Between the Stillness and the Stirring
As winter loosens its grip, we find ourselves in the in-between.
The days are still cool, the mornings still slow, yet beneath the surface everything is beginning to move. This is the season of evanescent transition. Of softened soil and swelling buds, of roots stretching deeper before anything dares to bloom, of tender petals and the arrival of first leaflets stitching green back into the landscape. The forest and the garden alike are answering the light.
In our treasured plant allies, growth doesn’t announce itself loudly. It happens patiently and invisibly at first. A gathering of strength and the remembering of proliferation. Plants teach us this every year. Restoration comes before expression, and nourishment before beauty. This threshold between winter and spring feels especially alive, like an invitation to tend what has been resting, to feed what is ready to grow, and to release what no longer belongs to the coming season. This shift, from deep winter towards emerging spring, also invites us back outside. Back into the parts of our world that humans don’t control, where nature writes beauty and expression into the wind, the sun, the birdsong, the rain, and the abundance of non-human life.
A week or so ago, I was walking the farm slowly, without a destination in mind. Just moving across the land to experience it, to listen, to remember my place within it. I paused beside a towering, very old cedar whose crown looks tired now, the upper branches thinning and browning with age. I reached up and rested my hand on one of her limbs and quietly asked, out loud, “What do you need from me?”
I assumed the answer would be practical. More water. Nutrients. Compost worked gently into the soil at her base. Instead, what came through was simple and unexpected: spend time with me.
Plant communication rarely arrives as clear words. It comes as sensation, as intuition, as a soft knowing that settles in the body. The earth is always reaching towards us, always inviting relationship. We only have to slow down enough, and offer our presence, to hear it. For me, the true gift of spring is not only in the buds breaking open or the color slowly returning to the land. I treasure those moments deeply, but they are not what feels most sacred. What moves me most each year is the way the natural world opens her arms and welcomes me back. She was there all along, steady through the cold and the dark, waiting without urgency or demand. It is only now, as the light lingers and the air softens, that I remember to give my time back to her. Spring feels less like an awakening of the earth and more like a remembering of my own belonging. A quiet return to a relationship that never truly left, only waited patiently for my attention.
Thank you for being here in this season, in this slow unfurling. May you notice what is stirring beneath the surface, and may you tend it with the same care you offer your skin, your garden, and your days.
Love and herbal tea,
Jenn
