Preparing for First Harvest

and sharing a personal, private dream with my paid subscribers

Summer is in full swing here in upstate New York. The world around me is blooming abundantly. I’ve been daydreaming ideas for celebrating Lughnassadh (Lammas), the first harvest festival, which will be here on August 1. Some of my ideas are so outlandish, but mostly I just want to get back to marking the times in the year that are significant to me, instead of barely acknowledging them. Lughnassasdh is such an Earth Mother Goddess kind of day, in my mind at least, and I am craving that kind of beautiful and opulent celebration.

I suppose I’m picking up on that lush, Empress kind of energy so much that I even dreamed about viewing an artwork of an Empress card (one of the cards in the major arcana in tarot). My full dream can be found below, if you are a paid subscriber, but first I have a funny story about the compost situation at the community where I live.

Mother Nature Sorts Things Out for Foolish Humans

I currently live in a place that functions almost like a community. There is a shared community garden here with compost bins. My family is fairly active with the garden committee here and have gotten to know the members. The person in charge, the only one who actually gets paid anything, is this lovely woman who does so much for the community. She is also the person who might be responsible for wrecking our compost.

One day, I brought compost to the compost bin and noticed flies buzzing around it. I thought, “Hmm... this doesn’t look right.” With some trepidation, I lifted the lid and noticed a god-awful stench! On top of the compost were these blocks of what looked like frozen soup. I cringed at the sight but went ahead and added our veggie scraps and dried leaves. A few days later, the compost was crawling with bugs. It was disgusting! The man who had been tending the compost the most was out of town. When he came back, he was so upset to see all his hard work ruined. At the next garden committee meeting, the frozen soup was brought up and it turns out that it was our head gardener who added it to the bin.

A couple days later, my brother and I went to the compost together to see what we could do to remedy the situation. We came armed with strips of brown paper, thinking maybe there wasn’t enough dry material in the bin. I’d told my brother about the awful state of the compost, so we both braced ourselves and I lifted the lid and….

Everything looked fine! No bugs (other than fruit flies). No stench. It looked like normal, healthy compost. We topped up the bin with dried paper strips and added some dried leaves anyway.

Isn’t it amazing what Mama Nature will do to fix human mistakes? Of course, it could be that someone else came along and added dried material in the meantime, but still. The natural world is incredibly resilient.

Thank you for reading! How will you celebrate the first harvest? Share your ideas in the comments. I wish we could all celebrate together. I’m thinking a Midsummer Night’s Dream kind of opulent garden party. Wouldn’t that be amazing?

PAID SUBSCRIBERS: keep reading for my very personal, private dream.