garden club of america

today, while most of you are reading this, i will be giving a virtual talk to the Garden Club of America. over 2000 people are signed up for the conference. so i am a little nervous, but mostly excited. i have given many talks on my STILL project over the past few years, but almost always the audience has been full of creatives. so i usually talk about the transformative power of dailiness for unlocking creativity. but, this time i am talking to gardeners. so i have shifted my emphasis to talk about how STILL has led me to a kind of intimate knowledge of place that used to used to be common to all indigenous cultures. in particular, i talk about my recent discovery of the ancient japanese calendar of 72-microseasons, and how i had independently come to a very similar understanding of my own bioregion, based on the natural unfolding of my immediate natural world: pussy willows beget catkins. catkins beget buds. buds beget spring ephemerals. spring flowers beget insect hatches. insect hatches beget migrating birds…so on and so on…everything unfolding throughout the year, always in the same order. it will be my first time presenting this material, so i hope i don’t get too tongue tied while i try to put into words all that i have learned. if you are reading this in in the morning, please send your thoughts/prayers/vibrations/intentions/well wished my way. i will need it.

ohhh, by the way…both dailiness and 72 microseasons will be essays in my book.

tulips from madeline