the Story behind my Plant Love Letters

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, but mostly because

I believe finding something we truy love doing and then creating a conscious, open- hearted rhythm and ritual around it is going to be our saving grace as a species, because it brings us meaning and joy.

I ask you, what is your true love? Your true gift(s)? 

With my love letters, it became a pleasant surprise how they birthed their own accompanying rituals that gave them a whole life of their own. They evolved without conscious forethought, and in effect they make this devotion a full circle—a living, gyrating craft, each action feeding the next. This experience reminds me how to live my life.

• So here is how finding something I love doing has evolved into grounding/growing me.
• First, I find myself tending exquisitely to the plant I am writing, making sure the place where it lives is welcoming and spacious for it to thrive. For example, when I wrote a love letter to Holly, I spent an afternoon clearing out the bittersweet and honeysuckle vines, cutting back the multiflora rose and the other plants that were choking the tree and blocking its airflow and light. Whatever plant it is I am writing to, I am dedicated to also loving it with the TLC I am able to provide.
  
• I stare at it. I smell it. I talk to it and praise it.
  
• If the plant is edible, I eat it throughout the week, as that certainly brings us closer.
  
• I put some of the plant material under my pillow and ask for it to come to me in my dreams.
  
• I place a sprig of the plant next to the chair where I write. At some point, I gather up the pile of weeks of plants and I take it to my garden at dawn with a prayer for more and more people to become intimate with the plant world once again.