Stirrings
How about some good news for a change? Here you go: tomorrow is June 1, the first day of the best month of the year, the start of summer, the welcoming ocean, the time of food gardening, going barefoot, brewing sun tea, eating fresh food, dressing lightly, dancing in the light, staying up late, day trips, roses, dogs, and healing love.
The food gardens are all in. We settled on three varieties
of heirloom tomatoes, long cucumbers, pickling cucumbers, summer squash, Japanese
watermelon, pole beans, corn, lettuces, arugula, kale, and Italian parsley.
There are tiny peaches on the peach trees and the raspberry bushes are full and
strong. We have pots of young basil, dill, more parsley, Tulsi, lemon verbena,
lemongrass, and a pot of cherry tomatoes near the kitchen door for morning
munching. We have window boxes of purple sage and German thyme.
I planted fat rows of Italian sunflowers and tall zinnias (‘a
For di Dalia’ and ‘Cactus Multicolor’, both Italian varieties). There are never
too many flowers for summer bouquets. I placed established plants of white
poppies in the front flower bed, where black-eyed Susans have naturalized and
are spread far and wide. The pink beach rose we bought at Martha’s Vineyard four
years ago has reached full maturity and is already covered in roses. In the
same flower bed is lavender, chives in bloom, purple clematis, budding pink and
white peonies, lemon balm, lavender, coreopsis, columbine, yellow lilies (a
gift from a neighbor’s garden), blue hydrangea, and purple monkshood.
Potted at the side of the house is a giant Bird of
Paradise. At the front of the house in another large pot is a mature aloe and a
big bowl of white impatiens. A large macramé hanger at the front door cradles a
large pot of stonecrop. The Japanese pencil tree my husband gave me for my
birthday was planted near the front door, surrounded with hosta. The rain barrel
has been cleaned and prepped and set up at the side of the house, under a
gutter, where it will catch rainwater all summer. It’s already full.
Now we settle back and water when needed and fertilize
sparingly. I picked up a large bottle of seaweed emulsion for the veggies. Mixed
with rainwater, it makes a powerful and chemical-free, all natural and organic
feed for hungry food plants. I plan to fertilize less often this year to encourage
more food production and less green growth.
It happened as if overnight, this transition from winter to
summer. Everything is green and growing strong. Life has retuned full bore, an
event that never fails to amaze me. By July – only a month away – we’ll be
harvesting berries and vegetables and eating fresh garden greens and picking
flowers for bouquets for us and friends.
There’s always that first moment each season when
everything garden-wise is in place, the scent of loam is on the breeze, the sun
is warm and the air takes on its June color, when I stop for a moment and
virtually fall to my knees in gratitude for it all. That moment came this morning.
I went to straighten a tomato cage around one of our young plants when a
hummingbird zipped by my head on its way to our feeder, and I could hear baby
sparrows calling from the birdhouse nearby. I realized that everything around
me was reaching for the sun, just like me. Rebirth is happening everywhere.
There’s nothing but good vibes and new life and promise,and healing plant
medicine.
And awakenings have been happening in my personal journey
too. There’s far too much to write here, but the recent months have been as
transformative as the changes of season. I’ve taken new ideas on board with me,
and offboarded others. I’m finding the greatest joy in accepting what is,
rather than striving for attainment and change. And just when I think I’ve
achieved the deepest level of love for and forgiveness toward others, I find
that there’s room for more forgiveness and compassion, and even greater joy to
come of that. I’m releasing more of this troublesome ego.
In thinking about end of life, I’ve been considering how my
death can be a lesson for myself and for others, and how I can approach the end
of this incarnation with the intention of ministering to those who will watch
me die, of easing their fears and bringing hope and even joy to their own experiences.
I’ve been planning how I’d like my body returned to Mama Earth.
I’m changing how I consume social media. The Internet has
become the central pillar of our society, with corporations like Google and
Amazon as the gatekeepers of what we can see and hear. Human perception is being changed.
These forces specifically target the young – the adults of
tomorrow - and I see that smartphones
control us far more than we control them and that the line between organic and mechanized
consciousness is blurring. I'm wondering what role AI will play in the lives of babies
being born today.
I’ve been studying Chinese and Vietnamese Buddhism and
feeling drawn to the essence of these ancient practices. The Tibetan tradition
will always be my backbone, but there’s amazing beauty in the perceptions of
others, and I’ve been allowing myself to experience it all without concern. We
are all connected.
We took the boat out to Block Island last weekend, the
first run of the season. When I mentioned to my husband that we’re approaching
our seventh wedding anniversary in a couple of weeks, he remarked that it feels
like we’re been together a lot longer than that.
I only had to think about that
for a moment to realize he’s right. We found each other in the maelstrom after
lifetimes of painful connections. We both came from fragmented, troubled households and when we set out to find meaningful attachments, we invariably
chose the wrong partners – those as deeply damaged and unwilling to evolve as the
people who brought us into being.
When we found each other, we were both still feeling unsteady
from it all. The gift we’ve given each other in our marriage is the medicine of heart healing. We’ve released our pasts and the troubled people within them. The pain
has lifted. Through this learning journey, time has just fallen away, and it
feels that there’s never been any other life but the one we have now. Yes, I understood
exactly what he meant: time heals some wounds, but you may be sure that love heals them all.
Barbie xo
