A Crunchy Life - June 2023 Newsletter

Think of this as a letter from a friend with a deeper look into this month's post. I share more thoughts and resources for tapping into a simple, intentional life filled with Earth-based practices.

Hello friends!

I am late getting this newsletter out. June is full of high school graduations, gardens to tend, and day trips to be taken. There has been fabulous energy but it has made me fall behind a bit with getting this out to you. I hope the newsletter is worth the wait. Thanks for your understanding!

The June blog post is up and it is all about sun, water, and fire. This blog post talks about how I am connecting with my hand, head, and heart to intentionally collaborate with nature and the more than human beings we are in relationship with in this Earth community.

You can find the blog post at https://acrunchylife.com/2023/06/03/sun-water-fire/

Here is what I am exploring this month.
 

Hand…….

Herbs and plants. Partnering with herbs and plants is intrinsic to my intentional practices. I love growing them, harvesting them, and then using them in meaningful ways for our family. Lavender has been one of my herbal allies for as long as I can remember. Two varieties grow in our garden: 

1. Lavandula x intermedia 'Grosso' - Its hardiness zone is 5-7S/10W, likes full sun, and grows in pots or in the ground. According to White Flower Farm, "'Grosso’ is known as the variety that was most widely cultivated in Provence, where its oils were used in making some of the best naturally derived French perfumes." This is one of the most fragrant varieties so it works well for sachets, bundles, dried wreaths, eye pillows. 

2. Lavandula angustifolia - English lavender. This is the lavender used in cooking. It can be used for the same purposes mentioned above for Gross, its just that it is not as fragrant. Its hardiness zone is 5-7S/10W, likes full sun, and prefers space when it grows, it doesn't like to be crowded. 
 

As promised in the blog post, here is how I make lavender bundles:
 

You will need:

• Scissors

• Twine or ribbon

• Lavender

To harvest, cut fresh flower stalks from the tops of the lavender plant. Be sure to leave a couple inches of stem to be able to form a small bunch. Using twine or ribbon, gently wrap and tie the middle of the stems to secure the bunch. Trim the stems to create a uniform base, if desired. 

You can also place two bundles end to end and then wrap it to form a double bundle. This is the one I made this year for over our main door. 
 

Head ……. 

I love stories. The older the better. And, the best are the ones that fall under folk tales and mythology. I spend time searching for those that connect to the celebrations that are important in our family and I strive to connect to stories from our ancestral lands. I believe those stories can provide insight into how our ancestors lived and managed the trials of life. More importantly, I believe those stories can help us figure out how to find our way through the times we live in. That's because, the stories deal with universal themes.

Stories for summer solstice are stories that include transformation, rebirth, journeys, light, and magic. In prior years we have read The Return of the Sun King by Christine Natale, a story full of fairy folk, gnomes, dwarves, water sprites, and seed babies.

This year, now that the girls are older, we are going to explore the story of Persephone from the Homeric Hymn to Demeter and The Descent of Inanna. The Descent of Inanna is the older of the two, thought to have been composed some time between 3500 BCE and 1900 BCE. Both stories tell the story of a young woman descending into the underworld and then returning. Both represent, at some level, the change of seasons and the cycle of death and rebirth.

Consideration of the differences seems as important as consideration of the similarities in these two stories. We will be focusing not only on the connection to the seasons but also to what these stories have to tell us about navigating life and transitions.

Heart …….

Between the summer solstice and midsummer my meditation practice moves outside. I have a dedicated  space, a comfortable Adirondack chair surrounded by Hydrangeas, Azaleas, Cosmos in pots, and Dahlias in pots.  I have a focal point that is composed of stacked rocks with two shells at the top: an Eastern Oyster shell and a Gryphaea shell. Rocks in the stack all contain tourmaline which is said to support protection and the dispelling of negative energies. The two shells at the top are what make the stack unique.

The first shell is the Eastern Oyster shell. This shell comes from the Chesapeake Bay. The Eastern Oyster is a keystone species in the Chesapeake Bay that is responsible for filtering the water. The old timers say that when Captain John Smith first came up the Bay, the oysters were so plentiful that they stuck out of the water and clean the water in the Bay in a day. Now there is less than 1% of that population in the Bay. This Eastern Oyster shell connects to ancestry, change, place.

The shell at the very top of the stack is the Gryphaea shell. Gryphaea is a genus of oyster that went extinct about 34 million years ago. The most interesting Gryphaea shells that I have learned about come from Dix Pit near the village of Stanton Harcourt, Oxfordshire, England. Dix Pit was a quarry and landfill when a mammoth tusk was discovered there in 1989. A team from St. Cross College, University of Oxford under the direction of Dr. Katherine Scott commenced a dig that turned out to be one of the largest and most-remarkable Pleistocene assemblages of more than 1500 vertebrate fossils spanning over circa 200,0000 years. If you are interested in Dr. Scott's work she has an excellent book entitled, Mammoths and Neanderthals in the Thames Valley Excavations at Stanton Harcourt Oxfordshire. This Gryphaea shell connects to geologic time, genetic ancestry, landscapes, perseverance.

This time of the year during meditation I focus on growth, expansion, place, feeling based knowing, collaboration with the more than human world. I am aware of how my body is entering the space, what my feet, my back, my arms are each touching. I am aware of the sounds/light/smells/etc. Then, I simply ask, "what do you want to me to know." And, then I listen and breathe.

The important steps in a meditation practice focused upon feeling based knowing and collaboration with the more than human world is to relax, breathe, and listen. Be open to hearing, receiving, and practicing, and something remarkable may come through. 
 

What I’m looking forward to…….

Midsummer Eve. Linked with the summer solstice celebrations, midsummer celebrations, the eve before 24th June, is a festival of fire and water, sun and moon, abundance and fertility, happiness and joy. Water and plants are particularly potent during this time so there are lots of ways to mark this day with water and plants. I will wash my face with the first dew of the morning, make an elderflower cordial, and decorate the house with herbs, plants, and twigs, such as chamomile, elderflower, fern leaves, lavender, and maple. All of these herbs, plants, and twigs are from ones that live in our garden spaces. 

Here's my cordial recipe:

Fresh or dried herbs and/or fruit - enough to fill a quart jar about 1/3 to 1/2 full (use the smaller measurement for dry herbs to allow for expansion)

240 mL (8 fluid ounces) vodka or brandy

240 m: (8 fluid ounces) honey or maple syrup

Finely chop fresh herbs and fruit, place in a clean, glass jar so that it is 1/3 to 1/2 full. Pour 240 mL (8 fluid ounces) vodka/brandy into a separate bowl. Slowly whisk in honey/maple syrup. Pour the liquid mixture over the fruit/herbs. Add additional vodka/brandy, if needed, so that the contents are well covered. Cover tightly, shake well, and let the mixture macerate for 3-4 months. Strain well, bottle, and enjoy.

I use dried elderflowers to make the cordial.

Mountain Rose Herbs has a wonderful recipe for elderflower cordial that does not use alcohol.  

In Kashubia, fire had a special place on midsummer as a symbol of purification.

"St. John's Vigil sparkled from early darkness with thousands of fires, at which crowds of people gathered for the celebration of the ancient feast. They were ruled by fire, worshipped that night as a life-giving and destructive element, but above all purifying the world of men, the world of the living.” (Piotr Schmandt, „Sobótka, ścinanie kani, ogień i czary na Kaszubach”, Gdynia 2104.)

Women in some villages would gather in the forest for a sacred fire in which herbs that repelled evil forces were burned. They drank vodka and danced until midnight. Our fire won't last as long as theirs but we will add some herbs and plants into ours as well - chamomile, elderberry, lavender, rosemary, juniper, and fern leaves.

Messenger by Mary Oliver

My work is loving the world.
Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird—
equal seekers of sweetness.
Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums.
Here the clam deep in the speckled sand.

Are my boots old? Is my coat torn?
Am I no longer young, and still not half-perfect? Let me
keep my mind on what matters,
which is my work,

which is mostly standing still and learning to be
astonished.
The phoebe, the delphinium.
The sheep in the pasture, and the pasture.
Which is mostly rejoicing, since all the ingredients are here,

which is gratitude, to be given a mind and a heart
and these body-clothes,
a mouth with which to give shouts of joy
to the moth and the wren, to the sleepy dug-up clam,
telling them all, over and over, how it is
that we live forever.

Love. 

Karen 

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