Although some places are still under snow, it's feeling like spring here. Several 80+ degree days here this week, some more rain today. I'm told that this my first winter/spring in Tucson has been a kindly one in terms of the volume of rain we've been gifted. 

The rains gift a spectacular blooming of this desert place. As the trees leaf out and all sorts of small weeds unfurl from the ground, there are flowers everywhere. My neighbor's magenta bougainvillea vine. Cactus and yucca and agaves sprouting spiky and marvelous inflorescences. Mesquite trees covered in yellow blossoms and bees.

A time of beginnings for plants, then. In other words, there were so many choices available to me for a plant related to the theme of apprenticing and beginning. (Mindfulness post and word post for this series.)

Okay, part 3 of our first tripartite spell! Since the mindfulness part was about remembering/forgetting in connection with boundaries and the language part was about the word "remember," you might have expected me to pick "forget-me-not" as the herb for the spell.

But  there was never any doubt for me that I'd be writing about "rosemary, for remembrance." It's such a wonderfully versatile aromatic herb, and although it doesn't have as much associated folklore as parsley or fennel do (stories for another day, perhaps),  it's been used and loved for millennia.

Keep a vial of its essential oil by your desk and take a whiff if your energy flags. Notice the renewed wave of clarity.

The bees are vanishing. Your organic produce was grown in China downstream of a coal-powered water mill.  Sea otters are found on Alaska beaches dead of canine distemper, spread from Atlantic seals  because the ice cap has melted. That plastic in your water bottle is making fish infertile and giving little boys boobs.

It's called the finite pool of worry.  Or compassion fatigue. Information overload.  I get it in my schedule too--so many things to do, I don't know where to start and end up doing nothing.

That's one of the reasons I love the Origins film and telesummit: the presentation is solutions-oriented and positive.

But that can be overwhelming too. You get the "someday" syndrome, and btw, "someday" isn't on the calendar! "Oh, great idea! Someday I'll build a solar greenhouse." "Oh, when I finish this project I'm totally going to go salvage building materials and make raised beds and domesticate a bunch of quail..."