I tend my garden in wildness and fine private laughter. In gladness of bee and beauty of flower.
Speak of the nesting Wrens to your neighbor, but not their Winter Soveringhty. Laud the Cardnals to all who might listen.
Whisper welcome to the shy Brown Thresher in the thicket of weed under the elder. Explain sharing to the russett Squirrel busy stuffing it's cheek pouches with my Hawthorn's berries.That, while I do not begruge her a share, a share should be left for me.
Don't tell the neighbors you talk to squirrls without cussing them. Neighbors don't care for squirrel's. But the squirrels are bright, intelligent and endlessly plotting for peanuts, and so entertaining.
"They are spies." My Russian grandmother explained.
"In Russia the squirrels belong to the Leshay, the forest spirits,"she said.
"Take a message from me to your Leshay," she might whisper to a squirrel.
"Leave a saucer of milk out for the little people'" my Irish grandmother would say.
"Leave a wee dram of whiskey," grandfather whispered with a nudge and a grin."Themselves would like that even better."
"The small spirits disguise themselves as squirrels or birds"
they told me, be kind to them all.
"We are all related," the Cherokee grandmother explained."Treat the little cousins kindly."
A mixture of peoples gives a mixture of stories. Stories of the many grandmothers. Some I remember. Some I found. Some stories found me.
All live together in some harmony in the almost wildness, almost cultivated boundaries of my garden.
Ancestral voices of nearly lost belief echo and jostle to get their stories heard. So I must listen to the voices of the many grandmothers, out of love. Out of respect.
Perhaps it is that I like squirrls, birds and the overgrown semi-wildness they need. The same wildness that hides the smallest of midnight dancers.
Is it not their garden also? Did I not invite them?
I spoke my welcome to the five directions at Beltane, the Time of Beginnings; again at Midsummers, at Lammas, at Samhain, at Yule and again at Beltain, forming a circle of love and balance and welcome.
Invitations given at the spokes of the Wheel Of the Year, and I was answered.