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Garden like a Garden Witch · Garden Like

• Garden Like Alycia Tumlin v2: A witch sits in her garden. She's not green or warty. She laughs, but I wouldn't quite say she cackles exactly. There's no Eye of Newt being thrown into a bubbling, boiling cauldron. She's not tucked away in some deep dark woods somewhere. No, instead, her garden sits in a backyard in San Francisco. And where you might expect to see a pointy hat instead is a black baseball cap with the words garden witch. This is Alicia Tumlin, and on today's episode of Garden just in time for Halloween, she is going to teach us how to garden like a witch. Welcome to Garden the podcast that teaches you to garden worlds both real and imagined. I'm your magical Kelsey over here today as your host, and I am so excited to nerd out about being a garden witch with Alicia Tumlin, also known as the Garden Witch. Who is an avid gardener, urban homesteader, women's circle guide, and village auntie who creates sensorial women's circles, seasonal ceremonies, and garden workshops that immerse people in the practical magic of cultivating food, self-trust, and a more reciprocal relationship with the earth. Welcome to Garden Like Alicia. Thanks, Kelsey. I'm so happy to be here. I am so happy to have you here. I have brought out one of my finest witch hats, although I might have had to change my Recording position. It's not really gonna work with my headphones, but I love your garden witch hat. And mine is ordered and it is on the way. Yeah, that purple one is really special. I love, love, love, love my garden witch hat. And I'm just so excited to talk about being a garden witch with you. You are someone who I became friends with via social media because our shared love of being garden witches. I was drawn to your content because you're so authentic. And real, and we share so many of the same values. And I saw you on social media and was like, that's my person. I could just tell. Yeah, I felt the same way. That makes me so happy. And so I am so excited today to have this opportunity to get to know you better through through talking through this podcast. So to kick that off, I'd love to know what's your first garden memory? Well, first off, Kelsey, thank you so much for having me on. I too s met you on social media, saw you on social media. I've loved your content. I love your energy, your positivity. And we do have so much in common, and I'm excited to talk more about that today. I don't know that it's my first memory, but I have sort of this conglomeration of memories from my very, very early days living in Kentucky. My Mother was a gardener. So we've always had a garden at home. And my best friend lived out on this little farm. And one of my earliest memories is running through this little mini corn patch with my best friend. Be and it just feeling like these towering stalks. It like the the corn just felt gigantic and we were so small. And we would hide in that patch and chase each each other. And it's a really sweet memory. And then my other memory that it was sort of around the same time. Was they had two cherry trees and a hammock swung between these two cherry trees. And her and I used to sit in that hammock and just eat cherries right off the trees until our faces were just red and our fingers were red. And it's just a really sweet memory. It's such a sweet memory. It sounds like something out of a movie. And the the image of the towering corn stalks, there's something that I feel in my own garden when I have. Plants that are all encompassing that I feel feel magical to me personally. And so for me, that was last year I grew mammoth sunflowers for the first time. And I've never felt more like a garden fairy, let alone a garden witch, of being amongst these things that the that towering, that sense of awe, that sense of nature in in just such a beautiful way. So you were in Kentucky originally. Where do you garden now? I am in the San Francisco Bay Area in the East Bay. So it is coastal, but I am technically in zone 10A, which makes it possible for me to garden pretty much year round, even though things do slow down in the winter. And for folks who don't know, so garden zones are the way the USDA classifies it's based off of the coldest temperature it can reach in your area. It keeps kind of raising. The earth gets hotter, the number keeps going. And so that goes from places like the coldest parts of Alaska up into when you're in that 13-range places like Puerto Rico. And so whereas Alicia is in a more temperate zone than mine, I'm in six. So can you describe what is what is the space like that you garden in? Yeah. So I live in a normal-sized house with a normal-sized backyard and an HOA. So I don't know the exact square footage, but it can't be more than, you know, a tenth of an acre. I think I have a little bit of extra space because I also gardened in my neighbor's yard. they were not using it and I stared through our chain link fence for like five years, going, gosh, if I could just get in there. And during the pandemic, I asked if they would be willing to let us put in a gate and let me garden in their backyard. And they did. And so now I have twice as much space as I used to. But it's really not that much. And I have a small deck and a small patio and do container gardening there as well. And this is garden like a witch. So I would be remiss if we just stuck to the garden point. Tell me about what witch means to you. I really think about Being a witch, meaning that a self-sufficient woman who's kind of on the fringes. I think that kind of encompasses a lot of different versions of witch. I know there are different modalities and different things that people identify with, different zones of genius, if you will. And so I really think about being a witch as someone who kind of walks that line in between the seen and the unseen worlds. And so, you know, midwives, doulas, healers, herbalists, you know, these kinds of women who are helping bring birth, bring life, and also supporting as, you know, through death. And in the garden, we see that full cycle, right? It's the circle of life, it's life and death. And I believe that there's spirit in every plant. And so I feel like My role is being here in the 3D world and having an awareness that there's something else here that we're working with. And it's, you know, the unknowable aspects of nature. and as you mentioned, as the world gets hotter, right? Those the aspects of nature are shifting and changing in real time. And so it's really about learning to listen. And learning to get in touch with nature, learning to create relationships with the plants, with the seasons, with the other animals and critters that you share your space with, and then sort of co-creating a garden. Which came first, the witch or the gardener? Or were they both at the same time? You know, that's really a good question that I don't think I have a clear answer for. I think before I Felt brave enough to call myself a witch, especially in a public way. there was a lot that I was doing in my life that might be considered, you know, I witchcraft, I'll just say it. But I came to the garden at a really dark time in my life where that wasn't really at the forefront. So maybe I was a gardener first, and then I identified as a witch. But I think I was always a witch, even when I wasn't a gardener. When we were first talking about this episode, and I want our listeners to know our conversation was how weird are we willing to get with this episode? And I was like, This is the garden witch episode. We're gonna get weird. This is I I don't want this to just be some cursory overview. Like, no, we're getting we're gonna get weird and witchy today. So I hope you're all buckled in. Tis Tis the season of the witch here in October as this this episode airs, and I'll share on my end. So I grew up in a family that I would consider very woo-woo. And so when I there's I grew up in South Florida, there's an area of kind of central Florida called Casadega that is a spiritualist town. And my family would go there all the time. It's like two blocks wide, and everybody who is a medium there needs to be certified publicly in front of everybody. If if somebody wants to go down the where did this even come to from history of it all, there was a a town, there is a town in New York called Lilydale, and it was all it's also a spiritualist community, which then the group I guess this is this is not a fact check sentence, but the joke in me wants to say that they snowbirded to Florida and did what everybody else does and it goes through the cold north and then realizes they should do things in warmer weather. and so I always grew up With that and grew up seeing mediums and things like that as as a kid. And so that's always been part of how my family thinks about things and very much has an influence on me. And then I've talked about this as well in other podcast episodes that my path to becoming a gardener was because I saw the booth be practical magic when I was a kid, and I was like, when I grow up. I'm gonna be a witch and I'm gonna garden and it's gonna be amazing. And so I don't have a greenhouse. I didn't realize how expensive those would be when I first saw that movie. But I just that point that you were talking about of ri really the the respecting those plants and being focused on those plants and you will you also talk in in your videos and the other places that you share your work about the importance of talking to plants and and being in those spaces. And so something I'd love to talk more about is how does being a witch impact the way that you garden on the day to day? Yeah. Well, I think, you know, kind of mentioned the woo. it's really about intuition, right? When I think about how did we learn all of these things about plants before we were doing the scientific method? To dissect them. It was really about intuition. What's here? What does it look like and feel like and smell like? What is it communicating sort of beyond those more earthly realm, you know, communications and then trial and error, right? And so on the day to day, my practice is going out into the garden and saying hello. Like it always starts like that. So I check in, I say hello. I notice what's happening here. Has anything changed since yesterday? Is there a plant that's looking or calling for my attention that needs something? And then I also share what's going on with me. So there's have you heard of the practice of talking to the bees? No, not as a practice. Yeah, so there's sort of an ancient practice of telling the bees when someone died in the family. And you would go and talk to the bees and and other updates about the family and about the land and just things that were happening because the bees go all over the land and they gather information and they bring it back, right? And so I use that as a model for how I talk to the plants and how I communicate with the plants. I tell them what's going on in the home, in the yard, with our family members. I sit and listen. So having a sit spot in my garden is really important. And it's really important that I don't bring my phone, especially now that I'm a content creator, because it's it's definitely changed the relationship. And I and I'm thinking like, you know, I should be filming this or that's so pretty. I wish I could get a picture or whatever. So it takes a lot for me to just leave my phone inside and actually just be in the garden and just notice what's happening there. And so I would say that those are the most regular things that I'm doing in the garden on the day-to-day. And then I have other sort of practices that are woven into soil care and how I plant seeds and, you know, moon cycle stuff, seasonal stuff that we can talk about too. Let's unpack all of that. So right now it's October. What does that mean for how you approach your planting and your caring for your land? Yeah, so it's early October when we're recording this. So it's technically autumn equinox season. The autumn equinox was on the 22nd, 23rd of September. And this is considered in the witch's year, the witch's wheel, to be the second harvest. So this is when we're bringing the most from out of from the garden inside the home to process and store and transform into medicine and other things. So it's really like this time of celebration and abundance. Our gardens are really the most productive, like that they're gonna be all year because of all the work that we've done throughout the year since the spring. And it's also a time of pruning and cutting back and letting go. So we're coming up, you know, on November 1st is soin, which it there are Many celebrations in cultures all over the world that kind of honor a similar thing, which is essentially the death of life. And that as a necessary process for composting and creating the raw materials to create new life. And so it's a time when we honor our ancestors, it's a time when we are starting to go more inward and putting the garden to bed. So this is really when I talk about that like walking the thresholds, this liminal time. This is the most liminal time in the garden where you're looking at this abundance in your garden. There's so much that's still growing. And then you're also watching it fade and you're watching things die. And, you know, you're kind of dealing with the grief of, you know, going from the light season to the dark season. Yeah. So that's sort of the seasonal energy of, you know. What we're doing in the garden physically. and then I always am relating what we're physically doing in the garden with how I'm sort of tending my inner garden or the garden within. So I'm thinking about what have I grown this year? What am I harvesting about all of the effort that I've put into whatever my passion project is or the relationship that I'm growing or building or the business I'm growing or. whatever it is in your life that you've been tending to this year, I'm sitting with the joy and the gratitude of reaping, you know, what I've sown. And then also preparing myself for the rest and for the dream time and honoring all of the, you know, it wasn't just me that grew this garden. It's the soil. It's all of the creatures in the soil. It's the sun. It's the wind. It's the rain. It's the water. It's all the spirit of the plants, the critters that are here with us. Like it's all of it. And so I really just think about deep gratitude for this co-creation. I love that. I love the the the some so many bits. And especially that it's just as much about an outer garden as there is an in inner garden. And being able to take that time in that sit spot in your space to be able to reflect in in both ways. And something that's been really interesting to me as I've done more of these interviews is the role of community in garden spaces. And you are the second person I've talked to, although for the listeners, this episode's gonna come first. Who is gardening also on somebody else's area, who was able to talk to a neighbor about sharing space and doing these things. Can you talk about the role community plays in your practice as well? my gosh. If we could spend a whole episode on that. So, like I said, I live in an HOA and for a long time all I did was bitch about it, you know? And they would spray poison and I live right up against a green belt. And there's wild blackberries and plums and miner's lettuce and other things in this green belt that I foraged from. and they started spraying behind my house and I freaked out. You know, I got very upset. And we bitched and moaned about it. And I finally started going to meetings. And then I thought, you know, actually I live here too. And If I participate in this process, maybe I can change the way we think about managing all of these green spaces in our beautiful neighborhood. And so my husband and I got involved. He's now the president of the HOA, and I'm on the landscaping committee. And we have completely eliminated spraying. We actually have goats come and clear all the green belts and the fire breaks in our community. Cool. Yeah. And we've completely shifted. our community's perception and perspective on what it is to maintain, you know, a living world, a living ecosystem. so that has become really important. And, you know, that still comes with headaches and there's still a bunch of bullshit we have to sift through. And like, you know, community is not easy. And that's why I think people don't invest their time or energy into it because you have to deal with a lot of people who think differently than you. But it's been so rewarding. So I would say that that has been a really important aspect. And then you we already talked a little bit about my neighbors who are incredible. And they used to garden, I guess. The wife used to garden, but now she's afraid of bugs and she won't go outside. And so they had this whole backyard that they weren't using. And so now I grow whatever I can in that space and they can come down and harvest whatever they want from it. So we have this really, you know, friendly relationship. We and our the neighbors on our other side were new. Like we had neighbors that didn't care what we were doing. And then they sold the house and we got new neighbors and we were kind of worried because, you know, we're we're walking that line of like, is this in the HOA bylaws or not? You know? And so the first couple of weeks, they, you know, were kind of. Here and over the fence, what are you guys doing over there? and then we had conversations with them. We talked to them, we explained to them what we're doing and why we're doing it. And then they got all inspired, and now they're planting fruit trees in their backyard and asking us questions and trading plants with us. And, you know, so it's really about investing in these relationships with the people that are right around me that have been it's just been such a rewarding process. But then I also want to mention that, I lead these women's circles and I lead them on a friend's, a neighbor's land because she has a lot more space than I do. and so I have, you know, through doing this work and through being more face forward with it on social media and other places, it has invited all these other garden-hearted people into my life. And so now I have people all over the Bay Area. I go to their gardens. They send me pictures of their harvests. they're sharing with me the joy of watching their son eat a fresh strawberry off the vine for the first time. it's deepened my relationships and my wider sense of community so much. And it's given us this shared connection that has enriched my life more than anything. So yeah, the the community aspect is Un it it's I can't be separated from my personal practice. Community is so important as gardeners. It's I found community via social media. That's where I found my first garden community and where it continues to grow. And the people that I talk to every day have said do the same thing, send the pictures of the garden, do all these different pieces to share in that joy. We send each other seeds. It's there's something that's so I I think with gardeners, so much of our heart is we we're trying to grow something. We're we're adding in in these different ways. And so we want to help everybody grow too. Going back to that outer and inner garden, it's we're tending to both in in community. Yeah, exactly. And I I this seems like a good time to talk about. I often get asked what's the difference between a green witch and a garden witch. Yes, that's a great question. And you know, I think there's a lot of crossover. There's it's a Venn diagram, right? but with a Greenwich, I think they are generally more focused on the plants themselves, their individual constituents, and then creating something, right? There's a the alchemy of taking a plant and turning it into a medicine or a salve or something like that. I feel like a garden witch is really about the tending, right? It's about the caretaking. It's about, and so, you know, a lot of women who come to my circles and things, not all of them have gardens, but they're garden-hearted, right? And they're tending something in their own lives. Lots of doulas and teachers and caretakers and you know, people like that. So that's how I kind of differentiate. what it is to be a garden witch. It's about the tending and the caretaking. I'm so glad you brought that up because that is a fantastic question. And I love the the phrase garden hearted. It's just, it's just so beautiful. And I think it's such an apt description of what you were just saying, of whether or not you actually have a garden that that nurture that care. For those who don't know, could you describe what is a women's circle? Yeah. So a women's circle, there's a million different versions of this. So women's circle in your town may be different than the women's circles that I offer. But generally they're a place for women to be in a safe space, to listen to themselves, hear their own truth, be witnessed in that truth, share it openly, open, honest conversation. So that we can go out into the world and do this work that we care so much about, whatever that is for you. and in many cases, it is this sort of tending the world, this caretaking, this bringing us back to life, bringing us back to humanity, rooting ourselves in the laws of nature and not necessarily the laws of man. and so in my women's circles, there's sort of a mix we Do gardening. We actually get our hands in the soil. There's garden education and garden communion, communication. There's movement, meditation, lots of singing. We sing to the plants, we sing to the soil, we sing to ourselves and each other. And food. I grow the food, I make a giant feast, it's all homegrown, and then we share it together. So it's really about being together. But having a space, an appointment for yourself to come back to yourself. Our lives are so busy. They're so full. They're so loud. Everything's trying to get our attention. We're so spread thin that literally just having a quiet moment to yourself is very rare. And it's so much easier to put an appointment on the calendar where you know other people are gonna be there so that you can sit. Quietly with yourself. Because I know for me, even, I talked about the sit spot in my garden. It's like sometimes, there are days where I'm like, my God, am I, I don't have time. I don't have time to spend 10 minutes out there, you know? Or I'm just like so stuck in my head. It's like hard to get quiet. It's very effortful. But when we're all there for that shared intention, it's like, okay, we can actually sink into this moment. There's someone me holding the space, holding the safety of the space, guiding you so you're not having to think, about whatever the meditation is or whatever's going on outside of the circle. It's a ceremonial sacred ritual to come back home to yourself. Absolutely. The there there's so much in there of spending that time and making that space for yourself. And we talked a bit earlier about. What this point in the year, this part of the wheel of the year is in terms of gardening and being a garden witch specifically, what does it look like throughout the year? Mmm, one of my favorite topics. So the wheel of the year is it, you know, it is a more kind of modern interpretation of taking seasonal celebrations from throughout the world, but mostly in Europe. And separating the year into eight parts. So these are structured around the equinoxes and the solstices. And then whatever the cross-quarter days between those equinoxes and solstices are. So there's eight points on the year. They're roughly every six weeks. And so it splits the year up into a pie chart, essentially. So instead of thinking about time as linear, as like a straight line. That's only going in one direction. We think about time as a wheel, as a circle. And so each time, you know, we come to the same point on the wheel, like summertime, we're back in the summer. It's the same thing as last summer and the next summer, right? There's variables, obviously. But if we can time our planting, harvesting, our seasonal practice in these six-week chunks. It actually gives us more flexibility. What I found is separating our gardening into the four seasons that we all know spring, summer, winter, right, fall and winter, these chunks are very large. Three months, there's a lot can happen, right? There's a difference between early summer and late summer. And so having these eight sections instead of the four, Has helped me stay a little bit more on track. I would say, like with fall gardening, it's so tricky to get the timing right to make sure that you're going to actually have stuff in the fall season and you're not waiting until fall to plant your fall stuff. And so I have these, I've sort of developed over time these markers, right? These tasks that happen around the In this case, we're talking about the fall garden. So around Lamas, which is on August first, this is when I start my fall seeds. And this is when I start thinking about the transition between summer and fall. Looking at my garden, I'm saying, okay, what's growing, what's thriving, what's giving us a lot, what's maybe not doing so well. Where am I going to be able to fit in my fall veg? Where am I going to maybe have to make some sacrifices? You know, that kind of thing. So I'm starting to like, I'm here in this moment, but I'm also thinking ahead. It's reminding me so much of there's all sorts of different, and and you touched on this too about how different cultures and spaces have different celebrations around these same times, around these same topics. And that these different cultures do also have this relationship to planting as part of these. There is, or there's sayings. I wish I remembered one off the top of my head, but it's like, wait to plant blank until after Labor Day or wait to do this of of using parts of the year as a reminder of of this is when I come back to this. And I I love what you said too about the like the a whole season is a big chunk of time for breaking it up into those smaller bits. Cause it is really different at the beginning of fall versus the end of the fall versus winter and all these different pieces. So That that makes so much sense. And something I want to talk about too is the pop culture perception of the witch and how that relates or doesn't relate to your practices as well. So when folks think of the somebody with garden powers, it might be poison ivy from DC, or there's Another garden superpower person from the the movie Sky High, which was a Disney Channel movie. And and they're thinking about witches as Harry Potter or Discovery of Witches or Practical Magic for me. So when her or the Wicked Witch of the West. How would you explain the differences between the pop culture witchcraft and what you do? That's a really good question. Well, I think in one thing is like there's an aesthetic, right? So we have kind of separated actual practice and power from the way things look. And in our culture, we're very concerned about the way things look more than how they function. Yep. so yeah, I would say that, you know, we all know kind of the the trope. And there's a difference too here. It's like we what you all the things that you mentioned are kind of maybe the more positive cultural depictions of shows my bias. Yeah, right. Right. But then there's also the negative ones. And when I first met my husband, he was raised Catholic. And he's a very brave and bold person, very confident. And he said, basically nothing scares me except for witches. And I'm like, well, that's why you met me, right? The universe has a way of doing that. And you said, boo. Exactly. Exactly. And I probably terrify him more than anything else on in the world. in the best way, of course. So, you know, there's this perception of. A woman who is ungovernable, who has a lot of power, who's confident in her ability, right? That is scary. And so we're like, she must eat children and, you know, cast hexes and spells, or she's seductive, right? If you think about like the Scarlet Letter, or you know, the what we know about the witch trials here in the United States. So I think there's, one part of it is like fear based. It's like, don't get mixed up with this business, And then the other part is this Disney, you know, fabrication. So, you know, most of the witches that I know, you would never know, are witches. They don't look like witches, they don't act like witches, and they most of them certainly aren't calling themselves witches. And it's taken me a really long time to feel confident enough within myself to call myself that. Right. Because it does, you know, it can kind of make people bristle. And even in some of my like public women's circles, if I introduce myself as the garden witch, there will be always a couple of them that are like, you know, what's that? You know? and that used to freak me out. And so I would shy away from it a little bit. But now I have more confidence in yeah, who I am and what I do and how I help people. So yeah, I would say that there's a lot of women that that you would never know. You know, I I think about women like Cher or like Margaret Atwood, you know, Yoko Ono, you know, like There are women in this world who have a certain label put on them, who have gone against the grain in some ways, who are saying, fuck you, to the patriarchy and colonialism and other things. and that have some kind of power or influence or ability to wield that power or influence and know things that are not. Provable, right? So we talk about intuition or psychic powers or having some kind of connection with other realms that can be very intimidating and hard to prove. So it's easy to be to dismiss them, right? So yeah, I don't know if I made a very clear answer there, but I I I love I I love it because I love where you took it too, because the So a fun fact about me is I can wax lyrical about the Salem witch trials. I know so I live in Massachusetts, and there is so many misconceptions about the Salem witch trials. And so it is my favorite little soapbox to stand on and be like, nobody did the drowning test. No one was burned at the stake. so I as soon as you were talking about witch trials and and history and Even to the point of the the woman is the seductress was so much part of the European witch trials where over forty thousand people were killed. And yeah, that went on for years and years and years. And there's also there's a song that came out a couple of years ago. I wish I remembered the name of the artist, but the song is called W-I-T-C-H and it's woman in total control of herself. Exactly. It's a bop. I will put it in the in the show notes so you can go listen to it. It is such a good song. And that that point about I like there's something really interesting here about being in like having that agency, being in control, being able to find yourself and sit with yourself and take a moment for yourself and like God forbid some a woman in the garden be able to Be in control of something or have knowledge about an area or be able to do these things on her own and to have the time to sit with herself in a way that's not for somebody else, which is so much of what women and and famsters like socialize to do. Right. And so I think this combination of when you think of like garden a witch, it sounds to me it's gardening like you're tending to yourself. It's gardening like you're listening in the space. It's gardening with community. It's gardening with intention. And also, it's not just the outdoor garden or the inner garden inside ourselves. Also, you have a beautiful plant behind you that is cascading over you in the background. So can you talk to the indoor plants also as part of your practice? Yeah, I mean any plant. Has all plants have spirit and have some kind of function. So even a small houseplant is doing something to like purify and clean the air that you breathe. And then you are feeding it through every exhale that you take. So there's a relationship that's happening there. And you know, plants brighten our space and help us have a regular thing that we have to take care of. That's that there also isn't like it's not a child, right? Yeah. So like if you kill a houseplant, if you accidentally kill a houseplant or a plant outside or whatever, like it's you can feel that grief. You can be like, what did I do? You know, what could I have done diff differently? What will I do differently next time? That sort of thing. But it's not the end of the world, right? so it's a really great way to bring nature in. We think a lot about we know the healing power of nature. We think about it as somewhere that's out there, that's distant, that's far away, that we have to put our boots on and bring a water bottle and go out and be a voyeur and just watch it and witness it. And there's still this separation between us and it. But with the garden, whether that's outside or house plants that you bring inside. You're inviting that nature in. And there's a reminder there that like we two are nature. We have evolved in relationship with plants. That's how we eat. That's how we get medicine. That's, I mean, this is the most fundamental relationship that we have, really. So inviting them in the home is just an extension of that process. Well, I'm glad you said the thing about the dead plants because one thing I was about to bring up is talking about the souls of plants and thinking about the plants that I have killed in my care makes makes me a little bit more concerned. You know, I kill a lot of house plants. I'll just say that. I'm really I'm a lot better with my outside plants than I am with my inside plants. And there, but there's something there. There's information there, right? Like I can sometimes neglect the inside of my home because I want to be outside. And then there's a reflection there that I can have. It's like, okay, what have I been neglecting within myself? What have I been neglecting inside the home of this body? because I notice that there's a reflection there. If I am like not cleaning up or I'm not tending, there's a room that's all the junk goes in that room, and I don't want to look at it. It's like there's probably something that I'm avoiding. And usually I can attach or If I feel into it, I can find some kind of energetic block or place where I'm like, avoiding or shoving things in my heart, in my soul, in my mind. And so through the process of cleaning up the garden or cleaning up my home or, any of those things, I usually have some kind of process where I'm attaching it to an emotional thing that I want to move through in my life. So there's this kind of Pairing happening, right? Where you have the emotional reality and then you have some kind of action, some kind of thing that you are affecting change on physically in the real world. And that's the alchemy process. That's the transformation process. Can you talk more to that? If somebody's listening to this, how would they go about doing that? Well, it's it's it's pruning season, baby. So get out those snippers. Yeah, yeah. I would say there's so much the seasonal shift can really be hard on a lot of people. I think the season going in from winter into spring and then from summer into fall, these sort of points around the equinoxes are some of the harder shifts. And things get really heightened, we get irritable. Here in the Bay Area, this is like when it gets the hottest. it's like we don't really have very hot summers, but then in October it gets a hundred degrees. It's fire season. people are just there's a lot going on, sociopolitically. People are stressed, they're overworked, and now there's less light, you know, they're like waking up and it's dark and having to go to work and that feels shitty, you know. So there's like a lot, and then we have election season. Like there's so many things that are happening individually and collectively. And We also have this retrograde coming up. there are lots of different cosmic things happening. And we're watching our gardens die. So if you can think into and feel into a place in your life where you have been overgiving that is just not working for you anymore. Maybe there's a relationship that just doesn't feel good anymore. Your job is not doing what it needs to do for you. something about your health, some kind of maladaptive coke. Coping mechanism that you're doing, something in your life that you're like, if I could cut this thing out, things could be better, or at least it could create space for something new to grow. So I would go into my garden, I would sit in my sit spot, I would have this conversation with myself and with my soul and get really specific about what it is that I want change around. And then I would go to the plant. with my snippers and I would talk to the plant and tell it, you know, thank you for what you've done here in the garden for us and the time that you've been with us. And now it's time for me to end your life and take you out of the garden and cut this out so that something else can grow. And sometimes this is like an actual conversation that I'm having out loud with the plant. And sometimes it's more of an energetic thing that's happening inside. I just kind of feel into that. And then I make the snip and I say, with this action, I am making this choice to remove this thing so that something else can take its place. Something new and vibrant could take its place. So that's just like a really practical thing that you could go out and do in your garden right now. And if you have a houseplant, you know, a similar thing. If you have the leaves on it that are starting to like not look so healthy, you know. You can say, okay, thank you so much for all that you've done to clean this space and clean this air and the joy that you've given me for your with your beauty. And I am going to return you back to the earth so that you can become the, you can compost down and become the nutrients for something new to grow. I can see why this is your space because I got emotional as you were talking about it. And I I very much as you were you were talking through these moments, because yesterday I I had a crazy work day and I went out and I went ham on getting rid of the tomatoes. And it felt so much better. It felt like there's something about gardening. And I find also a lot of folks who have chronic illnesses or chronic pain are gardeners too. And I see it for myself as a way of it gives some control back in in certain ways and some feeling of. Ha having an impact where maybe you're not seeing it in certain parts of your life, or if I want to scream into a pillow about AI usage in certain ways, that I can go out to my dirt and I'm like, I have plants. It's gonna be okay. Yes. And so that that time of cutting back in this moment and that pruning is exactly what I feel like I need right now in my life and can see why gardening like a witch. Can make make this space. And so when we, as we're starting to wrap up our conversation here, if you could give advice to someone who wants to garden like a witch, what's their next step? Hmm. Get quiet and listen. Go outside, get quiet and listen. I mean, that really is the first step because So much of the modern gardening space is really centered around domination. It's like I get to choose what goes here and I'm gonna force my will on this place. And we're not necessarily listening to what the place wants or needs. So, you know, both things have to happen. I have to decide, like, okay, I want to grow food. That's like primarily what I'm interested in growing. Cause I want to grow nourishment, right? And healing. So that's my focus. So I go out into the yard, into where I am in my normal, you know, suburban backyard. I'm like, okay, well, what's already here? Well, there were a lot of blackberries. That was like the main thing that was here. Like, okay, this is taking over. There's too many of these, right? But it's a really important. part of what's feeding the ecosystem. And it can be a beautiful screen. And so I worked with it to create like a wall where my chickens are. And they will eat, you know, as much as they can jump up and eat. They'll get all the berries down below. They'll keep all the vines tended, you know? And then I have the whole top part or middle part really is for me. And then the top part's for the birds. So there's A paying attention, I think that is really important. And then I think starting a garden grimoire is maybe one of the most important things you can do, which is really like sit, listen, notice, and write down what you notice. So then you can come back to that and you can be like, you know, on October 15th, the garden only gets About six hours of sun and half of it's in the shade by this point in the year. So now next year on Llamas, when I'm starting to think about what I'm gonna plant for the fall, I'm gonna remember only these beds are gonna get sun in the fall season, and these beds are all gonna have shade. So I'm gonna, you know, use that information to decide what I'm gonna do here. So the first step is noticing, listening, writing things down. And then, you can follow me on Instagram, follow me on Cal Instagram. Do it. Where can they follow you? Yeah, I am Alicia Gardens on Instagram and TikTok. And if you're in the Bay Area, I do women's circles monthly and seasonally. You can find that on my website at selfsownegarden.com. And if you just want to join me in being a garden witch. You can get garden witch. Yeah. And I have shirts and journals. So you can start your own garden grimoire at gardenwitch.me. That's amazing. My last two questions for you on that front are how did you determine where your sit spot is? Hmm. Well, my garden's really small and it none of it's flat. So it determining a sit spot. basically came from this is the only place where I can actually sit down. That's one way to figure out where the spot goes. That was it. And then later on, when I was rebuilding my beds, I built in a ledge, like you know, a a flat spot on on the bed that's in the flattest part of the garden. And I have a little piece of wood that I can put over that bed and sit in that like corner. Basically. So I had to build it in. In my fantasies, in my dreams, when I'm able to like build a garden from scratch, when I have flat space, I would put a sit spot in the middle of the garden, you know, to be able to like see sort of 360 all the way around. So as much of a garden as you can be in and see at once is probably a good idea. My second question was you mentioned the critters are just as much a part of this as everything else. So for the person who just went in their heads, but the critters, they tear up my garden or they're doing this or that. How how do you think about that? Well, there's a couple things. First, I accept that they're part of the ecosystem and that they're here. And so I always grow a little bit extra, knowing that some of it is gonna go to them. So there's a very generous sharing energy and mentality around that. And as a witch, as a tender, as a caregiver, we have to be really clear about our boundaries because our tendency is to overgive and to overshare. And so casting these circles of protection. energetically and spiritually and also physically in your garden is really important. Building fences, right? We have deer in the neighborhood. So making sure I have really strong fences. And then I, you know, being a a witch is kind of related to sort of goddess energy. we give life and we also take life. So if there is something that is threatening life, which is the nourishment that I get from my garden to feed my family, then I have to make decisions about ending their life. That's just that squash vine borer has got to go. There's no there's no universe in which I will I will let a squash vine borer leave the premises. Yeah. I mean I kill a lot of rats, you know? And that's just part of it. Now, I don't take joy in it. It's not like something that I like seek, gosh, I've got bloodlust for this. Poor Rebooie. Yeah, it's really just accepting the truth of what is. And I think that's something that we as a culture have forgotten how to do. that we have this fantasy about what nature is, that it's like all Bambi and like, you know, beautiful abundance all the time. And it's also, you know, I I say this sometimes and it kind of triggers people, but like the earth is a cannibal. Everything has to eat, and everything on this earth eats something else on this earth. And there is spirit and aliveness in every single thing. So when you take something to nourish your own self, there must be gratitude built in, gratitude and grief and forgiveness. For ourselves and for each other for this process. And this is like we have this thing in our society where we just consume and consume and consume. And there's just this constant overconsumption, this overmining, this overforesting, this forcing our soil to give and give and give and give constantly without letting it rest, without letting the fallow time, accepting that like death and compost. And turning something into something else is part of the life cycle. And so I think, you know, being a gardener, you're really faced with that so much more viscerally, and you have to really accept that as just part of what it means to be human and be alive and be on this planet, this living earth. So yeah, I think we just have to remember, you know. We just have to remember the sacrifice of what it takes to keep us alive and have more respect for ourselves and for each other and for the critters and the plants and everything so that we have a right relationship with those things and we aren't just taking them like we're some hungry ghost that's never satisfying. The hungry ghost. Is there anything that you wanted to talk about today that we didn't get to? Girl, I feel like we could go in so many different directions. Yeah, this seems to be a 12-episode series. Yeah. I was like, you know, as I'm making my list of things, like we could go in so many different directions. But I think the main thing is just gratitude. And I think this is a seasonal necessity, really. The autumn equinox is considered the witch's Thanksgiving because that's when, you know, the nature is most abundant. And then we move into Sawin, which is like remembering our ancestors, remembering all of the things that make us who we are and that make this planet possible. And, you know, just the fact that like the soil is made up of the death of like a million things over many, many, many millennia. and that's what we need to grow life, to grow food, to grow us. And so I always pull a card before any circle, or you know, I pulled one today. And the card that I pulled is gratitude, basically. Smoke gratitude. It says today, this card carries a message for you. Send more tendrils of gratitude in your life. We are all surrounded by such everyday miracles as rosebuds, spider webs, and snowflakes. Yet how often are you brought to your knees in Thanksgiving? And so it says cultivate a heart of gratitude. And so that's, I think, just the last thing that I want to say. I'm so grateful to you for wanting to have this conversation, for inviting me to this space. I'm so grateful for the community that I've been able to build through social media with all of its, you know, whatever things that are not great about it. There's also a lot of really great things about it. And I didn't set out to be like a social media influencer or whatever. it just sort of happened. And it's been scary and weird, but it's also brought me so many incredible people and garden-hearted people. And I'm just grateful to be part of the community and to be able to have this conversation and grateful for everything that the plants have taught me. So and I'm so grateful for you and for being here and And your garden heart and to everyone listening, be sure to follow Alicia on all those platforms. All the things we didn't get to talk about today is all in her content, in her circles. There's so much. And also, you can match us in the garden witch hats. come on, they're really cute. And with that, just thank you so much. Thank you for listening to Garden Like. We are a brand new podcast. So please, please, please do all the things that you do for your favorite pieces of content. subscribe, tell your friends, tell your neighbors, tell your enemies, follow us on social media at gardenlikepod. This episode was hosted by me, Kelsey Siegaloff, produced by Deanna Healy, and edited by Guido Bertolini. If you have any suggestions for future episodes, please send us an email at gardenlikepod at gmail.com. I can't wait to see what we garden like next.