Kambocha squash and fireweed in the wild garden

This year the garden has grown wilder and wilder as the summer goes on. All the rain of spring supported all the plants to grow in abundance….some wanted and others not so much.

Years ago I decided that a well-groomed garden with plants in rows neatly ordered was making me crazy. I didn’t want to spend time in the garden because it was so overwhelming as the weeds grew along with my work that didn’t allow constant tending and grooming. I wasn’t sure what to do about it.

But I began to spend time in the garden, participating in my shamanic listening practices, being very quiet and something started to emerge. All I can say about this is that it was the garden speaking to me about what she wanted.

Apothecary rose brilliance

The buttercup shared with me about compassion. The thistle offered me protection. The dandelion, oh the dandelion, took me deeper and deeper into myself. The nettle changed me and kept changing me. And the rose, she saved me, over and over.

And so this year, as I walk the spiral of the garden in late summer, I am overwhelmed

with so many emotions. I am overjoyed that the squash are climbing up the crooked hazel. I am sad that the rabbits have eaten all of my monarda fistulosa and

Skullcap flowering

echinacea and…..I am satisfied that our harvest of oatstraw is abundant and beautiful.

This August time, Lammas time really is the time of an abundance of emotions. We begin the harvest, of oatstraw, motherwort, goldenrod, skullcap, green nettle seeds and then we look around and see that, oh, if there was just more time to plant this or create a new garden here…..

Soon it will be time to return to the ground of autumn….the wild rose hips will be ripe, the dandelion and burdock root can be dug, and the apples will be made beautifully into pressed juice and sauce. But for now allowing the emotions to flow, now joy, now anger, now sadness, now grief, now contentment. We may transform into something new, harvesting the fullness of life and then allowing ourselves to rest finally.

May it be in Beauty.