I SEE YOU

   In the movie “Avatar”, a key moment between two characters is the phrase “I see you”. Those three words in that moment are deep and penetrating and a soulful connection…even bonding…between two persons who may be different from one another on the physical level, but kin in spirit….. a recognition and comfort that we are not alone.

   Humans have a deep need to be seen and to be heard and to be accepted, even loved, for whom they are. How often it is that our minds can wander while someone is talking to us, or how scarey it can be to look directly eye-to-eye in communication! The most beautiful and honoring thing to do when sharing with another is to be centered and quiet, to listen carefully and mindfully to the sharing, fully present, and to practice really looking at them with eyes that truly SEE. In listening and sharing when we are startled into the recognition of beauty and kinship between ourselves and another, let us not be afraid to take the risk to say “I SEE YOU”… and to let ourselves blush in the receiving of being seen.

   It is the same with our relationship with the Earth…with our non-human brothers and sisters….all of our Kin in Nature.

   When this tulip fell forward out of the bouquet to face me directly, courageously opening with its deepest self to greet meet me…I did…I did ..distinctly hear it say “I SEE YOU!”  And in turn, I do not think I have ever SEEN a more beautiful tulip.

~from Christine, the Greening Spirit

 

March 30, 2022

My Garden, My Soul-Part 6: Gardens in Glass

*** Photo: Lemon Balm Tea, steeping, fresh from the garden

As every herbalist knows, once we start growing herbs, harvesting or drying them and making tinctures, teas, vinegars and all manner of preparations, we start collecting glass containers to keep them in and especially so we can SEE them.

What that leads to are closets compulsively filled will bottles of different shapes and sizes, saving interesting jars that originally  contained pickles, jams, mustards, condiments, or liquids like wine and spirits.  We cannot…CANNOT…. resist a pretty bottle or jar…!

We also cannot resist the magic of the herbs either and so hopefully we are engaged in the making of lovely herbal delights for healing, culinary temptations or gifts for bath and beauty. Thus…. A Garden in Glass!

*** Picture: Dark Moon Tea/Dreamers Tea (recipe at the end of essay)

The garden is not producing veggies yet, but the greening herbal leaves are abundant and ready for preparations like flavored vinegars. One of my daughters just asked for a family favorite which I have not made in recent years… my Italian Lovage vinegar in a light red wine vinegar (like Pastene), also adding fresh parsley, basil, a few..just a few!..hot pepper flakes and a smashed garlic clove. LOVAGE is a strong herb…I describe it as a kind of cross between parsley and a medieval celery.  This first tiny batch will start us off and more will be steeping as summer progresses. These smaller glass jars originally held Major Grey’s Chutney.

Summer goes by so fast, as does life, which we do begin to realize when our children go through major passages like graduating college, getting married, becoming parents themselves while we become grandparents. Capturing the essence of the greening seasons of the garden and  those in our lives seem to be a desire to hold on to the experience or the memories through tasting, savoring…sometimes in photographs, sometimes in food…and sometimes in glass bottles to remind us of the seasons of life and love. Our Gardens in Glass …a little bit of magic…!

 

***Recipe:  Dark Moon/Dreamers Tea

A blend of dried mugwort, rose petals and perhaps a little spearmint or lavender… To your liking.  A teaspoon per cup, steeped for about 10 minutes, strained with honey for a social tea with friends. Stronger…a longer steeping time (an hour), 2-3 teaspoons per cup to drink before bed to stimulate and remember dreams…. (make sure to write those dreams down in the morning!)

 

From Christine, The Greening Spirit

My other blogs:

Do you love music? http://pianomistress.wordpress.com

Do you love delicious fresh food? http://sensuous soupsandsuppers.wordpress.com

Do you hope for positive life experiences? http://wordmagicandthelawofattraction.wordpress.com

 

 

My Garden, My Soul- Part 2: The Virtues of Borage

The Virtue of Humility:  “Having the proper sense of oneself in a universe of wonders!” ~ Sister Joan Chittister

Those whose gardens are the sanctuaries of herbs know that humility is a Virtue.  We often refer to herbs and their “virtues”, a medieval usage of  the word, describing their merits and usefulness subtly hidden in their at-a-first-glance smallness. Theirs is a humility defying the flashiness of showy and commanding Divas, but instead, tended in the green world by the elusive but ever present plant “Devas” whose mission it is to oversee and communicate the virtues inherent in each plant. Indeed that humility might almost render a clump of borage invisible except for tiny quick flashes of blue if we are moving through the garden mindlessly and in a hurry.

The herbal kindom require us to slow down and practice the soul-virtues of stillness and deep seeing. Looking closely into a patch of tiny blue flowers amongst their soft but prickly leaves, we observe a tiny magnificence of color, complexity and imaginative shape. The borage flowers are beautiful…another of the plants that exhibit the 5-pointed star in its form. If we moved quickly and mindlessly by a patch of this plant, as so many humans do in our largeness and speed, we might miss the complex but delicate blossom design.

Borage has many “virtues” and gifts for us. An herb of “good cheer”, it was thought to dispel melancholy and pensiveness (Culpepper) which actually happens when taking a true look at its richly colored flowers and their display.

A slight taste of cucumber in its leaves and blossoms offers a cooling effect…it can be used as a tea, or added to salads.

Herbs and their uses come in and out of favor in different time periods, but truly their virtues are always present whether acknowledged or not. I find that something shifts and awakens in me when I am hanging out with the herbs…something mysterious, wondrous, and alive…as if under an enchantment.

Enchantment… a virtue of Soul accessed through the magic of deep-seeing and discernment.  A rather nice way to live….whether one be a a plant or a person.

*** These pictures were taken in the garden of good friends….

From Christine, the Greening Spirit

     Hopefully, my other blogs will enchant you as well!

http://pianomistress.wordpress.com

http://sensuoussoupsandsuppers.wordpress.com

http://wordmagicandthelawofattraction.wordpress.com

My Garden, My Soul: Part 1- The Season’s Beginning

Being a Taurus Sun Earthkeeper person, I have always had gardens where I live. The cycle of the seasons in a 4-climate region has captivated me since childhood…each turn full of magic, myth and mystery.

Growing up in an inner city in the northeast USA, I was not exposed to posh gardens in the concrete environment even though I lived in an apartment building on Ash Grove Place which still had a genteel air leftover from earlier times when the neighborhood was lined with ash trees before cars. The plants that came through the cracks and between the buildings in ally-ways were the wild things…dandelions, poke, yellow dock, plantains and the flowers of grasses. Of course back then, I didn’t know their names but I was called to them because they were green growing living things tucked in and around the hardness and grey of city asphalt.

There were two “garden” situations however that served our city spirits. One was the chain-link fence bordering the back parking lot behind our apartment building. In spring and summer, the tall fence was covered by the climbing vines of morning glories. The blue flowers were a never-ending delight…the tight spirals of the buds before opening, which we would pick, blowing at their now- tiny opening at the base .. and out they would flare into full flower by the power of our own mini-godlike breath. Picking the full flower itself , we would also suck at the small opening at the base of it, pulled from the vine, to taste a delightful delicate sweetness,  coming to understand what the bees were collecting while visiting its center!

The second garden was for viewing only through the openings in the chain link fence to the back lot of the next-door neighbor. A German immigrant with a thick accent, he was a crabby terrible tempered territorial old man who yelled loudly and threatened any and all kids who might attempt to climb over the fence to receive a ball gone astray in the air, landing in his green sanctuary. But he was an amazing gardener and it was like peering into the Garden of Eden or a guarded oasis in the middle of the hood between buildings. As an adult, I now understand his fierce and protective personality preserving the peace and order of his sacred garden from a pack of potentially disruptive and invasive neighborhood kids….

My own gardens from marriage, parenthood, divorce, partnership and singledom on have varied. My first planting was of Lamb’s Ears (stachys officinalis) which first captivated me in a re-created colonial apothecaries’ garden at Mystic Seaport in Mystic, CT when I was age 21. The gardens that  followed throughout my life started with herbs and their charming and healing mystique, and later, flowers and vegetables. Always always green around me.  

( One of my earlier gardens )

Several years ago, serious vision problems with early cataracts began to develop and it became impossible for me to see in sunlight and also to just see clearly at all. For the past three years, that, plus a couple of stressful, attention-stealing life situations blocked the ability to garden. I thought that was okay. But there was a flatness in my spirit as a result…unrecognizable to others…but known to my own self. A loss of some sort of energy and meaning. A loss of “veriditas”.

Now, with much excitement and gratitude, my eyesight has been restored through surgeries,  and with the renewal of vision, I could not let another year go by without tending the “Green”.  Three years of not taking care of the yarden turned it into wildness except for the front. This year, I invested in Grow Boxes, not having the time or energy to tame field and woodland and in planting them and situating them in my yard,  I realized that in not gardening the last three years, I had lost some part of SOUL….my own “Greening Spirit/Veriditas”… by not participating in the cycle of the seasons in person and not tending the plants. But now! My Soul has come back home to both the inner and outer gardens!

A week or so ago, as I walked through the front border to the road, I stubbed my toe on an exposed corner of a flat rock buried under moss and matted grass. I bent over to scrape away dirt and plant matter to find a garden plaque that my partner David had placed in my new herb garden almost 20 years ago when we moved in. I had at that time also been teaching a nine-month internship in folkloric herbalism, natural foods and earth spirituality, called “The Sacred Garden”.

How synchronistic was its surprise emergence from “under” to welcome my SOUL back home as I became a “gardener” once again.

They are BACK! My garden, My Soul !

Veriditas! from  Christine, the Greening Spirit

Please visit my other blogs!

http://pianomistress.wordpress.com

http://sensuoussoupsandsuppers.wordpress.com

http://wordmagicandthelawofattraction.com

 

 

 

 

Grow Box Memories: Me and my Moveable Garden

End of season/Glorious Autumn: empty Grow Boxes awaiting our move

 

This past December I moved from my home of 18 years, voluntary “releasing” my sanctuary, house, wooded land and garden to greater power structures after a number of years struggling to keep it going in a time of financial crisis for many. There were a number of upkeep challenges as in most home ownership situations that could not be addressed but beloved beauty as well.

One of my biggest joys and loss in leaving were my gardens. Always over the years, the magic of herb garden, the awe and delight of flowers and the fascination, fun and nourishment of vegetables have provided much delight from seed to stem, leaves, flowers and “fruit”. Watching things grow from the invisible start, through all stages until gathering and harvest has been a reason for each day’s happiness and meaning. Photographing it all with a sense of humor (baby beanlings and escaping cucumbers) and writing about the mesmerizing life in the garden has been an irresistible form of excitement and inspiration about the stages unfolding in my own life.

For the last several years, knowing that at some point I would be leaving, I switched from in-ground gardening to the ease and inherent mobility of container gardening, specifically Grow Boxes. Last summer I finally knew that it would be the last summer at my home and decided that I would with the assistance of my Grow Box Garden, make it a celebration, although tinged with a bittersweet sense of having to let go of what was treasured, dear and familiar.

My Grow Box garden: Summer 2015

 

There are those who love the adventure of movement and change..buying and selling homes and relocating..over and over again. There are those who just cannot stay in one place too long.  And there are those who “ground” and put down roots that are so deep in spirit that to rip them up and relocate is like a mini-death. The way of a TAURUS, it is. And a Taurus I am. Like a Taurus (like the Taurean Ferdinand the Bull)..plant those flowers, lie amongst them forever, taking in the fragrance of the land, garden, field, woods that is familiar, that is “home”. Ah, Peace and Beauty….

 

My Garden, My Soul

 

Life is, however, a series of changes. I now live in the woods for a while…so many things in storage, a momentary simpler life. My Grow Boxes came with me to be my garden wherever I may be that has a patch of land under bright sunlight. For now, they have been over-wintering in the woods, the soil in them cleansed by water and snow awaiting this year’s growing season. Seed catalogues are arriving and in a couple of months, garden centers will re-open offering varieties of wonderful herbs, vegetable and flower babies full of promise.

My Grow Boxes over-wintering in the woods. A-waiting.

 

My prayer is to be able to fill those boxes once again so I may again experience the delight of the mysteries and magic of growing things.

Wherever I am, they are….. and wherever I may go, they too go with me….

From Christine, The Greening Spirit

Please visit my other blogs!

http://sensuoussoupsandsuppers.wordpress.com (FOOD!)

http://pianomistress.wordpress.com (Memoirs of a Piano Teacher)

 

Kitty in the Catmint

It’s not always faeries we spy in the garden when we least expect it, but also a face popping out of the herbs when we bend over to collect some flowers or leaves for tea. In this case, a kitty in the catmint.

You were so still down there and under the greening, even the bumble bees buzzing lazily around you seemed to think you were one of the plants. You are lucky I didn’t pluck you up along with the leaves and put you in the teapot with them!

Only when the three of us in this household came to lean over and laughingly call out to you..”Hi Sky!” did we rouse you from your deep sleep to blink and wink at us from down under, with no intention whatsoever to leave your cool and fragrant sanctuary amongst the catmint and Echinacea.

Cats and gardens seem to go together…whether it be the catmints or chives and it is always amusing to see a tiny  furry head pop out of the flowers or greenery.

Catnip and catmint share some of the same qualities of calming digestion, lowering fever and being a mild sedative. Catmint is more decorative than the weedier-looking catnip, and often planted as an ornamental. Cats are said to prefer catnip, enjoying mild if not wild intoxication merely from the scent…but from what I see here in this garden, the kitties find catmint quite suitable for “tuning-out”.

For a little more info on catmint, search for the herb on http://www.gardeningknowhow.com/edible/herbs/mint/catmint-plant.htm

From Christine, the Greening Spirit

also: http://pianomistress.wordpress.com

http://sensuoussoupsandsuppers.wordpress.com

Dappled Light: Where Mystery Lives

 

Perhaps it is because astrologically I am more of a Moon and Water person with Cancer Rising and Moon in Pisces that I shy away from the intensity of direct bright sunlight,the glory of summer for those who love to frolic underneath its radiant heat and blinding shine. My Taurus Sun loves the gardens, vegetables, fruits, herbs and flowers, but MY (earthbound) Taurus with the addition of a water Moon and Rising Sign,  is cooler and more moist, and garden tending at the morning and evening hours is preferred over sweating it out at high noon.

The same for me is “beach time” which practically never finds me basking in the beach chair under the hottest most direct radiance of the day, but almost always at the slanted light hours of early morning or late afternoon until sunset. If I must be out during the onslaught of the BRIGHT, sunglasses (BIG ONES) and hats (BIG ONES) soften the blow of squinched eyes half shut and blindness that is white and not dark.

I find that it is often hard to see in bright light and also to take photographs that reveal depth and complexity, scenes and subjects often flattened out and drained of color. If seen more clearly, the direct intensity of light leaves nothing to the imagination, everything revealed, no secrets to uncover.

For me, dappled light and slanted light is where Mystery resides and I am in love with mystery and the interplay between what is seen and what is unseen both of which are always “there”.  (I must admit that lounging about with a big hat and dark sunglasses presents an air of “mystery” but again, the mystery is about what is semi-hidden and unseen even in bright sunlight. The mystery resides in the shadows).

I also admit that sun is fun and that minus the relentless and blinding glare, there is always beauty to be revealed in every hour of the day… Let the fire people..Aries, Leo and Sagittarius… revel and activate themselves and play games and adventures under the intense bright light and heat of summer days…and we will meet instead and party together during the waxing and waning hours of the sun, or around the dancing flames of the firepit in the middle of the darkness. I will weed the garden, and pick my flowers and herbs in softer, cooler light…

Thank goodness there are 24 hours in each day…and something of preferred light and shadow for everyone…

 

From Christine, the Greening Spirit

ALSO:

http://wordmagicandthelawofattraction.wordpress.com

http://pianomistress.wordpress.com

http://sensuoussoupsandsuppers.wordpress.com

 

Time Out for Magick- ANOTHER Path of Soul

Some of us cannot be defined by a singular spiritual path but instead, draw from  the richness of a variety of traditions to inspire and nourish the diverse complexities of soul within and around us. For example, for the past several weeks I have been incorporating the Benedictine cycle of the Hours of the Day and Night, pausing to notate the energies and themes of Vigils  ( Deepest Night/ The Great Silence/Knowing the Truth)…Lauds (Sunrise/Praise and Celebration)…Terce and Prime (Mid-Morning/Work and the Art of Blessing)…Sext (Noon/Praying for Peace)…None (Mid-Afternoon/Nothing Lasts Forever)…Vespers (Evening/Coming Home and Community)…and Compline (Bedtime/Early Night/Asking for Good Dreams/Entering the Great Silence),  returning again through Deepest night, to Sunrise. Another day! Another gifted opportunity in which to create something new!

This pausing and mindfulness of the blessings and tasks of these hours has deepened  my appreciation and love of the cyclical nature of each twenty-four hour day from dark to light and back to dark again and connected me to the monastic rooms of my own soulful “Interior Castle”.

Living this way, although coming from a religious tradition, is really quite “magical” as spiritual practice, connecting me to the Great Mystery of Life and he rhythms of the earth and heavens that are felt and experienced rather than just described in words or print. In truth, the best of the mystical traditions, free of dogma, have never lost their connection to the Earth, nature and “the great Round” of the seasons, the moon, and the year.

Yesterday, my Library Angel “ACE”, through the agency of a soul-sister, handed me another book that is also a rich reminder of a path of soul that is ever a part of my own journey through life. All the way from “monk” to “green witch”… beloved traditions that each in their own ways have never lost the spirituality, and practices of the Earth, Cycles and Seasons of Celebration and Transformation.

Sitting on the front deck, feet up, un-apologeticley spending the afternoon reading “Healing Magic-A Green Witch Handbook” by Robin Rose Bennett and drinking fresh lemon balm and lemon verbena tea from the garden…. (the “Hours” of my reading being between mid-afternoon (None) to earliest evening (Vespers)… I once again reveled in herb lore, moon lore, tree lore, chakras and medicine wheels, the tarot wisdom, women’s sacred cycles and rituals and wise-women traditions.

Is there conflict between the monastic path of awareness and the green witch path? Not within me, as they each dance, blend and honor celebration, silence, prayer, ritual, presence, communication, intuition, gratitude and praise, beauty, and periodic chosen solitude to be one-on-one with the good and virtuous inner Voices of the “invisible” world…angels, ancestors, guides and God.

Is there conflict between the monastic path of earth-centeredness and the green witch path and the relationships with the healing plants/herbs of field, forest and gardens? I think not, remembering the wise women of the villages and the brother monks in the monastery gardens who all were keepers of the secret powers of lemon balm and lemon verbena tea!

And so:

“Healing Magic is rooted in the earth. It’s basis and foundation is the realization of immanence, which is the recognition that the Great Mystery that gives life to the earth and he universe is within the earth as well as transcendent. It (God-Goddess-All-That-Is) exists within us and within the land–every tree, every animal, every pebble and every so-called inanimate object”  ~Robin Rose Bennett (Healing Magic: a Green Witch Guidebook)

 

“There is a secret place. A radiant sanctuary. As real as your own kitchen. More real than that. Constructed of the purest elements. Overflowing with the ten thousand beautiful things. Worlds within worlds. Forests, rivers. Velvet coverlets thrown over featherbeds, fountains bubbling beneath a canopy of stars. Bountiful forests, universal libraries. A wine cellar offering an intox cation so sweet you will never be sober again. A clarity so complete you will never again forget. This magnificent refuge is inside you. Enter. Shatter the darkness that shrouds the doorway… Believe the incredible truth that the Beloved has chosen for his dwelling place the core of your own being because that is the single most beautiful place in all of creation. ~ St. Theresa of Avila (The Interior Castle)

May Magic and Holy Blessings Be Yours!  (one and the same,,,)

From Christine, The Greening Spirit

 

 

 

Less is More (sometimes) : Bouquet in a saltshaker

I am living with friends who are exquisite gardeners. The gardens outside are in stages of glorious blooming…every day something new…colors, shapes, scents exploding in a sensual symphony for the eye and the spirit. Joyful, delightful, playful and soul-full!

As I walk through the gardens at various times of the day, I want to scoop it all up within my arms and bring it inside to my room to keep forever..I want to keep it ALL very close to me day and night in daylight and dark..so full of beauty and inspiration.

How greedy of me, really, because I spend enough time indoors in harsher seasons of dying off and cold. The gardens and the surrounding green-ness outside is a celebration to visit on its own terms…out there.

But that’s why we have bouquets.

They do not have to be big.

Yesterday while walking about the gardens with my camera, I gathered tiny stems of blossoms…the purple ones of garden sage, and catmint. And then three tiny stalks of dianthus in brightest pink. Coming inside, I searched for a tiny vase to put them in, but they are packed away with all of my things in storage.

But, in searching, I found a small empty glass salt shaker…just perfect for my tiny bouquet from the abundance of flowering choices outside. And of course, silly me, I instantly knew that often.. sometimes…  Less is more.

A garden in a salt shaker is a garden of Abundance. A feast for the eye.

A garden on my  nightstand. (accompanied my a sprig of Motherwort in a jelly jar) is my indoor solarium.

 

From Christine, the Greening Spirit

Loving the World: The Art of Deep Seeing

The lovely poet Mary Oliver writes: “My work is loving the world………… Let me keep my mind on what matters,
which is my work, which is mostly standing still and learning to be astonished“.

There are days when there are hours wandering about with my camera seeking, finding and capturing mysteries, and then writing about them. It is for me a meditative time, akin to prayer, I have come to realize, for in this practice I am always in a state of astonishment. It seems it is my way at these times to “gaze” instead of “look”, and to “see” rather than “glance” for I am a Taurus and we prefer to move more slowly, and linger in order to savor the experiences wherever we are.

Which brings me to the art of Deep-Seeing nature around me which when involving astonishment triggered by Beauty makes me fall deeply in love with the world.

But in our ordinary busy-got-to-get- somewhere times, we rush by life and our environment moving so fast, merely glancing at the surface and brushing by the most astonishing things hidden in plain sight on our way to be elsewhere.

Coming in and out of the house on my way to “out there”,  hopping in the car and taking off to tasks and responsibilities, I am in my head making lists, prioritizing things to do, appointments to get to on time and all that. In so doing, I pass this beautiful red Japanese Maple right outside the door, glancing quickly as I am fiddling and looking for my car keys in the depths of my purse and am astonished when I find them amidst the pocketbook’s inner complexities and clutter!

A day or two later, when not so rushed but going out to do a task, the slant of light on this tree caught my attention as I passed, suddenly revealing the patterns of several layers of branches and feathery leaves. The greenery was multi-colored as well, green, red, purple and PINK! I was astonished, immediately stopping to dig into my purse for my camera which is always with me (forget the car keys!). This sudden switch of vision to deep-seeing mode captured a Mystery that captivated me, took my breath away and surrounded me with a feeling of the holy, the Whole-y, the Sacred, The Magical.

But it’s not over, this Astonishment. There is never any end to how deep we can go with the art of Deep-Seeing in the world around us, in the people we meet or live with, or in the desire and seeking for Truth. How powerful is your curiosity? How hungry are you for depth and meaning,  for the seeking of Soul in the world,  and for the deeper mysteries of beauty hidden everywhere when we stop to linger, gaze and be present?

Standing there, lingering with this tree, looking down at its flattened crown from above, I noticed a small opening in its branches. Bending closer, I was charmed and astonished as I looked deeper through the opening and down to the ground under its trailing limbs … there..brightly colored, lush, textured and shiny..a whole luxurious community of greenlings…broad  shimmering violet leaves and delicate sweet woodruff (an ingredient in May Wine)…a combined vibrant palette of pink, purple, green and pale yellow.

It is true that some of us, when astonished, are inspired to make art, sometimes writing poetry, sometimes creating a painting, sometimes a story written or told, sometimes a photo composed and edited for making magic trying to capture and make what we have seen immortal…all irresistible components of falling in love.

I come to know that while teaching piano and  spiritual well-being to earn a living, that my real work is, and ever will be, loving the world and daily being astonished, sharing that Good News wherever I can.

From Christine, the Greening Spirit

NOTE: don’t be shy..say hi!

also:

http://sensuoussoupsandsuppers.wordpress.com

http://wordmagicandthelawofattraction.wordpress.com

http://pianomistress.wordpress.com