Lavender and Memory: Evocative Pleasure!

Lavender is a paradox: the scent  brings you into the immediacy of the senses, and this experience evokes memory.  Lavender has provided an unexpected  journey to my husband and me over these 20 years since we planted it.

Casey was still in high school when we first planted the 3500  tiny lavender plants. He and our friend Andy placed irrigation for the lavender and  then weeded, over and over and over! Now Casey’s wife, our daughter-in-law Melissa, and their sons, Wesley and Sabien, help harvest and process the lavender that you receive.

Three great surprises in my life are my love of being a grandmother (okay, I am not too surprised!), my love of goats, and my love of lavender. When Donald and I planted 3500 plants, we had no idea what we were getting into. Lavender turns out to be a lot of work! Not only does it take a good bit of weeding if you don’t use Roundup, and we do not, and harvesting, and drying, and distilling, and pruning, but it also involves marketing, something we didn’t plan for. I have written about this process in other blogs and books, but I have to say this: lavender is a great marketing partner! If people smell it, it goes home with them!

Melissa and Sabien

But there is so much more! Through distillation, Lavender taught us that each area of the ranch, each terrior, expresses its individuality through its scent. We store the lavender in the cool dark of our basement, and its essence rises throughout the house. At night we open the windows to the field outside the bedroom, and the full bloom gifts us sleep. When I pack your orders, I think of lavender as an ambassador of the ranch, of the earth here, coming  to calm you, to delight you, to offer you her healing energies.

Melissa and Wesley

For this is the paradox: yes, it evokes memory, but it also brings you into the absolute present! Just sit in a lavender field at full bloom! The world buzzes with busy pollinators— bees of all varieties, sun up to sun down.  A few minutes of this completely changes the planet.

Lavender is now also now a playground for my grandsons. Little legs  run through lavender bushes as arms swing Star War lightsabers.

Will these lavender fields be emblazoned in their memory in times to come?