| Lavender is still in its wintering mounds, just beginning to send up growth. |
Yesterday a friend said, “It’s only eight weeks until your Open House!”
Yikes! I thought. This time of year I always go through the same anxiety: will the lavender be in bloom for the Open House? Right now it is just beginning to show growth. In May it sends up stems with tiny buds. In fact, harvest is about 10 days behind what it was 10 years ago, when we started harvest for dried lavender toward the end of the second week of June. Now we delay the Open House until the third Saturday to insure it will be as close to full bloom as possible (and still not be harvested!)
What does this mean? Cooler, damper springs? Older plants? We distill more and harvest for dried lavender less these days. Dried harvest is done earlier, when only one or two calyxes are open, which prevents shattering, or flowers shedding from the stem. So that may influence our feeling the harvest is later.
Nevertheless, another season is upon us. Tomorrow morning just after sunrise we spray the Biodynamic preparation “501”, horned quartz, a preparation which helps the lavender and the other aromatics utilize sunlight and cosmic energies. (The moon is in Gemini, an air or flower sign, and excellent for working with the aromatics.) If you are up at dawn, meditate with us as we stir and spray: May we all benefit from the light, may we thrive! That will be some of my own meditation, and I will think of you and your land as well.
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