nature

The great release

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Once again we come to the time of letting go, the great release as the leaves we’ve held onto for so long this year are finally relieved of duty. For a brief time they blaze with breathtaking color. Let your eyes take in and enjoy our gorgeous color! Soon enough they become the soil at our feet they as they wither and brown and decay. Next year’s plant food.

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Red Virginia Creeper leaves

Now through the bare bones of our winter branches we have a chance to see feel and know the underlying structure beneath the summer show. We see what is rooted, what endures from year to year, through the cold months as well as the warm, not just the shimmering temporary summer show.

You too have an underlying structure. You are a web of invisible energy, permeating the physical body. This is the structure on which your life and body are built. Your energy endures from lifetime to lifetime without end.

When you keep your subtle energy flowing, healthy, and vibrant your life pulses with health and glows with vitality.

Tree energy

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We tree spirits are content. You might say we are happy, or even joyful!

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Grandmother Cottonwood

We feel delight when one of you two-legged beings spends time and attention in our proximity- laying in our dappled shade, leaning against our textured trunks, receiving earth energy through our roots; climbing, swinging, playing at our base, gathering our flowers, fruits, leaves, and seeds.

Through us you are connected to earth and sky. The truly sensitive among you, and of course, the children, will feel and know our energy and be uplifted and healed and calmed in our presence.

Do not treat us as part of the scenery only! We are an integral part of your world. Our energies overlap and interweave. We are inseparable. Our health affects your health!

Do all you can to keep our sweet earth humming in balance and harmony, so all creatures and their descendants may experience peaceful, expansive, healthy, and joyful lives!

Know yourself

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Dearest ones, I ask that you reconnect with the natural world, the stones, rivers, and trees, the grasses and insects of your home, the animals, the soil, the atmosphere.

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Grandmother Cottonwood, dappled shade

Allow yourself to quiet and breathe and simply be with the world, the earth as it is.

Know yourself in the flow of a river, know yourself in the shifting dappled shade of summertime, know yourself in the rough gnarled bark of an aged tree. Know yourself in the purple thistles and down that drifts in the breeze. Know yourself in the shimmer of my silvery leaves. You are all of these things and everything not named.

My dears if you learn nothing else from me, know this: You are one with all that is and all that is is one with you.

Take up space and live!

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Potted plants will live fully within the parameters of their pot, the ceiling height, the light from the nearest window.

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Grandmother Cottonwood

Just as you must live within the confines of your circumstances, the blueprint of your species, allow yourself to live fully within the boundaries of your life. Live your life fully, fill your container with your roots. Take up all the goodness you have access to without depriving others.

Reach toward the sun and do not look down! Do not have a second thought about your right to exist, to take up space, to be here on earth as part of the exquisite tapestry of all that is! You live and that is proof enough of your worthiness.

Only humans question their right to exist, to receive love and abundance and nurturing, to keep themselves warm and fed and comfortable. This is a waste of your precious time!

Receive the gifts of this life with grace and gratitude. When you thrive all creatures on earth thrive as well!

Non-permanence

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Nothing in this universe is permanent but our indestructible spirits.

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Purple poppies

All is in constant flow and flux. What you call a stone is made of minute energy particles coalesced into matter, yet on a deeper level, permeable. On an even deeper level, nothingness.

Somehow, we are in a place where we perceive matter in solid form. Yet the pattern of non-permanence is shown to us in our cycles of life death life. All living things come into being, then must decay and pass away.

All landscapes erode, all cloud formations dissipate, all musical tones die away to the ear, bedrock becomes sand, and yet all deaths give rise to the new.

The upstart cottonwood sprout will surge ahead and surpass me some day as I enter my season of decline. Our parents will pass on, our beloved shade trees will succumb to age, our favorite pets will cease to exist on the physical plane.

Yet, the fabric of existence endures, as new rock is formed deep in the earth, as new clouds form on the horizon, as our children mature, bear children and become parents. This fabric is woven strong of spirit.

Hot weather and harmony

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Do you say “I hate this weather!”? Do you curse everything outside your refrigerated homes? If so, you are rejecting the magnificent earth that is your dwelling place and creating disharmony.

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A change in the weather

Do you become quiet and study her cycles of heat, cool, rain and dry? It is vital that humans pay attention to the minute changes  and learn to live in harmony with our earth.

Rejection is not harmony. Fighting against is not harmony. Fearing is not harmony. Creating an enemy is not harmony.

Dissonant vibrations are created by skewed thinking, then move from person to person, then move into your larger world. These vibrations are unhealthy and hurt all they touch. They create unsettled unpleasant feelings that tear at the web of all that is.

You do not feel good in the presence of this dissonance, yet you continue to create it.

Is it so familiar to you that the harmony of acceptance, kindness, compassion, and well being feel strange and threatening to you? I tell you that as an infant, you too were alive with the harmonies, chords, and tones of love. You were in harmony with others, co-creating an amazing composition of exquisite complexity! You did not complain about the weather!

The more you push against and create disharmony with others, with the earth, with the weather, the more you weaken the fabric of the web of life that sustains us all.

Cease your pushing. Accept what is. Breathe. Hum a lovely tune that makes you feel good!

Personality

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All things have an attitude, a habit.

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Grandmother Cottonwood

Growing things prefer shade or sun, rocky soil, swampy soil, rich soil. We can be expansive and confident, shy and retiring, showy and extroverted. Some of us thrive in the shadow of larger plants, some tower above the surrounding growth and reach higher than the others… like yours truly.

We may pelt you with hard nuts in the fall, or allow the breeze to blow our cottony seeds miles distant. We may be upright or prostrate, we may prefer to grow wild, or to live tame in your yards.

You too display your attitudes, your personalities. You may prefer to be quiet or lively, you may wish to dance in the street, or curl up with a novel. You may keep things in, or spill everything you know. Trust in yourself even if “Mom or Dad” want you to get out more or quiet down a bit.

Express who you are in the way that makes you happy and energized and satisfied. Do not ask for permission to be yourself! The world needs your unique attitude, for you fill a need here, just as each plant fills their unique place in nature.

The Moon

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My dears have you looked to the sky at night and bathed and danced and delighted in the moonlight?

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Moon at dusk

You would do well to study her rhythms and phases, to align your life’s ebb and flow, fullness and emptiness with her age-old patterns.

As the moon waxes, fill yourself with goodness, love and light. Prepare, gather in.

At full moon, open to her light, give thanks for what has manifested in your life!

Then as she wanes, let go, release all those thoughts ideas, energies that have served their purpose. Let go of those physical objects you are ready to release. Clear out, make room.

At new moon, the dark night of the month, honor the death of the old, make plans for the new, yet again.

All living things on this planet have evolved to be sensitive to the gentle rhythms, the pearly light of our beloved moon mother. You are no exception. Let the rhythms of your life be guided by our ancient night companion.

Cottonwood seeds

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Dear ones, all of my kind bless the earth with our confetti of cotton, our gentle shower of seeds, our annual pouring forth of faith in what is yet to come. You may think the deep drifts of tiny cotton puffs along the sidewalks and streets are overkill, too much- spam if you will. (Have you seen what the silver maples did last month? Later the oaks will pelt you soundly with bushels of acorns that fall like hailstones.) But I digress.

Life is sacred and must be honored. My seeds, perhaps millions of them are each a chance at fresh new life. They are sown on the wind with trust in the process of life! Most will end up fertilizing your yard or garden, or will be washed into the creek, but some will find the right place. All factors will line up: the moon phase, the soil type, sunlight, rainfall, slope of the land, shelter from drying winds…

The lucky winners will feel the stirrings deep within, then send down tiny roots and reach sunward with bright little seed leaves. The luckiest among this select group will grow tall, avoid the mover’s blade, the hungry grazing animal, the drought or devastating flood, the gardener intent on weeding alien seedlings that appear in her flower bed, the crushing earth mover, the wayward boot or bike tire…

Several of my offspring are sure to put down roots, to grow and flourish and eventually tower gracefully above the other trees and provide a home for the diverse creatures of the creek fringe. They will take their place in the timeless cycle of life on this our beautiful green earth.

Do not curse my fluff, for it is the fluff of life!

Falling seeds

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‘Tis the season for the seeds of silver maple to whirl in great masses to the earth. Each seed contains the promise of countless groves. It has been so since time began.

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Silver maple helicopter seeds

The seed swells, and tiny roots begin reaching down into the soil, pulled by the magnetic core of the earth, reaching, finding sustenance. The new shiny leaves and slender stem bend toward the sun, unrolling, soaking in life giving light. Reaching for life, stretching both down and up, rooting and reaching. Each seed a promise, the imprint of a million generations.

You plant seeds as well. Your words and actions are seeds. Your caring or turning away are seeds, your belief in the power of good or the existence of evil are seeds, your judgment or acceptance are seeds, your love or indifference are seeds and surely many of the them will grow.

What legacy do you wish to sow? Do you want the seedlings of doubt and despair growing in the hearts and minds of your family, or the legacy of love and joy and fun?

Plant your garden with each thought, word, and action. What will you sow?