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.

Full Moon Gardening

Indulge me, will you? I have to say it once. Will it EVER fucking stop raining? Our town has had repeated flooding and in such quantities that the Red Cross has had shelters set up for months now. You'd think this would make things green up like crazy around here, but it has also been unseasonably cold. Not the best of combinations. Two of my lavenders have bitten the dust, so I'm really pissed at myself for not having potted them up. Usually I've put all our warm weather crops in the ground by Beltane. It's the 16th today, and we were wearing pants and sweaters. My paprika peppers will have to wait for their permanent home a bit longer, I'm afraid.

Still, there is plenty to do in our homestead garden. I've been wanting to get a couple cuttings from my mom's raspberry bushes, which have been passed down from generation to generation in our family, but considering that it's been almost ten years (!) since she died I don't think that's going to happen. So today I bit the bullet and bought a couple raspberries on clearance to fill in the spaces I've been saving next to the Red Lathams. I bought an everbearing red variety called 'Heritage' and a yellow variety known as 'Fall Gold'. I've actually never had yellow raspberries before, so I'm curious to try them. There was also a variety of black raspberries, but I'm holding out until I can find some 'Brandywine' bushes. I have a thing for any plant bearing the name Brandywine.

I also picked up a couple blackberry bushes, a task I've been resisting for years because blackberries are widely available in the wild. If I can forage it in good quantity, why should I waste the garden space? The location reserved for the blackberries is in front of a basement window, though, and the husband really wanted something that would provide a bit of security in the form of painful thorns to deter thieves. When we moved here the ground in front of each of the basement windows was covered in prickly pear, and while I love the taste of prickly pear, I did not love picking the tiny, brittle spines from the various body parts of my children. So, blackberries it is. 'Ebony King' and 'Darrow' are the varieties I brought home, both of which had thorns on the plants I chose.

Tomorrow I'll be mulching in the rain and trying to tame the Latham raspberries which I've been very lazy about trellising. 'Tis time.

The Cunt Tree Blooms

My garden altar is planted (har-har) beneath a white mulberry tree that occupies a far corner of our backyard, and today (acutally, yesterday, thank you very much Blogger) the tree is blooming for the very first time since we moved here five years ago. Five years of piss, blood, and tears offerings. Five years of celebrations, meditation, and Journeying beneath its branches. Each year something more of the nature of this specific mulberry is revealed. It wasn't until two years ago that I even knew it was a cunt tree. That same year, just a few days before the dawning of the vernal equinox, I gave birth to my third daughter and named her after a mythological flaunter of the cunt. This year it blooms.

Courting is so often a long practice and a test of one's patience--be it human, plant, animal, spirit, or deity that one is trying to woo. Nothing is guaranteed, and there are no entitlements.


The altar covered in mulberry pollen.

When God is Convenient

First: My apologies and many thank you's to each and every person who has inquired about the grain-free life change going on over here. I am still working up to talking about it in this public space, as small a thing as it may seem. It has been a strangely revealing and emotional ride for me. There are no pressing health issues that made us change, but thanks for all your concern!

I have always been drawn to other deeply spiritual or religious people, regardless of the particulars and peculiarities. It seems a simple thing to me to say that my calling to Hera or the Stag King or the Cailleach is not so far from the stirring within those called to Yahweh, Allah, or any other deity. Perhaps this is because one of the most moving spiritual experiences of my life happened in a church at the altar of that most terrifying of Old Testament supernaturals. Sure, the specifics may not resemble each other at all, and the various Forces working through us humans may drive us to do very different things and lead very different lives. But in the end, I recognize that devotion in others.

I also seem to know when the devotion is being faked. Happens to pagans and Abrahamics alike, I assure you.

In the past couple years, I have grown somewhat close to one of my neighbors down the road. She is of the fundamentalist Christian persuasion, but we both homeschool and lead lonely lives at home with our children. This past year we went from exchanging thoughts on the weather and making sure our kids weren't being inconveniences to each other to more intimate conversations about motherhood and marriage. And I finally got to meet her husband when I was invited to their son's birthday party. I'd never caught more than a glimpse of him in the five years we've lived here, despite the fact that he was unemployed for over a year. Apparently, according to his wife, he was embarassed to meet me because he feels that I dress inappropriately. (giant, huge, gaffawing LOLZ) He specifically cited my constant bare feet as an example.

But that's neither here nor there. The real issue is how he uses God to force his will on others, especially his wife and step-son. When he and his wife were first married, she had a car. He convinced her to sell that car by telling her that he intended to buy her a van because of all the carting around of church supplies she is often required to do. Five years later? She was still without a vehicle. "God" had told him that he wasn't to purchase her a car until they had bought the house they currently rent, and that hadn't happened. He didn't tell her this until after he'd sold her car. Okay, I thought. Who am I to question what his deity tells him or why. It's none of my business anyway, right?

His mother, knowing that my neighbor was stuck at home all day with her son without a vehicle in a town that is not walking-friendly, offered to give them her van free of charge AND to pay the first year's insurance premiums so that they wouldn't have to take on any debt. She was promptly turned down by the husband much to the wife's upset.

Then one day my neighbor invited me over to see her brand new SUV. Whaaaat? It was explained to me, by the husband nonetheless, that the reason this purchase was okay was because they hadn't BOUGHT the vehicle--they had only leased it for FIVE years. The wife was thrilled of course, but the whole thing left a bad taste in my mouth.

You see, I truly believe that we are (almost) always given a choice with the gods and spirits. They tell us what they wish us to do, and we follow their instructions or we don't. That's free will, people. Exercise it frequently. But don't you dare use your connection to a higher power to fuel your ego trip and force your will on those around you who love and support you. And LYING about the depth of your connection to that higher power in order to get what you want? This is deplorable on all levels. It doesn't matter to me whether it's the Christian god or the Stag King, I will lose all respect for you.

Obviously, I don't believe for one second that God told my neighbor's husband not to purchase a car for his wife. I believe that this particular man uses his false devotion to God as a way of controlling his wife, his child, and other family members and friends. Makes me wish his wife were a witch.

Baby Boy Tracker

Tracker @ 7 weeks, 2 days old

I have a long and sordid history with dogs beginning when I was just a year old and my mother took me to a friend's house for a visit. Said friend had a very randy Dachshund who was not at all immune to my prolific charms. He promptly mounted my ass, thereby scarring me for life and instilling in me a long-term fear of any canine. Tracker--the German shepherd pup above and the newest member of my family--isn't the first dog I've invited into my life, but the trust issues run ever so deep this time. It's not just myself that I have to be concerned with. I have four little ones, all under the age of eight. And he's going to be a very big dog with herding instincts whose breed accounts for 44% of all bite cases (most involving children, of course).

The husband brought him home in a torrential downpour of rain, calling me several times during the hour long drive to tell me all the little things that made Tracker the best dog ever. I reminded the husband to let the pup have a turn around the front yard to empty his bladder and bowels before he entered the house. After all, I'd spent the entire day cleaning every square inch because apparently bringing home a puppy is enough to incite the full-on nesting instinct in me. But when the husband pulled up, I watched him carry a little ball of fur all the way from the car to the house, never setting him down once. In comes the husband, in comes the pup.

"Did you let him go po--" Before the sentence is finished, I feel a warm puddle form on my bare foot.

Oh yes. He'll fit right in.

Wishing you all the merriest of Beltanes!

Is Winter Dead? Has Spring Begun?

Ohhh, I can stretch! Ohhh, I can scoop the black earth between my hands and let if fall between my fingers! Ohhh, there are creatures of the green emerging everywhere! Ohhh Beltaine is nearly upon us?? Shit. I've been busy, yes indeed. There are many changes, mostly of the mundane sort, happening in the Heart of the Beast. A quick rundown perhaps, so you'll not wonder when I disappear for long stretches at a time?

On the eve of Beltane we shall welcome the newest member of the family, and for once it is not a human babe sprung from my own womb! Still, there will be sporadic sleep and endless piss and shit (my lot in life, I tell ya). Our German shepherd pup, a fine young lad dubbed Tracker, will finally be ready to come home. It's been 11 years since I've shared my life with Canis lupus familiaris. I think I'm ready. I'm sure more blogging will come on this matter.

We (and by "we", I mean myself and the children) have gone grain-free. Again, more blogging is needed on this subject, I think. It was a huge decision, and I'm not sure we'll be able to stick with it because--Hell's fire! The cost alone might put me in an early grave.

If adding a puppy to the mix wasn't enough, I finally--after 5 years of longing and talking and dreaming--got the go-ahead from The Husband to raise a small flock of chickens in our teensy, tiny backyard. There've been a million roadblocks (because all things by me must be started during Mercury Retrograde, naturally), but I'm working my way through them. Um, more blogging fodder? Yeah.

It's that time of year when the roadkill is prolific. I've mostly been sending them off and/or burying them because my yard has to be inspected before I can get the okay to keep the hens. I'm fairly certain that the smell of death emanating from buckets of macerating bones would not help me pass inspection.

Add to that all the everyday and normal seasonal things, and my plate overfloweth.