Imbolc and the full Snow Moon
Friday gratefuls: Mini-splits. Shadow. Ginny and Janice. Luna and Annie. Leo. Gracie. My Lodgepole companion. The crooked Aspen outside my bedroom. The Mountain Lion family near Morrison. Black Bears. Soon. Mule Deer and Elk. Fox. Abert’s Squirrels. Red Squirrels. Rabbits. Voles. Mice. Marmots.
Sparks of Joy and Awe: Wild Neighbors
Week Kavannah: Yirah. Awe.
One brief shining: Tis an odd season this with taxes due next month, the wearing of the green celebrating St. Patrick who took Irish Wolfhounds to the Pope, big Snows covering basketball tourney roads, and hints of Spring with resurrection and liberation waiting to manifest.
Always of two desires in these months. Crack wind, Winter blow, Snow. Stay longer. Fire in the fireplace. A good book. Cold nights for sleeping. Yes.
Open vistas. Clear Skies. Mountain Wildflowers. Aspen Catkins. Lodgepole Anthers. Rabbit families. Chipmunks. Greening Willows and Dogwood. Mountain Streams in full voice, tumbling and turning. A sense of possibility strong in the Air. Yes.
Dog journal: If you’ve never had a skittish puppy lay at your feet, head rested on your slipper. If you’ve never had a puppy wriggle up the side of your leg and look you in the eye with, yes, puppy love. If you’ve never had a puppy. I wish you had.
Shadow incarnates love. Adoration. Companionship. Even the struggles and the outright exhaustion. All part of the joy.
Puppies, like Wildflowers and Spring, remind us of the Great Wheel, Maiden-Mother-Crone, life begetting life. Old age and youth running next to each other in partnership. With love.
Shadow. A small streak of black fur bounding through Snow drifts, racing around the perimeter, the fence line, all young muscle and limber movement, all newness. A potion to ease the aching joints and rigidity of 78 year old bones.
Just a moment: I keep finding Seeds. Books about Seeds. Seed-Keepers. Seed Savers Exchange Catalogue. Seeds. The Seed Vault in Svalbard. Chapters in the Light-Eaters. Lectures in online botany classes.
Recalling the spiny nubbin of a Beet Seed. The delicate Carrot Seed. The thick Pea. The Soil in an Andover raised bed leavened with compost and top soil, organic chemicals. Pressing the Seeds into the Soil. Feeling a frisson of future salads, side dishes.
In remembering these things a sort of strange hope rises. That we, the faded flowers, now the Seed heads of yesterday’s generational garden will leave our Seeds of love, justice, and compassion to grow in the rich Earth of this once and future nation.
Maybe we could create a Seed Catalogue for our nieces and nephews, our grandchildren. Even a Seed Savers Exchange for the ideas and actions that still hold the promise of a victory garden for diversity, for equality, for shared wealth and opportunity.
Or a nation in exile limned in a new Whole Earth catalogue for those of us who hold fast to the notion that rapaciousness, cruelty, mockery, and misogyny have no place in America’s fields and beds. Plant these instead, these seeds of liberty and freedom with their attendant responsibilities.
Plant this seed of love and that one of compassion. Fertilize with chi, illuminate with ohr, moisten with joy.