MOONSPIRED: Summertime

The June new moon tonight arrives practically on the cusp of the summer solstice, the seasonal transition point from spring to summer. The shortest night and the longest day of the year are happening in just a few days in the northern hemisphere. This new moon in Gemini, The Twins, helps us look at duality and double edge swords. With hope and courage, within opposites, here on earth.

“We are all like the bright moon, we still have our darker side,” —Khalil Gibran. The darker times of the month, at new moons, remind us, we go through phases. We are just about halfway through the year, and right now is ripe for new harmony between previously polarized perspectives.

Strength comes from our ability to see our own shadow and embrace the darkness with light. This brings awareness of all our thoughts, feelings, and sensations. Knowing life is filled with passing cycles, whether we are counting by a moment, day, month, year, or season. We all go through good times and tough times. Life is hard! It’s in our ability to gain enough clarity to trust the process that helps us to believe in ourselves. We can find our voice and speak our truth. “Your playing small doesn’t serve the world. There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine,” —Marianne Williamson. In the darkness, like at a new moon, even the tiniest light shines bright.

Let the sol (sun) feed your soul; it’s nearly summer Solstice, the ultimate summer festival. A celebration of the hot new season! It’s a busy time of year for sustainable, regenerative farming. As I’ve mentioned before, we are an annual full-season sun grown permitted and licensed small cannabis farm in northern California. We are committed to clean practices and quality products. Martyjuana™: Plants by the moon with sun, soil & soul! That’s our tagline for marketing because it simply expresses how and why we do what we do. It doubles as our mission statement.

We do all we can to be in sync with nature, using the sun and moon as guides for where we are in our growth process. We plan many of our big projects in tune with the moon cycles. And this new moon is so near the summer solstice it is in alignment with one of our biggest projects of the year. We are “sexing” the plants. On a personal note, to honor our deep connection to this place and our attempts to imbue all we do with sacredness, we made love in the middle of the garden on the night of summer solstice upon moving here a decade ago, an intimate spiritual blessing of this fertile land.

Cannabis is a plant that expresses itself in gender. There are male and female cannabis plants. And less often, marijuana, and also hemp, can mutate and become intersex, in the plant world referred to as hermaphrodites. In fact, when this happens, it can cause chaos if not detected soon enough, as it can undesirably pollinate the entire garden. The best practice is to cull these plants as if they are males.

Around the time of summer solstice, the seeds we planted at the new moons throughout spring will begin to show us their sex. We separate the plants and only grow the females to finish in autumn. But we always choose some dominant males for the purpose of propagation. The males must be sequestered in another area while they develop. We use these males to pollinate a few branches of dominant females, in order to create seeds for the next year. Then we cut them down and compost them.

Male plants tend to grow taller and faster and show themselves to be male before female plants. We hand pollinate, marking clearly with multi-colored twist ties to know where the seeds are at harvest, also keeping track of their genetic parentage. If we were to allow a male plant to stay in the garden, it would seed the entire crop, and that is not our goal. In general, we do not want seeds in the flowers that will go to market, so that is why we undertake this intense process.

One of the things we do, unlike many cultivators who start in small cubes and up-plant to larger pots a number of times, is sew our seeds in one-gallon pots. We allow our seeds to grow out until they show us if they will be female plants before transplanting into their permanent homes. That time begins now. We also plant out into their final destinations our commercial production clones during this moon cycle.

“Our lives may be no more than dewdrops on a summer morning, but surely, it is better that we sparkle while we are here,” —Lewis Carroll. We must reconcile our past now to be able to clearly focus on the future. What has the first half of this year brought to us? At this midpoint, we can count our blessings and our lessons. Life itself is a balancing act! The yin-yang is the perfect symbol to use to help us focus our attention on this June new moon. Male and female, good and bad, happy and sad, high and low, birth and death, black and white, dark and light… all opposites within their core, yet each contains shades of the other, and only altogether can there be complete wholeness. Wholeness is holiness!

A practice: To quiet the mind, visualize the yin yang symbol. Let’s close our eyes and focus on breathing through the heart. We can actually picture our breath as pure light, an orb moving in and out through the center of our hearts. Breathe in light. Breathe out love (repeat as often and as long as necessary). Now let that light form into the sigil of the yin yang in our mind’s eye. Use the yin-yang visual to scan the entire physical body. If negative ideas emerge, send them the yin-yang of light in a breath. As we breathe, we notice any imbalances in the body and send the orb of light there with a few breaths concentrated in the direction of it. See if that creates a more physically relaxed feeling. There is no hurry. Breathe into that specific spot as long as needed to feel a shift. Let any tight or painful place open gently to the light, like the complementary opposing forces of a yin-yang. Notice if this change in the body also calms any intense thoughts and feelings. Grow the light to encircle your entire body before you open your eyes. It’s your energy shield. You can use it any time. I find I feel more centered and relaxed if I do this even a few breaths, but I could sit for hours at times; it is so soothing. From a more balanced place within, we can handle most anything.\

Rituals, like planting a garden or visionary meditation, can give us the powerful containers we need for our work in our world, personally and within our community. There is comfort and confidence that emerges in creating our own magic. This nearly summer solstice new moon is available to assist. “Whatever is dreamed on this night, will come to pass,” —William Shakespeare – A Midsummer Night’s Dream. This is yet another wonderful opportunity to bring the inner and outer parts of ourselves together. To make the ephemeral experience of dream time real. We can manifest our midsummer night dreams and our daydreams, too. “This is all a dream we dreamed one afternoon long ago,” —Grateful Dead – “Box of Rain.” Everything, every single thing, that happens in our world has a conscious point when it begins. “If you will it, it is no longer a dream,” —Theodore Herzl. Celebrate sweet dreams and sunlight of summertime blessings!!!