Ahh this glorious rain, bags and baskets over flowing with seeds and fruits; the Lammas season is upon us, the harvest time has begun. This time last week all I could think about was all that rain wasted, the seeds I didn’t sow and yes I was literally in the weeds as they were toppling over head. But now, thanks to the wise words of a circle of friends I am seeing the beautiful mystery in all that is unfolding without my careful sowing. My garden is literally only half seeds I sowed, the rest were dropped there by birds and trees and mysterious forces all around, but all that is sprouting around me is a gift and I am drinking it in. I have let go of my quest for perfection, at least in the garden for starters, the weeds literally fall over me as I scratch around them and throw out handful of seeds to the wet earth with wild abandon. There still is many moons of growth in my garden and half way through the year I am ready to set out more wishes, intentions and hopes of more food for the family.
This year has been intense from dry and scarce to overflowing floods…the extremes are truly a humble reminder that it is not all up to us…..As we witness the extremes in the world around us it is really hard in integrate all that seems to be happening right now I ask myself has the world always been this intense and we just were more insulted in our communities without mass media we just didn’t have to take it all in? I really don’t know but I feel responsible some how to take it in, to be aware, to act as effectively as I can to create hope, support and effect positive change…to do enough!!
And some days lately I simply can’t muster much of anything. Remember those seeds my son and I threw out this spring on our new land…well I never really watered, went away and then got too tired and too hot to care. I kind of wrote it off as a personal failure and then we wandered up there last evening and let my tell you it is a wild mess!!! But what went from being the dream of a flower farm then quickly one more project I couldn’t quite maintain, has magically transformed back into a flower farm with any of my doing. While I slept and fretted about all the work I had to do, but simply did nothing, the ‘weeds’ grew into a million sunflowers and are all about to bloom. BOOM, a flower farm with nothing but Mother Nature to thank,(and of course the previous farmers who dropped and ton of sunflowers seeds in the earth last year without me knowing).
So though I am still sneaking seeds in the ground it is time to reap and appreciate, the ripeness of the season, all that we are given and all that is. In this high time of summer with all the intensity that it has brought, we must remember to rejoice in all that we have, which is more than so many and pray for the same simple abundance for all beings on this earth. May the fullness of this season nourish all and may we all know what we need to do and may that be enough, at least for now.
The Journey- by Mary Oliver
One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice–
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
“Mend my life!”
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do—
determined to save
the only life you could save.
