#59.1, Thursday, August 1, 2024

Historical Setting, 629 C.E. Herb Garden at the farm

         Ana, a fine physician herself, has been with Hannah and Vizsla, closed behind our cottage door for the fearful surgery to her breast. I’ve been sent away to the herb garden to gather wound wart and violet leaves.

         I was hoping all that is needed are flowers and some tea, but here I am again in this herb garden where the white geese keep the weeds at bay.  The gander declares me an intruder and comes at me clicking and honking, tall and arched necked, so now all the geese are chasing me around the garden. I hold my hand out to them in a gifting manner and it gets a raw pecking. I try speaking in a soothing tone, but hearing my own voice through my empathetic goose ears, I must sound like a snarling bear. It is no wonder they whip the stems I’ve gathered and fling them hither and thither.

         It’s true, I rarely come here and they don’t know me as a human caregiver who checks on them and fills their grain bin all through the winter freezes and summer droughts. They don’t know my voice.

         It is only the women and children who come here to gather the fragrances and collect the leaves for tinctures and teas. So, I’m already feeling humiliated by the medical people overseeing my wife, then, even the geese want me out of their garden but I have managed to gather a good bundle of wound wart.

         I know it’s late in the season for gathering violet leaves, torn and frail after the spring bloom. The violet leaves are laced with holes from beetles. Most of the useful violet leaves I can find are outside the herb garden, growing wild, hugging the earth in the tender woods and graciously out of range of the dutiful weed-pulling geese.  Now, it’s good to have a quiet moment in this tender, fragrant wood.

         Dear God, Thank you for all these critters that care for your gardens, and particularly for staying near us in our own human time of dread. I know you hear each of us calling for you to stay close now, so that Ana may feel your loving Spirit as she has to handle her own fears and pain in the midst of Hannah’s tears and my intrusions. And only you know what this fellow Vizsla might bring… 

(Continues Tuesday, August 6, 2024)