Early Registration for Weaving the Wheel of the Year is Dec 15!

"The mother of us all, the oldest of us all, Hard, splendid as rock, let the beauty you love, be what you do. There are a thousand ways to kneel and kiss the earth"~ Rumi ~

The Early Bird registration date for Weaving the Wheel of the Year is approaching this week!  Anyone who registers by Dec 15 is going to receive a sweet welcome gift package right around Yule time!  If you've been thinking of joining in for the journey, don't wait, and get started with your connection to yourself- to the Earth- and to Spirit in the season of Yule!  

Weaving the Wheel Monthly Payments

Monthly Payments : $125.00USD - monthly

 

Weaving the Wheel - Full Payment

Full Payment $1,425.00 USD

 

Weaving the Wheel of the Year

Do you feel the seasonal shifts of the Earth in your heart, bones, and spirit?

Are you yearning to find meaningful ways to connect with and honor these energies of the Earth and your spirit?

Do you have a sense that the power and magic of the Earth and the plants is something you could tap into for your healing and well being?

Do you notice the ways that certain plants seem to become more vibrant and powerful at different times of the year?

Would you like to learn practical and effective ways to nourish and prepare your body, your home, and your spirit to live in tune with these seasonal cycles and shifts through food, herbal medicine, ritual, and community?

Do you feel like a kitchen goddess, who enjoys brewing up pots of soup, creative meals, herbal brews, and magical potions for your family and friends?

Are you ready to dive whole-heartedly into all this and more?

Then join me on a powerful journey deep into the medicine and power of the seasonal shifts that our beloved home, Earth, moves through each year. I have spent many years as an herbalist wandering the wild lands of the west- the deserts and mountains, and the east- forests and fields, watching, sensing, and learning about how the seasons, and the seasonal shifts effect our biology, our spirits, and our life journey. I have sat with the plants and learned so much from them through personal experience and communion. They have shared how to spiral into the energy of each season with plant medicine, with appropriate foods, with ritual and ceremony, and nature awareness. My life has been deeply changed and fully nourished by sitting on the Earth and feeling her power and her moods. Now I would like to share this experience and journey with you- so that you too may be deeply nourished from Gaia’s healing plants, foods and energies.

In this unique program you will receive an in-depth, hands on and heart-centered lesson and herbal medicine for each quarter and cross quarter day for a full year. That is 8 lessons and 8 seasonally appropriate herbal medicines to help you balance and attune to the energies of the earth happening around you and within you. Plus access to a community of like minded spirits, and specific practices and suggestions for you from me as you explore!

You will recieve every 6 weeks (8 times per year):

• 1 seasonally appropriate herbal medicine to help you attune and adjust to the seasonal energy (2 oz tincture, 2 oz tea, 1 plant or flower essence, 2 oz oil or salve)
• 1 surprise gift for your ceremony, practice or celebration of each season
• A lesson jam packed with information about the seasonal energies present at each quarter and cross quarter day, plants and herbal medicines that can support you in each seasons energy and work, seasonally appropriate activities to do alone or with your family, journaling questions and more.
• Periodic emails highlighting special natural events, shifts, and resources as you work within the program.
• Access to a private community web space to share your discoveries, challenges and inspirations and stay in touch through the years changes.
• A private teleconference for participants only each 6 weeks with Darcey on a seasonally appropriate topic and Q&A session.

If you are ready to discover your deep and powerful connections with the rhythms of the Earth and her seasons through herbal medicine, healing foods, and time spent on the Earth, then join me today for this amazing journey!

Program begins on Imbolc/St. Brighid’s Day, February 1, 2012 and continues through mid January 2013. Space is limited in this unique and transformative journey, and will close early if all the spaces fill before the deadline!

Registrations accepted through Jan 15, 2012.

Join me today for an amazing journey into Earth, Self, Plants and Connection!

Ready to sign up right now!? 

Register Here!

Gaia's gift of Weather: Thoughts on Hurricane Irene, Preparedness and Presence

Much of the Eastern seaboard, including my little spot in western Vermont is under the baleful eye of Hurricane Irene. Despite the scare tactics and fear mongering I saw in the news this week, it has been a wonderful opportunity to tune in to the messages of the land,  to pay attention to what needs tending in our immediate surroundings, and to harness the power of Gaia's breath.

In the days before the onset of the storm, I spent some time preparing myself and my home for the effects of the storm- making sure I had ways to care for myself, even if power went out or I was cut off from travel due to downed trees or flooding.  I have extra water, a source of heat and fire for cooking (both a wood stove and wood and a propane cook stove), plenty of non perishable foods- canned fish, beans, hearty greens, lactofermented pickles, sauerkraut, apples and such.  My herbal pantry is stocked with nervines, and I've been imbibing nervine teas with chamomile and lavender.

    And certainly not least, I've spent a good portion of the weekend outside on the land- feeling the incredible stillness and anticipation in the air.  All the plants and trees communicating their awareness and readiness for the oncoming storm- reassuring me that storms come and go, and life continues to flourish and flower.  I gathered medicines for the upcoming winter months- elderberries, alder branches, boneset, hawthorn berries - and put them up into elixirs, oils, and tinctures.

This storm is a reminder to be to always be living each moment fully- fully present, aware and connected.  That each moment is precious- whether it is our last or one of many more to come.  Things around us can change in the blink of an eye, or in a matter of hours in a storm.  And to be well prepared for life's storms.  Although we can't anticipate everything that might come our way, we can prepare ourselves, through attention and presence, and wise planning to have on hand the resources we might need in many cases.  Food, medicine, community support, back up plans.

As the winds are picking up here, I'm struck by the awesome power and beauty in the storm at hand.  It brings me closer to my humanity, and more in touch with the precious present moment, the trees that surround my house, the river that runs through this little mountain town, my senses are fully aware.

While this storm is blowing through, I'm thinking of the things I'd like to release and wash away, and what I'd like to breath power and life into.  The elements of water and air-  emotion and mental precision. Set your intention with forethought and passion- use the power of these elements to manifest, release and empower.

Wishing safety and peace to all as we journey through this storm!

The Healing Balsam of Poplar Buds

It was downright springy today.  The sun was shining, the snow melting off the roof in a steady wet stream, puddles and mud expanding even more.  We've had enough above freezing days in a row that I felt it was time to go out and get some poplar buds.  The few I had gathered before were oozing their resin into the oil very nicely, and so I slugged on the snowshoes to go have a look.

Now I'm used to gathering poplar buds in the southwest, sometime in early februrary, usually the sun is warm, reflecting back from the sandy wash where the cottonwood trees grow.  It gets downright hot at times, but it was always very meditative work.  Working slowly from branch to branch, gathering a bud here or there, taking care never to strip one branch of all its buds.  If lucky, finding freshly fallen branches on the ground after a windstorm.

But I've never collected the buds in the snow.  I mean, the sun was out.  And it was reflecting back at me from the blinding white snow.  It was so warm that I had to shed my hat, and unzip all my layers.  But then came the differences.  Snowshoeing through the maze of Balsam Poplar saplings, Sumac trees, spiny raspberry canes and tangling low branches just at snow level (because the snow is probably still three feet in spots.  I tripped more than once, got smacked in the face a few times, slid down an embankment, and generally had to pay close attention to where I was going.

Harvesting poplar buds is slow work.  2.5 hours yielded only half a quart jar of sticky, fragrant buds.  But oh god the smell- warm, sweet, pungent, vanilla,  honey, plus something all its own.  Ever so much more fragrant than the Fremont cottonwood buds I am most familiar with.  Little droplets of resin hardened on the large, brown buds.  Fortunately, this land is blessed with an abundance of sapling sized Poplars, just the right size for a short herbalist to gather from the lower branches.

I was thinking as I gathered, what is the lesson of poplar buds?  Certainly she teaches a measure of patience.  I mean- you have to wait until JUST the right moment, when the days are warm enough to melt the sticky resin inside the buds, but nights are cold enough to freeze it solid on the outside of the buds.  You might go check on them, every week for a month, or more.  And then, there's the slow business of collecting the juicy sticky buds, one by one, buds sticking to your hands, for hours on end, to result in a small harvest.   Surely we will learn patience from our poplar tree friends.

But also, attention to detail. Small details.  Watch where you step, check each bud, pick one by one, add to the jar, observe each branch, never pick too many from one spot, listen for the next tree to call, pick out the tree by paying attention to the grey, furrowed bark on older trees or grey mottled bark on the saplings, with reddish twigs where the growth is new.  All of these with no leaves to give it away, and picking it out among the whitish-yellow bark of its relative, aspen, and the bare, yet hairy branches of the sumach.   You look up, and notice how big and juicy the buds on the poplar are.  Nothing on any of the other trees compares.  Notice the aspen buds in some places are already opening catkins!  See the pairs of birchkins high on the white birches, and how they blend in with the large poplar buds.  Where does one branch end, and another start, which tree is which.

Attention to minute details isn't my forte in the normal world.  I have little patience for things like that. I like generalities, patterns, flow.  But it is different with the plants.  They ask of us more than we would give in other situations.  So I give my full attention to all the details of gathering poplar buds.  And sink into a state of peace- for a short while, not thinking about how much other shit I have to get done today, how sad and overwhelmed I feel by everything right now.  Just be here, now, with the trees, and the sun, and the snow shine, and the birdsong.  Following the trail of the turkey tracks through the trees.  I wonder if turkey was checking out the poplars too, or perhaps lunching on fallen sumac fruit clusters.  "And don't forget to pay attention," says the branch that smacks my cheek with a crack, "Slow Down" says the bramble that grasps at my clothes.

Finally, thirst and hunger urge me back to the house, trudging through the now melted snow crust, where I pour olive oil over the fragrant sticky buds in the jar to infuse for their pain relieving, antiinflammatory, and stimulating properties.  I'll go back another time or two, and gather a little bit more before the buds open into leaves and catkins, perhaps tincturing some as a nice stimulant expectorant and bitter digestive stimulant as well.  But for now, satisfied coming home smothered in the fragrance of poplar balsam.

Still sleeping

Winter is still in control. It's icy grip lays over the land, relinquishing nothing.  Not a trace of spruce tips- too early for that-  poplar buds frozen solid, with sticky resin inside that burns my tounge with its pungency and balsamic taste, it will be weeks before it is time to harvest that medicine- not even the hawthorn buds are swelling.





The ocean of snow, perfectly poised with precision- waves waiting to crash in on themselves when the skin kisses the vast expanse.  But for now- seeds lay sleeping far beneath the icy waves.

Hawthorn buds in waiting

I've been remiss in visiting my spiny hawthorn tree for the Tree Year in the fields below.  Crossing the ocean of snow is daunting.  She is still sleeping as well.  Wild cucumber and grape vines dangle lifelessly from her spiny arms, also waiting.  No sign of bird nor squirrel.  Just waves of snow 5 ft deep.


But the birches have birchkins...thats my word for catkins...because really they aren't cats, they are birches, and birchkins sounds more fun. 

birchkins

 

 It is supposed to storm again this weekend, but could end up being rain, so instead of working today like I had planned ( had a list going even) I went outside. The first time in months it feels like.  It really did take about 30 min to get dressed and get the snowshoes on and get the dog ready, but it was almost warm in the 25 degree sunshine.  But the snow doesn't think so, nor do the poplar buds. 

So here we are, all the plants, and all the herb folk still locked in winters icy reign- still sleeping, still hibernating, still awaiting the kiss of the sun prince to wake us from the 100 day slumber.

love

I am in love with the world today-
the perfect beauty etched in stone and cloud and shadow.
The sun after rain, and the clouds interrupting with their dance
across the blue bowl of sky.

I am in love with the world today-
chiaroscuro of rain and warm sun.

Blessed rain that washes over us all- like tears,
releasing the pain, the greiving,
letting go of what is passed, washing away what is old.

And the ever generous sun- returning always
to give life to sleeping seeds,
buried deep in the heart,
in earth.

I am in love with the world today-
filled with the deepest sadness and most ecstatic bliss
in the space between each breath.

The wildness of my soul aches
for days like today
everything so clear, so intense
in the contrast between love and heartache.

The beauty of this world so intense, almost too much to hold within myself.