Earth Devotions

Read a Love Letter from one of the greatest of all time, Oak.

Excerpt: In early spring, I like to eat your baby leaves, so tender and tasty! Another new growth happens this time of year, around the autumnal equinox, and I nibble these too, putting them in salads. For medicinal use, I harvest you in…

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This being human thing is a real trip! Will you ponder it with me here for a minute? Here I am, a woman who has lived over half of her life, and I only (probably) know a few hundred of us humans. I say probably because I have never actually…

Here ye go...

excerpt from the Story behind my Plant Love Letters: "Look. I am sharing this post with you not because I am a Taurus sun, Capricorn moon, Virgo rising gal (that’s Triple Earth, y’all) and can’t help myself with list making and explanations,…

Here it is...

Loving the Lamium is this week's highlighted plant ally!

Poppy Papaveracea Dear Poppy, Every February, I sprinkle some of your seeds in my garden as an early spring blessing. I know you need some cold to kiss your seeds before they can sprout, so I disregard the nonsensical label that says ‘sow…

In this week's Substack.... Imbolc stories and rites + Cleaver praise. Did you know Cleavers is a natural milk curdler? And oh so much more...

Read Hear Her Roar plus a Love Letter to Horsetail.

It’s 2007, and I am hitchhiking across Australia with my daughter, Makyziah, and we are finally leaving Perth, headed to the small coastal town of Esperance. I know nothing about this town—I just like the name of it and that we can experience…

If you are reading this, you most likely already feel a closeness with the natural world, and I give thanks to be here with you on this planetary journey. I am uplifted by both our resilience and devotion to building a better world, even when…

Frank Cook was the first person to tell me that plants are grouped into families. Plant families? The idea got me excited, so he turned me on to Thomas Elpel’s Botany in a Day which really opened my eyes to seeing the patterns that plants…

Dear Avena sativa This is how I know you~ In cookies, in granola, in bread, as breakfast, as tea, as tincture, as bath, as waving growing grass. I like to eat your groats, steel-cut or rolled. I like to place them in a muslin bag and let you…

Blessed Imbolc dears! I thought I would share one of my Imbolc rituals with you of tending to Elder (Sambucus canadensis) and then wax on a bit about this Adoxaceae family member  while I’m at it. For those of you who do not know about Imbolc,…

“Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself. I am vast. I contain multitudes.” Walt Whitman wrote these words in Song of Myself and I return to them when I am feeling guilty and confused about my contradictions and inability…

Growing up in the 70’s and 80’s, the school and church I attended and the family and social conversations I witnessed never broached the subject of what we did and were doing to Indigenous peoples in order to hold the life of comfort and…

Until recently, whenever I’d have a bouquet of flowers, the moment they started to wilt, lose their ‘fresh’ look, drop petals, and fade, I’d dump them out as quickly as possible. I mean, who wants to look at spent flowers, right? Hart…

Yesterday would have been the 99th birthday of my paternal grandmother whom I am named after. Mary. She and my mother were the dearest women of my life and now they are both gone. Gram died 7 years ago, mom 5 months ago. Sometimes I feel such…

There are so many flowers we can eat! Some taste better than they look, others look better than they taste/ just like people! Here are some freshly harvested ones from our gardens at Herb Mountain: DayLilies Bachelor Buttons Calendula Rose Nasturtium Evening…

As I watched this beautiful egret skillfully feed in the Everglades Sawgrass, I was struck by this thought- Does this bird give a damn what anybody thinks or says its experience should be? No! It is both intuitive and constantly adapting to…