Shifting Rhythms

An amazing year we're having. Lots of intense sun and aside from the lack of rain over this past month, a great growing year. It's hard to believe that it has only been a year since the garden went in. Already, it seems like the terraces have been there for years - especially considering the robust growth of the plants....Mediterranean in origin plants like the Clary Sage and Hyssop are thriving, and I am amazed at their structure and beauty. Having been a vegetable gardener - with some understanding of culinary herbs, it is wonderful to harvest garden bounty during what was once early in the season. As with the post earlier about the red clover, I knew that there was beauty in the flowers of certain plants, but to have healing in them too is marvelous. I have enjoyed shifting my rhythm in the garden to harvesting and processing earlier and with different methods. Yesterday I made a garden sage, thyme flower and tulsi essential oil - infused honey. Today I caught the tail end of the elder flower season, and made a batch of Elder Flower Fizz starter ( see Darina Allen's the Forgotten Skills of Cooking). We'll see how all these initial attempts come out. In the process though, there's poetry. Taking something that had meaning and beauty to me already and then integrating it into my life in nourishing, new and unexpected ways has pushed my experience of landscape and ecology into a new direction that's more profound and rewarding to me.