What are you harvesting?

Lammas (the name comes from Loaf-Mass) and Lugnasadh, falling at the start of August, are celebrations of the grain harvest. Of course in practice, where exactly you are in the world and what the weather is like will decide how closely this date relates to your harvest. It’s also a celebration that assumes grain as the central foodstuff – not, say, rice, or potatoes, or some other staple. It assumes involvement in the grain harvest. You don’t have to go back very far to find most of the people in Britain were actively involved in bringing in the grain, but these days its all machinery and we ‘bring it in’ ground, packaged and quite probably already made into bread.

However, harvesting is an ongoing issue for all of us. Whether the seeds are literal or metaphorical varies, but what we sow, we reap. Even if we didn’t mean to sow it. Even if we had no idea what those seeds were going to do, or thought they would grow an entirely different outcome. Every day, we plant the seeds of our future lives, and every day we harvest the consequence of previous plantings.

It pays to stop and have a look at what you’re planting and harvesting.

This is a shorter than usual blog, seeded in advance with the view to a harvest of some much needed time off. I’ve spent the last few weeks with the difficult harvest of not taking enough care of myself, and I’ve decided that really needs to change, so, new things to plant.