Five Things Friday

- Some days I sit at the computer, fingertips poised, a world of stories flipping through my mind.  Fragments of dreams, slivers of conversation, single pages from books, and hours of internal processing.  I have begun too many journal entries with the phrase "my thoughts swirl."  But when I lay my hands across the keyboard, all that comes out is a breath of golden leaves clinging stubbornly to the elms. 

- "You must keep rinsing out your heart."  That single command, residual words from a vivid dream, has tattooed itself across my chest.  Frida herself would be intrigued by this one, the salty sea and beating heart, aorta bright with life.

 - I need to paint all of the things.  I could begin today and never finish every image that suggests itself.  The more I tap into imagination, the more I record and acknowledge, the more I understand this limitless source.

- I am the bird who glories in the morning, in expansive space of pre-dawn, the possibility of sunrise and the hope in dew.  I need to crawl into bed earlier, because that first light is too good to miss.

- Sometimes I feel I could live a hundred different lives all within this single lifetime.  I feel so at home striding through gorgeous brick galleries swilling wine with urban artists, I feel so at home deep in the words miles away from the nearest human voice.  I feel at home in the dry heat, I feel at home in the dripping mist.  I feel at home with the ocean roaring in my ears, I feel at home in the thin mountain air.  I am at home everywhere and yet I carry my roots with me.

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My friends!  This week utterly escaped me and I've been remiss in naming the gift-a-way recipient of my sweetgrass!   CAT BABBIE, you beautiful soul, your name came out of the bowl!  Send me your address miss, and I'll have a package in the wind for you!  And to all my other ladies who wrote, thank you.  I love, LOVE reading your words, hearing about your lives and musing, your joys and trials.  Thank you.  You make my world a brighter place.

The Sweetest Grass (plus Give-a-Way Braid for YOU)

- A Story - 

When I was 18, I was convinced I was a bonafide herbalista. I started my first garden on the rickety balcony of a cheap apartment in central California.  Three plastic tubs housed a smattering of red leaf lettuce, sweet basil and one slightly tragic tomato plant.  Meager though my garden was, I fell in love: the lettuces were snipped and placed on hand-me-down plates, the basil was plucked for all those experimental meals one creates as a poor college student, and the tomato saw me as a hovering mother hen, checking water at least twice a day.  

In the 15 years since that first garden, I've moved countless times up and down west coast, a nomadic wanderer of sorts, but I've always managed to carve out a gardening space.  Sometimes no more than a tiny porch, sometimes as broad a sunny driveway full of containers, but I've always grown something.   However, the caveat of limited, container-based spaces always translated into a fine display of pragmatism:  If I only had six square feet of space, then I obviously needed to grow six square feet of vegetables that would nourish my family and herbs that would spice up our teas.  Anything else seemed to flippant to "waste" my precious room on.  This mind-frame ruled my planting choices for a great many years: window beds were always filled with collard greens and kale, baskets hung heavy with strawberries and cherry tomatoes, ceramic pots at the front door grew lemon cucumbers and thyme.

Then late last winter, something shifted.  For years I had been purchasing crisp white smudge bundles of sage and thick braided ropes of sweetgrass from consciences companies, never thinking too deeply on the lives of the plants before they offered their medicine up to me.  I did not know where exactly those plants sunk roots into the earth, how they unfurled and grew throughout the seasons, who tended them (if anyone aside from Mother Earth), and with what ceremony were they harvested for my sacred use.  And suddenly, it became Important.  The sacred practice of smudging was a daily ceremony for me, yet I felt unconnected to where these herbs came from.  As I walked through my home, wafting smudge smoke, cleansing the air, I realized that I wanted to, no, needed to understand that process.  I already understood what it was to grow seeds into food to place on my family's plates, but the act of tending life that would nourish my spiritual practice illuminated a new fire in my heart.  

Armed with the power of Google, I found a gardener in Northern California who would ship out baby sweetgrass, still infantile in their propagation plugs.  After the last frost melted from the Seattle ground, my postman delivered a small package holding six wee bundles, each carefully wrapped and tucked in plastic and paper.  And the mother hen, from that first tomato so many years ago, came back out.  

As the months slipped into high summer, my garden bloomed on.  Tomatoes, beans, carrots, berries, greens were all gratefully plucked for our bodies and bones.  But the sweetgrasses were something different; they were deigned for our hearts and minds.  So it was to them I sang the longest songs of thanks, them I combed over and cleaned with the gentlest hand, them I brought out gratitude offerings of aventurine chips and crushed sage.  And under that love, they thrived like I would have never expected, growing fat and glossy leaves, wafting their earthy vanilla scent over all the garden.  

When I harvested them, it was with appreciation that bubbled up from my very marrow for I knew these plants.  I knew what they looked like with dew drops sparkling, how they smelled when the wind lifted their leaves, how quickly they grew when the sun shone bright.  I was the first to tuck them into soil, I was the one to watch them grow, and I will be the one to feel their sacredness every time I light a braid.  I harvested as much as I needed for the year and left the rest to the earth, for their perennial roots.  Now, as the autumn settles deeply and the mornings promise frost, I see my sweetgrass settling in for the winter sleep.  And when I light one of those pale vert braids, my heart will know that it was in the sacredness of full understanding, full season, full circle.

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 Now for you, my friends, I'd love to offer one of my precious sweetgrass braids.  Just a simple little gift-a-way, from my hands and heart to yours, this baby will be wrapped up with love and a couple other small goodies from me.  

To enter, just leave me a comment below!  Say hello, tell me a story of your autumn, or what delicious concoction you're sipping right now.  I'll pick a winner at random on Wednesday November 6th and announce the name right here on the blog.   Be well you glorious souls!

- U - 

La Grande Feuille

I spent last week in the warmth of California's central valley, bare armed and open toed.  The golden rolling hills have a beauty all unto their own: scattered live oaks, grasses turned nearly white, wide blue skies and over all, the scent of dried earth.  I filled up on it, as this is the land I was born to, raised in, formed on.  It is, and alway will be, one of my homes.  

When I returned North, the night fog stood to greet me.  The dawn broke cold and bright, breath hanging heavy in the air.  But after a week of all that California sun, the thing that cracked my heart wide open in the North was the color.  I could feast on that chroma for the rest of my days.  It catches me mid-sentence, mid-stride, mid-thought in a blaze of vermillion fire.  It wraps me up in the tide of seasons, the shifting dance of growth and release, the marker of yet another year drawing down in a flaming burst of glory.  If summer is the outstretched wings in flight, then autumn is the phoenix's fire.  Halleluia I say.

La Grande Feuille - The Autumnal Rings

(sterling silver and carnelian) 

So naturally, when I sat down with paper and pencil, when I opened the drawers full of stones and silver, I needed to make an homage to the glory of Fall.  And so they are.

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(both rings are in the etsy shop now!) 

Guess What?

Guess what? For you, the corvid femmes, magic makers, feather collectors, moon watchers, medicine holders and wild women, I made you a bag.

 Corvid Medicine Bag

(tooled leather, distressed hide, teal suede, cobalt lacing, and a whole lotta rivets) 

Now I try not to boast too much, but seriously, this bag is Amazing. It deserves that capitol A. Richly distressed hide, fully lined in the most delicious teal suede, hand-tooled and painted feathers, hundreds of stitches and nearly as many rivets, this bag represents so many hours of love and meditation, so much care for the details and commitment to craftsmanship that will last a life time.  

I've been thinking much on, and deeply in love with the idea of medicine bags lately.  It is in that spirit that I've poured so much time, energy and love into this piece.  I love the idea of infusing goodness into something that will see you through a lifetime of seasons, worn close to the body, across the heart, something that will be a daily staple that was so carefully crafted, so intentionally shaped.  Every last piece of this bag has been worked by hand, from the original template to the drawn, tooled and painted feathers, from the bright lining to the hand-stamped rivets, from the stitched lacing to the swinging fringe.  It rests upon the hip with a sturdy, substantial feel, a native bohemian piece with a little attitude and a lotta magic.  But that's just how I roll.

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(She'll be in the etsy shop this afternoon!) 

Eos

I like to wake early.  I like the animal-quiet of the predawn.  I like to bring up the sun and feel he's all mine for the taking.  I like the steamy rush of my breath blending with the frosty air.  I like to stand very still, imagine I'm just one more redwood in the forest, and wait for the robins to land on my shoulders.

I like to be alone.  That way when I shed a tear, I'm free to let it roll down my cheek and wait for the sun to dry it off.  That way, when the fog slinks back and the sunrise first breaks the ridge, I'm free to clap and squeal and spin in circles like all the other dawn-crazed birds.  That way, I'm just one more creature pressing down into the earth.  One more ridiculous, glorious, fallible, survivalist creature.

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