My friend brought me a beautiful basket of dahlias today and when we took one outside instead of adding it in the vase, I told her the story of why I don't pick flowers. I love to receive flowers as gifts but years ago I had a terrible moment of not remembering something important, and not picking flowers is my way of saying "I'm remembering now".
We arrived outside at a deep hole in the ground where a tree had once stood but then rotted away. All around the hole I sprinkled the dahlia petals while saying "I remember this place, I remember I am feeding the beauty of this place."
Then I broke up the stem and the sepals and added these to the ground. I told my friend how I had learned from Martin Prechtel, when attending his school of spiritual ecology, that a tree hole like this is a most sacred connection between the worlds--a passage for the spirits on the other side; a place to honor the spirits of nature on this side. I also learned from Martin that there is no garbage. Nothing is without an origin on this earth. So I leave the petals and all the parts of the flower at this site whenever I can, instead of bring them into my house for me to enjoy. "But why" my friend asked.
Because years ago, we hired a man with a backhoe to dig our septic field. I forgot to mark out or cover over this sacred place in order to protect it, and since this area was immediately adjacent to where he was digging, of course he dumped the buckets of earth on top of the tree hole. It was buried under many feet of rocks and soil. It took months for me to remove the covering, and as I did, I understood to honor the place I forgot by giving the beauty of flowers to it instead of to me. Forever.
I tell this story in another way in the Journey Oracle cards and book in a fairy tale for card #18 called "Wanting More."
