Blessed Lammas friends. You've made it to this place where the work that you've done this year of planting seeds and nurturing their fragile growth is about to give you an abundant harvest. It is also a new moon, the time to examine what has manifested in the last moon cycle and set new intentions to work with as the moon waxes to fullness again.
May we turn the wheel with the harvesting of the crops and the feasting on the fruits of our labor. My garden, which was so full of blooms and fresh greens just a few short weeks ago is now showing the signs of withered exhaustion as the blooms begin their transition and give way to bolting and going to seed. I feel that customary sadness and grief that always comes up at this time of year, knowing that the time of blooming and fruiting is winding down and that the time for harvesting and storing for winter is coming on.
This garden, which has grounded me and kept me in right relationship with the turning of the wheel has been mostly left to its own this year as I have taken these last few seasons to tend to the sacred gardens of my inner landscapes. I was blessed to see that despite not sowing any seeds in the garden this year, volunteers plants stepped up to do the work themselves, as if to say, "No worries friend. Thanks for taking such good care of us when you could. We are ready to facilitate our own process this year."
The tomatoes, tomatillos, chard, and kale have all become self starting annuals at this point in the progression of my food forest, and the perennial fruit trees, edible flowers, and medicinal plants have all established well enough that they have become capable of beginning and completing their cycle with very little maintenance on my part. My permaculture system, or permanent food system, has replaced the labor intensive annual work that comes with annual crop production and gave me the time and space that I so desperately needed to tend to a much different variety of seeds and seedlings.
These last few seasons I have been turning, churning, and working with the soils of my soul as I came out of a very dark winter. The soils were so severely depleted that I spent all of spring and summer pulling up diseased and dead plants, adding compost and nutrients. Planting seeds of transformation, transition, and change. I composted almost all of the old life that used to grow in my soils and offered it up as nourishment for the new. I tended these fragile new seedlings with so much nurturance and care, making sure to not utilize or default to the old practices that led to disease and death in the first place. I sang to them as they struggled to push through to the light, and welcomed their arrival as their first true leaves began to form. I diligently watered the roots of these seedlings and cared for them until I saw that the root systems of these new plants were established well enough to pull water from the soil on their own.
Now the work of harvesting begins and I look forward to feasting on the fruits of my heart labor. I pray that I might take in the teachings of these seasons as the soil takes in the rain. I pray that I will be able to put up enough stores to get me through the winter. I pray that the killing frost of last winter will pass me by this year.
On this Lammas day I sit with the awareness that we are at the very beginning of our long descent into the darkness and that I will have time to reflect and integrate all the death and rebirth that has happened this year. But for today, I will bathe in the sunshine, letting it soak into my skin, sooth the wounds, and nourish the flow. I will grow. I will harvest. I will sit in the darkness of the new moon, practice the art of being comfortable with the unknown, and set intentions to guide me through this next cycle.
This sun worshipper offers deep gratitude and thanks for the light and for all the gifts that the light brings.
This moon follower offers deep reverence for this new cycle and for the teachings that are revealed through darkness.
Blessed Lammas. Blessed new moon.