All Flourishing is Mutual

A random list of reflections (mostly about my garden...)

I started this Substack with the intention of using it as a place to write whatever comes - to keep hitting “publish” without the constraints of my professional newsletter and in the spirit of no-big-deal mind. And then I started to find the pressures that I left social media to avoid were starting to creep into my mind even here. And so, I’m sharing this random list of reflections today to break that spell and banish those vibes and to return to that original aspiration of letting myself feel free and unhindered about writing and sharing a wide range of topics and styles. In that spirit, here is a list I wrote for myself today that I’m inspired to share with you. Why not? No big deal, right? No pressure to address all the things, right?

Jupiter’s Beard in beautiful abundance

1. I don’t think it’s naive to believe in the lived possibility of what Robin Wall Kimmerer says. “All flourishing is mutual.”

How many ways might we live into this? It reminds me of the beloved quote I’m always repeating from Martín Prechtel: The people cannot be healed until the land is healed. The land cannot be healed until the people are healed by the land.

There’s a doorway in that quote. Can you feel it? It’s an invitation to mutual flourishing. Isn’t it?

How might we come into intimacy again with life such that we can be healed by the land, while also becoming a healing presence to the land? Or as Martín says, wellness is more about a place being well because you’re in it than the version of say, a wellness-influencer-selling-products version of wellness. I want to live into being healed by the land and healing the land. I aspire for land to be well because I’m in it.

By land, I mean the ground right here under my feet - not just the special lands. (I love those too.) I am so grateful that over the past years, I’ve been able to transform our yard into a bird and pollinator habitat. I feed the birds at multiple feeders. (And I know I know, bird flu… However, the songbirds that come to my house don’t tend to carry and transmit bird flu, and they are sure grateful to be fed.) I remind myself of the time several years ago when someone asked elder Deena Metzger about pulling the bird feeders for the sake of the birds, and she said, “Did you ask the birds?”

Well, I did ask these birds and they told me in no uncertain terms that they appreciate the feeders. They enjoy being fed, and I enjoy their company, their songs, and their beauty. The plants that feed and house the birds, bees, and other pollinators invite their presence. I’m lucky that they then pollinate the food and herb plants I’ve tucked into the soil. So the harvest is greater for all of us. More pollen and nectar and habitat for them, more beauty, more blossoms, more pumpkins, corn, beans, and birdsong for my family. Mutual flourishing abounds.

Every day I wonder: Could we as a human people finally grow out of the story of survival of the fittest and that competitive, toxic nonsense we do and are doing on such a grand scale right now, and instead aim to spend our lives helping each other flourish? I imagine it’s clear by now that I don’t just mean the human others. Indigenous peoples did this for centuries. I don’t think it’s so far-fetched to return to those common-sense roots even now.

Carl just texted me to say that there are 10 finches at the feeder on his office window in our backyard, while more are waiting on the window screen. I replied to say that there are so many birds on the three feeders and the birdbath in the front yard. He replied, “The birds must have told their friends about finding a house where they feed the holy in nature.”

We try.

Praise the lovelies at The Far Woods who made this bumper sticker you know I love!

2. I’m feeling very deep this morning. Almost noon, and I’m still climbing out from the underworld of dreams. Deep sleep and I’m still deep tired. I spent yesterday in the domestic realm indoors - doing laundry and grocery shopping at two stores and cleaning the fridge and the compost containers and the cabinets and then putting groceries away. I made lemon poppyseed pound cake and spinach lentil soup and tabouleh with farro and lots of parsley from the garden. I made chicken thighs with grilled corn and lemon basil butter for dinner. I washed so many dishes and still have more to do. I enjoyed it. And I’m tired.

3. Some of the harrowing developments this week: I read that Oklahoma public schools are teaching that the 2020 election was stolen and the Jan. 6 insurrection was legit. Along with the government banning words like “bipoc” and “women” and “Native American” and “gay” from government websites. All while defunding health research, science research, and even our weather-tracking agencies. What could go wrong? I’m tracking the ongoing use of the words “emergency” and “terrorism” by the administration, as Timothy Snyder invited us to beware that they would do. Find his other good reminders in this short document right here. Deportations and bullying law firms and colleges. This is some crazily dystopic shit moving so fast. Ugh.

Plus, our public lands are at risk of being sold to industry (and always our Utah politicians are at the head of this shortsighted, idiotic movement.) Who wants to see our gorgeous public lands reduced to desecrated wastelands that make money for the few while destroying nature and beauty? Whyyyyyyy are they like this?!

My love and I helped a baby bird that fell from the nest. How cute is this little one?!?!

4. Yet here in this little yard, there is thriving life. The baby lilac is taking root. The birds are landing on the young ginkgo tree as they wait their turn to take a drink from the bird bath. The seedlings are sprouting in their pots. And as perimenopausal dementia goes, I can’t even remember what I planted in these pots that also have dahlia tubers under the soil. Zinnias? Chamomile? Soon enough we’ll see! Abundant fragrant pink roses are in bloom along with cheerful orange California poppies and the lovely stands of oat grass that are improving the soil health while also offering goodness for my herbal teas - milky oats and oat grass are lovely, soothing brews. There’s abundant lavender and mugwort, lemon balm, agastache, and goldenrod for teas as well. I call my front garden “the medicinal meadow.” There are also blooming purple alliums and Jupiter’s beard blooms making my heart swell.

When I recently visited my mom, she named my style “chaos gardening.” Haha. I certainly add a lot of plants and seeds, both purchased and collected in local wild places or traded with friends, and I have some ideas of how I’d like things to grow, yet I also like to leave a lot of room for the wildness in my yard to do what it wants. Beautiful chaos. I think chaos gardening is a great general description of my beautiful, messy, overflowing life.

The seedlings I started indoors during the winter are hardening off outside and soon will be tucked into the back garden beds; so many heirloom tomatoes, peppers, chiles, cucumbers, cabbages, squash, flowers, and more. The sacred blue corn seeds gifted to me by a friend last year were tucked into the soon-to-be three sisters garden bed last week and have been receiving nourishing rain. Once the corn seeds sprout a few inches high, I’ll tuck in the bean seeds, and shortly after, add squash and amaranth in that bed as well, and because I can’t help it I’ll probably scatter some lettuce and purslane seeds in there too.

The hummingbirds are zooming in to drink from the feeders throughout our yard, and the goldfinches, house finches, chickadees, and sparrows are filling our yard with song as they fill their bellies with our seed offerings. Last week, we even had a black headed grosbeak at our urban feeder. Exciting visitation!

I saw a cute 20-something woman walking down the sidewalk last week with that unmistakable young-person-strut that says, “Look, I know, I am just so hot.” Gotta love the youth. They get to be hot for a while… why not enjoy the hell out of it? She was cute, and yet I thought to myself, I’m so happy to be at the age where some of the juiciest eros for me is in watching the biodiversity and thriving life in my little less-than-half-acre urban yard. No one’s ass is even close to as sexy as this thriving ecosystem I get to take care of.

Roses, California poppies, red clover, and oat grass make me happy

5. Martín Prechtel (long may he live) wrote this passage in a beautiful book years ago: “Turn that worthless lawn into a beautiful garden of food whose seeds are stories sown, whose foods are living origins. Grow a garden on the flat roof of your apartment building, raise bees on the roof of your garage, grow onions in the iris bed, plant fruit and nut trees that bear, don't plant 'ornamentals', and for God's sake don't complain about the ripe fruit staining your carpet and your driveway; rip out the carpet, trade food to someone who raises sheep for wool, learn to weave carpets that can be washed, tear out your driveway, plant the nine kinds of sacred berries of your ancestors, raise chickens and feed them from your garden, use your fruit in the grandest of ways, grow grapevines, make dolmas, wine, invite your fascist neighbors over to feast, get to know their ancestral grief that made them prefer a narrow mind, start gardening together, turn both your griefs into food; instead of converting them, convert their garage into a wine, root, honey, and cheese cellar--who knows, peace might break out, but if not you still have all that beautiful food to feed the rest and the sense of humor the Holy gave you to know you're not worthless because you can feed both the people and the Holy with your two little able fists.”

6. I rediscovered that beloved quote (above) recently and I was surprised to discover that I’ve nearly lived into this vision.

My lawn (full of grass when we moved in 18 years ago) is now grass-free and full of herbs, trees, flowers, veggies, native plants, and so much beauty. (Ok, I confess, not totally grass-free. Grass is the weed I am always pulling.)

My top-bar beehive is situated to receive morning sun and afternoon shade and sits right on the flat roof of my garage. It’s currently humming with the song of increase, thriving and buzzing right above me when I work from my office. I don’t have onions in the iris bed, but I do have an iris bed full of fresh white blooms, and there are onions growing elsewhere, and the whole yard is a gorgeous riotous mess of herbs and flowers and food all growing together.

These amazing beings!!! From a hive inspection a few weeks ago…

Fruit and nut trees abound. We have a Nectarine tree gifted to us when our son was born. We buried one of our miscarriages at its roots, too. Kindly don’t tell the misogynist authorities or I might be burned at the stake. We have 3 young peach trees that reseeded themselves after our old peach tree died. What a delightful surprise for us to discover last spring! I love watching how life keeps making more life if we let it! We have a sweet Plum tree that would like to grow a hundred babies in the backyard. At least the chickens loooove eating the leaves of the baby plum trees I pull up. We also have an old Apple tree, a young Winesap apple tree, a Montmorency cherry, a Chicago hardy fig, two Hazelnut trees, Elder trees offering flowers and berries galore, and a new Pear tree I’ll tuck into the ground later this week.

I don’t need to trade food to someone who raises sheep for wool because, though after 25 years my mama sold her herd last year, she’s raised alpacas for decades and still has an abundant supply of gorgeous hand-spun yarn, roving, and loose fiber that I’m lucky to have easy access to if I ever get around to fiber arts.

A small part of the backyard as seen from up by the beehive on top of the garage. Chaos gardening. : )

I need to dive deeper into learning about the nine sacred berries of my ancestors, (do you know yours?) but so far in our yard we do have an abundant strawberry patch, blackberry canes standing tall among our thriving nettle patch, two kinds of ever-bearing raspberries along the back fence that would take over the whole yard if I let them, a few kinds of grapes (and yes, I collect their leaves for dolmas!), elderberries, hawthorn berries, and gooseberries. Is that nine?

And we do have chickens who love eating the weeds I’ve been pulling from the gardens. I hope to use my fruit in grand ways… and isn’t that a lovely invitation? This week, I’m planning to cook up some goodness with strawberries and the rhubarb I’ll harvest from our two thriving plants that were gifted to us by a dear friend when her father, who loved to grow rhubarb, died a few years ago. I think of and thank Pops every time I harvest their tart, ruby stalks. Maybe a galette. Maybe a fruit syrup for cocktails. Maybe a cake. Maybe all of that.

I haven’t yet invited fascist neighbors over to feast. In fact, I don’t know any fascist neighbors. But I do share eggs and fruit and veggie harvest and seeds and starts with my neighbors.

Getting to know ancestral grief happens in nearly all the groups I hold and always in conversations with friends, and I’m always aiming toward turning it into beauty.

And while I haven’t converted a neighbor’s garage into a wine and cheese cellar, and while I’d dearly love to have a dairy cow and a lot more acreage and a clone of myself who could be a full time maker of cheese and other lovely creamy things, I have converted one bedroom in my house, the room right off the kitchen, into a pantry for all the canned tomatoes and salsas and dry beans and seeds and bags of dried herbs I like to turn into teas and oils and salves. Along with “Pay attention, be astonished, and tell about it” from Mary Oliver, and “Free yourself, free others, serve every day,” from Nelson Mandela, I think the above invitation from Martín Prechtel is a great instruction for living a life. Apparently so, because I seem to have brought this vision to life right here in my old house from the 1800s that sits on less than half an acre, that sits between two apartment buildings, and none of this sits very far from downtown Salt Lake City. And yet even here in this urban landscape, this thriving life is spilling over everywhere. It makes me happy in spite of what one online friend calls the “VDTs” (very difficult times.) And I am still longing to tear out most of my driveway for more soil to plant in!

7. Why is a book proposal so much scarier than writing a book? And yet I’m doing it. I have two proposals I’ll be turning in by the end of the month. Wish me luck!!

My view from the porch. The medicinal meadow out front, plus pots with flowers and dahlias and mystery seeds, plus in the near bed we have oregano and comfrey and succulents and potatoes and peas and beans and strawberries and just out of sight there are so many roses, and still so much more…

8. I’m excited to dive in and watch some videos from this year’s Bioneers conference. Someday I’ll get there in person. One of my fervent prayers to life and Mother Earth is this: May the love of life for life itself flow through me uninhibited. I’m turning toward resources that remind me that’s how I want to live. If I don’t stay in the stagnant shallow pool of mainstream media or the mind-fracturing insanity of social media (praise my past self for leaving that realm as I cannot believe how much the exit has improved my mental wellness), I remember this truth: This is who I want to be. This is how I want to live. Tuning into Bioneers is one avenue that reminds me and inspires me all at once.

Freya all sacked out after staying out all night long, as she loves to do during this time of year

9. A morning biblio-divination from Jaiya John’s book Freedom came with my coffee today: “Bring your soul out to the plains of Sacredness. Kneel and praise earth and sky. Wash your spirit clean in holy water. Share breath with Creation. This pure air is deep ceremony. Drum your ancestors back to you. Sacredness will remind you, you are a sacred thing too.”

#praisethepoets. #foreverandever. #amen.

The glory of the nettle patch right by the chicken coop

10. My Women Embodied groups have been meeting weekly for the past 9 months and will be concluding next week. We will gather tomorrow and the following Wednesday will be our last time together. I am, of course, in love with each and all of them, and in awe of what happens when we slow-cook together in a sacred vessel of practices and cultivations and kindness and a community of belonging with room for all our unique weirdness, all grounded in embodied presence. In awe I tell you!! To witness people blossom so fully, to witness people relax into themselves so beautifully, to arrive, more than ever, at home in their bodies, to deepen together over time, to witness each other’s ups and downs and beautiful undoings and fresh becomings - truly one of the greatest gifts of my life.

11. I didn’t go to the last big protest because it happened to fall during my 3-hour pick-up-the-package-of-ten-thousand-bees window, which happened to be an hour away from where I live, and that is what I was doing instead. But I keep thinking about the 3.5% rule, and I imagine myself carrying a version of that sign that says, “It’s so bad even the introverts are here.” The VDTs y’all. It feels so important to tune in and then to give our nervous systems a big fat break from the insanity that can overpower our circuitry because it just was not made to sustain this quantity of soul crushing bullshit every day. The garden, meditation, poetry, feeding the birds, making beautiful food, doing nourishing movement practices, tonglen ongoingly, and connecting with beautiful humans - (and let us not forget - there are sooooo many of those) - all of this is what’s keeping me sane(ish.) I keep thinking about heartwood being strengthened by strong winds, and somehow comforting myself that our heartwood must be getting very strong... How about you?

Thank you for reading, for heart-ing, for sharing, for caring about what I write. I’m so glad you’re here.