A Year of Babies

I was only half serious when I said before that babies and young (and insects) seem to be my niche. It's remained a pattern this summer though. Last week my youngest daughter was stung by a honey bee who had expired quite some time before my daugher (aptly nicknamed "Bee") ever touched her. But that's a story for another time. Today I performed the funerary rites and burial service of a sweet little baby boy squirrel who I'd found in my path on our morning pilgrimage/nature walk. I didn't see him on the way to our destination, but there he was, plain as day, on our way back. We sent him on his way with thirteen black walnuts, water, and a lullabye-- "Rock-a-bye Baby". He had curled all ouroboros-style in the ochre red terracotta dish that held his body during the rites. The girls picked some flowers from the waning garden to mark his grave where it rests among the web of roots that spreads beneath Mother Maple.

And lest you think my silence on this blog has meant an idle summer for me and mine, I'll leave you with this:



Yes, that's my poor, broken garden trowel.

Brazen Bunny

Let me tell you, this is one rabbit that had better be fucking magical because the only other option in a yard with four curious children and an equally curious German shepherd pup is to end up someone's indelicate plaything.

I first saw him (or her) yesterday when I was cutting the grass. (Don't worry, no noisome, fossil fuel guzzling lawnmowers here. The old push mower is equally deadly to small wildlife though.) He darted out from behind the mulberry Cunt Tree, along the fenceline, and into my very overgrown and weedy herb garden near the house. Immediately I had flashbacks to my teen years when I'd failed miserably to save any of the many baby bunnies my dogs had proffered as quickly expiring acts of devotion. They ended up instead contributing to the education of my budding naturalist self, usually being dissected and hauled out to The Swamp for the scavengers.

I thought that was the end of the story, but Cunt Tree Bunny resurfaced again today--when all four kids AND the dog were outside with me making their normal hellish racket. He sat there, as bold as day on the brick path, munching violet leaves. I crated the dog, made the kids back off, and snapped a picture. He was unconcerned as far as I could tell.

I don't think it's a coincidence that today is one of the days I woke with a foot in each of two worlds. Tonight I will sit beneath the Cunt Tree and let myself slide down the rabbit hole.

Songs of the Green

When I was first beginning my forays into the world of plants, attempting to learn the magics and medicines contained within them, I was told that these secrets could be gleaned from the plant IF you knew its song. And if you've ever spent your time plucking delicate blossoms from stems or gathering miniscule seeds or snipping nutritious leaves, then you know that these activities allow for the mind to easily slip into light trance and welcome things unbidden into consciousness. Many of the "songs" that come to me in these moments are new to me, trails of notes that I don't recall encountering before. But sometimes there is no helping the fact that the song which seems to fit the job was one that I learned at my grandmother's knee while helping her in the garden. For example, I absolutely cannot see lilies of the valley without singing "White Coral Bells." Do you know it?

White coral bells upon a slender stalk
Lilies of the valley deck my garden walk

Oh, don't you wish that you could hear them ring?
That will only happen when the fairies sing.

This song is a particular oddity for me because, though I've been singing it annually since childhood, I can never remember the damn lyrics unless I'm not trying to remember them. I had to google them for this post even after singing the song this morning with my children! The origins of this little ditty are pretty obscure as far as I've been able to gather, but it is lovely.

A bit more idiosyncratic perhaps, and almost definitely more modern, is the song I can't avoid when we are harvesting violets, as we did today:



Dinah Shore was a witch. ;)

In the Absence of Anything of Substance...

My second daughter sporting her Beltane whites and a wreath of English ivy (the real stuff, from our garden).

Asking the blessing of Dionysos on May Day for an apple tree planted atop a departed sparrow nestling.

Carpenter bee enjoying the flowering kale.

Solstice Divination #1

It is a Winter Solstice tradition for me to divine which plant(s) will serve as my ally for the upcoming year. While it may seem odd to be concerned about plant allies during the dark of the year, it has always felt right to me. As the sun begins His return, I feel that the... consciousness (for lack of a better word) of the plant world begins to shift as well. I've tried for years to put words to this particular feeling that I get, but it defies my efforts to properly describe it. Machaelle Small Wright says of the winter solstice in her Perelandra Garden Workbook: "I feel that then the architectural blueprint is complete and its information is accessible to me."* This is as close as I've come to anyone describing my feelings of the solstice moment in terms of its affect on the plant world.

The process for revealing my upcoming ally is simple. I generally use a pendulum along with a list of plants/seeds that are available to me. Only once before have I been given more than one plant with which to ally during the year, and I've been doing this for seven years or so. This year? THREE. Three creatures of the green whose secrets I am to unlock. I'll admit, I'm a bit effing intimidated. I normally work with more plants than my designated ally, sure, but the ally is the one to whom I devote massive amounts of time and energy. I grow the plant, tend it, breathe with it, eat it, study it, make offerings to it, use it in witchcraft, etc. Needless to say, three plants is going to be a stretch for me. Perhaps the challenge will do my lazy ass good.

So, the plants: Poplar (specifically Balm of Gilead), Mugwort, and Dittany of Crete.

I've worked with both Balm of Gilead and Mugwort before, so I'm pretty excited to delve deeper into communion with them. Dittany of Crete is totally out of left field for me though. I've never used it in any form. Hell, I've never even seen the plant beyond a few pictures online. It is also unique in that I've typically been allied to plants that are found locally, despite the fact that my list always includes those that aren't local. I suppose this was inevitable. Dittany isn't even hardy in my zone, but I'll worry more about what to do with the plant next winter after I've come to know this beautiful herb a little more intimately.

*(NOTE: The referenced book is a bit New Agey for my taste, but as with many such books, there are definitely gems of wisdom to be plucked.)

Dreams of the Vine

There have been so many instances in which I've wanted to write this post, or some facsimile thereof, but each time I've shirked at the discomfort and erased everything I'd written. I've come to one of those confusing, disquieting points during which things are... up in the air.

It began around the time of my Saturn Return, which of course will surprise no one. Saturn can be a ruthless sonofabitch. I suddenly began to feel called to a billion and one (<--- slight exaggeration!) goddesses... and none at the same time. Frustrating doesn't begin to describe it. I was a bit like a crow, attracted to each shiny bauble that caught my black eye but equally as likely to just forget about it and move on when the other eye saw a glimmer. I made a list the other day in true Virgoan fashion and realized that there are ten--TEN!!-- goddesses that I'm feeling drawn to. Having been a one goddess (hell, one DEITY) witch for most of my life, this is, um, new. And uncomfortable. And making me batshit crazy.

I figured that maybe when Saturn was done with me things would fall into place. I was okay with change (on helluva remarkable statement from this Taurus Moon, for sure). I knew that I might not come out on the other side with the divinity to whom I had devoted so many years and so much life energy. I thought, maybe, I'd end up with someone darker or more Saturnine or just something different. After all, I'm not 11 anymore. I thought maybe I'd even come out with more than one deity demanding my attention, though that sounds far more arrogant than it felt at the time. I was just biding my time.

But it didn't work out that way. Saturn left Virgo, and I was still left with a mess that seemed impossible to slog through.

So, I did what any reasonable person would do. I began to make offerings and devote my extra time (ha!) to study and asked that there be a definite sign that someone--anyone--was going to claim me.

Cue crickets.

(Okay, okay. That's not completely true. My apprentice wanted to give me a reading with his new Goddess Tarot and the culminating card happened to be my matron goddess. Of course, the reading had nothing to do with my crisis of faith, so I've been talking myself out of that particular "sign".)

But, amazingly, this post has nothing to do with goddesses at all. tee-hee! During the same time that I was struggling to puzzle all of this out and sitting quite comfortably with my relationship to the Stag King, someone else entirely decided to step in.

I'd done a bit of a ritual, a simple thing really, and asked that I receive some message or answer to my dilemma in my dreams that night. Dreamwork has always figured prominently in my practice, going back to the days of listening to my beloved grandmother telling her dreams to the walls when I was a child. That night, there was no vision of a goddess. There was only Dionysos in all his typical ecstatic, wine guzzling, devil-may-care glory. What? The? Fuck? Now, in all fairness, I'd been reading a book that included a little blurb about Dionysos and had quoted said passage on my Tumblr. So I shrugged it off.

Fast forward a bit. (In fact, I need to go back to my Tumblr and see just how much time has elapsed because it's been quite awhile.) It is the night of the last full moon before Samhain. I am dreaming of a man who constantly changes form. He is dangerous and alluring at the same time. He literally unzips his facade from the top of the head down and steps out a completely different person. In the end he is wearing a jewel green-toned poet shirt and has thick, but short, black hair. I think he is flirting with me, but he may be trying to kill me. I wake as I'm saying the name "Dionysus" aloud. My husband had just gotten out of the shower and heard me say the name very distinctly. (He thought I was dreaming about another man. hahahaha! I suppose I was, in a way.)

He hadn't introduced himself to me in the dream. Somehow, in that borderland between dreaming and waking, I apparently just knew.

This may be nothing. This may be a passing thing or a way for my mind to think of something other than my lack of input from the female divine. I don't know. But I haven't been able to shake it, and that means something I suppose.

I'm a bit frightened, I'll admit. I'm kinda hoping that nothing comes of this. I am decidedly NOT a Dionysian kind of person-- at least, not if my version of what that means is correct. Sure, I love a good bout of ecstatic trance as much as the next witch. I'm prone to dancing wildly and singing at the top of my lungs whenever the hell I feel like it. But I was also dubbed The Ice Queen in high school and college (not because I didn't put out but because I can be a stone cold bitch and have chronically cold extremities). I don't drink, like, AT ALL, though I've made mead and beer for others to consume. I hate the taste of wine. Don't even get me started on sex.

But none of that will matter if it's where I'm meant to be.



My first small, pathetic bunch of homegrown Niagra grapes

Who wouldn't...

love a native plant company named Genius Loci and whose website address is "indignation.com"??

I mean, come on now. That's just right up this witch's alley.

Offering or Marking?

First let me say that it's an absolute fucking miracle that I managed to start this blog when Mercury wasn't retrograde. Absolute fucking miracle.

Now, onto the stuff.

What does a witch fertilize her plants with? Nothing less than a golden shower, baby.

I had finally, after searching for weeks, procured ONE lady's mantle for the garden. Luckily she was a rather robust specimen and was split in two (how's that for magic?). I had to make sure her blessing didn't go unthanked though. What better to give than something from my own body? This method of fertilization, urine diluted with water, goes back at least to the ancient Egyptians if not farther. Urine is sterile (unless the donor has a bladder/UTI infection) and safe and nitrogen rich and keeps the larger beasties away. An offering and a territory marker in one hit. Google it if you don't believe me. Because Google is fail-safe. :P

I usually add a few strands of my hair and menstrual blood if I can get it. Since I'm breastfeeding on demand, that last ingredient is hard to come by right now. A little of Mama's milk is substituted but does not carry all the same benefits.