Lessons from the Earth

Things I've learned from my strawberry patch:

- Patience. The six spindly plants I planted last year that barely survived the summer came back lush, fruitful and vibrant after the rains of spring.

- Optimism. I've amended the soil and planted six more along that stretch of fence where several plants died last year.

- Enjoying the Moment. I've been harvesting berries for several weeks now. With only this small patch, this means every couple of days, five to ten tiny little berries are ripe for the picking. Just enough for a single serving, sweet and delicious and best eaten the same day.

- Steady Hands. It's delicate work, cutting the berries loose without bruising them.

- Observation. Berries ripen overnight; I have to check the patch every day to catch them when they're ripe for me but not yet noticed by the critters.

- Calm. Working in the earth, in any capacity, brings me calm. The worst of moods, the heaviest of worries, even the grip of sorrow can be dispelled after a few minutes of digging up the earth. The monotony of weed-pulling offers a rhythm all its own - and the occasional joy of actually getting the whole root of the dandelion.

I've been thinking a lot about the Strawberry Moon, of how to better live by the cycles of the seasons. I'm a very early-morning person, up before dawn every day, but I've been pondering a shift to a later schedule to better enjoy the long protracted days of summer. I haven't done it yet, and I may not - the sunrise, after all, is still my favorite time of day - but it's a natural inclination, I think, to feel a shift in the body along with the season. Just as we tend to get to bed earlier in winter, when the nights are long and dark, it only seems right to stay up late past the long sunset, and watch the first stars dot the sky.

Long long days, that's summer. Live by the sun, feel by the moon, as they say.

(don't ask me who they is, I saw it on Pinterest)

Quickening Moon

The February full moon is tomorrow. Snow Moon, Ice Moon, Hunger Moon; many of its names recall that winter is still upon us. But it's been two weeks since we passed the halfway mark to the next solar event of the year, the spring equinox; and the shift can already be felt. The Front Range has seen a very mild winter thus far, with occasionally dumps of snow but many, many sunny and warm days. February in particular has been very warm. Denver set a new high for the date last week - 73!

http://yourtake.9news.com/media/18442654

It has other names that hint at the coming spring: Rowan Moon, Wild Moon, and the one that caught my eye today, Quickening Moon.

The Earth certainly is quickening. My tulips are beginning to poke above ground. I wish I could be happy about that, but as we all know, winter is not over, and it will certainly snow and turn cold again before spring really settles in to stay. So while it gave me a thrill to see them emerging, it also makes me sad, because they're rather frail, and another hard freeze will mean yet another year with no blooms.

This time of year is about beginnings. An intention planted now that will grow and thrive as spring arrives, and our energy increases along with the lengthening of the days and the warming of the Earth.

Full Moon Spell:

On a slip of paper, jot down, in simple terms, what you want. You can also do this on a bay leaf, with a single word.
Light a candle in the color corresponding to your need.
Consider your desire, really think about what it is you want, what steps you will need to take to get there, and visualize it manifested.
Burn the paper and bury the ashes in your garden, if you have one.

Pre-Dawn and the Wheel of the Year

I'm an early bird, so much so that I intersect with the night owls occasionally when I get up at 4:30 a.m. Even on the weekends, I'm up with the dawn, no matter when I went to bed.

The best thing about the very early morning - the wee hours - is the predawn sky and the stillness of nature. Every morning, before I get into my car and fill up my head with thoughts of my workday and what I need to do, I like to take a few minutes to look up at the night sky and listen to the wind walking through the empty branches. It's the kind of quiet that only occurs for a few hours each day, when most of the humans and animals have gone to ground and only a few creatures are stirring.

(Then I get in my car and head out, and am always surprised at how many people are out and about, going to or returning from work. Humanity is never truly at rest, it seems.)

The moon today is a waning third quarter, still boldly lighting the sky even only half-illuminated. Venus, Mars, and Jupiter shine in a jeweled arc from the east to southwest. The big dipper hangs upright over the eastern horizon. I missed Orion today - he may have set already, or was perhaps just further over the western horizon than my vantage point afforded.

In any case, it's a strangely magical, wondrous, marvelous thing to simply look up at the night sky. And yet, there's far more to it than simply appreciating the beauty of the moon and the stars. People have been observing these moving bodies since the beginning of our existence as a source of not only wonder and awe, but a means of discovering our own place in the universe, of calculating time, of establishing and connecting to its rhythms.

In ancient Egypt, the rise of the dog star, Sirius, coincided with the annual Nile flood that brought fresh, fertile soils in which they planted their crops. As the event that ruled the very rhythm of their lives, this was the date upon which they based their calendar. The flood was believed to have been the tears of Isis, weeping for her dead husband, Osiris.

  Annual flood, 1937. Click here for spectacular full-size image.


With the construction of the Aswan High Dam in 1970, the annual flood no longer occurs in Egypt. While the release of water is now regulated, and the previous fear of an excessive or insufficient flood is relieved, the lack of fresh silt means the land must now be artificially fertilized. For every advance, a price, I suppose.

It is a fascinating paradox of humanity that we are part of nature - not only that we are born of this Earth, but that all we have achieved has been based upon learning from nature, understanding how it functions, how its parts fit together, how one piece affects another - and at the same time, we have developed our entire civilization on the principle that we can manipulate our environment to suit our needs. We cut down trees to put up shelters, and grow fibers to weave into clothes, and plow up land to plant the seeds we want to grow. We're part of the Earth, and yet our history of adapting its materials to suit our needs have given us a sense of separateness from it. Some philosophies suggest we are above it, keepers of it...masters over it.

Nature laughs at such notions, and reminds us regularly how we exist here by her whim. At this moment, floodwaters in Missouri have closed roads and threaten hundreds of homes. Last week, at least 11 people were killed by tornadoes in Texas. Here in my home of Colorado, several people will lose their lives over the course of the winter in avalanches, and more will perish next summer when they get lost hiking in the woods, or are struck by lightning on a mountaintop.

It's no wonder to me that for millenia, humans have both revered and feared nature, developing stories to explain her activities and practices to placate her more destructive flights of fancy. The gods of nature are typically gods of Chaos, and a common mythological pattern is the overthrow of these Chaos gods by the gods of Order - the gods who give life and guidance to humans. Typically these were the gods around which the society centered its worship.

But it's worth noting that the gods of Order were born of the gods of Chaos themselves.