The earth forever calls us home, and the "ground" of any true culture lies in the soil. It's that in-between common world of civilization and wild nature, that place where relationship is formed. It's where our human hands and feet marry mineral and plant, there in the world of microbes and insects, sun and rain.

When the world threatens to consume you and your mind becomes a place cruel and cold, remember the day that you stood under the Douglas fir in the late afternoon, the way the light was saturated a deep amber so thick it had weight.

Inspired by Nature - Winter Story with snowflakes, icles, wolves, and caves. Enjoy!

These poems are prayers ~ words of honor and thanksgiving ~ to the myriad beings seen and unseen, with whom I share life in this still-healthy Virginia woodland. I write for my other-than-human friends who speak in languages I, only now, am learning to understand.

Honestly, it is ridiculous how nature spoils us in abundance. There is really no way to ever be sufficiently grateful for all we have been given. The heaviness that starts to gather on the land at this time rises up in one last push of expansion. We hear the Earth whisper: “I nourish.” At the same time, we feel that same heaviness begin to sink, decline, and fall back to the ground, the fall winds rustling, “I transform.”

We all have innate sensory abilities that link us directly to the natural world. I recently taught a two-session Zoom class on plant communication. There were twenty-two students in the class from all parts of I’ll the world, all with different types and levels of sensitivities and experience. In the class, I gave a wide variety of ways to open up to nature and the plant world to receive information, messages, and lessons.

When I first moved to Champlain Valley Cohousing in Charlotte Vermont, I was shown a large oak tree out in the forest land owned by the community. We walked through the thick forest of young trees and underbrush that had grown around a tree they called the Mother Oak, shading her from the sun and taking nutrients from the soil. I was stunned by her majestic presence 

In this dawning of a New Year, greeted by the luminous full moon, who drew so close to Earth and opened our hearts with her beauty, ONE wishes you awakening, blessings and resolve in 2018.

A few days before our harvest of Christmas trees, I make an offering. I offer prayers of gratitude and thanksgiving to each and every tree and to the Spirit of the Land. ... I found one of the elders that was tagged to be cut and gave my offering of beads standing in front of this most gracious being.

Thank you for your instruction to stand strong, to be exposed and seen in all your irregularities. My strength is to be like you in these ways.

We offer gratitude to the Life-giving Trees. You whose green breath sustains our breath. You who have created the atmosphere in which organic beings can thrive.  Thank you, trees for the music you make with the wind, for the way you gentle the rain into the earth, for your sheltering, protection and inspiration.

Our sanctuary garden is at Derrynagittah in the west of Ireland, 29 acres of magical land deOur sanctuary garden is at Derrynagittah in the west of Ireland, 29 acres of magical land dedicated to the sacred. I moved here with my family in 1995, coming with the intention of working with Nature to co-create a place of beauty, a sanctuary where the plant world would be honoured and where people could come for healing, to learn about plants and the spirit that resides within all beings.

At Zen temples, in medieval monasteries, and in modern day retreat centers, gardens have played a key role in spiritual practice. Uplifting, calming, healing places where humans and natural forces work in harmony to create beauty--these sanctuaries invite meditation and prayer. Recently I attended a retreat at an "Eco-Sufi Village" and wandered into an herb garden that carried me right into that spirit of sanctuary.

A garden becomes a sanctuary for deep listening and a place that animates the creative life force within you. The power of intention ignites this sacred communication between you and nature, allowing you to connect with the creative potential that is possible within this divine union.

In Bay City, Michigan, a small and very special section of the Saginaw River has become an inner-city wildlife sanctuary. Within a stretch of four city blocks along Arbor Street, in the center of Bay City, the natural habitat is encouraged and existing sea walls are being, or have been removed, creating an inner-city sanctuary for wildlife. 

All living beings and elements have multiple dimensions—physical, emotional and spiritual. Likewise, the Amazon region holds all these dimensions and possibly more, within its animate entities like plants and animals and inanimate ones like minerals.  

Botanical sanctuaries not only save our precious native plants from unconscious predation they provide healing at a source level by feeding our essential nature so that both plants and people are held in life-giving balance.

We offer Gratitude for sanctuary gardens, dedicated to the sacred, where there is safety for all beings. For those cultivated places where humans consciously co-create with Nature to bring beauty, healing, inspiration, peace, nourishment and remembrance.