Sowing the Seeds of Dreams

Every day, I am noticing more and more signs of the seasons shifting towards Spring. Green grass and wild plants are emerging from the soil, the biting cold has gone out of the air, the light lingers a little longer in the evening, frogs are singing their choruses at night, and wild geese are returning from their journeys south. As all the wild weed seeds are germinating in the soil and popping up, it’s also the time seed catalogues arrive and get us planning our Summer gardens. The end of Winter is in sight.

Traditionally, this time between Winter Solstice and Spring Equinox is when the ancient Gaelic festival of Imbolc was held to celebrate the early beginnings of Spring. In old Irish literature, there is mention of Imbolc originating as a celebration of the onset of lambing season, the blooming of the blackthorn, celebrations of hearth and home, and the lengthening of the days. Candles and fires were lit to represent the return of the sun and its warmth over the coming months. Today, many people still acknowledge this seasonal shift by celebrating Groundhog Day, Candlemas, St. Brigid’s Day, or just plain old seed catalogue time.

In my household, we have a standing tradition of acknowledging this shift in the seasons by making a meal of some form of shepherd’s pie and dark, earthy carob treats. This year I made a pan of carob brownies with cocoa nibs mixed in, and a yeasted carob bread with sunflower seeds on top.

I have also held a standing yearly tradition of planting an Imbolc light garden with my
children. One of them goes out and fills a pan with soil (they have
established taking turns at this every year), and we write down our
dreams and plans for the coming year on little scraps of paper which get
rolled up into “seeds.”

When they were younger, they simply drew little pictures on their
scraps, but I notice each year they take more time and give more thought
to each one. We have always done this as a mostly silent, thoughtful activity, not
sharing what we are putting down on our scraps of paper with one
another, but I can’t help but wonder sometimes what plans they are
laying out for themselves, and what they are aspiring to.

Each seed gets planted in the pan of soil with a
beeswax candle lit and stuck in over the top of it to burn down until
it disappears.

Then, when we start working the garden in the coming
month for early Spring crops, we till in the pan of soil and the seeds
of all our dreams.

I have always found it a good way to set out into the new growing
season with some direction and intention. After all, with a handful of dreams and a little direction, we can grow some amazing things in life.

You can read about some of our past Imbolc light gardens in these older posts:

Imbolc Light Garden 

Imbolc is Here and Spring is on the Way!