Solstice passes. And now the green begins to ebb, to wane. Ever so slightly. The sun has reached its peak and so has the green. They grow and die together. Now the light begins to ebb.
The green has feed its own roots and are now food for others. I eat you and you eat me. Notice the holes in the leaves where insects have feasted. Whole leaves sometimes eaten to the bare outline, shadow of dissolution coming. Fungus, smut, mold, mildew, rot take their turn at the table, to feast on the green. Leaves shrink as flower stalks emerge, wither as fruits ripen.
Too late to harvest any more nettle to dry for infusion, though the soup patch is still providing our monthly kettle of nettle soup. Some of what we didn't get to cut to dry (because it was too rainy too many days in a row) will go to seed. Nettle seed is a medicine as well as a "grain," so I don't chide myself if I don't harvest as much for infusion as I'd hoped to.
The new
live-in apprentice is harvesting 25 red clover blossoms every day (that is sunny). (Me too.) A little every day really adds up. My daughter Justine got the jump on the weather with her harvesting. She already had lots of lovely red clover laid out to dry before it started raining . . . and raining, and, yes . . . raining.
A past
live-out apprentice participated in the Summer Solstice Great Remedies class this weekend. She said she knows she can't pick enough herb to make her daily quart of infusion, but she harvests what she can anyway. She puts a little of her own harvested herb in with the purchased herb when she makes her infusions. She envisions that handful of herb she has harvested herself will communicate with the commercial herb; she knows that it will deepen her connection with the infusion when she drinks it. Speaking of infusions, she has been giving them to her elderly mother, who is now off all but one prescribed drug. Ah, I love nourishing herbal infusions.
And speaking of the Summer Solstice Great Remedies class, we had an amazing day. We made nettle soup, went on a weed walk, harvested cronewort, garlic mustard, giant chickweed, five-finger ivy, red clover and white clover blossoms, creeping jenny/ground ivy in flower, violet leaves, shiso, and wild oregano for our salad, and to top it off, we make motherwort tincture, lemon balm vinegar, catnip vinegar, St. Joan's wort tincture and oil, and plantain oil. Green blessings were everwhere we looked.
Shaman's Corner
Become your holy self. Spend time alone in nature.
Human spirituality arises from time spent alone in nature.
Spend time alone in nature.
You don't have to go far away to spend time in nature. (But you can.) You just have to do it all by yourself, alone, in nature.
Maybe it will be your retreat. Maybe you will call it a vision quest. Maybe you will consider it your menopausal time out. Maybe it is a sabbatical. Maybe you won't speak of it at all; maybe you will. Spend time alone in nature.
Maybe you will only do it once in this lifetime. Maybe you will make it a regular part of your life. Maybe some small part of you will always be alone in nature.
Maybe you will be alone in nature for only a few hours. Maybe you will crave days of being alone in nature.
Maybe you will go barehanded. Just you and nature. Alone.
No music. No books. Alone.
No art supplies, no pens for writing, no electronic devices. Alone.
No distractions from nature, or yourself. Alone.
Doze. Daydream. Babble. Run naked. Eat berries. Watch birds. Paint yourself with colored mud. Spend time alone in nature. Soon.