You've got to hang out.

This is where the fairies are.

You’ve got to hang out.

Back when I was a veggie farmer, one of the things I wanted most was time to be still with plants. I wanted to leave a carrot and watch it go to seed; I wanted to stoop down and get lost in the fractals of the cauliflower. I wanted everything to slow down.

As my herb farm became an herb garden, I’ve had more and more time to get slow with the plants. This year, the garden is undeniably a place of leisure, and only leisure: the garden helpers are helping with the workload (thank you!), and I’m barely teaching classes there due to the pandemic, so it’s a space for very select gatherings, pick-your-own, and for me. To hang out. To be still.

When you rush around in the garden, you miss everything except the showiest flowers and the general loveliness vibe that’s unavoidable. When you rush, the butterflies fly away, and you only see them from a distance. When you rush, you don’t sense the fairies watching you. And forget about the gnomes.

In order to see the proboscis of a swallowtail nosing around a flower, you need to hang out for a few minutes – a whole few minutes of being still, just looking. The butterflies will return, and then you enjoy them. And through enjoying them, your spirit learns the subtle things that you don’t get from a book, or from social media captions about stillness.

You’ve simply got to hang out.

That’s where the magic is. ✨