40 Days of Peace Day Eighteen

A season for everything

Witch Hazel

“The flowers are a ragged affair: five long petals, each like a scrap of fading below cloth that snagged on the branch, torn strips that wave in the breeze. But, oh are they welcome, a spot of color when months of gray lie ahead. A last hurrah before winter…”

The more I learn about natures gifts, the more I want to learn and the more I fall in love with the world I live in, and even so, the more I love myself as part of this spectacular creation.

“There ain’t hardly no hurt the woods don’t have medicine for.” -Braiding Sweetgrass

I’ve been wondering why some plants only bloom in certain seasons but we use them all year. Witch Hazel is one of these plants. The medicine of this plant is a gift which is purposeful all year round, but there are seasons for harvesting and preparing the plant to be used.

“The twigs and leaves of witch hazel can be gathered throughout the growing season, but are most potent in the springtime when the sap is running and the leaf growth is fresh.

Both can be gathered by cutting small, leaf-bearing branches from mature trees. Strip the leaves and trim the twigs into smallish sections of about 1 inch (2.5 cm). For thicker twigs or branches, you can strip the outer bark using a small knife. All parts can be used fresh or dried in baskets or on screens for later use.” -Juliet Blankespoor LINK TO ARTICLE
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I like to compare plants with people, seeing that we both have our purposes in this big play we’re a part of. I was daydreaming and wondering how plants chose their purpose, or if it was chosen for them. Picture all the seedlings preparing to come to this world and be planted in the soil. Perhaps there was a sign up for each season, “Alrighty, little seeds, we are looking for volunteers for Spring. Spring recruits receive a lot of love during this season, as the humans have just gone through the gray period of winter and any color will excite them. Humans love to buy seeds during this period and will care for you well. You will have lots of friends and live in a rainbow of color during this season. Ok, volunteers?” -Lady Spring

Clearly there were LOTS of seedlings that signed up with Lady Spring. We all know how we are as humans. Every calendar, commercial and song written about spring advertises to the seedlings to “choose me, choose me”. LadySpring won the lottery with seeds when they we’re passing out names in heaven.

And then there’s Aunt Fall and Gramma Winter. Not as many seeds running up to the board to sign up there. But! Witch Hazel did! She chose to bloom in November when the trees have all but lost their leaves. What a gift she is! Thanks WH!

“That witch hazel, it’s not just good for you outside, but inside too. Land sakes, flowers in November.

The good lord gave us witch hazel to remind us that there’s always somethin’ good

even when it seems like there ain’t. It just lightens your heavy heart, is what it does.” Braiding Sweetgrass

Nature has many things to teach us with a plant like Witch Hazel. She chooses to bring us color for joy, and medicines for our pain. She is a salve for many things that ale the human body and we owe her a deep gratitude for her gifts. She comes to ease our pains and she blooms once (some species twice) a year just when we could use a burst of yellow sunshine on a walk through the woods.

I’ve decided we will ask her to join our family of plants on the farm! She will be a reminder to us to appreciate the seasons of our life, even the painful ones. She will be a friend to our family and our girls. We’ll tell stories of how she was once among the stars and she chose to stand in the Fall line, instead of the all popular Spring or Summer lines, just so she could bloom when we needed her most. And she asked to be a strong medicine so she could help take away peoples pain.

Yes, she’ll be a good addition to the Poe Clan.

No matter what season of our life we are in, there is something to appreciate, something to be grateful for, something to learn. It would be so boring is ALL the plants bloomed ALL the time. I love the seasons! I love living in a place where my body can experience all the seasons! I love to eat in season and soak up the medicine of this period in my life. I look forward to spending time in the Dakotas again in a few months, where we will stand in awe at the pure beauty and strength of Gramma Winter. She is a season to respect. I’ve learned to love all 4 seasons.

There’s a Sting song that says, “She can be all for seasons in one day”… that was me for a while. I’m pretty sure my brothers played it for me on a few occasions. I could shift from a sunny spring morning, to a stormy summer night right into a quiet winter scene. Unhealed trauma turns this ride into a rollercoaster when emotions take the driver seat. But that was then, and this is now! That song doesn’t describe me anymore, but I still love that Sarah, and all her seasons (all of them at once sometimes) have been purposeful in my journey.

No matter what season we are in. All we have in the present moment and the gift that it is. Best to be grateful for it. It will be the next season before we know it.

Journal Time

If you could choose a plant, what plant would choose to be?

Describe yourself as that plant..

Pretend that each season is a character in a book.

Now, pretend YOU are each of the seasons..

Describe the ways you are similar to each season and why you love this about yourself.

Shams of Tabriz’s 40 Rules of Love

Rule 18

If you want to change the ways others treat you, you should first change the way you treat yourself, fully and sincerely, there is no way you can be loved. Once you achieve that stage, however, be thankful for every thorn that others might throw at you. It is a sign that you will soon be showered in roses.