still here...

Stitching and finally finishing a project gone dormant feels good.

Tacked onto a base of black linen, it became a book cover for my tarot journal -- now I want to make another one, only with a different card for inspiration. 

This year I have set Mondays aside as a day for watery, intuitive rituals. One thing is a constant -- I first light a candle and meditate and then draw tarot and/or oracle cards for the week ahead, using different decks each month. I definitely have my favorite decks to work with but by rotating them, I get to know all of them better. (I also give myself permission to buy new decks now.) Monday/Moonday is just a good day for me to stretch and learn. Some watery mundane things include watering plants, laundry, soup-making, medicine making, taking a bath -- it all depends on the season.

A new colony of honeybees moved into the tree-house a few months ago. 

                                                                                                                                                                  This bee-house is occupied by a colony led by Queen Heidi II who is the daughter of the first Queen Heidi. I love that the women who raised and sold us the colony had a lineage established to pass along.                           

Another cloth close to being finished. For months, I have been trying to decide whether to chop it in half or not. It seems like it would have more options to be useful if it were smaller.

These are the new girls, Liza and Amber. Liza is a French Cuckoo Marans (with feathers on her feet) and Amber is a Dutch Welsummer. I'm learning that having chickens is not for the weak of heart -- Lilith died one morning in my arms, out of the blue. Then another young pullet named Saphie was sick from the start and died after only a few weeks. I have seen and learned so much in such a short time.

The original Moon sisters -- Margaret Wise Moon, Honey Moon and Cinco Moon. True to form, they are very tough on the new girls, pecking order being so important and all.

On the kitchen table, some new-to-me plants -- Marimo moss balls. They aren't really moss balls, they are actually solid algae balls that live in the bottom of fresh water lakes. The movement of water currents makes them round so I try to help by spinning them around by hand when I think of it. Their water needs to be cold and they need to be kept out of direct sunlight. I squeeze them gently and replace their water every Monday. 

A red sun one afternoon with forest fires to the north and the west of Denver.

Nasturtiums soon to be harvested for the kitchen.

Assorted reading and easy knitting, hexipuffs for the beekeeper quilt. 

A project for autumn -- to partially deconstruct and then reconstruct craft-store brooms and then make my own broom from scratch using the lighter, greenish broom corn, Sorghum bicolor, that I grew last summer. The darker broom corn broom was a gift that will serve as a model of one way to do the stitching. I'm reading about broom folklore and magical uses and like the idea of an ancestral broom for the time when the veil thins next month. 

The garden at the beginning. See the kalette plants grow around Buddha.

Mid-to-late summer -- Buddha's mask. I planted kalettes all over the back yard because the chickens loved them last year and it was so fun to watch them jump to reach the leaves at the top. They are beautiful plants.

Last night when it was nearly dark. Buddha wearing a headdress. 

I hope you are happy in the now moment and also looking forward to good things in your life. I love the feeling of reconnecting after such a long time. 

xo

harvests

Today is Lammas, the traditional time to mark and celebrate our first harvest. Since it's been a little while again since I've posted, my first-harvest photos will begin a few months back. 

The orange tree/houseplant that we bring inside every winter and take back outside every spring produced two oranges in May. This is the largest of the two and true to its botany, there are ten sections. We were so happy she finally succeeded in ripening her first fruits after one and a half years of carrying them in her branches.

In May, lilac-infused water was made over and over.

In May, lilac-infused posset was made, a rich cream and honey dessert.

In June, mullein root, leaf and stalk tincture was made. When I learned that mullein is used for spinal conditions (in addition to its other more common uses), it only made sense when you think how tall and erect the mature plant stands.

 

In June, the iris bloomed -- one of my favorite displays of the month.

In June, a chicken coop and fenced-in run were delivered to our home in the middle of the city.

In June, two Barred Rocks and three Buff Orpingtons arrived.

They have changed my life forever.

In July, I made Monarda fistulosa leaf and flower tincture.

In July, lavender was dried.

In July, I remembered that I had made an egg basket about 25 years ago. That was a very long "build it and they will come," wasn't it?

In July, the chickens -- Margaret, Henna Penny, Lilith, Honey Moon and Cinco -- began to free-range in the evening until their bedtime. They always visit the Buddha garden first; it's so densely-planted they really can't cause much damage plus I already had wire cloches set up because of the rabbits.

I didn't know how much I wanted them until they came.

Which brings me to now -- to mark the harvest today, I am filling all my little green vases with flowers and herbs to put all over the house.

And making little incense bundles with Palo Santo wood, lavender, white sage and mullein.

August is the beginning of autumn and there is a definite shift in the light. The air seems to literally turn green and when I breath it in, I turn into a plant of the human kind.

Today, I wish you all the beauty and abundance you can contain. xo

may cloth and mycelium

I recently did an exercise which called for recognizing what fulfills you, waking up to your real needs and then creating a new life design around them. So I made lists for each of those categories. Long lists. Then, over a period of time, I trimmed and purged the lists. And trimmed and purged some more. Mostly what I learned is that long lists can be reduced to very short lists, but I also learned that I really don't need or want that much.

Bringing in the May once again with my May cloth -- the words are from the Cambridge May Song....I love this song so much. This piece of cloth is to be my only stitching focus for the next few days.

I planted the forsythia with forsythia syrup in mind.

Pour 1 cup of boiling water over 1 cup of forsythia blossoms, cover and let steep for several hours, then strain. Add 1/2 cup of honey and refrigerate up to 3-4 weeks. I used this recipe.

The whole time I was collecting these juniper berries, I could hear the squirrels in the upper branches chewing and eating them. I have a few cooking/baking adventures in mind for these in addition to juniper's place in my herbal pharmacy.

A Venus of Willendorf in the making -- the basic pattern idea was from Marie at Ancient Threads (her blog is no longer online). Easy to make, I just folded a legal-size piece of paper in half and drew it freehand.

Back and front.

 

Her yoni is a small triangular piece of millinery flowers.

 
Her head-wear is another cluster of millinery flowers. She has wings.

Every spring I enact a new moon egg spell for myself, writing my deepest desires for the coming season on an egg. Some things have changed over the years, but I usually place it on my little altar to serve as a reminder throughout the month -- then on the day of the dark moon, the egg is buried and a pansy planted over it. This kind of moon work can be done anytime of year but it's nice to be able to bury it in the ground and plant something atop.

Revisiting and revamping an older cloth using new eyes. 

 

Dinner party favors made with little pots of pansies loosely wrapped in old book pages and string. 

 

'Tis herself.

Spring clean-up is well underway in my garden. I walk our little bit of land here in the city everyday. I try to notice the growth of plants from day to day and make future plans for planting food crops in and around established perennials, trees and bushes. The old saying "the best fertilizer is the farmer's footsteps" makes sense to me. For the last 10 or more years, I have not disturbed the soil except for planting. Each year I put a layer of compost on the soil along with other natural amendments. No more digging and churning and turning eliminates quite a bit wear and tear on my body and gives me more time for other things. The main reason being that I want to protect the mycelium from being damaged. A mycelium is a thread-like fungal network that unlocks nutrients for plants, helps plants resist pathogens, assists decomposition, releases carbon dioxide back into the atmosphere, serves as a food source for earthworms and much more beyond my lay-person understanding. A mycelium network can be microscopic or it can be miles long.

And we need it.

Blessed be you. xo