This is our first Christmas without my grandmother here in physical form and we miss her. But, her beauty lives on in her Christmas Cactus which is covered in blooms bringing color and life to this season of new family traditions. I also have her favorite amaryllis about to bloom on my dining room table. What a lifetime gift of the love of growing things both of my grandmothers bestowed upon me.
Spring
For last year's words belong to last year's language
And next year's words await another voice.
And to make an end is to make a beginning.
~ T.S. Eliot
Return
The light begins to return today. The season of the dormant seed.. potential and hope. This is my favorite season.. this part of the life cycle.. for the promise of life being held within the shell deep of the seed in the ground as the visions that come after the harvest now must lie in wait.. and, for the potential of each seed.. between now and the great turning in early February when the light shifts to a sweet pastel yellow is the time to consider the seeds to be planted the coming cycle. As a tender of plants and soil and other living things this metaphor for this season speaks to me. What seeds will you plant this year?
Winter Solstice
We live between the act of awakening and the act of surrender. Each morning, we awaken to the light and the invitation to a new day in the world of time; each night, we surrender to the dark to be taken to play in the world of dreams where time is no more.
`~ John O'Donohue
