My favourite photo from my pregnancy.
My name comes from the Old English for a clearing in a hay meadow. When I was a child I remember feeling disappointed with that but now as a woman directing a scythe, I see medicine in it. Pondering the various surnames of our unmarried family of 3, I realised recently that if we all took my partner’s surname, which means ‘joy field’ in Old English, my name medicine would subtlety reinforced.
This morning a friend told me that when she thinks of me, she sees a meadow. I really liked that. Fitting ~ given this life amongst grass. I was at the herbal apiary, scythe in hand: a woman with a mission. There was grass to tame! At the herbal apiary, this is the time of the heavy mass of grass. Grass marching towards precious medicine plants. Grass tickling my arm pits. Grass in my face. Grass jammed in pram wheels. Grass falling over on itself not knowing what to do. Grass grass grass.
And yet I secretly love this midsummer dance with the grass. The scythe is by far my favourite tool. It completes my body with a blissful power. Scything is an embodied meeting of the fiery force of summer that lives through plants on the land. And the scythe is an instrument that can be used with intention for moving and clearing the fiery energy that lives in the body.
Photo – freshly scythed grass in the Herbal Apiary this morning.
My name comes from the Old English for a clearing in a hay meadow. When I was a child I remember feeling disappointed with that but now as a woman directing a scythe, I see medicine in it. Pondering the various surnames of our unmarried family of 3, I realised recently that if we all took my partner’s surname, which means ‘joy field’ in Old English, my name medicine would subtlety reinforced.
This morning a friend told me that when she thinks of me, she sees a meadow. I really liked that. Fitting ~ given this life amongst grass. I was at the herbal apiary, scythe in hand: a woman with a mission. There was grass to tame! At the herbal apiary, this is the time of the heavy mass of grass. Grass marching towards precious medicine plants. Grass tickling my arm pits. Grass in my face. Grass jammed in pram wheels. Grass falling over on itself not knowing what to do. Grass grass grass.
And yet I secretly love this midsummer dance with the grass. The scythe is by far my favourite tool. It completes my body with a blissful power. Scything is an embodied meeting of the fiery force of summer that lives through plants on the land. And the scythe is an instrument that can be used with intention for moving and clearing the fiery energy that lives in the body.
This website might be filled with apparently calm photos of gathering plants and motherhood, but I am a very very healthily angry woman. I am angry about many many things I see and feel in this world. The movement and direction of anger is daily work for me. The work with anger is my fuel, my motivation to do this work and the source of my passion. Riding and wielding it brings me purpose and clarity. And of course sometimes it hurts me. And sometimes it hurts others. I’m human. I’m learning. Grass clearing has a lot to teach me yet.