Spiritual Writing Workshop still has space!

It's not too late to join me at the scrumptious MoonDance Botanicals in Denver for the Sacred Path of Writing workshop! It will be a nurturing day of communion with Spirit and like-minded writers, from beginners to professional. Let me be your witness on the path of writing for personal and creative growth.

This workshop is a way for me to share my passion with others, and it also helps me out by fulfilling my writing internship for my MFA in Creative Writing.

Join me August 3rd, 2008, 10-4. The cost is $65 - if that is a hardship please email me and we'll work something out.

For more, see here.

Or call MoonDance today to sign up! 601 Corona Street, Denver, CO 80218 • 303.263.7275

Harvesting the Intangibles

In The Zen of Gardening in the High and Arid West, David Wann urges his readers to "harvest the intangibles" (p 50). If a garden does poorly, he argues, don't beat yourself up. Just rip up the evidence, toss it in the compost, and learn from your mistakes.

So today I gave up on the three minuscule tomato plants that didn't already die. I decided the eight-inch tall corn wasn't worth the water. I'm digging it all under and getting ready for a fall planting. Fall plants do better here anyway; in a few weeks I'll put in another round of beets, onions, rutabaga, and other cool season seeds. How do I know it will be different this time (after two summers of a crappy garden)? Because I've learned from my garden what it needs.

I had read somewhere that double digging had become uncool. That it was now regarded by the microbe gardeners as bad as tilling. That lasagna or layered gardening was best, as it didn't mess up the microorganisms and worms. All you need to do, some argue, is aerate by poking a pitch fork down and leaning back.

Those gardeners are right - in California and Missouri. Not so much in the sun-baked clay soil here in the Rocky Mountains. Here is what I learned from observing two years of severely crummy harvest: dry, sunny clay breaks down organic matter so quickly, I have to fluff it and add organic matter yearly, or even seasonally. When I do, my garden does well. When I don't, the clay packs and roots have nowhere to go.

So today I did. I double dug my bed in early July. Very strange time of year to be prepping a garden bed, but it felt therapeutic. I felt the garden soil breathe, and it helped me to breathe. I let go of feeling like I had to follow the gardening trend, and listened to what my garden was telling me it needed. Now maybe in 15 years my clay will have transformed into perfect flaky tilth (like the photo above), but until then, I will double dig. Each garden is different, as is each climate and each gardener.

What is your garden teaching you this year?


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For information on
double digging, see:

Attuning to the Moon for Global Awakening

There is a movement to change our Gregorian calendar to a 13 month calendar, adding another month (some call it Sol) in the middle of summer. Each month (moon phase) would be 28 days, with 29 days in December and an extra day in December every 4 years. Jose Arguelles, author of The Mayan Factor, argues that the only way we humans can move into a new solar age in 2012 is to change the way we relate to time and the earth by adopting this 13 month calendar.

I'm a positivist. I would like to believe that this is not the only way, especially since adopting wind power (and other crucial technologies) is going slowly, let alone changing our calendar. But I do think Arguelles and other time researchers have a point: we need to align with the real patterns of the Sun, moon, seasons and our bodies.

One way we can do this is to attune to our menstrual cycles as months. Whenever your cycle begins, mark it in your heart as a New Inner Moon. Celebrate the new moonth by pouring some blood on the earth in thanks. You can add it to your compost, or water it down and pour it around your plants. This is, by the way, the only technique I have found that keeps squirrels out of my strawberries. I simply pour my blood out of my Keeper Moon Cup onto the mulch around the berries, and the squirrels stay away. Amazing!

If you have stopped bleeding, you can of course still attune to the moon as your months. Take some time each new or full moon to sit outside at night and drink in her light. Feel yourself sitting on a planet. Know that you are a part of a great cosmic unfolding. We are all one.

I have a very hard time keeping track of the day of the week. I even have to ask my husband what year it is from time to time. Part of this is due to my being a mom and a right brained type person. But also perhaps I am slipping from the non-natural structures of the Gregorian calendar. I am moving into more natural time. I am tracking my moon blood and the moon, following the Sun as It moves along on its yearly travels, and I am feeling the rhythms of the earth deep beneath my feet.

May you walk in peace and great awakening. Aho.