Seeding at the New Moon

This is an excerpt from the weekly News-Loveletter. If you would like it sent to your inbox directly (with all the other juicy bits, including a mini joy practice), you can add yourself to my mailing list here.

How important are friends?

Studies show that we're more likely to do what our friends and family do than we might imagine. True of our neighbors too. Our choice of who to hang with matters. Our Joy Together community inspires me weekly (thanks y'all!). But Keith, who is among them, and a friend, and a neighbor ... that's a super power.

Keith and I text to ask if the other wants to walk at 10 minutes from take off. I feel giddy as a school girl, playing with friends close to home. We meet between her house and mine, walk together clicking trek poles, nursing a knee and nursing a hip. We laugh out loud and get serious about joy.

"When you said last week at the Q&A," says Keith, "that if—now this is my take on what you said, you didn't use these words—if someone farts in the room, you don't have to hang out there and smell it." I turn to her wide-eyed and hoot with laughter. I double over and try to catch my breath.

"No, really," she says, grabbing my arm. "You said if they say something that you feel bummed about, you can just leave. It's an option. You can go find your joy and come back later if you want. You don't have to stick around and add your fart to it. That can happen, ya know." I'm dying as I hear her version of this. I love it.

The best part of having friends is the string of real-life-moments that hang together like pearls, just below the collarbone. Moments of wonder, reflection, and self-reflection. Right there at the heart.

Then there's inspiration. When Keith texts me a snapshot of her newly seeded soil trays. "New moon! First go at accelerating springtime sunshine! So grateful for you in my life!" I see she's inviting me to plant seed with her.

I can't, I think. My knee won't do it. Not possible. Maybe next week. But the new moon! It won't wait. It'll be a whole month before that siren returns to sing those roots down into the earth. I sigh and smile mischievously. I get up from my desk and grab a few packets of seed. What if?

I scatter orach (Keith's gift), Chinese broccoli, kale, lettuce, and Swiss chard right onto the garden bed in my backyard. I drag a rake lightly across to bury the seed and pat the ground gently. I thank my former self for thinking to lay the compost down with Seda when our bodies could. How did we know?

The new moon, calling us inward. Seeding abundance in the dark when we thought it wasn't possible. That's what friends are for.