Hey friends,
When I was little, we took a trip to Florida but my dad stayed home to work. We brought him back a can of Florida sunshine, a gag gift that enchanted six-year-old me. What if you could preserve the sun? Could you really crack open the can one cold dark day, inhale that solar power? On this summer solstice, could you harvest the light and store it up for later when you and your people need it most?
Something to consider, and in the meantime, I hope all your favorite summer offerings overflow for you this season :)
I’ll be in my garden, weeding, watering, cutting back exuberant boughs. Hands in the dirt most days. Doing the quotidian stuff to tend to this spot, even as the garden stays a a few steps ahead of me. Honeysuckle is on the move from the shed wall to its roof, ivy is matting under the overgrown holly, chickweed proliferates, yellow archangel is spreading at an alarming pace - oh shit, did I accidentally plant an invasive? It’s a mess over here. The lilies and roses are lovely though.
At the winter solstice I set an intention for the coming year to deepen my connection with the natural world. I asked myself - a city dweller for whom running away to live in a yurt on a flower farm in Northern California is a vivid fantasy but unlikely scenario, think of the family! - how I could build a more connected relationship to the land?
Start in the yard, I figured, and planted a bunch of daffodil bulbs in my front garden. When the snow fell and the ground froze, I daydreamed about my tiny landscape, about how I’d create the conditions for deeper connection to my place.
“It was the sweetest, most mysterious-looking place any one could imagine.” - The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett
Gardens start with imagination - what could this be, how will we get there - and over time become a long conversation between you, your plants and your chunk of (Native) land. Imagining the textures and colors and smells and sounds - seedpods rattling, grasses rustling - that the plants and I will make together gives me the chance to create the future of this space. We’re not at sweet and mysterious yet, but we’ll get there.
There’s nothing like speculating on the kind of future I want to see to get me galvanized for action. Thinking on a longer timeline than what my garden might return to me this summer gives me incentive to improve my soil, let the clover and violets take over the grass, entice the pollinators with native plants that evolved for this place: baptisia, coneflower, milkweed, goldenrod. Plant a tree that some other family might string with lights on the winter solstice, 30 years from now.
Giving and reciprocity are part of any good relationship, and gardens are no different. We give them our creative and physical energy; they give us food, beauty, shade, habitat for our non-human neighbors. Keeping that reciprocal loop in mind helps me think more concretely - and lovingly - of the life-giving power of this sphere in the universe we call home. Of course I love the planet, as corny as that feels to declare. But as author Robin Wall Kimmerer suggests in her book Braiding Sweetgrass, is it possible that the land loves me, too? Hard to say, interesting to ponder, and how to proceed as if it were true?
In the paper today there were two connected stories. On the front page, Ford and GM are competing for market share in the still young era of electric vehicles. On the business page, mining firms are facing a metals shortage, including those in demand for use in renewable energy.
The shift to renewables is driving the shortage - but for me the two stories together are telling. Instead of drilling for oil, there’s mining for lithium, when instead we might consider fundamentally changing the way we move through this life. Fewer electric SUV’s, more dedicated bike and bus lanes.
When you think you might be in a loving and reciprocal relationship WITH THE PLANET, thinking this way comes more easily, because your choices are rooted in love. Food, transportation, entertainment, work, travel - it all looks different but maybe it’s more generative? Time will tell. Of course, we’re still in the realm of personal choice, not the political and structural change we need to actualize these changes.
While I rattle on about picking rocks out of the soil as an act of love, tens of thousands of species of flora and fauna are threatened and on their way to being endangered. It’s already another whopper of a fire year, fueled in part by drought, but people are still irrigating their lawns. The Great Salt Lake is drying up and this could be very bad for all living creatures in its orbit. And we’re still extracting what we need from the earth to maintain a way of life that privileges market share and quarterly returns over any kind of humility and service to our planet.
In this moment, nurturing connection to the land feels necessary and overdue. One documentary filmmaker and author recently wrote, “To be alive and explore nature now is to read by the light of a library as it burns.” But what can we do, other than continue?
You know where to find me,
XO
Leigh
PS: I couldn’t let 15 hours of light slip by without sharing this joyful number:
LIGHT ray stream gleam beam sun glow flicker shine lucid spark scintilla flash blaze flame fire serene luciferous lightning bolt luster shimmer glisten gloss brightness brilliance splendor sheen dazzle sparkle luminous reflection kindle illuminate brighten glorious radiate radiant splendid clarify clear ROGET'S THESAURUS -Lucille Clifton