I will tend and water and pray and sing

The garden this year has been deeply nourishing. It is the 5th year of this garden for us here at our little farm on Whidbey. I have written before about my whole life being an adventure of moving here and there and discovering new plants and new gardens. It was so easy in the past to uproot myself and leave for new adventures. When we moved here, I knew it was permanent.

There has been a stirring in me for over 20 years to root into the land and grow from there. It started in Seattle, where Tadd and I owned a little house in Ballard. We had a eight foot thick laurel hedge growing around the perimeter of our yard. Tadd, with chainsaw in hand, cut the laurel back dramatically. We discovered that the squirrels lived in there as we disrupted their homesteads. And the summer after that clear cut, I discovered a blue elder growing out of the laurel. This was right around the time when I met Susun Weed and EagleSong. My life was to change dramatically in a very short span of time and I didn’t quite know it yet.

I began to do small rituals out my my yard, to honor the earth, to pray for my life purpose to be revealed to me and for peace. I would pour herbal infusion on the elder at the end of my rituals. The elder grew flowers and then berries that summer, right in the middle of Seattle, right in the middle of the laurel. I trusted this message and thanked Mama Earth for such a generous gift. One day when I finished my ritual, I turned to walk back in my house and from around the corner of the house flew an enormous hawk. It flew very near me and then out of sight.

I was taken to my knees by this experience. And from it I felt something grow in me that now flourishes some twenty years later. I learned that wherever I am on the Earth, it is sacred. I learned that to do what we are called to do wherever we are, whoever we are is what is needed.

I am now being called to cultivate the land here. This seems like the hardest task of all. It is the land itself that is calling for this. I could easily live here amongst the great weeds and tall grasses and not grow many plants. But I am being called into something greater than I have been before and with some reluctance and resistance I am answering the call.

It is like the shedding of the snake’s skin. I am surrendering to the fact that I am
changing. It is uncomfortable with a lot of not knowing. And like the seed that hold new life inside it, I don’t yet know what I will become with it. I will tend and water and pray and sing and trust the invisible hands that guide me on.

May it be in Beauty.