Black against the golden grass and many inches deep into prairie earth, the trail follows the natural contours as if centuries of footfalls have prec… - Robin Wall Kimmerer

Much of what fills our mouths is taken forcibly from the earth. That form of taking does no honor to the farmer, to the plants, or to the disappearing soil. It’s hard to recognize food that is mummified in plastic, bought and sold, as a gift anymore. Everybody knows you can't buy love. In a garden, food arises from partnership. If I don’t pick rocks and pull weeds, I'm not fulfilling my end of the bargain. I can do these things with my handy opposable thumb and capacity to use tools, to shovel manure. But I can no more create a tomato or embroider a trellis in beans than I can turn lead into gold. That is the plants' responsibility and their gift: animating the inanimate. Now there is a gift.

If you ask permission, you have to listen to the answer.

The sphere of a wise woman is beyond herself, beyond her family, beyond the human community, embracing the planet, mothering the earth.