Time for Growth

This year we went big. We decided to do serious gardening.

For the first time in my life (Well other than that pregnancy thing...) I grew something from seed to plant and now my babies are beginning to flower.

In some cases, the leaf products, we will be harvesting this weekend our first labors.

I am feeling this incredible pull to be out in the dirt. To care take these little lives. To nurture and protect and enjoy that process.

I am frustrated with obstacles that keep me from these labors.

Lack of weed whacker line, thunderstorms, lack of sleep, lack of dirt all seem like demons slashing at my soul.

Diabolical imps tormenting me, laughing as I sit by the window and watch the rain fall. Or worry as mid-May freeze threatens leaf and stem and flower.

But this eagerness is such a new feeling. Usually my gusto for gardening wanes from June to September as the dread fear of wasp bite and subsequent lack of breathing drains my happiness and draws me deeper into the cave like safety of the living room.

I play outside with the kidlet daily. We play in the park and on the porch. But the joy of communion with my land has been so muted these last six years it seems like a memory of a dream.

So forgive my new parent enthusiasm for spinach and tomato blossoms.

Ignore my gushing over containment methods.

Laugh behind your hands as I sing to the Fae folk my happiness and desire for their blessings.

Be gentle with my robustness in speech when waxing poetic over canning methods.

I am growing into this new role as earth mother. I am just being to sprout in my ability to understand the wants and needs of my Genus Loci.

Though new to the growing of plants from storage cell to full leaf, my twenty plus years of herbal lore and actual planting of others seedlings gives me courage.

And the most wonderful things of all is to share this learning with my own body creation.

Nurturing the love of the natural world in the kidlet is humbling and beyond rewarding.

So Mary, Mary Quite Contrary, what are you growing today?