As daylight lingers below 10 hours, and darkness begins to creep ever so slowly back from the dominant 14 hours of winter, plant growth slows to a whisper, and we have time to contemplate, ponder and dream of what the coming light of Spring will bring us…
Smiling as we greet the New Year, the next full Super Moon coming quickly on its heels and the year of new beginnings and the Fire Horse ride in on the cold wet wind and mountain snows of the Pacific Northwest.
Here we are once more in the time of planning, thinking, reading and burrowing into seed catalogs, plans for grafting and taking winter cuttings for new starts, new life and new growth. Trimming fruit trees, grape canes and berry bushes to encourage new growth and fruiting in the coming seasons. It’s the time of consideration and thinking. Of building new beds, or at least laying the plans for beds to be built before the growing season fully arrives.
We follow the journey of Persephone deep into the darkness of her mythological journey to rendezvous with Hades and re-cast her spells of all growing things for the year ahead. Emerging slowly, with the first early shoots of February when the hardy perennials begin to peak out from wet ground, and the first wild pea shoots emerge in the pasture edges. Soon there will be daffodil buds pushing up, even through snow, and preparing to claim their place as the first heralders of warmer and longer days.
But for now, we dream, and stir the fire. We drink copious amounts of hot herbal teas and bake cookies for children and grandchildren visits. We dig deep into our inner landscapes seeking new inspiration and insight to bring to the dawning of another new year.
In the myth of Persephone, her abduction by Hades into the underworld brings the great grief of her mother Demeter, Goddess of the harvest and plenty – leaving the world destitute. Only through the return of her daughter can the natural world be saved from Demeter’s all-consuming grief – and so it is that we come, even in this ‘modern age’ to call these days of darkness falling roughly between mid-November and mid-February by her name: the days of Persephone.
As gardeners we know that there is not enough light to support much growth beyond the tender greens or lingering kales of autumn plantings. But we also know that soon the light will send them all crowding upwards once more, and so it is our time to prepare, and to nourish, and to dream.
As we move more fully into this new year in 2026 there is a new energy in the air – a new joy seems to move through the landscape of our hearts. Friends speak of new awakenings to their own inner compass and guidance as they explore the methods and tools they have used for years or even decades. New healing modalities and adventures into unexplored awarenesses newly coming online.
There is an excitement and even a sense that some new and powerful understanding of what we have long known is emerging – not as an entirely new teaching, or a new approach, but rather as a new way of experiencing ourselves and the space and world we inhabit. There is a gentleness asking for our attention, a more direct awareness of the presence we have been cultivating rising up to meet us in each new moment.
Persephone calls us to take the time to ponder and reconsider the ways in which we move and assume the world moves around us. To sink a little deeper into the waking dream of our lives and allow the magical to inspire and delight us. And it appears at every turn, when we slow down long enough to notice.
This is the gift of seasons which move and flow across time and space in our world. Whether they are the rainy and dry seasons, or the deeper darkness and light cold and warm of the higher latitudes, they are rhythms of life inviting us to come into our own remembrance of the beauty and joy and yes, magic, of our co-creative dance with the all that is of physical existence.
To remember that we chose to come here. To remember that our dreams are precious and sacred and our heart’s yearnings are the deepest callings of where we come from and where we will, when our journey here is done, return to. To step for a time into the joyful expanded vision of new possibilities and new awakenings calling us forward in our own life journey and honor that which only we can feel, know and see within ourselves as the reason we are here.
I invite you to join me here, in this sacred space of your own inner dream for what your world, life and our collective world and dream can look like. To feel into it with care and concern and compassion, not just for ourselves, but for all of life. And to nurture and clothe that dream in the choices, directions and decisions you make as you step into this opportunity to re-create yourself and your world in this new year.
