Busy-ness, Breaking and Blessings

June has been exceptionally busy. For me. Filled with events and workshops, comings and goings, garden demands and wild-harvesting, deliveries and doings, forgiveness and gratitude, associates and friends and loved ones.

No matter how I slice these experiences, Nature is present. With this realization, I was inspired to make myself a botanical Spirit Bundle, and figured if I'm making one, why not a few extra?

Today they get unwrapped and sit atop mugwort stems in the solar dehydrator for a final kiss of sunny drying.

I've been harvesting my local allies for food, craft fodder and Medicine. Today I have more Saint Joan's wort and violet leaf to harvest... among other botanical allies.

I was blessed over this past weekend with an intimate workshop to share the simplicity and empowerment of making one's own kombucha. This experience offered an opportunity to re-meet (that's right, re-meet) a lovely local woman who, as serendipity would have it, raises angora rabbits to spin her own fiber and consequently has a bunny "waste" management challenge. And there I am... with my compost. So bunny "waste" has been added and the compost pile turned for the first time this season. Connections/relationships steer it all!

I was blessed with some art time over the weekend. Craft time, too.

And actually began a new spread in my art journal. Such amazing Medicine this is, giving mind and heart to the busy-ness of June and to the coming of July, a TaB (Take a Break) month for me, with only a few external commitments, and lots of time and space for Me, my gardens and preserving, my wild-harvesting, my herbs, my art, my loved ones. And my spirit. I especially look forward to rekindling my relationship with my botanical ancestors in some very intentional ways.  When lay it out like this I wonder: What exactly is it from which I'm breaking? And I smile and feel ever so blessed.

I invest this final day of June in setting the tone and rhythm for the month ahead as I look forward its full arrival. I'll be kicking off the eve with a grilled feast of homegrown and local deliciousness, served outdoors, and tomorrow will be shared with my spouse and playtime at the studio, and Thursday's activities depend on the weather, yet will wind down with a visit to the opening reception for J. Timothy Quirk's wonderful art project, "Our Stories," for which I feel sweet gratitude in having been included.

So whether I'm busy or breaking, I do feel blessed. Challenges and all.

Peace.