Perennial Ceremony: Lessons and Gifts from a Dakota Garden

Travel through a garden's seasons toward healing, reclamation, and wholeness--for us, and for our beloved relative, the Earth. In this generous collection of prose, poetry, and recipes, Teresa Peterson shares how she found refuge from the struggle to reconcile her Christianity and Dakota spirituality, discovering solace and ceremony in communing with the earth. Observing and embracing the cycles of her garden, she awakens to the constant affirmation that healing and wellness can be attained through a deep relationship with land, plants, and waters. Dakota people call this way of seeing and being in the world mitakuye owasin: all my relations. Perennial Ceremony brings us into this relationship, as Peterson guides us through the Dakota seasons to impart lessons from her life as a gardener, gatherer, and lover of the land. We see the awakening of Wetu (spring), a transitional time when nature comes alive and sweet sap flows from maples, and the imperfect splendor of Bdoketu (summer), whe