09/22/2026
Today. I welcome in the day.
Today, there will be gratitude, abundance, joy and grief.
Today, I will harvest all of the Sweet Annie.
Sweet Annie is a powerful aromatic and bitter plant with a history of medicinal use for malaria, Lyme disease, and internal parasites. I work with it in many ways. For me, it is a ritual plant. A plant I work with internally, but also aromatically. When I experience its aroma, I experience a coming home. A grounding.
I can feel joy moving through my grief as I harvest it.
Whenever I harvest on the farm, I feel so much gratitude. But within that gratitude, there is also grief. Within the abundance, gratitude and joy, grief walks alongside us.
The emotions of the season and the act of harvesting are interconnected. We are complex, and the plants help me make room for that complexity. They help me honor being joyful and in grief at the same time. They also show me how to hold ritual and remain in relationship with them well beyond our time together in the fields.
As we welcome autumn, this is not only a time to honor the abundance and give thanks to the plants, the animals and the land. It is also a time to honor our inner knowing. Our ability to connect with the land, the plants, each other and, especially, ourselves.
As I harvest the Sweet Annie today, I will allow all of it to be present.
The gratitude.
The abundance.
The joy.
The grief.
Harvest is not the end of my relationship with this plant. It is a changing of form. What grew in the fields will continue as medicine, as aroma, as ritual and as memory.
The relationship comes with me.
Perhaps this is what autumn asks of us. Not to choose between joy and grief, or between holding on and letting go, but to make room for all of it. To honor what has grown, grieve what is changing and trust the cycles that carry us forward.
Today, I gather.
Today, I give thanks.
Today, I grieve.
Today, I welcome in the autumn equinox.