March 7, 2015

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Pine Needle Weaving

The pine needles blow through my back door and land at my feet while I type. Our tiny little urban homestead is a trio of buildings all circling a giant Canary Island Pine. The tree towers over 150 feet above us, and we love its presence, despite the falling cones that endanger our noggins and the needles that we constantly rake and gather and heft into the green bin. The tree brings shade, and birds, and a feeling of permanence in this place.

We have a lemon tree, too, and many other fruit trees. We make lemonade, and plum jam, and eat our figs fresh for breakfast. 

After trying pine needle tea, which is high in vitamin C and fairly awful, I finally have found a way to enter into the life of this tree. No longer am I merely an observer (there is a whole story that unfolds up there daily) and cleaner-uper of its ways. For once I'm actually celebrating the mess that season after season drops onto our little plot.

It has been a fun shift, thinking of pine needles as a tool for making something new, and maybe even making something useful--beautiful. But more than that, there's a joy in learning a new craft. A new way to use my hands, another learning curve that causes creativity to emerge and shift, and that touches other areas of my life.

And like knitting, or sewing, it's another repetitive art, where I can settle into a rhythm, and where prayer becomes a partner as I stitch round and round and round...