I love being out here by myself, walking the land prepping for plow day. I look for abandon tomato cages and other items that could get stuck in the soil moving machinery. I would feel horrible if the company that plows for free had to fix their equipment due to gardeners left over supplies. As I diligently scout the ground, overgrown weeds, and last year’s brown and decaying vegetable plants, I feel glad and satisfied in this work.
Wind on me,
Sun on me,
Soil on me.
“Thank the Goddess for this hour of land walking.
It soothes my Spirit”
I walked up a human made berm that separates the garden from a brush pile site, to take a picture of the entire garden. “I’ve done this before.” I tell myself, “Not just in this life but in other lives.”
The Keeper of the Gardens,
The Keeper of the Land,
The Keeper of the Harvests.
I remember the first time I felt this stirring memory. I was walking a corn maze one autumn afternoon. I had a sudden flash of past life memory. A woman in charge of the harvest, of the fields, of crops. My gift to guide the harvest – when to start, what parts of the land to take from first. How long to harvest, specific times of the day to harvest. Picking people to harvest making sure to rotate them for rest so they could be careful with the process.
“That’s all?! My only job was to instruct others to harvest the crops?”
“That’s a big job”, I reminded myself, “Deciding when the perfect timing at peak nutritional value means careful watch. Hundreds of acres can’t be harvested in one day, that’s not how plants work, you know that. It takes days to weeks to plant seeds so the crops aren’t going to be at peak all at the same time. Plus, weather plays a critical role in maturation – air moisture, soil temperatures, sun and wind duration.”
I wasn’t the boss or the manager of these harvests…I was the Queen of Harvest, Priestess of Harvest.
“Someone must have been the Priestess of Planting, Queen of the Watering, Priestess of Storage.” Unlike what most people think of Queens – Purpose of spokesperson, showing up for a few words, ribbon cuttings – Priestess and Queens did the work with their feet on the ground, face in the wind, soil on their hands.
I felt a resonate “Yes! That’s it! You’ve got the right idea.”
How enjoyable that would be to focus on a task, rest when other stages were underway, reflect on how to do it better, enjoy what was done. Unlike today’s world where people have multiple responsibilities in one “job” resulting in burn out from working none stop except to go home eat, clean the house, pay the bills, and get ready for another round.
After reflecting on this memory, I slowly walked down the berm. I found a rock, reminded me of a human heart in shape and color. Immediate message was “I’m the original emoji! People placed me in various places whenever they wanted to express their emotion and experiences about a site. HaHa! I’m the original emoji. You have digital symbols to express emotions and before that it was rocks like me!”
I often wonder if someone living 500 hundred years ago stepped into Western civilization. What would they think of all this technology? Would it seem absolutely mind bending and most likely magical? Though, I wonder what it would be like if Western civilization stepped back into the way of life 500 years ago. Would we be able to survive the slower pace, moving with the seasons, eating with the seasons? It seems I can get a very small glimpse of that time tending to this shared garden space.
