Occupy

For those of you who support the Occupy Wall Street movement but cannot be on the front lines of the protests, here is a quick, easily implementable suggestion for how you can help from the comfort of your own home. The best part is that it hit the banks where it counts--the bottom line! Please help and show your support if you can.



Also, there have been some really brilliant herbalists and healers putting together information for those who would like to help the protestors at the Occupy Herbalism facebook page.

I am the 99%!

Epiphyte or Parasite?

It grows in the crotch of another species of tree, conifer cradled in deciduous. Both live and seem no worse for wear as of yet. More remarkable yet is that conifers of any sort are scarce around here in a landscape dominated by maples and beech. It seems to me that the most likely scenario is that a bird or squirrel or other beastie carried this seed from the cemetery not so far away. Perhaps it is wishful thinking on my part. Does it make this sapling any less magical?

Dream

Last night I dreamed that I was working in a bookstore, and a customer came in looking for a book called How to Find Mugwort. Subtle title, yes? There was a large, wooden circular display in front of my register where I went to look for the book, but all the copies of that title had been sold. Still available, however, was How to Harvest Mugwort. I tried to sell the customer on this, but I woke before he made his decision. The cover illustration on the mugwort book was a wood etching done in dark blue on cream-colored paper and showed a man with a broad-brimmed hat wielding a sickle. A tiny spider darted diagonally across the cover as I lifted the book to show the customer, a man of inderterminate features. I woke with Fiona Apple's "The First Taste" in my head, a song I had played during my Anthesteria celebration to provoke Dionysos (he didn't bite).

Today, with The Husband still home over the long weekend, I'm off to my favorite haunt to woo mugwort. Will she let me find her?

P.S.--Mugwort was one of the plants that came up in my Winter Solstice divination.

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.

A Winter Harvest Day

My back felt nearly healed today, so of course I thought it would be a good idea to haul my ass and my four kids, bundled nearly beyond the point of recognition, out to my favorite "wild" spot to harvest poplar species buds. I become nervous to the point of insanity every year that I'll miss the bud harvest because Ohio late winter/early spring weather is nothing if not unpredictable and so is my schedule. Today was pretty perfect for this particular activity. We'd had enough of a warm-up to get the resin pushing from the buds, but today was extremely cold. The resin was mostly frozen, so tiny helping hands were spared the potentially sticky disaster.

Thus far, I've identified trees of two Populus species here in my little domain. The most common is the Eastern poplar (Populus deltoides), also known as the cottonwood. I've found that it is mostly the terminal buds of the cottonwood that carry the thick, healing resin that I am after. The second, much rarer species is the famed Balm of Gilead (Populus gileadensis), which may actually be a hybrid between the cottonwood and another poplar species. Either way, the buds are highly aromatic (great for incense!) and resinous.

The third bud I harvested brought with it the blessing of the Stag King--two coarse deer hairs frozen fast in the resin. I was overwhelmed with gratefulness.

The littles could only last fifteen minutes or so in the bitter cold, so our collection was much smaller than I'd hoped. As Fate would have it though, we had just the right amount of buds for the amount of olive oil I had at home. Score one for unpreparedness? I love it when things work out like that. Maybe I'll get to go back to the lake by myself this weekend and pick up some olive oil on the way...

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.)