Hello friend,
Spring has a ripping-apart sensation. Buds tear off their winter coats to explode neon-green leaves, bulbs press through cold dirt to send brave flowers skyward, and the whole world pushes and pulses, lifting leaves and flowers, baby hummingbirds and bunnies to the sun, “Look! Here I am! I am alive.”
Flowers are creeping over our hills and through our streets. Neighborhoods are lighting up with waving yellow clouds of invasive mustards, elderflowers’ big white umbels, and golden poppies blooming sheer joy. Flowers everywhere, flanking city hall, crowding the tops of Arroyo Verde’s back hills, seething near Ventura Botanical Garden’s footpaths, shouting from roadsides and hilltops.
Wood Element: Ride the Wave
This is the season of Wood Element, Liver and Gallbladder systems, the Wind, anger. Everything moves upward and outward: Sprout! Rise! Grow! To the sky, and beyond!
Anger is our inner spring, the upward-outward inner momentum to act where needed, create the change we wish to see in the world, flourish our authentic selves for the benefit of all beings. Ride that powerful rising wave of Qi with steady grounding rituals and stabilizing plant allies:
Nibble: Taste trailside edibles, like Mustard. Look for 4 petals, 4 stamens, 4 pistils, spicy scent. Taste baby leaves, flowers, young seed-pods. It’s that little yellow flower that’s all over our hills, and probably in your backyard… just beware/ avoid pesticides by roads and tended areas, and low plants that dogs pee on. If you love ‘em, garnish salads, or turn into pestos or vinegar-infusions.
Sniff: OMG Ceanothus! Heavenly blue or white petals that sprinkle down like romance-scene flowers and smell like sweet peace. Instant meditation. Elderflower, too. Bushy big white composite flowers that look like white parasols and smell like vanilla-y bliss, thick compound leaves that smell like funky peanut butter and can get as big as your hand, often surrounded by drunk bees.
Rub: Nibble Sage leaves and flowers, or just rub your hands over their aromatic leaves. Sage smells like California, like home: black sage’s purple flowers are starting, white sage’s bluish-white flowers will likely pop within the next few weeks, purple sage’s buds are fattening daily, hummingbird sage’s exquisite hot pink blooms are already going through their bloom-fade cycle.
Write: My Mama put pen and paper in my hands when I was young and had big feelings, and said, “Write it down.” I did, it helped, and I’m still writing. You might find it helpful too. Set a timer for 5-10 minutes and free-write, or just set your pen free for a paragraph or page, and see what emerges.
Doodle: Do blind contour drawings of plants, places, people you love— or find interesting. Color-blocks of different shades of green. A flower palette. Add play to your notebook, palette, life!
Move: It’s the best way to help Qi flow. Walk, roll, dance, swim. A body in motion stays in motion.
Go outside. The Qi of spring can get overwhelming, so walk it out. See and taste the flowers. Dig in the dirt. Plant something beautiful: poppies, lettuces, sunflowers, pollinator-loving plants, plants that make you smile and want to dance. Then get up and dance! Dance your joy out into the world, the abundant life-filled joy of plants, pollinators, sunshine, wind, anger (vivacious Qi), life. Be the change you wish to see by planting the plants you love to eat and sniff for the pollinators, creatures, and entire biome to jump up and dance together. Everything is changing. Here we are still, together.1
節氣 Seasonal Nodes
The 24 seasonal nodes in the Chinese lunisolar calendar observe seasonal shifts. Each node has 3 pentads, poetic snapshots of natural phenomena to align with EarthBody cycles. Here’s this month’s upcoming seasonal nodes and pentads:
Mar. 6 驚蟄 Insects Awaken • 蟄蟲啟戶 Hibernating insects emerge • 桃始笑 Peach blossoms smile • 菜蟲化蝶 Caterpillars become butterflies
Mar. 21 春分 Spring Equinox • 雀始巢 Sparrows start nesting • 櫻始開 Cherry blossoms open • 雷乃發聲 Resonant thunder
Events
Ojai Herbal Retreat: Rest and renew with a day-retreat in beautiful Ojai. Take a plant walk with Lanny Kaufer, make herbal oils for self-massage with Emily Watson, design sleep pillows with Carol Wade, and sip tea and make nature-art with me on May 30. Early bird tickets on sale now!
Ventura: Join me and hubby Ben for Harmon Nature Meditation on Wednesday, Mar. 4 for community walking and sitting meditation.
Spring Equinox greets us with a wink and smile on March 20. A wink, because Equinox marks the middle of spring in the Chinese lunisolar calendar, whereas the western calendar usually views it as the beginning of spring. A smile, because— it’s spring! What a time to be alive.
Book Updates: I am wrapping up Water Element, and hopefully editing Wood Element soon— on a self-guided writing residency in Yosemite! (Anticipated publication Jan. 2028)
Recommendations
Podcast: Enjoy this month’s important conversation with Minneapolis-based herbalists Linda and Luke Black Elk about herbalism as activism, and stay tuned for a chat with Patricia Kyritsi Howell about medicinal plants of southern Appalachia, and Chicago-based Alex Williams about bioregional herbalism.
Ephemera: 🌻 Tune into the Wildflower Hotline for weekly updates on So-Cal wildflower sightings. 🌿 Enjoy your flowers responsibly. 🐝 Identify plants with the Calflora app. 🌵 Crowd-source plant identification with the iNaturalist app. 🍊 Learn edible-medicinals with Lanny’s book Medicinal Herbs of California. 🌺 Get plants at Ventura nurseries, and seeds at Strictly Medicinals. 🥑 Listen to an inspiring chat with Nat-Geo photographer Paul Nicklen, Sam Roberts on Pantry Staples for the Home Herbalist, and Devin Berry on Bread for the Journey. 🍄 Watch Bad Bunny’s historical halftime show, and remember: The only thing more powerful than hate is love.
❤️ May this be the best season of your life,
JilingLin.com • Acupuncture, herbs, art
Hi! I’m Jiling, an acupuncturist and herbalist in coastal southern California bridging medicine and expression through my Ventura acupuncture clinic, Five Elements classes, and Elemental book-in-progress that interweaves nature, art, movement and ritual for thriving personal and ecological wild beauty. Learn more about me here, join events here, get acupuncture here— and buy me a tea to fuel the book-writing magic. See you next month!
Editing the Water Element chapter, I came across something I wrote in November 2024 on a hike:
Over the years, I’ve sat on these rocks overlooking a willow-laden valley watching planets, animals, and fungi come and go. Seasons change, time passes, the stream keeps flowing, trickling dry in autumn, surging high in spring. I know the stench when the stream dries up, its roar at peak spring thaw. These trails burned then flooded after the fires and were inaccessible for months. Now here we are again, cycling. Together.
How do the forests and rivers of our bodies respond to disasters natural or otherwise? How do we change over time, shifting with the seasons, aging gracefully?
As our world keeps shifting— chaos, beauty and all— so too do we change, the leaves of our youth flowering into the fruits of adulthood then falling away into the seeds of elderhood, onwards into the rippling currents of time, beauty, change. The only thing more powerful than hate is love. Value your life, and the life of this world, the beauty all around. Love with your eyes opening to the morning sky, in how your greet neighbors and strangers, your legs stepping and body gliding in movement and stillness, the moments between. Small actions coalesce into a big life. Let it be glorious.
Wisdom, joy, hope and awakening. Magic! Thank you for sharing it all.