Summer Blooms & Dreams of Right Relationship

It’s flower harvesting season here in my urban garden. Summer is my favorite time of year and picking flowers each afternoon brings me all the delight and joy. Plant beings have so much to teach us humans if we know how to slow down enough to really listen. Working with plants is a practice I approach with curiosity, reverence and humility. Flowers especially have taught me what it means to truly be in the present moment, and to hear and receive their quiet invitations into embodied pleasure, healing and joy.

Here are some photos of this year’s blooms. These babes are my precious co-creators in the Artist Apothecary. Their good vibes, vibrant colors and unabashed beauty make my handmade candles and roll-on perfumes truly magical!

After harvesting, I arrange the flowers in flat trays to begin drying. Below is a photo of my current setup. Drying on trays works great for me as they can be stacked on top of each other and placed on a shelf where they won’t be disturbed. Once they are completely dry, I will transfer them into big glass jars for storage.

I dream of someday living away from the city and having a much larger garden (a small farm perhaps) with big rows of flowers and herbs that I tend and harvest each year to craft my own products and make herbal remedies. In my dream, I live in a cozy cottage home and have a spacious studio where I create my products and host craft classes and workshops for the local community.

But there is a deeper layer to this dream, and that is to truly live in right relationship with the land itself. This is a desire that I feel deep in my bones and stretches beyond just me, into my ancestral lineage. I don’t want to just own land and extract from it what I want. I want to live in harmony with the Earth herself, to be part of a healing process and engage in mutually beneficial exchanges with the land I live on and the plants I grow and work with.

As I continue to unlearn my colonial programming, I am forced to acknowledge the uncomfortable reality that “owning” land that was originally stolen from indigenous peoples only perpetuates harmful cycles of modern-day colonialism. What does being in right relationship with the land I live on really mean as a white settler whose lineage has benefited from colonization? How can I reimagine and decolonize my dreams for the future?

These are big questions I have no answers to, and continue to sit with and reflect on. Immense gratitude and credit to my teacher, Dra. Rocio Rosales Meza for sharing her wisdom and visions for decolonizing as a way of life.