Garden Authority

It has been too long since I held communion with the Green Realm.  Around these parts, it is a quiet time.  Only the evergreens remain to add their chlorophyll ease to eyes weary of browns and grays.

Yet, there is work to be done.  I cut down the withered stalks of dead flowers, scattering their seeds where I want them to grow in the spring.  I separate and transplant perennials.  I pull and pile the last limas with plans to harvest their dried beans.  I give up the ghost on the peas whose glorious growth was cut short by a single night of frost that turned the pods to rubber.  I marvel at the flourishing carrots, spinach, chard and even lettuce, all of whose proximity to the warm belly of the earth spared them.

I finally realize that our firewood operations over the past few years have produced a gold mine, or rather mountain, of well-decayed wood mulch.  I shovel and haul cart after cart, tucking it in around perennials snug in their beds and dumping it in piles throughout the garden.  I rake leaves too and heave them over the garden fence.  I then till this organic matter into the soil — the pea vines and the mulch and the leaves like morsels of veggies in a clay soup.

I sow winter rye, hairy vetch, and clover, shaking the seeds out from a cup in a percussive symphony.  I hill up a single row and plant the last of our potatoes, now gone to seed.  I bury them with a winter blanket of mulch and leaves.  I hope that the heat of decay will stimulate strong root growth and an early spring flowering.

Then, the week’s work done, it rains.  A welcome rain.  Despite the cold, I stand in it.  Water rolls down my hair and into my eyes.  It wets my shoulders and trickles off my fingers as I hold up my hands to its wonder.  Droplets thrum the newly scattered seeds, exploding on impact, soaking quickly into the dirt.  They roll down the potato hill in a gentle caress.  I watch as the rain pours out over the earth like love.

As I watch, in my mind’s eye, I see green growth quick on the heels of love’s nourishment.  From the dusty, dull dirt plants are spiraling into being like a jungle.  There, in my door yard, I am witness to an awesome law — love pours out upon the earth and the seed sprouts.

It is a law as ancient as the cosmos.  It is the big bang banging.  It is the earth spinning.  It is the sun shining and the moon reflecting.  It is the tides flowing and the seasons cycling.  It is the bird flying; the lion preying.  It is the human, being.

Yes, even I am an expression of this law, as natural as the seeds of winter rye, as blameless as their green growing.

And from this law, derives my authority.  My very existence — my skin and bones and blood — give me my authority.

It is the authority of a seed, sprouting.  Sprouting in a world that does not punish or judge, but rather, bears consequence.  Sprouting in world where the actions or in-action of one ripple to all.

Today, soaked in love and in communion with the Green Realm, I declare: “I am my own authority and if it harm none I will do as I will.”

© Jennifer S. and harvestliberty.net, 2012.

Author’s Note: This piece is in debt to the magical work of Sage Goode and the students in her 2012 Pearl Pentacle course.  You know who you are.  Thank you.