Dear Hive & Natural Medicine friends,
Every time I pick these oranges, every season, I feel closer to the trees, their rootedness, and the sheer divinity of the beauty, bounty and generosity of their fruits... Juicing them the old-fashioned way with a brilliant glass squeezer that I bought recently secondhand, augments the multidimensionality and the blessedness of making fresh juice.
The trees being so close by is an immense bliss-ing. None of the agrumi/ citrus trees 'belong' to me - i.e. each of them is 'owned' by a person holding a certification which they attained by transacting money to another person previous to them who 'owned' that square of Gaia Sophia. I do not stand under that inferior 'legislation', and act and Live instead from Natural Law. If the oranges are not being picked - they should be.
If the oranges are not picked, a great cacophany of insect life will spring up under the trees, which will also support rat life and other small mammals. This would be wonderful for Nature, but less pleasant/ hygienic for folks living next to the trees. The trees might wish a few of their seeds to be carried by animals (or intelligent humans) to a nearby place for planting, and they might benefit nutritionally from their own fruit as mulch, but on the whole, the symbiotic relationship including us as living beings with a certain mastery within a natural heirarchy - we hold a certain sacred duty of care.
This duty of care is to intervene gently and rightly, where appropriate; where our actions support our own flourishment, at the same time as the plants, animals and insects continue to flourish in symbiosis.
Usually we don't operate under this Natural Law: everything is speeded up, mechanised, separated from Nature, artificially sprayed-harvested-transported - removed from its right, natural context. This means that we receive the Gift of God in a much diminished form: its natural beauty is lost in a haze not just of our manic hurry to gobble down breakfast and get to school/ work/ whatever - but by the energy in which it has arrived with us.
The epic journey tires our food, if it is taken from where it was grown. Our unique connection with Gaia Sophia in the place that we live-work-play is compromised - we are eating 'foreign' food that cannot inform us with the energetic-biodynamic-nutriment download that it should be giving us. The sacred geometry is lessened and therefor the magic of the thing is lessened. Our Right to good food is greatly atrophied.
The alchemy of birdsong dancing in my ears, the feel of the buccia/ rind under my palms and the mastery of feeling into how the pulp presses firmly against the juicing form, the potent smell of oils being released and the gorgeous kaleidoscope of colours which unveils like a gem being cracked from deep in the earth...
The sacred geometry is pristine - it has never been seen and will never be seen again (bar through snapshots like these!): I marvel at the perfection and precision, the deep and shining colours, before transforming it into living juice with my sacred geometry wee glass appliance.
I have a particular action once the most of the juice has been squeezed - of grasping the half fruit in my palm and tightly gripping it until the very last drops come out, then running the open edge of the half circle that remains, across the top of the juicer peak, so it get the pulp which is hanging out... the final juice is very pulpy and filling for a breakfast drinky-food.
Today there were around 15 oranges to juice: there were some very small and a couple very large - varying sweetnesses and colours, as you see in the photos.
Some were quite gnarly on their outsides - I love that when an orange is stored for a while - so long as it hasn't travelled far from the tree (mostly mine can be seen from the window, directly below my house) - it will become even juicier and sweeter. I live in an organic/ natural home, so I'm sure that the geothermal ambience has something to do with providing a good storing atmosphere.
I have a big bottle of juice for a couple of days' breakfasts, and I will harvest more from my neighbours-who-never-harvest-their-agrumi's trees later this week. For now I am all juiced up and ready for the day, feeling bliss-ed and grateful.
