Grieving the Land

And all the plants and animals who inhabit the Earth

The Meadow

The first time I ever shed tears for the plant kingdom was for one of the standing ones. I believe it's the Cherokee who call trees "standing ones," and that sits right in my tree-loving heart.

I must have been about seven or eight years old, living in a neighborhood in Northwest Detroit. The houses were tiny, but the streets were lined with massive American Elm trees.

One morning in the summer, I ran outside to play and saw dried-up leaves covering the ground. The beautiful Elm, which shaded our house and a tiny patch of lawn, the one that we would lean on when we played hide-and-seek or draw a circle on the old man's back, was dying.

I don't have many childhood memories, but that is one of them. I cried and cried, knowing that something terribly wrong was happening.

Detroit's majestic American Elm trees had been struck with Dutch Elm disease. The city had planted the trees in rows, and well over a hundred years old, they formed a canopy of green, a literal tree tunnel in the spring and summer, a blaze of color in the fall, and a snowy winter wonderland in the winter.

The fungal disease was and still is spread by a beetle. Millions of these majestic deciduous trees have died. It's just one story of many of the trees in America that have been devastated by insects, often brought in from another country.

Nature can be cruel.

When I was married and living just outside of Detroit in a neighborhood where many of the Elms had survived, a tornado once touched down, and when we came up from the basement and saw the standing ones standing no more but strewn across the street, I again felt that deep grief.

Last week I came home to find my landlord's landscaper mowing down the meadow my little house sits upon. Before I could flag him down, he had plowed over the Milkweed lining the driveway, where the Monarchs lay their eggs and are still gracing this area.

After 😢

Along with the Milkweed disappeared a patch of Mugwort, which I was watching and waiting to harvest when it flowered.

The same thing happened last year, and my landlord said he would postpone the mowing until October.

But his landscaper didn't know this, and because he was in the area and had the time, he thought he would take care of it.

I asked him to leave the remaining Mugwort growing by the barn and went inside. I was numb all day.

I wasn't angry. I was just sad. My landlord and his landscaper (who built this amazing little house) are good people. I'm just an ex-city girl who doesn't know that, come September, most people around here mow down the meadows. The roots of all the plants - the Yarrow and Goldenrod and Queen Anne's Lace and St. John's Wort, etc., are still underground and will emerge again in the spring.

I am grateful that my landlords let me leave it wild and unsprayed.

I have my own guilt for mowing an area around the house to keep the ticks away. I'll admit that I love having a space where I can walk barefoot on the ground, but I know that the blessed "weeds," AKA food and medicine, would be growing there if I'd left it alone.

And so, I stay out of judgment and righteousness, which I work hard at these days. The man who mowed the meadow is a nice man. He was just doing his job. Next year, he said, he'll wait until October.

As much as I love the land, the plants, the birds, bees, and the butterflies, I am constantly making decisions about who lives or dies.

Whether it's mowing around the house or killing ticks but NEVER killing spiders (I will let them hang out with me in the shower for days or gently put them back outside), I'm the human making these decisions. I have lived in peace all summer with the paper wasps who built their nest right above my kitchen door. But, those deer flies? I had nothing but disdain for them.

The morning after the cutting of the meadow, I woke up from a restless sleep, and my first thought was of what had happened.

I sat up in bed and started to cry. I felt the same deep grief for the land that I felt when I was a little girl and saw the Elm tree dying. And as a married woman witnessing the destruction wreaked by a tornado.

I got out my drum and went on a shamanic journey to the middle world. To visit these places. To talk to the land.

The drum reached right into my heart and calmed me down.

Later, I played my flute while I walked the land. It looks brown and barren, but I know that will not last long. As I'm typing this, there's been a steady rain since last night.

To add insult to injury, when I returned home later in the day, the first thing to meet my eyes was a struggling Monarch butterfly on the ground. His wing was damaged, and I couldn’t help but wonder how it had happened. I brought him a tiny bowl of water and a branch from one of the Milkweed plants that had been plowed over. I didn’t know what else to do.

Earlier in the day, I was listening to my astrologer talking about what’s happening right now and heard her mention the Monarchs and say, “If they can’t fly, they die.” She was using an analogy for how we need to take risks, to fly, in our life, or we will die.

We had a drought this summer, and many of the plants struggled. Last year there was healthy Mullein everywhere. This year it looked sick, so I just let her be.

I could end this post here, but I want to take my attention away from the land and look to the skies.

Yesterday, I got up early and hopped on my bike. The sun was rising, and the sky was a deep dark blue.

When I returned home and rode into the driveway, I glanced up at the sun just in time to see a big fat chemtrail cutting across the sun.

And there they were, the geo-engineered clouds swirling around, blocking the sun. The sky was already losing its deep blueness and was now dull and hazy.

Weather modification in action

The first time I started to pay real attention to chemtrails was well over a decade ago. I was living in downtown Manhattan, and it was a beautiful summer weekend, so I rode my bike to Battery Park City with a good book and some lunch.

I lay on the lawn and remember looking up from my book to see several massive chemtrails over the Hudson River. I knew what chemtrails were, just not the whole story.

When I returned home a few hours later, I felt a dull headache growing - something which rarely ever happens. I used to get the weather-is-changing kind of headaches, but that hadn't happened in years.

I was heading out of town the next day, and the headache persisted the whole time I was gone. Eventually, it went away, but I was curious about what it was all about.

That little voice in my head sent me to my computer, where I proceeded to type into the search bar: last weekend, chemtrails, NYC, Hudson River, headaches. Lo and behold, an article popped up saying that people witnessing the chemtrails over the weekend complained of headaches!!

Geo-engineering, weather modification, carbon dioxide removal (CDR), solar radiation management (SRM), cloud seeding, stratospheric sulfate aerosols geo-engineering. Do you know what these terms mean?

To this day, if you search chemtrails, you will likely see a host of articles calling them a conspiracy theory.

The site geoengineeringwatch.org states:

"Chemtrailing is the public's term for the CLASSIFIED ONGOING artificial modification of Earth's climate systems using reflective nano-materials (aerosols) to reflect sunlight. The aerosols are dispersed via jet aircraft trails that expand into reflective artificial clouds. As noted above, the "chemtrails" term is not a scientific term and is thus used to discredit the validity of the anti-geoengineering effort. This term is not helpful to the cause of exposing and halting climate engineering and thus should be avoided."

Duly noted by me.

I've been a lover of clouds my entire life. When I lived in the city, I often looked to the sky to make me feel grounded, as silly as that sounds. I could stare at them for hours.

Now, I know too much, and staring at clouds can lose its joy if I let myself go there.

We are being poisoned from above. Globally. So, like me, you can move to the country and grow your food (well, or a Mystery Garden!) using organic compost, seeds, and plants, but we have no control over what is being sprayed on us, on the plants, and on the animals.

It is perhaps the number one threat to life on this planet, including the plants and animals, and we are oblivious.

For decades governments have denied that this is happening, calling it a conspiracy theory. Thanks to more awareness, they have admitted that it's happening but have cleverly turned it on its head, saying it is helping with global warming. And now, they are starting to talk about it on the news - the "new clouds!" and "aren't they beautiful?!" And how blocking the sun will cool the planet. Because "experts" like Bill Gates say, it will.

If you think our government would never do this to its people, are you old enough to remember DDT? In Detroit, the big trucks would come down the street where we were playing curb ball, spraying this toxic chemical on the trees to kill insects. What harm could possibly come from that?

Or the millions of genetically modified mosquitos that have recently been released in Florida. What could go wrong?

The weather is being weaponized. It is no longer Mother Nature's weather. Droughts, floods, and forest fires are, for the most part, man-made.

The mad scientists seem to think they can do better. Unfortunately, their intent is far from benevolent. The same chemicals rain down on all crops - whether organic or not. Into the rivers and lakes. The plants and animals. The precious bees and Monarch butterflies that we so love. Think about that for a second.

Lyndon B. Johnson famously said in 1962: "He who controls the weather will control the world."

"It lays the predicate and foundation for the development of a weather satellite that will permit man to determine the world's cloud layer and ultimately to control the weather, and he who controls the weather will control the world" - Vice President Johnson at Southwest Texas State University (1962)

The US famously weaponized the weather during the Vietnam War. Search Operation Popeye.

Weather wars.

You will rarely hear a politician whisper the words geo-engineering. I have written to government officials and heard…crickets (pun intended). BTW, crickets are not suitable for the human body, so start scrutinizing labels as the NWO goes into full swing, replacing meat with insects.

But I digress.

This is dire, indeed. So many of us deeply respect and love Mother Nature and do our best to nurture her.

But, how easily our best is undone by chemicals raining from the sky, just like corporations were allowed to dump chemicals into rivers. Rivers that were changed forever. Rivers that man used to be able to drink from.

I like to imagine that world. I want that world returned to us. I want the Earth not to have to work so hard to heal from man's stupidity, greed, and power.

It's hard not to feel powerless. But, at heart, I'm a Sagittarian Pollyanna. I loved that book and movie, and I will never give up on hope.

"You see, when you're hunting for the glad things, you sort of forget the other kind." Pollyanna/Eleanor Parker

When we desperately need rain, my PA friend and I go to work, looking to the skies. Willing the clouds to gather and the rain to fall. We are powerful, not powerless. Never forget that.

Here are two excellent documentaries, both free to watch. I'd love to hear your thoughts.

“FrankenSkies” is more recent than “The Dimming,” but they’re both worth watching.

Click HERE to watch FrankenSkies

"They call it the elephant in the sky." — Alan Buckman, US Air Force Weather Observer, CA Dept. Fish and Game Wildlife Biologist

Much love,
Barbara