you or seems to be changing in a way that demands your attention, you better stop and take a long hard look. Otherwise, you might miss a very important and well-crafted message.

Is it just a coincidence that, a year into the establishment of a whole new life– a massive uprooting that meant a complete change of location, occupation, friendships, and partnerships–  that some of the living pieces of my past might thrive, while others begin to wane? I don’t think so. I am at a point right now when I am taking serious stock of all that I have built and all that I have carried with me from the past. In this new spring I’ve been stepping back to really recognize what is fulfilling for me, to let go of all the old patterns, people, and positions that might have blossomed for me in the past, but are now just draining my energy, resources and reserves. Some parts of your life will bloom and grow forever, and others are only supposed to stick around for a little while. That’s just the way it goes.

Why is the spider plant thriving, but not the marginata? Why is the ZZ suddenly sprouting anew while the fittonia slowly loses all its leaves? That, I don’t know. What I do know is that things are changing, I can see it.

Share this:

  • Facebook
  • Pinterest
  • Twitter
  • Email

Like this:

Like Loading...

Defined

[wool-gath-er-ing] v.
daydreaming, the gathering of thoughts and dreams as one might collect fallen tufts of wool

[wild-craft-ing] v.
the harvesting of herb, root, flower or inspiration from the wilds

Herbal Greetings

Sign up for our Newsletter

follow us

Instagram

Recent Posts

  • This Blog has moved…
  • A Guide to Keeping your Head up
  • My Top Three Herbal Books
  • Pilgrimage Project: Japan
  • Empty Rooms Fill with Light

Categories

  • Appalachian Beauty
  • Crafting
  • Domestic Bliss
  • Earth Medicine
  • Inspirations
  • Wild Foods
  • Wildcrafting & Collecting

Archives

  • July 2019
  • October 2017
  • September 2017
  • July 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • April 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • January 2017
  • December 2016
  • November 2016
  • October 2016
  • September 2016
  • July 2016
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • March 2016
  • February 2016
  • January 2016
  • October 2015
  • August 2015
  • June 2015
  • April 2015
  • March 2015
  • February 2015
  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • October 2014
  • September 2014
  • August 2014
  • July 2014
  • April 2014
  • February 2014
  • January 2014
  • September 2013
  • July 2013
  • June 2013
  • April 2013
  • March 2013
  • February 2013
  • January 2013
  • December 2012
  • November 2012
  • September 2012
  • August 2012
  • July 2012
  • June 2012
  • May 2012
  • April 2012
  • March 2012
  • February 2012
  • January 2012

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 772 other followers

Blogs I love

  • Analog Beauty
  • Blog Castanea
  • Blood and Spicebush
  • Glorious Forest Farms
  • Green Man Ramblings
  • Moss Dreams
  • The Crystal Chick
  • The Indigo Vat
  • The Medicine Woman's Roots
  • Way of the Wild Heart
  • Wisdom of the Plant Devas
  • Woodworking & Quiltmaking

Blog at WordPress.com.

Cancel
loading Cancel
Post was not sent - check your email addresses!
Email check failed, please try again
Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email.
%d bloggers like this: