Autumn is approaching and I have to say, it is my favorite time of year. And despite this year being yet another wild and crazy ride in the larger world, I can feel myself getting excited about the shift. It is also Virgo month, and my Sun Sign is Virgo, so I am very much in my element of focus, clarity, attention to detail, discernment, and building foundations. Add a New Moon in Virgo to the mix and, well, this is pretty much my happy place.
I truly do love this season, not only because it begins to cool down, the leaves change colors, and we harvest what we have grown—literally and metaphorically—but because this is a transitional time between the fire and expansion of summer and the darkness and inwardness of winter. This is when I am in my most fluid and flowing time. Some of that is because of my own personal rhythms of life, but most of it is because I feel deeply connected to the energy of the season.
And perhaps that is especially important this year. There is so much happening in the world, and so much competing for our attention, our outrage, our worry, and our energy. I don't think the answer is to disconnect from any of it. We are part of communities and what happens around us matters. But we also cannot carry the entire world in our nervous systems every minute of every day. Virgo energy, at its best, asks us to discern. What is actually mine to tend? Where is my energy useful? Where can I make a difference? What needs my attention in my family, my community, my work, my relationships, my own body, and the little patch of Earth I have actually been given to tend?
This New Moon feels like a particularly beautiful time to sit with those questions because New Moons are beginnings, but they are beginnings in darkness. We don't see the whole path yet. We are planting something that will take time to reveal itself. And I think Virgo adds another layer to that invitation because it asks us not only what we want to create, but what will actually be required to tend it.
Every September and October is a hugely energetic and creative time for me, and I look forward to it every year. Autumn is a time to celebrate the harvest that we have nourished all year—or perhaps for several years—but I also believe THIS is the time, along with Spring, and NOT January, to plant the seeds for the next cycle. Because it falls during Virgo time, we have this beautiful energy of looking at the details and understanding how much energy we actually have to put into our visions before the time of darkness comes.
I have never understood why we decided January was the moment we were all supposed to suddenly burst forth with resolutions, goals, plans, and an entirely new version of ourselves. Nature certainly isn't doing that. Most of the natural world is resting, conserving, and doing its work underground. Autumn gives us the opportunity to plant something and then allow it to take its time. We don't have to immediately make it grow.
And as the leaves begin to drop from the trees, it is also time to honor what perhaps DID NOT happen this year and decide whether we are going to re-energize it or let it go. The process of leaves falling is both a letting go AND a requirement to nourish and energize the tree so it can produce again the following spring. The tree isn't failing when it releases its leaves. It is redirecting its resources.
I think there is a lesson in that for us, especially when there are so many things asking for our energy. Not everything needs to come with us. Not every idea needs to become a project. Not every unfinished thing needs to be finished simply because we once thought we wanted it. Not everything demanding our attention deserves it. Sometimes the most life-giving thing we can do is decide what we are no longer going to feed.
This is also where the plants begin to change for me. One of the things I love most about seasonal herbalism is that it brings all of these ideas out of our heads and into our bodies. The weather begins to cool and suddenly the things I want in my cup and my kitchen begin to change too. We don't flip a switch from summer to fall; we transition. There may still be hibiscus and rosehips on a warm afternoon, but ginger, cardamom, roots, mushrooms, soups, and warming foods begin finding their way back into my kitchen.
Burdock is one of my favorite plants for this particular threshold. It is a root, earthy and grounding, and traditionally used as a nutritive, digestive, and alterative herb. As the plants themselves begin sending their energy downward, there is something almost instinctive about returning to roots. I think of burdock as a beautiful companion when I am considering what I want to root into more deeply and what I am ready to clear away.
Ginger starts returning more often too, bringing warmth, movement, digestive support, and a little fire as the heat of summer begins to leave us. And then there is marshmallow root, which reminds us that autumn isn't just cooler, it is also dryer. Marshmallow is moistening and softening, which I think is beautiful medicine both physically and energetically. Not every transition needs more pushing, more heat, more doing. Sometimes we need to soften as we move through it.
Astragalus also begins finding its way back into broths, soups, and long-simmered preparations in my kitchen. I love it at this time of year because it is traditionally used as an immune tonic and restorative herb, so it is less about waiting until we are sick and more about tending resilience as we head toward the colder months. That feels very Virgo to me too, actually. Tend the foundation before the house needs it.
So I invite you to spend some time over the next few weeks, between now and the Equinox, thinking and journaling about what you are celebrating, what you are desiring to re-energize or let go of, and lastly what seed ideas—or bulbs, if you prefer—are sparking you and asking for attention. Look at how many of those ideas are ones you truly want to put energy into. Really feel that in your body and understand the details and actions required, knowing that we are approaching a time of darkness, a time when our bodies begin asking for something different from us, and eventually a time of holidays and being with family.
AND KNOW that you don't have to have anything done by December 31st. That is a made-up story.
Look at your seeds as things that may begin to sprout next Spring. Some of them may need the darkness. Some may need to sit quietly underground for a while before you even know what they are becoming. Trust me when I say this is a much more fluid and relaxed way of being, AND YES, you do still get things done. In fact, I find that I get even more done because I am operating in Nature's flow rather than some made-up calendar and goal-setting system that puts us into overwhelm.
Maybe that is the invitation of this New Moon and the beginning of the turn toward autumn: pay attention to what you have grown, celebrate your harvest, choose carefully what deserves another season of your life force, and plant a few seeds without demanding that they become anything just yet.
And then make yourself a cup of tea and let that be enough for today.
Bringing the Season Into the Kitchen
This way of living with the seasons is exactly why we created our Seasonal Alchemy series at Wise Roots, and our new Seasonal Alchemy: Fall Recipe Book might be my favorite one yet. (Again...Virgo. Fall. I am admittedly biased.)
It is a 38-page digital collection of the things I actually want to make and use as the season turns: warming teas and tonics, elderberry syrup, fire cider, herbal honey and oxymel, nourishing roots and soups, autumn foods, body oils, baths and herbal steams, along with rituals for letting go, remembering our ancestors, tending the hearth, and deciding what we want to carry forward.
Because seasonal living doesn't need to be another thing you have to get right. It can be as simple as noticing that you want warm tea instead of iced tea. Making soup. Putting a few roots into a pot. Lighting a candle. Remembering someone who came before you. Watching the leaves fall and asking yourself what you don't need to carry anymore.
That, to me, is Seasonal Alchemy.
