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Insects' presence, diversity, and behavior provide real-time feedback on the health of the entire system.

~Jay Drysdale

Dear Reader

Waking to misty mornings and birdsong, I’ve already forgotten the still quiet of falling snow. I've also lost track of how I filled those dark winter days. It’s difficult to imagine, with these abundant days, exactly how I spent my time. That is the nature of seasons: when you are in the midst of one, it's difficult to imagine there was ever another.

With the summer solstice looming just ahead, my hens and I are on a similar schedule. Up at dawn and climbing the stairs to bed at sunset. Although growing-season mornings are certainly denser than those of winter, some rituals continue all year round. Tea steeping, fruit prep, candle lighting, greeting the land spirits, a tarot card draw, and always filling some pages with whatever asks to be written. These are the simple yet profound steps that ground me in my here and now.

Once the pen slows down and my mind begins to drift, I release the hens from their sleeping loft, turn on all the garden taps, harvest what has matured, and set off on potato bug patrol. What began two years ago as my most dreaded task has transformed into something actually quite amazing.

For two years, they were the gosh darn potato bugs, but this year I have come to understand that they are food for the predators I want content and thriving in my garden. While I don’t want them taking over the plants a few here and there keep the spiders, beetles and hoover flies fed. My morning plant scans deliver all I need to know about harmony and what it can look like in a healthy, balanced ecosystem. It’s taken me three years to fully comprehend what was happening before my eyes, and I was feeling in my gut.

Three growing seasons ago, we transitioned the front lawn into 24 no-till permanent beds specifically for potatoes. Around the perimeter, I added a deep border of perennial flowers to bloom throughout the season and seeded three kinds of clover into the pathways. For a beginner, I’d say we had a pretty good season as we ended up producing enough potatoes to last the winter. But two weeks before the actual harvest, we learned that the sewer lines, which ran diagonally through the existing beds, needed to be replaced. Negotiating a start date after harvest, I braced myself for the inevitable destruction that a work crew with a backhoe can inflict.

It would be true to say that I was not this crew’s favorite customer, as I fretted over their tedious trenching. As a trade-off for destroying my meticulous rows of beds, the company owner offered to bring me a load of his “best” soil. I was immediately suspicious. I could imagine we likely did not have the same definition of “best”. To clarify my standard, I asked if he would grow food to feed his kids in that soil. He assured me he would. The very next day, a dump truck full of soil and a crew with rakes turned the expanse that was once a thriving garden into a blank slate.

Knowing time was short, Joachim and I made it a priority to reestablish beds, this time 36, so I could seed a fall cover crop. In went the oats, the best “nurse” plant I know. As I worked the soil, however, there was a noted absence of worms, and my garden toads and snake had sought safer grounds. Winter came and went, and it was soon time for potato planting. In they went, but within the process, I found myself searching for life. This was dirt, but it wasn’t living soil.I should not have been surprised that, instead of a bumper crop of potatoes, there were more potato bugs than I could have imagined possible, and not much to harvest.

Let’s jump ahead to this season, which began with planting potatoes directly into a deep oat mulch from another round of cover crop, and I had top-dressed all of the beds with our own compost. Here’s what I’ve noticed two months into the season:

Earthworms galore

Toads a plenty

Dragonflies, a wide variety of bees, and butterflies

Potato plants that not only have a population of potato bugs, but for the first time, I can spot a predator on nearly every plant. Except for one variety that has failed to develop due to poor seed quality, the plants are thriving- taller than the first year and holding their own with an entire village of helpers. Since this is growing, anything can happen, but regardless of the end results, I've learned some priceless lessons.

What had been the dreaded morning project is now a delight. I will say that although I pick off a fair share of the potato beetles, I will leave one alone when I see a predator in the vicinity. I mentioned Jay Drysdale’s work last week, and it’s worth bringing it up again as he does such a fabulous job of simplifying the complexity of natural balance.
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As you head into your week, here are the greater energies I'll be keeping in mind.

Sun Transit- Saturday, June 13- 18

The sun begins its transit through Gate 12 today. It is the gate of caution, and the I Ching Hexagram is Standstill. Here’s the ask: What work can you do when nothing is working?

New Moon- Sunday, June 14

It’s interesting that this new moon in Gemini falls within this gate, as it could be about rethinking how you communicate and receive information. Are you relying on external influences or inner guidance?

Perhaps the overall energy is about pausing and giving all you encounter a moment to simmer before you respond.

Until next week,

Follow the Sun June 13th-18th

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