A standard week in the way that life exists on this earth. The sun rises and sets. Political posturing continues. The moon waxes, adding abundance each night as it sails through the stars, growing into its fat fullness, The Harvest moon. Our human tribe gathers in the West loudly defending land and custom who's voice has been muffled, but not silenced. Our days are growing incrementally shorter, the shadows on the fields lengthen noticeably. The cunning coyote nabs another unsuspecting pullet. The nighttime temps flirt with frost, just enough to cause sleepless tossing and turning in bed as they dip and deceive. Loved ones leave this earth through the doorway of death, new loved ones join us here in fast and amazing births. The delicate hot crops of summer, persist, doggedly ripening and staying the course. The late summer/fall hustle catches up with one farmer and slows her with a course of cold and cough ailments, the subtle sign of the body saying, "slow down, you've had enough." But then, there are tomatoes to pick and cover crops to sow and emails to reply. Balance, oh balance you ephemeral height.
I bow humbly to some of the tools the garden can supply, not just a piece of livelihood, and nourishment, but medicine too. A healing broth procured from the bones of the sassiest of this year's roos, simmered and bathed for hours on the stove in aromatic spledor. Softened together with the antibacterial allicin housed in the raw power of garlic, mingled with the power of onion in its own right. Enhanced with the enlivening and energizing effect of a hot pepper~ antioxidents, capsaicin, vitamin C, carotanoid. The kale swirled into the broth bringing magnesium and folate. Carrots adding their own phytonutrients~beta-carotenes, cartanoids, polyacetylenes, names meaning less against their clarifying, strengthening work flooding through heart and digestive organs, the pulmonary system, the lungs, the breath, the brain, the blood and bones of me. Any and all herbs, themselves an arsanal of healing and wealth, a fine addition. A crushed stem of rosemary, infusing the pot and my lungs with its anti-inflammatory, anti-fungal, anti-bacterial, anti-septic magic. Steaming warm mugs of Tulsi (aromatic, antibacterial, antimicrobial) laced with raw honey, brewed by honeybees (magical in their own right) from flowers of the same plant, a goddess of a plant (holy in her own right) noted to aid in soothing colds, coughs, asthma, bronchitis, sinusitis, headaches, stress, anxiety...A refill please! And though I am not one to shy away from other mainstream courses of treatment, I do know the sweet freedom of starting a wellness journey mere steps from my back door. All the gifts the garden offers up, a fine meal to be sure, but also a cup, a spoonful of health. A held hand in overwhelm, a warm embrace of healing and health, she extends...and I to you.
