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 In winter, with the leaves fallen, the landscape is much more permeable to our sight. The neighbors' fences peak through what used to be thicket. The rows of trees seem to stand together as fragile forms, rather than in a bushy plume of green life. This is a time of year for seeing, both on the land, and with interior eyes that look towards what we want to grow. Roots and orchardists alike digest the clippings from the season, breaking down the fast-paced journey of spring and summer, transferring nourishment to our visioning of next year's crop.
Being able to take in a tree whole, without the drapery of its magnificent foliage, we know where to cut: where to cleave away branches that block something we envision a future for. We can perceive the full impact of the competing life that may have claimed slivers of orchard during the warm months, and return that boon to be dissolved by the life underground. Sap flows away, following the moon's apogee, and we begin to plant the apparition of next season. Imagination flows from our interior world into the limbs that we choose to keep.
With numinous sight, we also see what isn't visible to our physical eyes, but visible in a felt-sense, as our spirits empathically mirror what happens outside of us. The cold dismantles our rapid push at the end of the season to secure the harvest, process it, and store it. Our resolve is unwound and restarted for the next season, focusing instead on nourishing an internal life. We process the season and plan the next, and those dream hooks propel us towards the action characterizing the warmer months. The long cold hours dissolve the dormancy hormones of trees, thereby mounting signals to the buds for breaking. Greedy microbes beneath the mulch and sod of the or chard floor extract the building blocks of life, hibernating with them until spring triggers their release. The trees, slowly ticking out of dormancy with each chilling hour, grow a hunger for nitrogen until the advent of spring signals a pressure change of compulsion, and roots pull on the nutrients they need to grow.
In our winter reverie, we have passed the threshold of midwinter and travel closer to the coming exchange each week. In astronomy, this is called the cross quarter -- halfway between winter solstice and spring equinox. Others know this junction as Imbolc or Candlemas. Still more see it passively, as the winter looms on and our sights keen on what's to come.
Learn more about these energetic exchanges connecting us with the seasons and the orchard in The Promise of Biodynamics, the second in our webinar series.
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