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My Mom, a true Wonder Woman
My birthday falls on International Women’s Day every year, March 8. I had the best gift ever this year, the opportunity to come together with the intelligent, progressive women of the Slow Flowers movement on the live monthly meet-up with...
Grandma Rosie
For Women’s History Month I am remembering the women who shaped my life. My grandma, Rosalie (Gage) Majerus, was the oldest of eight children. She is pictured here with my dad on the right, Uncle John on the left, and...
WWI Poppies in No Man’s Land
The 2023 season was so hectic, but we got a LOT done! The wildfire smoke and drought didn't make it any easier. We did more planting and putting in infrastructure again than selling, but the perennials we planted will pay...
Brave Little Seeds
Brave Little Seeds The Spring Equinox seemed like the perfect time to start anew with newsletters about the farm, and your farmers, Deb and Joel. Equinox comes from Latin meaning equal night. Day and night are roughly equal today and...
A Cat in Water
Minnesotans grow up on the water. Lakes, rivers, streams. I however, am a bit like a cat in water. My dad almost drowned as a child, and so we did not have a boat or a cabin. I grew up on the...
Fire and Rebirth: Easter Reflections
I didn’t set out to be a flower farmer. I was perfectly happy living in my “Beautiful Little Oasis” I called it, with pretty gardens and a natural spring in the backyard where previous owners had created this tiered water feature...
Grow something that gives back
How replacing a little lawn can feed the land, the pollinators, and your vase.
Original Poetry
From the Ashes
When I said that sometimes you need to blow it all up and start again, this is not what I meant.
I was speaking figuratively for f%$* sake. But the universe burned my house down.
Rise up.
“The best laid plans of mice and men go often askew... your small house in ruin... now you are turned out for all your trouble ...to endure the winter.”
Mr Burns was right.
My plans are in ashes.
Burns. That’s ironic.
What shall I do?
My beautiful little oasis saved me during the divorce. Now I have to let it go. I guess if I was missing the nudges from the Universe before, she flat out pushed me off the edge now.
That life is over.
Be reborn from the ashes.
Rise up.
Breathe in and out.
Summon the spirit of the Empress. The Phoenix.
Sprinkle the ashes all around.
They will counteract the acid.
They will foster clover for the bees and make a tea for the tomatoes. They will hasten the decomposition of the manure.
Let go of the bullshit sister.
Spring is coming.
Plant a new garden.
Rise up.
~Winter 2020
Iron Butterfly
I am the iron butterfly
forged in the fire
blood, sweat, and tears
I am strong and fragile
I am fierce and afraid
But I will not crawl on my belly any longer
I will meet my brothers and sisters in the garden where hope blossoms,
and we will travel across continents on the winds of change
spreading it like pollen.
I am the iron butterfly.
-August 2020
In Remembrance
The day of Laura’s funeral in 2020, which I attended via zoom, after many tears, I went outside and planted sunflower seeds. It was May in Minnesota. We were past the last frost. Spring was in the air. For the first time I had a large open sunny field to plant whatever I wanted.
My garden, this little farm, it helped save me. Going outside, sun on my face, hands in the dirt, thoughts of the future, of flowers, it was healing. Gardening is inherently hopeful. If the fire sent me into a cocoon, planting those sunflowers was what started to help me break out of it, the genesis of Iron Butterfly. There was a ray of sunlight through the darkness.
I reflected on the following words from CS Lewis that day:
No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. I am not afraid, but the sensation is like being afraid. The same fluttering in the stomach, the same restlessness, the yawning. I keep on swallowing. … There is a sort of invisible blanket between the world and me. I find it hard to take in what anyone says. Or perhaps, hard to want to take it in. It is so uninteresting. -CS Lewis, A Grief Observed.
This is exactly how I felt. In shock, moving through the world as if underwater. Before heading outside to the garden I jotted down some thoughts:
Laura was the best of us. Her soul glowed.
As Anthony Doer pointed out in his Pulitzer Prize winning novel, All the Light We Cannot See, we call color visible light, and “mathematically, all of light is invisible”. I’m going to believe that although I cannot see Laura anymore, and I cannot see the light inside her, I am going to believe that she is part of the light surrounding me, and nourishing these tiny plants, and continuing to make the world beautiful.