❋ #01 ❋ Solstice musings

On New Beginnings and Community Gardens

The days around the solstice are long and hazy, marked by rainy showers and rosy sunsets — seemingly neverending daylight keeping me awake late and waking me up early. For a while now I’ve been craving to carve out an online space to share my thoughts a little better. This is an experiment, perhaps only a place to tease apart ideas and lean into a slower, more thoughtful rhythm when using social media. Truth is I’ve been enjoying reading ‘newsletters’ myself and now here we are!

Perhaps it’s a good idea to start with an introduction of some sort

I usually introduce myself as a freelance community gardener, forager, and artist. I make [and collect] various things: videos, drawings, baskets[, shells, rocks, feathers] etc. I like to use my hands to form and shape things, but sometimes my hands hurt and that’s okay because I also like to listen [and record sounds]. Beyond what I do, I am a curious person, often sleepy, often sore and I adore observing things, touching things, smelling good smells, usually capturing experiences in some way or another. I get confused, I get overwhelmed, I need time to process, I care a lot but can seem blunt to some and certainly struggle to achieve any kind of balance [it’s the audhd].

I’ve been reflecting on how I spend my time / where I use my spoons (spoon theory). As someone with very fluctuating energy/pain levels, it’s impossible to upkeep any kind of regular weekly work. I currently run flexible, occasional foraging walks, community garden sessions, and other creative workshops around Edinburgh. I feel deeply grateful to get to meet with so many people and connect through plants in one way or another, while also having the space to rest during flare ups for weeks at a time.

I love the work I do get to do, it feels meaningful to continually learn how to facilitate workshops and bring people into connection with nature, plants and fungi. I particularly value facilitating groups that face barriers to learning about or accessing experiences with nature.

Woven into a lot of my work is a radical re-imagining of our relationships with nature and one another. I like to push the boundaries of how we connect with and refer to plants, what names we call them and how we approach them.

~ ☼ ☁︎ ꩜ ✶ ❀ ～ ✳︎ ～ ❀ ✶ ꩜ ☁︎ ☼ ~

[ Journaling/Thinking Prompts: How do you feel connected to nature? What communities are you part of? How do you show up in them? How are you or someone you know not able to show up due to systemic oppression / what barrier do you face in showing up as you would like to? ~ approach these questions with curiosity and care]

~ ☼ ☁︎ ꩜ ✶ ❀ ～ ✳︎ ～ ❀ ✶ ꩜ ☁︎ ☼ ~

My current favourite smells include bonfire smoke, freshly picked peppermint leaves, meadowsweet and linden blossoms.

here’s me [happy!] holding some nice flowers at the community gardens

～In the Garden❊

I work at a community garden that is at risk of closing — I am at awe of the group of volunteers that have kept coming and tending to the land, even though it might be taken away from us next month. Some days the anxieties of losing our community garden overwhelm us so much, we can’t do much more than watch the insects and birds, while talking about how unfair it all feels [there’s more to this tale, but I’m too in the middle of it to tell it fully just yet].

I started volunteering at the gardens a few years ago, in a way it saved me, taught me so much that I wasn’t even aware I was being taught [as gardens do]. After seeing me through a few growing seasons, the land and beings that inhabit it have found a special place in my heart [so much so they come to me in my dreams].

It’s a messy place;

St johns wort, borage and chamomile flowers

self seeded burst through the pavement cracks.

I love its wildness

the way it won’t be tamed

forcing me to just

slow (the f***) down and rest awhile.

Farm Garden in June ☽

I’d like to write about this place here, so far I’ve only written about it in notebooks, on rain drenched and ink stained paper for noone to see or read other than me. This month the yarrow and St johns wort burst into bloom, our potatoes are growing well and the nasturtiums are crawling their way through the beds in the polytunnel. The june full moon brought the ripening of strawberries and red currant, raspberries and black currants. The rains even brought a flush of wine caps [that I forgot to harvest]. Oxeye daisies are sprawling out onto the paths and the enormous lovage is in full glorious flower. I’m drying the chamomile flowers these days, they make a soothing tea. We made anthotypes using plants from the garden ↓

a set of anthotypes + polaroids

“We Are Nature Defending Itself”

Lately, I've been thinking about community gardens - how groups of people come together to cultivate diverse ecosystems, often on temporary sites designated for development. How even though you knew it was only temporary - it hurts that little bit more than expected when the gardens become inaccessible behind locked gates, bulldozed or in other (kinder) cases moved elsewhere.

A garden is never just a garden. Especially one born out of community. They can be places to feel belonging, somewhere to feel part of something greater. They can be hubs for mutual aid. They can be the one place to access healthy, organic, local food without worrying about money. They can provide us with herbal medicines. They can be places to connect to ancestral roots and places to preserve cultural heirloom plants and their associated stories. They can improve our health and give us a sense of purpose. They can be places to socialise. They can be a home away from home or in some cases the one place that actually feels like home. Gardening is slow and takes patience, the seeds take time to germinate, they take time to wake up and grow depending on the weather. Growing anything teaches patience, it teaches the importance of letting things compost and how good things grow from fertile soils (always from decay).

In some of the coming newsletters I’d like to share different stories around community gardens and gardening as a form of resistance. [If you’d like to share any personal stories get in touch!]

☼ In the Foraging Basket～

In the basket these past weeks

～I’ve gathered St johns wort for oil

{sunshine in a plant, I like to call you sun wort or chase the devil}

Horsetail for a hair tonic

Meadowsweet and rose for tea

{the sweetest of teas, a delicate flavour with a bitterness that makes me feel held}

I’m sleepy and running out of thoughts — I’m sure this newsletter will take shape as I go, but for now this is where we’re at.

If you read this, don’t be a stranger, see you again soon. ~ <3

the season that is summer (the rainy Scottish kind)

~ ☼ ☁︎ ꩜ ✶ ❀ ～ ✳︎ ～ ❀ ✶ ꩜ ☁︎ ☼ ~

SOME RECOMMENDED READINGS / WATCHINGS

TopSoil: gardening as radical queer resistance by Jemima Elliott and Boe

Gardeners’ Pay by Radicle / @decolonisethegarden (lots of great writings on gardening)

Wort Journal (radical herbalism journal)

Imperial Plant Taxonomy by Centre for Plants & Culture

How do you build a medieval castle? (my go to calming special interest watch sooo)