Happy Solstice friends! 🌞 Here's to another circle around the sun!
✨"Winter solstice ushers in lengthening days and shortening nights. It occurs when one of the Earth’s poles has its maximum tilt away from the Sun, which in the northern hemisphere occurs on or near 21 December. Ancient names for the winter solstice (from the Latin sol, “sun,” and stit, “stationary”), include Longest Night, Midwinter, and Yuletide. Solstice also includes ceremonial time spent visiting with loved ones, eating, singing, wassailing, dancing, and reveling at festivals, and fires—all urging on a return to the light.
Even though it represents the beginning of what is often the worst of winter weather, this solstice brings an end to winter’s darkest days and welcomes in the growing light that helps us keep heart. Though bitter cold can sometimes disconnect us from nature and community, postharvest abundance and celebratory foods remind us to feast and share the perishable surplus of fruits, roots, winter greens, and holiday roasts. The same ancient holiday traditions inspire us to carry boughs of evergreens into our homes and add the warming light of candles and fires to keep the connection alive through long cold nights.
At midwinter, the Twelve Days of Christmas offered weary gardeners time to visit and check in on one another. Sharing abundance when it was to be had and making kindness a ritual by commemorating the innocence of a newborn. If we saw need, we returned bearing food or firewood. If we saw loneliness or illness, we returned to raise spirits. Lighting a candle, raising a cup, singing carols, bedecking the halls, adapting a seasonal family recipe, and remembering our part in making life kinder.
The older I get, the more I aspire to tap into the symphonic song of nature. To harmonize with the flow of seasons, the cycles in our landscapes, and the larger universe. Solstices and equinoxes mark the four movements in a celestial score. I often go to nature to find peace and solace, but winter solstice reminds me to go out on a limb. Extend myself where I can, and take rest where I can. My agricultural roots remind me that even the earth must rest in winter, and that a new year offers a chance for introspection, connection, and renewal. Occasion to pore through seed catalogs and dream new landscapes into being. Time to slow down, observe, and reflect"
Excerpt from my book "The Heirloom Gardener - Traditional Plants and Skills for the Modern World" by John Forti *(available for purchase and gift-giving here:
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