My lawn is full of Queen Anne’s lace this year! I just mow pathways through and let what grows happen, and this is the first year that, toward the end of August, it was solid Queen Anne’s Lace … I just have to celebrate it!

my lawn 2013

I’ve struggled with “cutting the grass” for years, because it seemed to desecrate the life that was present in that habitat: the wildflowers, crickets, moles, toads, healing wild plants and so much more.  Just because we are “supposed” to have short lawns in our culture. Just because everyone else does it. My yard looked messy for years, as I would delay for weeks at a time, waiting and watching, and finally – feeling the pressure of judgement, dreading the extra hard work, I would capitulate and MOW it all down! with great sorrow, blood, sweat and tears… then the cycle would start over again…

The breakthrough came about ten years ago, as I was first awakening to my spiritual path… I got the inspiration to mow a pattern in the lawn and leave a part of it wild. The symbol that was awakening in me I called “the Hand of God”;  it was showing up in my clay work, drawn in bowls, or as slab handprints, arranged and interpreted.

In God's Hand

In God’s Hand

One, showing a path to a cave by a brook, with a figure (me) seated in meditation, symbolized my spiritual journey, and it has been largely a journey of surrendering judgment and allowing Flow.  From that period on I have felt fully supported by Source/Mother/Father God…  The huge handprint in the lawn that year was beautiful, until the grass got so tall that a heavy rain made it look like a hairy paw, which spooked me, and I mowed it all down!

The next year, I tried another symbol, the cross inside a circle, a personal symbol of great resonance.  It was showing up in my art work, especially in a long series of mandala paintings. The very center was often a little circle, crossed top to bottom and side to side. I didn’t know why I put it there, it just seemed “meaningful” and right. I began to explore the history of the symbol, and learned that it was, among many things, an ancient Mu symbol, a Medicine Wheel, the Quartering of the Universe, the Astrological symbol for Earth, and the Gnostic cross.  The Gnostic belief in the divinity within us was just beginning to resonate within me.

Mandala Garden

Mandala Garden

I was just beginning my apprenticeship with Jeshua in 2005, and I asked him about the symbol that was occuring in my paintings and he told me that Yes, I had in fact been a Gnostic priest in one life! The pattern in the lawn became a place to greet the sun, to pray, to sing, to walk and dance the pattern of reverence for all of life.

Anyway, my lawn has carried this symbol with all its levels of meaning for all these years since. As the grandbabies got bigger, they have used it as a place to play, so I began to close off some of the paths to make it more of a maze to challenge them and add the element of mystery. The lawn has become a place of enchantment!

Seeing the brilliant delicate beauty of the masses of Queen Anne’s Lace was a surprise to me, and it felt like a bold statement of gratitude from the devic realm for allowing, blessing and celebrating my wild and beautiful lawn!