The Healing Power of Wild Grapes

 

The Wild Grapes have been whispering to us.  “It is time.  It is time.”  We’ve been watching their transformation since the grape vines flowered in the spring.  This year, there seemed to be a lot of grape flowers on the side of the walking trail that we frequent.  Soon, we noticed large clusters of small green orbs appearing as if by magic.  We watched them grow larger and larger throughout the summer.  When they began to blush pink, then pinkish purplish blue, we paid close attention.  Soon, they were dark blue but still hard to the touch.  Last week we noticed that they were soft and flavourful when tasted. “It is time to pick us,” they whispered.

I spent last Saturday in an Indigenous Culture Competency workshop with a local Indigenous teacher, Kelly Brownbill.  She provided an excellent foundation for us to later “build a house of knowledge on,” as she put it.  Some of the information was new for me and some of it strengthened what I had already learned from other authors and teachers. 

I have been thinking a lot lately about ancestral traumas and how my ancestors brought the worldview of scarcity to Turtle Island.  Instead of seeing the abundance as a cure for this scarcity, they moved into greed which resulted in the death of 80% of the people Indigenous to these territories, the extirpation of some species of birds and animals and the deforestation of thousands of acres of land.  Kelly explained the worldview of the Europeans coming to Turtle Island in which the monarch was the supreme ruler and the aristocracy took way more than their fair share of resources.  Despite the warnings about greed in the Christian teachings, greed was the sign of success.  This is still true today in Western non-Indigenous culture.  And so, scarcity hoping for abundance turned into greed and destruction in the face of actual abundance.  This seems to me, to be an ancestral trauma in need of healing.

This morning, in the gentle fall rain, my partner and I renewed our relationship with the Wild Grapes that grow beside the dock where we tie up our canoes.  We asked their permission to pick and they were happy to say yes.  We gave them an offering in reciprocity and then we begin to break the clusters off of the vines.  There were a lot of them and they hung in beautiful clusters.  I felt the ancestral desire to get as many as I could rise up in me.  I didn’t name it greed but that is exactly what it was.  I was picking quickly, as if there was someone approaching who would take them if I wasn’t fast enough.  But, we were alone.  There was no actual threat. Wild Grapes are a treat for us, not my main food source.  We give most of the jelly we make to our friends and neighbours.  There is absolutely no need for greed.  I became conscious of this ancestral trauma rising up in need of healing.  

 I don’t exactly know how to do this healing. It seems to be a relatively new idea for non-Indigenous people who see themselves as the perpetrators of trauma, not realizing where it comes from to think about healing the trauma they carry. And so, I am finding my way, making this up as I go along, co-creating healing experiences with nature.  I took some deep breaths and stopped picking.  An idea came to me.  What if I thank each cluster for their gift as I break them off of the vine.  So, that’s what I did.  My body changed.  I slowed down.  Efficiency became null and void.  Presence, gratitude and appreciation were what was important.  We picked only what we could reach from our feet and left lots of grapes up high for the birds who do need these grapes for their food.  There were enough for all of us.

Dr. Gabor Mate talks about holding compassionate space for healing and he does that beautifully for his patients.  And so, I held a compassionate space for myself as I became conscious of the impulse for taking as much as I could arose in me.  I didn’t beat myself up.  I simply noticed it and felt the fear of scarcity that was underneath it.  What we love softens and as I held a compassionate space for myself, the fear diminished as did the greed that arose out of it.  Instead of being driven by unconscious trauma, I became conscious of it and could then choose to slow down, calm down and feel gratitude.  My body slowed down, calmed down and softened.  I could be present in the actual moment instead of being driven by an ancestral past.

Perhaps healing ancestral trauma is a series of healing events.  Perhaps some of these are done on a personal level and some are done at a collective level.  I do believe that as we get better at this, it is possible for a shift in “society” to take place.  As an older woman, I have the freedom of time and space to experiment with this, to reflect on my experience and to listen to the whispers of the Wild Grapes.  It’s what I feel called to do.  It’s where I want to share my gifts just as the Grapes share theirs. 

 

The Transformation of the Humble Potato

 

It all started in the late winter of 2022, on a visioning zoom call for the brand new community garden.  We were brainstorming what vegetable we would like to grow.   “Let’s plant potatoes,” suggested Ronald Muwonge.  Originally from Uganda, Ronald works in food services and has a You Tube channel called “Cooking with Ronald”.  He is also an avid gardener and I imagined him putting potato cooking recipes onto his You Tube channel.

The cedar potato box with the word potato in Luganda (Bumonde), Anishinaabemowin (Opin), French (Patat) and Michif (Patak) reflecting some of the languages spoken in our region.

Another member of the community got into the spirit of potatoes and built a cedar potato box to grow them in.  We researched how to grow potatoes in a box and what nutrients might be needed for such an endeavour.  We learned that potatoes like lots of potassium for good root growth.  An easy source of this is dried banana peels that are ground up.  We saved all our banana peels for a few weeks, dried them in the greenhouse and buzzed them in the coffee bean grinder.  We also learned that potatoes like slightly acidic soil and that pine needles are a good source to lower the pH.  We collected this “pine straw” from the local forest and added it to the soil at the bottom of the box which had holes cut in it for drainage.

On planting day, we added the banana peel dust to the top of the soil and Ronald planted the seed red potatoes into holes in the soil, leaving the “eyes” looking up to the sky.  Some of the children in the community helped him to water them.   You can see the planting on this beautiful You Tube video that Ronald made about the celebration at the 29:45 mark  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nRmwgSlZuDk

As the potatoes sprouted and the stems and leaves grew higher, we added soil to encourage lateral root growth and thus more potatoes.  We added more pine straw as well and watered.  Eventually the plants made it to the top of the box and we stopped adding soil.  The stems and leaves kept on going up another two feet.  Eventually they flowered with beautiful purple and yellow flowers that had a very sweet fragrance.  Most us the people that visited the garden had never seen potato flowers up close before and they stopped to well, smell the potatoes.  These flowers turned into seed pods which look just like green cherry tomatoes except, potato seed pods are toxic.  So, we quietly picked them all off so that no child would make an unfortunate error.

The beautiful potato flower that has a very sweet smell

Towards the end of August, some of the plants began to wilt.  We knew that we could get small “new potatoes” from the box at this point but we decided to wait a while longer.  In the middle of September, we had a Harvest Celebration including the big potato reveal.  At first, we had some trouble enticing the kids to come and dig for potatoes.  But once, they started to reveal the pinkish red spuds, the excitement mounted.  Some of the children had been watering the potatoes all summer while others were new to the garden.  They used yogurt containers as scoops and carefully removed the soil to discover potato treasures.

The children reach into the potato box

Each one was carefully pulled out and handed to another community member to be put on a wire screen.  The excitement grew and loud shouts of “Whoaaaa” were heard with each new find. It was wonderful to see children with their hands in the earth, finding food.  Hopefully that will be a memory that stays with them. Eventually we reached the bottom of the box and looked at the beautiful harvest.

The final potato harvest

Three potatoes were put in each brown paper lunch bag to be taken home by the Harvest celebration participants – including the soil that still clung to them.  There were enough potatoes for everyone to take some home.  As we were packing up at the end of the celebration, I was told that there was one more potato left in the box and that I should come and see it.  There, inside the box was one of the five year old boys who had helped to plant the potatoes in May.  He was curled up and was vibrating slightly as he pretended to be the last potato to be found.

Sadly, Ronald and his family had to move away from Waubauahene at the end of June.  However, we sent him email updates about the garden and he is planning to make a third video this fall.  And so, it only seemed fitting to mail him three potatoes for himself, his wife Vanessa and their son Liam.  We are all still connected.

What started as an idea on zoom blossomed and transformed as we worked together.  In a small way, we got to take part in an activity that our ancestors knew only too well. The potato which originated in Peru, has travelled the world.  And the world has travelled to Canada. This richness of ancestry was represented in the potato harvesters at our celebration as we came together to renew our relationship with the soil, the rain and the sun that resulted in food that will sustain us and with each other.  I will never look at a potato in the same way that I used to after this.  For me, potatoes have now become a sacred symbol of community and the healing that is possible when we renew and nurture relationships.

A tiny tree frog who itself transformed from egg to tadpole to frog, surveys the empty potato box.

Late Summer Harvest

 

The Earth released her embrace

Allowing the plump white onion

To break free as the young girl

Tugged on its hollow green leaves.

Smiling, she placed it in the basket

And selected another and another.

 

Then came the generous Kale leaves,

Curly green textured delights

Snapped off at the base of their stems

By small hands absorbing tactile knowing

From being in relationship with each leaf.

 

A juicy beet pulled from the soil

Joined the beauty in the basket,

Food to be shared with the community

From the garden with the same name,

 

Meanwhile, little boys searched through

The jungle-like tangle of tomato leaves

In search of ripe red cherry tomatoes.

Bursts of warm delicious brightness

Exploding in their mouths with each treasure.

 

Later, alone, I carefully selected the delicate

Arugula and Mizuna leaves to join the offering.

One ear of corn has been nibbled on.

Torn husk leaves and missing kernels

Hint at the sharp teeth of a squirrel

Sharing in the abundance.

We picked the cob to save the seeds

As promises of next year’s garden.

 

Squashes, cucumbers and zucchinis

Expand almost as you watch them.

Each one finds its way to someone

Who will delight in their gift

From our common mother

Earth.

 

Blackberry's Community Wisdom

 The ancient Celts used the first alphabet in Europe which is called the Ogham script.  Each letter is associated with a tree or an important plant.  The alphabet was used as a mnemonic device to encode knowledge, the Celtic song of the universe, Ceolta na Cruinne (Diana Beresford-Kroeger).  The thirteen months of the year (pre-Gregorian calendar) were each represented by a particular tree.  The new year began on Nov. 1^st with Birch, followed by Rowan in December, Alder in January, Willow in February, Ash in March, Hawthorn in April, Oak in May, Holly in June and Hazel in July.  The “tree” associated with August is the Blackberry (Bramble) or Vine.

Some authors say that the plant for August representing Muin or the letter M, is the Blackberry or Bramble and others say the Vine.  Grapes were introduced to Ireland so the original plant was likely Blackberry.  Both grapes and blackberries are used to make wine so they are linked with intuition and prophecy.  They are both plants which bind themselves to other plants and are thus understood as connectors. These plants travel wherever they want.  Blackberry has roots that sucker up wherever they can.  Their branches grow out into space until they are heavy enough to touch the ground.  Then the tip produces a root.  In this way, the blackberry “leapfrogs” along.  Grapes send out strong tendrils to wind around whatever the plant is climbing on.  I have seen wild grapes cover a small tree and weigh it down once the grapes form.  Both these plants have a strong life force that can teach us about  the tenacity that comes from being both tough and flexible.  Blackberries brambles create a safe place for a community of beings including small mammals, birds and saplings.  In this way, it links different energies into a community.  Muin is also about weaving your consciousness with the consciousness of everything.

The Celtic knot is a never-ending thread of connection which represents Blackberry's characteristic of connecting beings into a community.  At the centre of the knot is the ripe Blackberry.  The violet in the loops of the knot represent intuition and inspiration.  The bright yellow of the sun represents the time of year, August, the festival of the sun god Lugh surrounded by the green of the plants and the blue of the water that brings life to all.  The Ogham script for Muin is at the bottom of the piece.

As I pondered the teachings of Blackberry with a small group of like-minded women, I could sense Blackberry wrapping around us, providing a safe container for us to open to its teachings.  We talked about the seeming opposite qualities of thorns which can really hurt human skin and the delicious soft, ripe berries.  One woman pointed out that it takes skill to reach through the thorny branches to pick a ripe berry.  You can’t just rush in there and take.  And it takes patience to wait for the berry to be ripe.  It won’t come away into your fingers unless it is ripe.

As an older woman, many of my friends are also older people.  After a few years of the pandemic, social changes, fear and uncertainty, I am noticing that some of my friends are struggling.  Age reduces one’s need to people please and be socially “nice”.  I notice that some of my friends can be quite thorny at times.  The ancestral and personal wounds that they have been carrying their whole lives are becoming more visible.  It takes some skill to not take their thorniness personally.  It takes patience to wait for those moments of beauty when their best selves shine through, like a delicious, ripe blackberry.  It takes skill to find a way for these experiences to act as connectors, weaving the safe space of community.  Walking away at every painful moment doesn’t build community.  Finding ways to stay connected does build community.

I have experienced the tenacity of blackberry’s life force as I seek to keep the Black Raspberry canes in one of my gardens from taking over the whole space.  The little plants pop up everywhere from suckering roots.  I usually don’t have my gardening gloves with me at this particular garden and so I try to pull out the little plants with my bare hands.  Sometimes, little thorns get left in my skin as a reminder.

This summer, my partner and I have been part of a new community garden in our village which I have already written about in this space.  Part of the idea for this garden is to let the plants teach us how to build community.  We have the Three Sisters; corn, beans and squash, which are companion plants, as the centrepiece of the circular garden. The squash is heading out in every direction now, putting roots down at nodal points where flowers and fruit also emerge.  My partner and I are experimenting with co-creating community with these plants.  When vegetables are ripe, we encourage people to pick them and take them home or we pick them and give them away.   Sometimes, this give away is to people who are visiting the park and sometimes we teach children how to harvest carrots, lettuce, kale, beets or zucchinis.  Little carrots can be washed off and eaten right there.  Food is a great connector as everyone eats. We hope that people will feel more connected to the plants and the Earth as they get their food from the garden.  And somehow this space will connect them all in the energy of community.

We like to walk as a form of exercise and since we live on the shores of Georgian Bay, walking is also a chance to take in the natural beauty that surrounds us.  As we walk through the village and along the shoreline trail, we encounter all kinds of people.  Some are year-round residents, some are cottagers and some are visitors.  I am imagining myself as a Blackberry branch that grows out into the air and then touches the earth and puts down roots.  Perhaps the act of going for a walk is grounded or rooted when I stop to chat to someone.  At times, we take vegetables to people’s homes and have a little chat.  We as humans have the ability to take the garden to the people. Perhaps all these acts of connection create a sense of community.  Blackberry would tell me that it is.

Often, when we pick a vegetable because it is at its best, I hold it and cast my mind out to see who might like it.  I access my intuition this way and often someone pops into my mind.  One evening, I had a nice big Golden Zucchini and some Kale that needed a home.  One of my neighbours popped into my mind as I held the food.  Trusting this intuitive lead, we set off on foot to her house and knocked on her door.  She was delighted to receive the food.  She told us that earlier that day, she had been driving past the garden and she was struck by the beauty of all the plants growing together.  She had also come across a zucchini recipe that day but didn’t have a zucchini.  Somehow, I had intuited her connection with the beauty of the garden and her desire for a zucchini and had walked the vegetables over to her house, like a long blackberry branch.

 

References:

Diana Beresford-Kroeger (2019) To Speak for the Trees. Random House: Canada.

Danu Forest (2014) Celtic Tree Magic: Ogham Lore and Druid Mysteries. Llewellyn Worldwide: Woodbury, Minnesota.

Sharlyn Hidalgo (2019) The Healing Poser of Trees. Llewellyn Publications: Woodbury, Minnesota.

lennie Kindred, (1997) The Tree Ogham. Glennie Kindred: UK.

Liz and Colin Murray (1988) The Celtic Tree Oracle. Connections Book Publishing: London, UK.

Jacqueline Memory Peterson (1996) Tree Wisdom: The definitive guidebook to the 

You Are Allowed to Feel Joy

 

“You are allowed to feel joy,” said the on-line workshop leader.  Despite the news, the threats, the changing weather, the pandemic and the fear, you are allowed to feel joy.  This was the invitation, the permission I seemed to have been waiting for.  My inner knowing knew this, my body knew this but my human mind had bought into the belief that suffering is more worthy of my attention than joy. 

I began to pay attention to when I felt joy in my everyday life – joy that didn’t require a lot of mental machinations -- spontaneous eruptions so to speak.   Spending time in the circular community garden in the park beside my home gave me the opportunity to watch small children interact with the plants and the water in the watering cans.  One child discovered a green squash hiding under the big squash leaves and I experienced joy at his find.  Watching kids pick lettuce or kale and pop it into their mouths also brings joy.

The hidden squash revealed!

Joy allows me to expand.  It is fuel for creativity.  When I stand and look at all the plants in the community garden noticing their differences in shape, shade of green, and colour of flower, I feel a kind of joy at their sharing of space.  Being a part of this co-creation of plants, insects, soil, air, water, sun and humans fuels my sense of myself as a creatrix, as a co-creator.

Fear, on the other hand, causes me to contract, to think small, to feel alone, to hoard, to worry. It keeps me awake at night.  But, Sharing food from the garden with friends, neighbours and visitors brings me joy.  I feel abundant as I share the gifts of the plants with humans.  I naturally appreciate the food that we have grown there.  I feel connected.

Down the hill from the garden is the lakeshore.  This part of Georgian Bay (Lake Huron) is called Sturgeon Bay.  There is a small beach that allows easy entry into the lake for humans.  As I walk down the sunny road towards the lake, I usually get warmer and warmer so that once I reach the beach, I am ready to cool down in the clear water.  Yesterday, the wind was blowing from the west and the waves were rolling in.  As I felt the waves move through my body, I asked the lake to wash away the suffering that my body still held.  Some of this is my own clearing of ancestral wounds and some of this is the pain of others that I have unconsciously picked up.  I have to tell myself that empathy doesn’t mean carrying around the pain of other people in my own body.  It means walking with them in a compassionate way and making sure that I am taken care of so that I can do that walking.

The female corn flower has silk threads that lead to the ovule inside the husk.

Seemingly overnight, the corn in the community garden has produced the beginnings of cobs with their silky threads waving in the wind.  The male flowers have already emerged and are producing pollen that will travel down the silky tubes to produce kernels of corn in the ovules.  I have seen corn growing in fields for my whole life, but this is the first time that I have been able to closely observe the life cycle of corn.  It is stunning and I feel joy just watching it emerge.

The male flowers or tassels produce pollen which is carried by the wind to
the silky threads of other corn plants.

http://pgandp.org/hybridcorn

This morning, my partner and I went down to our dock to cut back some of the Red Osier Dogwood that has grown over the walkways.  In a few weeks, his grown children and grandchildren will visit and we want to make it safe for them to walk beside the water.  After trimming the dogwood, he carried it up to the big compost pile near the road.  Just after placing the cut pieces on the earth, a beautiful hummingbird appeared and hovered just in front of him.  He experienced pure joy in that moment.  To me, this gift of joy spoke to letting go of what is in the way or no longer needed.  In so doing, he was gifted with joy.

As we walked home, my partner spied a chipmunk sitting on a rock amidst wildflowers, eating a black raspberry.  The chipmunk was un-phased by our presence and we managed to take a photo.  We could see a mom pulling a wagon with a toddler walking ahead of her coming towards us on the sidewalk.  We quietly brought the little boy’s attention to the chipmunk so he could experience this magical moment as well.  He was as happy as we were.

Chipmunk enjoying a black raspberry on a rock beside the sidewalk.

Both suffering and joy are a part of life.  However, too much focus on suffering leads to a sense of hopelessness and giving up.  There is so much healing work that needs to be done and stamina is a necessary part of this work.  Paying attention in the moment to the magic that is present allows joy to fuel us for this work.  Children know this.  Dogs seem to know this.  Hummingbirds and flowers teach us this as well.  And we know this as well, in the little moments of magic that uplift us and bring wind to our sails.  We are allowed to feel joy.

Echinacea and Sweetgrass bring healing.

Message of the New Buds

 

Fed by the sugars in your roots,

Wisdom stored from your lifetime of experiences,

Sugars that have travelled in water,

Up your trunk, along your branches,

Wisdom moving through your spinal chord,

along your peripheral nerves,

Across the synaptic gaps.

And now, the sugars feed your tender buds,

Allowing them to grow and expand into leaves,

That will create more sugars that will descend,

Along the branches and trunk into the roots.

Your new buds, new experiences, new abilities,

Will create more wisdom that you will store,

And use again and again to expand.

It is impossible to stop growing while alive.

You know what you are doing --

You always have.

Learning About Interbeing in the Garden

 

Lately, I have taken to going to sit within the circle of the community garden in the park next to my house.  I sit on the lower cedar log that is part of the “container” that holds the soil in place.  This brings me to eye level with the tomatoes.  I can glance down at the kale or up at the corn.  This point of view brings me into the diversity of the garden physically and visually.

The community garden is built in a circle and has a wide diversity of plants within this circle.

I have been bringing my sketchbook, colouring pencils and a black fine tip pen with me.  One way of being totally present in the moment is to draw what is around me.  Particular attention must be paid to shape and colour and I see things that would have otherwise been missed with a cursory glance.  There are many, many shades of green around me, too many to accurately depict with my four green colouring pencils, but I do my best.  The curly kale is a bluish green and the dinosaur kale is a greyish green beside the grey-white sage that contrasts beautifully with the fuscia coloured flowers beside it.  The new corn leaves are bright green especially when they are backlit by the sun.

I picked the end off of a carrot top and took care to draw out its intricate design of feathery leaflets. Outlining the drawings with the thin black marker makes the shapes pop off of the blank page of my sketchbook.  The calendula and nasturtium seeds that I got from the local Seed Library have grown and are now flowering in hanging pots at the sidewalk side of the garden.  I celebrated their beauty by drawing them.

Calendula flower

 

As I moved from one plant to another, noticing the different shapes and colours I began to feel like just another species amongst many.  There were no other humans to compare myself to.  My age, size and shape no longer mattered.  I was just one of many sizes and shapes.  A white Cabbage Moth fluttered amongst the plants and landed on the soil from time to time, perhaps looking for minerals.  A bee arrived at one of the cucumber flowers seeking pollen.  The toad that only comes out in the evening did not make an appearance except in my memory.

I was no longer the gardener, the caretaker, the one who watered, weeded and harvested.  I was the one who admired, the student, the youngest sibling in an ancient family.  As I sketched the Three Sisters; corn, beans and squash that have been grown as companions for thousands of years here on Turtle Island by Indigenous Peoples, I became aware of my interbeing with all of these plants.  They magically turn soil, water, sunshine and air into food that I will eat.  All the elements will become the plants and then will become my physical body and on the cycle will go.  

I feel at home and at peace in the garden.  I can experience the moment and my interconnections, my interbeing as Thich Nhat Hanh would say.  My hope in helping to co-create this garden was that the Three Sisters could teach us how to grow community.  And so, I go and sit with them, listening, drawing, paying attention so that I can indeed learn from them.  I watch the strong tall corn hold up the weakly-stemmed beans.  I imagine the bacteria in the nodes of the bean roots absorbing nitrogen from the air that will later be left in the soil for next year's corn to feed on.  I delight in the squash setting off on its meandering journey, setting down roots every now and again and shading the soil from water evaporation and the growth of unwanted plants.  I ponder my role and responsibilities as a human, as a youngest sibling and I delight in my place in the cirlce of the garden, in the circle of life.  The plants are excellent teachers and I am learning to learn from them as I silently sit at their "feet" where they transition from stem to root.

I

/The Three Sisters; corn, beans and squash have been planted as companions for thousands of years on Turtle Island by Indigenous Peoples such as the Haudenosaunee.

t seems that I have to understand who I am in this community of beings so that I can take that knowing into the community of humans.  I need to be rooted in that knowledge before I set off on my meandering path discovering my interbeing with others of my species.  I may be a senior adult but I am a novice at understanding my interbeingness, at understanding community.  Luckily, I have wonderful teachers.