The tall and rather elegant plant with its purple throated pink bell-like flowers grows well in the shade. Its leaves are downy, deep forest green. Enamored as I always am with English cottage gardens, I first discovered foxglove during my endless scrolling of secret garden like places on Instagram. There is a patch of earth on one side of the path to my shed that is opposite the one that contains the peony bed. It is completely in the shade. I planted a foxglove last year, and it bloomed this season. Enthralled, I thought about planting an entire row of them. After several years of trying to cultivate flowers in the shade, this was the first year something thrived and bloomed.
My research started and ended at my naïve romantic garden notions and the fact this plant could grow in the shade. After two seasons of growing, when I posted the blooms on Instagram, thanks to followers who are much more experienced gardeners, I discover that every single part of this plant is extremely poisonous and deadly. There is a reflexive recoiling in horror. I feel deceived. It is a plant that uses its beauty to seduce and hide a poisonous nature.
The plant’s name derives from an Irish legend, “the glove of a fox,” in which foxes use the flowers to quiet their footsteps. How did I not hear or see and allow these “foxes” into my garden, a place where animals and children freely roam? It calls to mind the saying, “don’t let the fox guard the henhouse.” Foxes prey on domestic animals like chickens and rabbits, even small cats and dogs. They transmit disease and parasites. I’ve let my guard down, we as citizens have let our guard down, and the foxes have entered the henhouse and passed a bill that hurts so many people. It psychologically maims all of us, even those who benefit. It feels almost unimaginable that it is happening the way it is, how fast and completely it has happened. How oblivious I was.
As I do the research, I should have done about foxgloves (were I not so attracted to convenience and the false and surface beauty of digital gardens) I find like all things when you think about and explore more deeply, there is a duality here. Cardiac glycoside, the poisonous substance in foxglove, also serves as medicine for heart conditions and other ailments. It can make a too slow heart beat faster. Botulinum toxin is the most poisonous toxin known to man, and it is the basic ingredient in Botox. Calvin’s new treatment, an inhibitor added to his hormone therapy, can cure his cancer but can also cause serious harm to organs like his liver and heart. To stay ahead of potential toxicity, doctors must closely monitor his blood.
Toxicity of a drug depends on its dosage. But there is always a tipping point, that moment when something creates unimaginable harm, even death. All the shiny new technology things that have so entranced me and made life easier have passed the tipping point of usefulness and insidiously stole my attention from what was happening right in my backyard. The tipping point is reached, the mediating balance (courts, congress) is gone.
We define toxicity as “the quality of being very harmful or unpleasant in a pervasive and insidious way”. It can refer to substances, people and on this 4th of July the day after passaging the “big beautiful bill” I must sadly say government and leaders. During the month of June, I’ve several experiences in my personal life and within the cruel and revengeful country I now live in which have led me to understand I have reached my limit of toxicity, that if I continue to not set boundaries with people in my personal life, to somehow figure out how to build boundaries against the overwhelming flood of horribleness that comes through my phone, I will become sick and probably die sooner than I should. In my personal life, I’ve set out to do just that. There are people who, because of who I am now, will not be in my life the way they were before. Because for them I was nothing but a toxic dumping ground. My tipping point has been reached.
It’s been slowly dawning on me since I have moved from the city that nature, as manifested by my foxglove plant, while it can hurt us, is also what can heal us. It’s consistent in its unpredictability and in its predictability (the sun rises and sets, the moon regulates the tides each day). It provides nourishment, shelter, medicine, and wisdom. It is a source of beauty that encompasses all five senses. Today my body wants to eat only natural food (preferably from my garden), put clothes on it made of natural material, (preferably that I make myself), lean into the wisdom of old crones and the crafts through which they passed down stories, and be in the physical company of positive others.
Named Grass Cocoon, a work by the nature artist Jeanne K. Simmons, conjures an image for me. Her work features women engaged deeply with the natural world. In the print of this work, a woman lies in a bed of tall, green grass. The artist braids her long grey hair into the grass around the model’s face, becoming one with it, and the grass cradles and covers the rest of her body in a stunning sculptural representation of a protective cocoon. This provides a vision for my body’s natural, organic return to the earth at its destined time. Living and growing organically, whether you are a person or a plant, takes a lot more work, but the rewards are worth it. The wisdom and experience of nature and older women are why we deem them (us) dangerous, leading to the destruction of the natural world and making young (and not so young) women so terrified to be like us they voluntarily inject poison into their face.
During the period of the last year, there has been a return to self, alongside a return to the natural world. I have learned to trust and depend on my intuition. Part of this process has been to pull a Tarot card each day to trick my analytic mind and privilege my spiritual and intuitive side. I must thank the author Alexander Chee for introducing me to the Tarot as a tool for writing and consequently for living. During the last five days, despite multiple shuffles and several cuts, I have pulled The Sun every day. Sometimes upright, sometimes reversed, regardless of position, it is always an optimistic card. I never pulled the same card consecutively before. The timing concurs with the realization that my salvation and anecdote for too much toxicity lies with an even deeper engagement with the natural world. During the last five days, as I watch prison camps being built and great harm being done to the most vulnerable, I move in and out of despair and the goodness that is my own life. The reversed position of the card reflects my mood.
The sun represents a commitment to seeing and putting light into the world. Thanks to the work I have done this year, the light of the unconscious is now brought into my daily life. The inner and outer life are one and the aftermath is joy. Life is joyous, active, and physical. The world is felt and experienced. The reversed position of the card reminds me while clouds may pass and cast shadows, the light will always return. Things are not lost, but rather confused. Going beyond the fear of darkness by traveling through it, I can be once again lucid and filled with light. Perhaps everything that was no longer working for so many needs to fall apart. Maybe we need to envision what might be more equitable and fair ways of economic and social governance. Maybe that’s the light. The repetition of The Sun card is telling me that no matter what, we must release this light into the world. Releasing the light within us restores unity. I’m determined to use my dwindling energy this way as I age.
The foxglove is now bending over and caving under its decadent weight because I have not staked it up or given it my support. Calvin and I decide we will move it to a place down the slope where it won’t be accessible to people. We can admire its beauty from afar, but keep ourselves and those we love safe. It belongs to a part of our history, a part of the past. Now we’ll have the joy and energy of figuring out something else that can thrive in the shade while we wait for the clouds to pass over and the light returns. It will return because we will keep putting light out into the world.
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