Lammas. Loaf mass. First fruits.
Our Christian fathers may have taught us to celebrate the harvest festival when all is safely gathered in, but our pagan mothers knew not to wait. The divine feminine knows to celebrate first fruits as well as the full harvest, to notice everything in its time, to pick the berries as they ripen and to make a ritual of the first loaf from the cutting of the first corn.
As it happens, I neither grow corn (of any kind) nor bake bread (ditto) – but my harvest has already begun. Let’s be honest, we started with the strawberries long weeks ago, and they are ready for cutting back now.
I have eaten the first blackberries, the first few tomatoes. I have snipped chives. I had three or four juicy peaches – not so many and yet enough to have been grown in a “let survive what will” garden in the suburbs. Oregano has dusted tortilla pizzas and found its way into fish stews. Several basil plants have given it a good go, but drown in the down pourings or wilted in the sun…when I wasn’t here to rescue them from either. Besides, there were hungry caterpillars too.
The last of the strawberries are frozen in yoghurt for when I need to be reminded of Summer
later in the year.
It has rained for days…and days…
Ok, to be fair, that’s not strictly true. More accurately, it has rained on all the mornings that I had time to go into the garden and, well, garden. I don’t mean an uncomfortable drizzle, or lovely summery gentleness, I mean downpours, torrents, thunder-&-lightning bide-ye-best-indoors rain.
A professional gardener cousin of mine tells me that she will finish in the rain, but not start in the rain. I feel the same way about walking, so I get it. I’m happy to apply it to my own tending of the plot.
My plot is not a kitchen garden, per se. It is the land on which the house stands, and it serves as many purposes as I have whims on any given day. It is a meditation space. It is a photography studio. It is a practice space for tai chi and ropeflow. It is an adjunct to my library – somewhere to read and write. It is a hedgehog thoroughfare and at times a rats’ nest. It is where jay birds insist on planting acorns and I have to keep uprooting would-be oak trees. It is where blue tits jig across the sky, and magpies and pigeons fight if I have remembered to put out seed. It is where thistles spread their down, and ragwort does its worting. It is where my zen space overgrows and my goddess statute gets lost between the bay and fuchsia…but carries her water bowl regardless. It is the place that reminds me – should I ever need reminding – that I am not in control. I am merely an intrinsic part of everything.
And every so often it gives me something I can eat. The pears thrive, but don’t taste great raw. I don’t know what variety they are…and I’m still trying to figure out how to use them. This year there are apples…more than I would ever have expected. I am waiting for them to ripen to see if they can be eaten as they come, or if they will need to be stewed down with sugar and honey.
The herbs have bolted this year and gone to seed. I will cut them right back and they will come again.
The lavender and sage scent my way from my door. And golden rod dances its acid yellow dance, daring me to cut it down too soon.
All of this is my harvest. The lemon balm that I rarely use. The mint that I try to make the most of.
But also the butterflies: whites and blues and browns – loved in their passing through.
I went blackberrying again tonight. My own hedge is re-establishing from last year’s major hacking back, so I’m having to stretch for things from over the fence, or stoop low for the escapees. I come in bloodied of fingers and drip-stained of shirt…and smiling.
The day started in rain, thunderous, torrential, downpour rain. It is ending in clear skies and summer winds, and the seagulls going back down to the marsh.
Over half the year has gone, Summer snuck by almost unnoticed and now, already now, we are turning towards the autumnal season of shortening days.
I am not ready for that, not yet, but if what it really means is that we are harvesting, slowly, gently, the first fruits and eating the first loaves of a year, then yes...I can settle into the fruitfulness of late Summer.
