Pink Coyote

Summer's Offerings at SouLodge

Half way between the Summer Solstice and Autumn Equinox sits a little celebratory holiday that the Celts call Lammas. It's been written that the earliest harvest of grain occurs today, and that bread made with todays grain will be a bit risky. It may not be as rich in color as Autumn's wheat, or as ripe in flavor, but that the benefit lies in the possibility of the early seeds. The festival is a reminder that everything has a beginning: ideas, shifts, new ways of receiving nourishment. All change comes from a place that beckons us a little deeper into the full, robust flavor of our lives. The energetic shift can be felt in the in-between seasons, as well as when they appear on the calendar to call us to movement. I even just love sensing the subtle changes in the way the sunlight comes through my windows.

The creatures are slimmer, lighter, and seeking water from different sources now, their babies of Spring finding their own relaxed footprints behind them as they sink into their wild ways, and the instinctual natures that will ensure their survival. Ants are coming up out of every crack and crevasse, showing my children and I how to work communally, and for wholeness, carrying seeds (and bits of dog kibble!) on their backs many times their weight.

Summer's hot breezes, cool dips into swimming holes, ripening fruit, and long, playful days, feel expansive to me. Juxtaposed to Winter-a time of cozying down and becoming perhaps a bit more quiet and inward-Summer is a season to connect, to build campfires together, to feast, to storytell, and to acquaint ourselves in community. It is a time of intimacy and openness of hearts, for guidance to flow in like the sun's rays- warming us up to our potential, readying us for the coming harvest, which will carry us through Fall's crisp drawing down, and Winter's bundled-up months.

Part of the experience in the SouLodge is to gather at the long table of the season and break bread together. The teachings and relevance of the seasons creates presence, and grounds us, binding the medicine of what wants to come in and be shared in the waning days of light.

I'm thrilled to be able to host this sacred space...and to do it online! I am full of hope that the fluid experience of communing together, creating ritual, crafting, journeying, practicing gratitude, and going deeper into ourselves, will secure the lessons that Summer brings for all of us. Please join me in the Lodge, if you feel called, and share this post with someone who you think might love what is being created. Registration closes Wednesday, and Lodge begins on Monday!

So much Lammas gratitude!

Once Upon a Nettle

If you are my Facebook "friend" you may be right tired of hearing the word nettles. I have become an absolute fanatic about them, considering that they are growing wild all over our back property and in full season right now. There has been many a lively discussion about what to do with them and how to endure their prickly, welty stings in order to come to know the one known as the little Grandmother with a broom who comes in and gets to work moving things along.

Today I collected her leaves three times for three cups of tea, for the sinus infection I'm suffering. I just picked the leaves and some of the tops and stuffed them into a mug about half-way to the top, and then poured boiling water over them. I picked them fresh each time to make sure that the life and energy of the plant was at it's peak. The first cup was very clearing and satisfying, and I used a neti pot afterward with great success. I chomped her wilty leaves from the bottom of my cup. The sting leaves the plant after about 3 minutes after being picked when the acid in the needles loses it's mojo.

Nettles contain more protein than any other native green, her claim to fame being breaking down uric acid lickity split, having a curative effect on kidney conditions, mucus in the intestines, and gout. She attacks mucus like a crimefighting ninja superhero and I've had better luck with her than with any other herb. She loves to grow around junk heaps, where the soil is unfavorable, making gold out of the worst conditions. I consider her an alchemist. The possibilities of her use are endless. Matthew Wood tells a story of a man with no feeling in his legs flogging them with nettles and regaining feeling, allowing him to walk again. Isn't that wild?

When I harvested tonite, under the starlit sky, I was alone and in no hurry, so I took my time talking to her, listening, I sang her a native song, peed nearby as an offering, and thanked her, promising to bury some crystals and medicine near her roots with the children tomorrow.

I love how the kids are learning to respect her, though her sinister needles have impaled them mercilessly. They seem to be appreciative of the gifts that plants give us, and Miles has noticed that she springs up for free, with no effort at all, every Spring. As he prepares to plant his vegetable garden, I see him lingering near the wild dandelions, lying in the flowering clover, inspecting the weeds. I wonder if he is curious about cultivated plants versus wild ones. I hope he asks me why they're both important. I think he'll figure it out on his own...

Easy Mornings

There's only one more day of preschool before the year ends and the children and I are already in vacation mode, eating breakfast outdoors, and dinners, too...sliding and swinging and bouncing as much as we can fit into our days.

Brandon and I have been working on beautifying this corner space on our property since he and my dad tore the hot, rusty, corrugated tin roof off of 4 poles which stand in a rectangle.

A few years ago, I gave him three bamboo plants for our ten year anniversary. My dad bought me the wisteria in the corner. Miles' and Ivy's Nanna bought the petunias that Miles and his Dad later planted in the pots you see. An old table was hauled down from a cabin we owned in the mountains. I traded three massages for the turquoise cottage chairs that often show up in my photographs. A friend gave us two paint-chipped benches that they were tired of looking at. The allyssum has seeded itself again and again, bless its heart. The large frame that the wisteria is peeping through is living out it's second life.

On the Memorial Day holiday, while I was busy working away in my studio all day, Brandon and Miles were wheelbarrowing load after load of pea gravel under the structure, from a mountain which has been sitting next to our driveway for nearly three years. They first covered the tangle of grass and weeds with black gardeners plastic and then filled in the space.

It feels like a Zen garden and I feel relaxed just writing about it. I found a big tray that I used to let Miles sort beans and projects on when he was much younger, and we've been carting it out there each day covered in various drinks, peanut butter on sprouted grain toast, cup after cup of tea, brown rice with golden raisins and almonds, fresh strawberries.

Outdoor spaces and late Spring go together like lemon slices in my water...I hope you find a sanctuary to rest in, too.

Farmer Miles

 

Carrot, var. Nantes; Planted and harvested by my only sunshine.

Tools: Plant Kingdom, Part Two

The doors are flying off of the hinges here at Pandora's box, as I realize how very many things I have in my toolkit to be shared. I don't know what's got into me! I had a completely different post planned for today, but, no. These members of my family demand to be introduced. Who am I to argue?

*Please bear in mind that my experience of plants and herbs may be somewhat different from yours. That is to say that what I feel safe ingesting may not translate to others' constitutions. Always consult reliable resources for contraindications before using, especially if pregnant, nursing, or when considering remedies for children. I'll include the references I use most at the bottom of this post, as well.

If you share a comment or story, I would love to send you a little medicine bundle of gratitude. Email me with the address you want a little plant lovin' sent to and then watch your mailbox...

 

Juniper is a common shrub which offers so many uses, from medicinal salves to headache remedies and even to prevent nightmares. I use the beautiful, tasty, little juniper berries in a tea (when I'm not pregnant or nursing) to create a sacred environment within before sitting in a sweat lodge or doing a releasing ceremony. Juniper berries (relaxing in a bowl of last year's lavender buds) are such good friends to me. I have been using them in medicine bundles as a way to dispel negative energies for a long time and there's something that is just so comforting about them. I love to throw a handful of them into a fire and smell their evergreeny scent. Carried in a pouch, they have a protective, safe quality to them. One might use them mixed with a bit of lavender or chamomile buds in a little bundle for a young child's pocket when leaving to school for the first time.

Juniper was a name I was quite keen on for Ivy, but Ivy sounded better with her middle name :) Miles loves to play with the dried berries, smell them and make special "potions" with them. Wild animals love to eat them, too.

Salvia Mellifera, or Black Sage, grows like pure madness here. I planted a very small twig I bought at a native plant sale two years ago and now this hulk is over 3' tall and perhaps 5-6' wide. Dried, then wrapped into smudge sticks with colorful cotton thread, it is a lovely companion for shamanic journeywork. Truth be told, it is a bit stinky to my nose until it is burned. Hummingbirds and bees love this giant plant, but most insects do not. That makes it perfect for burning around a campsite or picnic area to keep pesties away. The bees who frequent these plants make very yummy honey. However, I am not a beekeeper...but I know a few of you who visit here would like to be! My garden always looks lush with this evergreen fellow hanging around in bulk.

Comfrey is pretty much a lifesaver and is used routinely at our house. I first discovered it when my midwife recommended making large batches of tea out of it, refrigerating it, then spritzing my birth-weary parts after bringing Miles & Ivy in. The reason for this is that it has regenerative properties and helps tears and lacerations mend. I found it to be very useful with both births; I applied the tea directly on my birthing region extraordinaire, and also poured it liberally into the bath. I also found that it works well on Ivy's eczema if I make a tea and just lightly blot the area.

I only use it topically, because it is indicated as causing distress to the liver. The varieties used in herbal teas you may have seen on market shelves likely do not contain the harmful alkaloids that cause liver trouble. Always best to check. Some who are even more woo-woo than me might use a pendulum over the herb to intuit whether it *feels* safe to ingest or not. I like to play it safe. And I'm pretty woo-woo.

Mugwort! Doesn't that just sound like a witch's plant? It is sometimes actually referred to as Croneswort because it's an old folk belief that it springs up at the doorsteps of healers. This is a plant that I have never taken internally. I picked it up years ago while making a dream bundle for a family member who was having a terrible time sleeping and also trying to work through some issues that her thinking brain was making no progress with. It is used to stimulate lucid dreaming, but best used in small amounts so as not to have restless sleep. I'm a big fan of letting dreams do my inner work for me at times when I feel too overwhelmed to think about them in my waking life. Mugwort is another great insect repellent. Wing of bat! Eye of newt! Hair of Toad!

Balsam tea is relatively new to my collection of helpers, though I'd been drinking it without knowing it's true medicinal properties for years. I used it with great success when very little else was working on the bout with bronchitis I recently had. It's full of vitamin C, and acts as an expectorant. However it is also slightly diuretic, so I drank only one cup per day, followed by lots of water, so as not to disrupt my milk supply for Miss Ivy. It is so very yummy. Juniper Ridge makes a great bag of Douglas Fir Tip tea that I crave during the wintertime.

I hope you've enjoyed this little show-and-tell I've presented. Perhaps on your walkabouts, you'll be inspired to say hello to those plant people who rise up to greet you and make your landscape more beautiful. Maybe one in particular would like to make a love connection with you. (push play: romantic music)

Resources for Herbs:

Las Pilitas Nursery -for the best in California native plants

Cal Flora -the go-to plant identification database

Juniper Ridge- my very favorite grassroots wildcrafters who make amazing incense and tea

Mountain Rose Herbs -my one stop for organic essential oils and bulk herbs

Plants of Power: Native American Ceremony and the Use of Sacred Plants

Hygieia: A Woman's Herbal -this is radical book written by the ballsy Jeannine Parvati and I love reading her folkloric writings about woman's body and the plants that heal them. (It must be undergoing another printing according to availability)

Native American Healing Arts -a lovely reference for native ceremonies involving plants and folk medicine.

Plant Spirit Medicine -a wonderful little book about understanding the more esoteric value of plants and developing relationships to them.

I would love to hear your stories about how you heal with herbs or recollections from your childhood about a sensory experience with plants or whatever you feel moved to share. Don't be shy! Let your earthy,hooey-dooey, intuitive freak flag fly...in all of us, there is a healer.

Tools: Plants, Part One

Oh, where to begin!? While I'm not being pushy with myself to be productive, I thought I'd share some of the tools I commonly use here at home and in ritual space. There are so many tools to talk about and I simply don't know where to begin. Plants may be a good place to start.

Anything can be a useful tool for healing, change, or manifesting, when you think about it. A tool can be tangible or not. It can be a mantra or a meditation. It can take any shape, and I suppose, for me, it can be defined as a tool if it helps. (do caramels qualify? i think so.)

Here are two of my favorites from the plant kingdom, but I will be sharing lots more:

 

White sage (Salvia apiana) is found not far from here and is probably the most common herb used for smudging today. I light it over a big abalone shell , blow out the flame after a few moments, and use a feather fan to send the smoke up into the corners of a room or even inside of cabinets to break up stagnant energy and wake the place up. It's also used to purify, cleanse and prepare the body when sitting in ritual, so it isn't uncommon to be "saged" before crawling into a sweat lodge or sitting in a sacred ceremony. I love the smell of white sage and always have lots on hand.

Cedar bundles are used very much in the same way as sage, but the scent is much different, less strong. White sage is very distinctive and cedar is probably more accessible. Native Americans use it to help release heavy emotional energies, and cedar is burned in lodges to help with detoxification and purification. It is a lovely winter plant to use during  Solstice and Yule rituals.

I realize I have so many herbs, plants and roots that I use, that I could write forever about them. I'm so grateful for the plant people! They make such wonderful companions. I've entitled this "Part One" because I'll be paying my helpers a proper tribute here shortly. (They like to be photographed in sunshine and we don't have any today!)

What are some of your favorite plants and healing herbs?

Millions of Peaches

Peach season has finally come! They've been turning up at farmer's markets, but ours were a bit slower to ripen this year.

Our little peach tree was planted two years ago, along with an apricot and a plum nearby. We created a "plant guild" around it, consisting of supportive plants such as artichokes for continual mulching, nasturtiums as a soil fumigator, strawberries and allysum for shading the soil/water retention, and beans for fixing nitrogen. Using these and a few other basic permaculture guidelines, the first year showed rapid growth for our stone fruit trees.

My favorite resource for permaculture is Toby Hemenway's book, Gaia's Garden, which is now out in second edition!

Sadly, winter came, dogs dug and grass moved in, and the guilds slowly gave up and all became mulch. They did a great job for the year they were most active, though, and their benefit meant that when our trees were one year old, we had fruit! This is the second year we've harvested and look at these babies! We're pretty proud.

 

They're white peaches, so they're very sweet and soft (but not mushy!) when ripe.

And the shadow side of organic home farming...

Gross japanese beetles! Which divebomb my ears and head while I'm trying to pick! I've had to pick some peaches early, and invite my friends & family to rush over and do the same. Now that the fruit is ripe, the ne'er-do-wells have arrived! I don't mind sharing a bit of the harvest with the natural evolution of creatures, but these dudes are big, loud and fast and they cause me to run screaming and slapping myself.

I'm going to get back to that day off....:)

The Do Nothing Garden

Doing nothing is a future goal of mine.  I have not begun to get close to doing nothing at this point in my life-but I see it up the road a bit.  Keri's Tuesday entry inspired me to talk about my garden here, and my hopes for it, and how the philosophy spills over into the rest of my life. 

We live on 2 1/2 acres of washed out desert dirt in the south central

California valley.  It's where I grew up.  My parents live 2 parcels down on their 2 1/2 acre piece.  The chunk we live on belongs to them, and my dad built this house we live in.  The soil is pretty barren; a test I did showed that there is literally nothing in terms of nutrients in the soil and that it is highly alkaline.  In short, it needs major ammendments to become really fertile.

There are some pretty bright minds out there, tackling the issue of where the world will be in 10-50 years, but the ones intriguing me the most at this time in my life are those who emphasize learning to feed ourselves.  Psychologically and collectively speaking, we are a very dependent culture.  Many of us do not know the difference between food grown at home and food grown far away-what is in it, at what point it was harvested and by whom, whether the farmer and his workers were paid enough for it for them to live on, whether it was irradiated or not... 

With that in mind, I wanted to explore growing some food around here.  I started a compost pile to cut down on landfill contributions, though it's gone a bit crazy at the moment.  I read some books.  I've considered adding chickens to fertilize, weed and eat my leftovers, but haven't gotten to that yet.  What we have done is begun some little experiments called "guilds". 

I'm so excited about guilds because they are a model that could effectively do all of the work I would normally have to do: fertilize, water, feed, kill bugs, draw pollinators, create habitat for beneficial sorts, crack open hardpan, and mulch.

I've created four guilds and will begin another three in the next month or so.  I have no idea if they will really work, but here is what I did for one of them:  All guilds begin with a simple tree, preferably one that has a few functions such as fruit, nuts, shade, or flowers.  Then around it I planted these guys:

*Nasturtiums-this flowering, fast grower is a soil fumigant-she keeps scores of destructive, plentiful-in-my-bad-soil organisms off of my tree's roots.  I planted scads of these from seed packets.

*Root vegetables-also from seed packets-radishes, rutabaga, carrots, mainly.  These break up the hard soil.  In fact, what we don't want to pull and eat, I can snap off the greens and eat them or toss back into bed for instant mulch and let the root rot in the ground, feeding the soil and providing food for worms. 

*Beans and snow peas-these fun vining varieties feed my lacking soil with much needed nitrogen.  From just a few plants, we munch on sweet, raw beans while we're out inspecting plants and removing weeds.  We haven't had enough to cook yet, but we will.  You can just poke a dry bean into the soil and have a plant in a few days. 

*Artichokes-these plants totally rule.  I bought some tiny cheapies at the nursery and they are going nuts.  Their big, spiky leaves fall off on the underside of the plant and create lots of mulch for the tree and the guild. 

*Strawberries-for groundcover-to shade the spots where the sun beats down on the earth and sucks away the nutrients.  Clover is also great for this and is a nitrogen fixer, too.

Though I putter around out there, nurturing the newer plants and asking them what I can do to help, soon, most of my work will be done.  These little communities have been created to take care of themselves so that I won't have to, except to eat them, smell them, or enjoy them visually. 

If the guilds flourish and become jungle-like, this will be the best thing I have ever learned and executed in my life.  I say this because it seems to come much easier to me to make my life more busy, difficult and overwhelming than to do things that make it run smoothly.

Privacy Please

My son is cracking me up.  Yesterday his book pick off of my shelf was "You Grow Girl" by Gayla Trail.  He took it all over the house with him, pausing to sit and flip through the pages, seeming to admire that it contains  illustrations, as well as real photos.  Today he is still on about it.  He has brought it to me to read, but only for a minute.  He mostly wants to enjoy it alone.  He opens it to the back flap and looks at Gayla's picture and points, making soft sounds.  I think he's in love!  I'm giddy that he wants to cart around a gardening book.  I'm going to go see if she has tee shirts in his size.

Buzz Buzz

The raised beds are in and mostly planted to my delight.  Blogging takes a back seat whenever work with the hands is the priority.  Between massaging at the day spa and digging in the earth, my hands are under serious duress.  They are swollen and sore most mornings and sunburned, too. Anyone know of the magic solution?

I took a restorative yoga class on Sunday.  If you've never done this and your back suffers, I recommend it. I don't know how classes or instructors vary, but we were put in a series of asanas using props under our backs, bums or legs-holding the positions for 10-15 minutes each.  Sometimes it would take 5 of those minutes for the burning in my muscles to stop.  Many positions were like propped up backbends.  It took a day to feel the real benefit-a soft, relaxed back!  Of course, it only lasted about 2 days.  Once I went back to work, I was burning again. 

Spring is fully sprung here, the bees are buzzing, inspiring work and planting.  It doesn't seem like the restful winter season lasted very long!  The work, work, work is never done.  Sometimes it seems this is all our culture knows.  My fantasy is that in generations past, the workloads were offset by regular campfires and conversations, fishing trips and lying in hammocks with lemonade nearby. 

That's why it's called a fantasy, I suppose. 

Strawberries in Winter

Miles and I drove out to a family farm ten miles up the road (a piece) this afternoon to buy some sweet navel oranges and see if, by chance, they might be harvesting any other surprise goodies this time of year. We were overjoyed to find ninety-nine cent avocados grown on the property that made better guacamole than those I remember from last summer! I bought a giant bagful. There were tomatoes, strawberries, grapefruit, kumquats and honey to be had.

I heard a woman complaining in line that she was visiting from Michigan and that they hardly get fresh grown produce, and most certainly not in the winter. Cha-ching! I counted that blessing immediately. Living in the fertile San Joaquin Valley of California where I was raised means access to even more fresh food than I've been used to since I moved away 17 years ago. I'll need to keep a catalog of blessings so that when the 110 degree global warming July arrives, I'll be able to stave off the inner moanings that will scream, "WHY did I move back here!?"

We came home to unusually sunny and warm weather and ate our booty on the new back porch of the House that Dad Built. You can see that Miles loves strawberries. He missed them last summer because strawberries are apparently a scary, possible allergen that we were told to avoid until he reached a year old. He's home free now.

Missing all of my regular stops and looking forward to getting back in the swing when the dust settles here.