Seed catalogs, dreams of planting, fear of rooting

 

"Sometimes challenges come along to innovate our thinking and attitudes, so that we can naturally spark a moment of understanding that means something to us personally. That’s something we can use to connect ourself to others, to even understand what is us, what is them, what is WE?" - Satori

I'm scheming and dreaming of planting and gardening. Last night I dreamt of an old friend. She was beautiful (she is) in a long lacy white dress whose hem stopped just above her ankles to show hearty caramel colored rubber boots. People watched and commented on her style and in particular the long moments of silence as she crouched with a trowel to weed rich brown dirt. 

I woke from the dream with a calm and sweet reflection of the friendship I have had with this friend, and consider how my life has woven, unraveled and re-plaited. In and out and over time we have gardened, separately and together. Never in white lacy dresses, but we have been married and divorced in white dresses and not and now my thoughts wander to this place ... where schemes stirred by long moments with seed catalogs -- tempt me. An antidote to regular and near-constant moving: planting roots.

Among the books that create a small tower of escape hatches and simmering pots of delicious possibilities is The Good Thieves written by Katherine Rundell. 

The Good Thieves is the book I wish I'd read as a girl, but, am thrilled to be reading at seventy-three. It's that kind of book! The kind of story to conjure up characters and character that know what it takes to make things right.

"She had to do something to make it right. She did not yet know what, nor how, but love has a way of leaving people no choice." - Vita, The Good Thieves

The characters author Katherine Rundell describes in the video above are the quirky and wonderfully organic seeds for growing my kind of garden. A troupe. A 'Four Sisters' millage of living that can set nitrogen in the dirt where needed; create stalks for beans to entwine; send furry thick ropes that crawl along the ground and open big umbrella leaves to hide tender squash; track and collect sunshine because that's what Sunflowers do.  

A storyteller, and story maker like me and others before me, those in the making and yet to come thrive on the unlikeliness of solutions to challenges that will not come un-knotted by convention. I know, and appreciate the Taurus who are excellent and consistent in their provisions; and have survived more than once because of the red coats, boxes of winter comfort and solid answers. I know, and lean on the Capricorn including my earth-moving father who are steady at climbing mountains. It takes some, or a lot of living to gather those others around close enough to pull off this life-as-it-is caper. 

And, it feels like an especially auspicious time for me and Pete to sprout seeds, and nurture plants and attitudes that are not so much afraid of rooting.

We have been at this Baba Yaga (tutu witch) life for awhile. When we have parked during the growing season we have created pocket gardens or filled pots to grow food. The experience of experimentation is always wonderful, surprising and almost always rewarding. 

Making do, doing what is needed, is what we have learned to be good at. There comes a time though where the fear of rooting is out-weighed by something else. Without completely spoiling it for you who want to read The Good Thieves, I will leave this:

"Grandpa leaned on Vita's shoulder, hard, and used her strength to straighten his spine, and her left leg shook but she stood firm under the weight... 'What a thing you've done, Rapscallion?' he said. 'What a miraculous, unthinkable, un-sensible thing!"

Pete and I began a life in a wagon, before we became a pair of true and real life baba. There is a something firm and unshakable to that. My story-maker seed, bred from the coral polyp so many eons ago, pushes at my ovaries who are still vitally fecund with imagination. It might be just the thing, the thirteenth step (the thirteenth year) in making room to root out fear.

"The symbol of the Wise Woman Tradition is a spiral.
Twelve is the number of established order.
One step beyond is thirteen, the wild card, the indivisible prime, the number of change.
Walk a spiral, you will inevitably come to the unique next step, the unknown, the thirteenth step, the opportunity for change, the window of transformation.
The thirteenth step creates the spiral." -  Susun Weed, 'The Wise Woman Tradition is a Spiral"

The first two photographs above are: Watanabe Burdock (gobo) and Chinese Motherwort grown by Strictly Medicinals  in Southern Oregon. I'm drooling over the Strictly Medicinals website and feeding my dreams and this story medicine as Pete and I get ready to drive down to Hopi's,  in a couple hours, to talk about rooting ourselves with her.

Wish us good luck and that 'something' my friend star watcher Satori told us about.🤞