Flat-earth prairie herbalism of rivers, creeks, hills, and flat grassland. People, plants, place, prairie. The stuff of vitalism like riding bicycles, playing guitar and bass. Stand with prairie green grass real work.
Hawthorn Blessings on Lyrids, Falling star pollen will activate Hawthorn flowers, Crataegus this is best time to gather for (W)holy plant with last years berry save. When Joseph of Arimathea traveled by boat with the Virgin Mary, Lazarus, Mary Magdalene he brought the holy grail to Glastonbury. He stuck his staff in the ground and a Hawthorn grew. Today we celebrate this day during the Lyrids, when falling star pollen collects on the Hawthorne branches. Say the Señal de la Cruz, 3 Hail Mary's, an Our Father, and glory be, and walk around the tree when gathering or making medicine. You can take a piece of cloth to leave near the base of the tree, or just think about the people being helped by this medicine. The branch, always ¡before it flowers!, is brought near the entrance to the house, as on an outside porch, ideally where you blessed the house with chalk from the Three Kings, Epiphany, if you haven't done so you can take the chalk to the Hawthorn tree, and it's customary to write something inconspicuous on the tree. Note the branch if flowered should not be brought inside the house to protect from lightning strikes, only outside or nearby.
Hawthorn blooming lowest elevation here, just budding leaf now, soon to flower next week. The waxing gibbous will set west near sunrise, look for star dust pollen in the east, lower horizon, constellation Lyra with brite star Vega after midnight to early morning.
Wake robin trillium soon beth root "....i knew it was true, trillium soon, Wake robin house talk story, Good to see willow and robin knowing Mary is the greening. Wake robin flowered Trillium with 3 leaves, that appears in spring emerging from the snow houses. The wake robin is both wild turkey and Holy Mary, Mother of God, who with gobbling turkeys bless melted snow water, flowing, sheep creek. Turdus migratorius, red chested robin, buries itself in the snow around Christmas when the days are short. The robin lives the winter beneath the snow. They leave their snow house sheltered by thick red cedar, and meet up with elk and turkey to plan everything coming up in the plant world.
Become wake robin singing. During the winter, Mother bless red cedar pine wake robin mountains.
Later snow houses become bunch berry or wake robin. Our Lady Good Remedy, good medicine, praying thru us all two legged four legged creatures, birds with wings, those swimming in water. Giving us your heart and eyes...i knew it was true, trillium soon.
In the spring wake robins Turdus migratorius leave their snow houses and as the snow melts pussy willow grow around the lake.
Poleo, Lycopus and skullcap are 3 migrating south plants, who leave for the winter, and will return later to flower in swampy mud around the east end of the lake. Later these three plants will journey south over 2000 miles, walking mountains dream different dreams. Poleo, Lycopus and skullcap bless ancestors buried in this muddy Earth and your children coming from sky.
Holy wake robin Queen of heaven, earth wind and wood, blessing life of water. In the Holy name of Jesús + Mary, wake robin and willow. You are our stories. You are our assistance bless the water, our red blood, green blood of trees. "We open mountain lake by opening our hearts. Abrimos el lago de la montaña
abriendo nuestros corazones.." -pm
Good to see willow knowing Mary is the greening...i knew it was true, trillium soon.
2nd grade Sister Anne spun a bucket of water. Not a drop spilled out. She said, the reason no water spills out is called Mary's greening love. So i tried it, not a drop spilled out from the bucket. Then a robin sang a song and a wild turkey fanned and gobbled, a squirrel scampered up a tree, blown down by the wind storm, blocking the trail, so i knew it was true, bunch berry and trillium soon."
Saskatoon, Amelanchier alnifolia, rose family sprawling shrub tree, used to get lots of attention, still waving, hello stream side
watercourse, open meadow forest interface, leaves toothed on upper half, oblong deciduous leaves, turn gold to red autumn, flowers 5 petaled pearly white sprawling on terminal racemes lushly adolescent disorganized prolific, fruit edible & eatable, manzanita, tiny apple pomme, gathered mid sommer, delightful whimsical supportive tree bush. like many wind waving, hello, hey you high? plants opening up the space, appears quite lonely because having been loved now forsaken, to women bark for afterbirth, stems with snowberry to quick start break a fever, with prunus bark diaphoretic cold and phlu, like recent bathed sweaty lovers sweat. These plants are waving calling, because they meant much, saw and watched us, played with us, now still waiting, sit and talk to me, listening. So many plants waving deeply imbedded in our hearts Saskatoon
.....at the risk of being random...Well...we're in dry crunchy times...a couple of thoughts, we all come with an expiration date stamped on the souls of our feet. It's hard when sons, daughters, grandchildren make it clear we're no longer relevant. No longer invited to the party and put us in the back room.
Lysichiton americanus -- skunk cabbage, northern swamp medicine, first wildflower of spring in the north woods, sitting with plants on Wild Herb Ways.
The feminine is dark, cold, wet, moist, forgiving. The root can nourish breathing
We don't get invited to the wild parties anymore, even though on a good day we could still dance around the fire. Usually they'll come back and say, 'wow gramps, you had a point there. We're having a party, bring your guitar, sing some of those old songs.' Even if it's because our name still is on the deed to the farm and with that expiration coming closer, little johnny or joAnne might get a little bump.
From working on🔥...the yellowstone'88 fires i first became aware 1st hand of changes afoot. Environment is rooted in place. It's not that there is herbalism in this box, politics in this box, systemic inequality in this box, wild fire and drought in this box. There is a single box and it's contents are mixed and mingled. This was a different kind of fire. Whether the shrinking glaciers in the wind rivers or the contracting retreating medicine gardens in the southwest, there was a movement from moist lush to crunchy dry. Socially likewise communities were becoming stressed like the plants. People tend to forget our lives are twined and spun in a world of wind, rain and seasons within the natural world. Just as the political wars of europe spun to a lung cough, drowning in mucus epidemic 1918-1920, an unseen unknown enemy stalking. One hundred years later we are similarly masked, stalked, victoried or defeated by the invisible. Like Francisco and Marta of Fatima, we may have seen Our Lady, heard her voice, yet we are stalked by the cough.
Visiting sw university arboretum libraries, and comparing specimens of where madrean sky island plants were noted in the early 20th centuries to the 2000's, the plants just weren't there any more as described. They were reduced, limited to portions of their range. Still there struggling and surviving though hiding in the remaining abundance. Likewise human communities where people in the past could reasonably expect to thrive were unraveling. People like the plants were moving in small bunches to preserve what they could of their authentic cultural expressions. The plants already restricted to sky islands, began to retreat to trickles of moist yin cañons and further contraction.
Extreme high pressure drought like historic late 16th century and the medieval period, between 900–1300 AD drought had returned to the south west after a brief respite of wet years in the 1980's to severe drought by the decades end. The difference being exponential human population growth, stress on the plants, mining/pumping of ground water. Just as poachers can ping a collared sheep, wolf or griz, people were using similar technologies and data bases with plants. It just wasn't possible for me ethically to gather wild plants in these drought stressed areas or disclose their locations. I remember reading rereading, Aldo Leopold for several years at Escudilla mountain and his account of the last griz shot and killed in Arizona in the 30's, and thinking about these plants in similar terms.
In terms of woke for me, it has been positive for growth. In these dry crunchy times, the woke I encountered in the early 2000's, my response went from denial to acknowledging a new generation has emerged and while it's sad i am part of the thesis, and i won't be able to contribute to the synthesis, still it's new life, although a life i don't want to enter and won't be able to enter.
All of us come stamped with an expiration date, physical decline, death, which extends to our most cherished possessions, our beliefs. i acknowledge my own dated- ness. I acknowledge the new voices, their concerns by listening. In the same way i listen to flyover geese honking, heading north. Geese like all the feathered flying are beautiful yet foreign strange, undependable yet none the less poignant. I have no possibility to embrace goose-dom and they are rightly so wary of me. As far as the woke, I have heard their generational words spoken for a lifetime. There's nothing new there. They are and have been the dominant culture. Yet I don't pretend to understand their words because i can't. They refuse to understand me on my terms, and i likewise the same. I have to be ok with being labeled the enemy, because they are the narrative. i do consider them friend or foe but hold no ill-will to them because ill-will damages the holder. Best to be wary, aloof. during the elaborate dance for which i am uninvited. Being alone and quiet is a gift. Understanding based on discursive thinking tends to be shallow empire political bound. So i understand by not understanding. I welcome the uninvited, it was what was required.
All i can say is the daily living situation across 'merica has exponentially deteriorated especially for young people coming of age. Having lived in 'merica's 5th largest city, in a dry crunchy, pressurized terrarium, there are new voices, avoid or deny them at your peril. This is a time of listening not understanding. The old ways and the real work will be there, some people will come back to it, others won't, a sharpened maul with a good handle, works as well today to split wood as before. The main thing is deepen with plants by doing plants, words will come later.
