This is the time of year when I have always most strongly felt magic seeping out of the environment. California’s seasonal shifts are subtle, but quite tangible. On some days, the air is filled with an enchanting freshness and vitality that hint at new life and energy beginning to stir just beneath the seemingly still surface of the natural world. There’s a feeling of having emerged from a burrow and being poised at the top of a long, slippery grass slope, waiting to be swept away into the explosion of Spring.

I moved a few months ago to a place that has a nice amount of space both indoors and out — not too big and not too small (if I can’t set up a sustainable way of life here, then it’s hopeless). I’m still getting settled and there’s been lots of rain recently, so I haven’t spent much time out in the garden. But it’s a beautiful setting, and I look forward to watching its secrets unfold. It has fed me from the day I was handed the keys, from daily tangerine juice the first several weeks to dandelion greens for my vegetable-herb elixirs to the oranges and Meyer lemons that are just now beginning to ripen.

There’s a plum tree or two, along with a shrub that I think is a Mexican lime. But two of the trees are a mystery. Somebody thought the one in the back was an apple tree (which would make me very happy). The tree on the side of the house had leaves in late fall that resembled peach leaves, but someone thought they were too big, and it may not be a fruit tree at all. I was advised to just water and fertilize it and see what crops up, which about matches my skill level — I know the basics of organic gardening, but have always been too busy with other things to properly tend a garden over an extended period. I haven’t had time to peruse the Sunset Western Garden Book to see if I can dredge up clues, and, anyway, there’s no rush. Mother Nature will reveal all in due course. In the meantime, I’ve dubbed them “Mystery Tree A”:

and “Mystery Tree B”:

A prayer from the Yokuts Indian tribe of central California.

My words are tied in one with the great mountains
With the great rocks, with the great trees
At one with my body and my heart
Will you all help me with supernatural power
And you, Day, and you, Night
All of you see me one with this world

Winter Solstice is the darkest hour, the day when the sun spends the least amount of time in the sky before descending into the longest night of the year. Immediately after, even as the season plunges into the depths of winter, the lengthening days and diminishing nights carry the promise of spring. The hustle and bustle of holiday activity—lights, social gatherings, feasts, gifts, evergreens brought indoors for decorating—lend communal energy to the idea of rebirth and renewal for the coming year. Amidst the whirlwind of activity, it’s good to find time for solitude and inner reflection. In stillness and dark the seeds of new life and activity begin to coalesce and grow.

Through brute nature upward rising,
Seed up-striving to the light,
Revelations still surprising,
My inwardness is grown insight.
Still I slight not those first stages,
Dark but God-directed Ages;
In my nature leonine
Labored & learned a Soul divine;
Put forth an aspect Chaste, Serene,
Of nature virgin mother queen;
Assumes at last the destined wings,
Earth & heaven together brings;
While its own form the riddle tells
That baffled all the wizard spells
Drawn from intellectual wells,
Cold waters where truth never dwells:
—It was fable told you so—
Seek her in common daylight’s glow.

– Margaret Fuller, (1810-1850)