When the everyday enchants

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Subject: When the everyday enchants

Hi Friend,

In recent weeks, Krissy and I have been spending a lot of time working in our yard.

This year, there are so many flowers.

Some of the abundance of flowers arises from the work we've put in for the last few years - taking out poison ivy (though it still grows back, darn it); cutting back overgrown bushes and finding nearly-hidden roses, pulling out virginia creepers (who also keep coming back) who have taken over a patch of peonies. The first builders of this particular house had some great landscape design initiatives that the next owner didn't make the time to maintain. So now we are here, dealing with the past: both the ugly and beautiful.

I mean, that's just so much of life.

This year, I find myself deeply moved by the flowers. After years of little interest in planting, I'm joyfully planting more flowers. Some of them I know well - lavender, pansies - while others are unfamiliar.

I've wondered at this newfound appreciation of flowers.

Was I missing something before? Am I avoiding something now?

Perhaps. But maybe the story here isn't one of either absence or avoidance.

Mostly it feels like I'm noticing them because they are speaking to me and I am at a place in my life where I both can and want to hear them. Now is a moment when I yearn for their beauty, their multitude of expressions, their daring proof that life continues through color and brightness, and my own response of amazement. I've always liked flowers (I mean, of course) but its especially sweet when some aspect of nature seems to reach out and touch your heart, caressing you with beauty.

Here are a few images.

The row of peonies is in our neighbor's yard. Sometimes I walk by them several times, in awe of their lush beauty.

And then there was that Strawberry Moon earlier this week.

A friend and I walked up to the top of the hill above our house at sunset and found ourselves rejoicing in the tiny wild strawberries everywhere around us.

Even in my most recent visit to our local lake, as I waded into her waters, felt soft, and gentle - that mixture of warm edges and cool depths that promises such delight for my next swimming moment.

Sometimes, sometimes, it seems like my little ecosystem is actively working to enchant me.

Is it I who work to ReEnchant the world.... or is it simply a question of letting myself be enchanted?

And oh - I need this kind of enchanting by the sweetness of Abundance and Beauty and Eco-Erotic exuberance.

Our home continues to be accompanied by grief. Grief is an odd friend to have, coming and going in ways I don't always understand as we navigate unfathomable (though not necessarily uncommon) losses. It shapes our bodies and our conversations and our silences. I expect this will continue, changing and shifting and returning and echoing, for many moons to come.

A client who works in regenerative rural systems recently learned that a partnering food bank has been significantly impacted by the administrations' policies. It's a story that's easy to see across the nation, but especially in rural communities, such as in the Appalachian mountains. In thinking about what kinds of innovations might emerge, we decided to take on mapping some of the local food systems to get a better grasp of what is going on right now and how things are changing. We are, of course, looking at the past as well as the present - not only because one informs the other, but 'how people used to get by' can offer fertile ground for 'what a greater level of self-sufficiency could look like now'. It's a cool project - but the background reality of watching food insecurity rise in real time is scary.

Not necessarily new, mind you - America as a country has never prioritized ensuring food security, or other forms of safety and wellbeing, for all of its own peoples, much less whomever it considers ‘other peoples’ (indigenous peoples, immigrants, many of whom have indigenous heritage as well, etc).

I appreciated seeing these pamphlets from the 1830s at a local exhibition, reminding of some of the horrors of the "King Jackson" era and the multiple forms of protests that people in those days (also) did.

And then there's the daily news. The situation in America is (again) dangerous.

The military presence being sent to Los Angeles, the tanks set to roll down the streets of Washington DC, the crushing of the judiciary through ignoring court orders, the removal of funding from media and universities and the crushing of multiple forms of opposition both from within party/ranks as well as outside of it, the attempt to do away with social security and other forms of federal support in order to fund further state-sponsored violence and severe cuts on clean energy/fueling oil gas and coal (an unbelievably bad choice even by basic market sensibilities) - all signal consolidation of power and a dangerous rise of authoritarianism.

You yourself might be joining a No Kings Protest. Feel free to let me know how yours goes.

you might appreciate: The podcast, In Bed with the Right, has been doing a really excellent multi-part series on Germany in 1933 that I've really been appreciating that several of you might also appreciate. I also loved the podcast episode on how Social Security came to be offered by Throughline: The woman behind the New Deal .

So amidst all of these dynamics I find myself giving such deep, deep gratitude for flowers and the birds and the bees that keep this great big collective love orgy that flowers are participating in going.

To the brilliance of the eco-erotic dynamic moving Rhythm of Life (and death) that we are all a part of. There is a source of life and of peace that is not only about nations or Empires.

Amidst wildflowers and potted plants and my neighbor's herbs, I wonder: what can I offer in return?

Somewhere in the question itself is the pulse of reciprocity.

Somedays it's a song. Some days it's compost. Some days it's seed saving. Some days it's behind-the-scenes work to restore better relationships between people and places. Somedays it’s protesting. Somedays it's a prayer of gratitude. Most days, it's a humbling, a turning, ever so slightly, towards greater "kinning".

Which, if we look closely, includes so much erotic behavior across animal and plant kingdoms that isn't necessarily (or even at all) hetero-normative.

Recently, a client asked me to write a piece for their audience about diversity, regeneration/ecology, and gender expression/sexuality for Pride Month (I support them in their newsletter, amongst other things). Several iterations (including some support from Claude AI) later, I decided it was interesting enough to put a version up on Medium. Perhaps some of you will appreciate it:

Our Queer Kin-dom:

Science Keeps Finding That Sexual Diversity Is Nature’s Original Design

by Sara Jolena Wolcott

Read the full article

Our Queer Kin-dom: Science Keeps Finding That Sexual Diversity Is Nature’s Original Design - From gender-fluid clownfish to lifelong gay dolphin couples, groundbreaking research reveals that LGBTQ+ behavior in over 1,500 species isn’t an exception — it’s evolution’s baseline. And if you believe that the Divine is involved with life on Earth, this tells us something about the Sacred, too.

So however you are planning to celebrate the upcoming summer solstice, I hope you can lean into the real abundance.

Because the teachings of Earth are teachings of abundance closely accompanied with reciprocity.

The other stuff?

Human, yes. Humans can be very ugly - especially towards ourselves.

But ugliness is hardly the only option.

Blessings of beauty upon your turnings -

Sara Jolena

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Subject: When the everyday enchants