Winter

I've been so quiet!

I got an indigo giftcard from work - I'm going to be ordering some books, getting back on track with my reading.

I had plans for a post delving yet again into the powerful death-vibes of 2016. The darkness swirling in the world, the realizations and understandings I've come to over the past several months. I was going to write about emotional abuse and gaslighting, about my stepping away from a toxic environment and how long it took me to wake up from that.

But y'know what? Fuck that. The world is in a hellhole right now and I can't bring myself to feed the yucky feels any longer.

So I'm going to quickly sum up some of the awesome fucking shit that's been going on.

I've been celebrating every sabbat/esbat/etc in style. My group of four (myself included) have made a point to get together. Our rituals are loose, informal affairs, but our energy is wonderfully in sync, so even if we allow ourselves to be casual and silly, we still have great synergy and I can feel that we are connected. The love in our little group is unbelievable. My wife, is of course, my wife, my best friend, the love of my life. Garm has come to help in the yard many times, we feed him supper, he took my wife to the emergency room the other night to get some stitches looked at, while I was stuck at work. (She's absolutely fine by the way.) Nootls has helped us around the house, we've hosted her on the couch as she has quite a drive to get home, we've babysat her dog. She just hooked us up with Reindeer hides, mine I'm using as a throw on the couch.

Mabon

I managed to source a suckling pig - Yule is in the middle of the week and I have no time off, so we'll likely do our great Yule feast a little later - but I am so beyond excited.

We got our yard cleaned up, and a few things planted - it snowed today, and I still have raked leaves to bag, but come spring we can start fresh on much better footing than this time last year. We got to harvest some garden sage and lavender from our herb garden.

I finished reading the first half of Taking Up the Runes - I have the elder Futhark memorized, and their meanings, and finally made myself a set of runes. 

I have other rune books to read and more study to do - the runes are a lifetime journey, I feel - but I'm beyond happy to understand them even at a baseline now.

We bought a sewing machine - my wife and I - and we each made a cloak. I'm madly in love with mine. I then made a viking style apron dress and tunic to go with it. So I finally have real, handmade ritual garb!

Stylin'

I did some major altar work as well. My current altar I inherited second-third-?? hand, and it was battered and covered in sticky tape residue. I did love it despite (or because of?) it's well-loved look, but I wanted to refresh it. I attacked it with sandpaper, sanded parts of it down to bare wood, others simply deep enough into the finish to smooth over the gouges, the old adhesive gunk. I then refinished the whole thing with a more matte-paint-like stain and replaced all the hardware. It has a fresh new look now and I adore it. <3

 

 

Looks good as new!! There are "before" pics back in my blog somewhere I'm sure...

I also worked at making a small Odin and Sleipnir statues for the Alfather's altar. Sleipnir I felt was particularly genius. I bought two paper mache unicorns at a local arts n' crafts store...and murdered them to make a hybrid 8-legged steed.   

I mentioned snow.

Well that was a shock! I can't remember the last time that the first snow I saw in the year was an actual "snow storm". It's not quite cold enough to stick here as we're near the coast, so we got mostly wet slushy snow and rain - but still more than flurries. The wind was intense and COLD this morning.
I need to get those damn leaves bagged up before they get buried. It's supposed to be another rough winter.

Secretly I'm excited? I love snowstorms and snow days and being curled up with a warm drink listening to the wind howl outside. It's a bit scarier when you own a house vs. an apartment, but damn, it's still so comforting.

I've been busy-busy the last few weeks, but feeling very driven. I have a new gorgeous leatherbound book to make into a proper BOS - I have plans to use pressed plants, colour, polaroids - and make it a mishmashed work of art. I'm ready to bring back the activity into other parts of my spiritual life - not just rituals, but meditations, real practice, get reading and blogging again.

Here's to the rapidly approaching end of this majestic shit-show of a year!  

Dirt. Worship.

It feels weird to be stuck at a desk again.

I took a week vacation, the first since December (which has been waaayyy too fucking long), and spent nearly all of the week toiling in our yard.

With my mother's help, we got most of the leaf litter cleared away, and my wife and I were able to get beds rebuild, cleaned, dug, and are slowly refilling them with soil.

We were left with a decrepit old metal and wood bench - I acquired fresh wood, metal primer and rust paint, new bolts, and outdoor urethane, and am slowly getting everything ready to rebuild it good as new in a lovely deep red colour.

During one of our hardware store trips, we got some herbs (3 types of lavender and one of garden sage) to plant, as well as a foxglove. We have dahlias, fairy lilies, and marigolds to put out.  I have 5 happy plum tomato plants in pots on the deck.

So many nights over the past week, I've stumbled in the house and straight to the shower, exhausted and aching and filthy. Head to toe dirt. Smeared on my arms and legs, inside my gloves, smudged on my face, under my fingernails, on my glasses. Soil and old muck and rust and dust.  From digging out rocks from garden beds, from pulling weeds, from carrying bucket after bucket of fresh garden soil, from slipping and falling trying to disconnect the hose from the tap again. Grass stains on my knees. My neck hurts, my legs are covered in bruises, I have hedge thorn scratches on my arms. I have the start of a swell farmer tan. Sweaty. Hair at the back of my neck is wet, between my breasts is dripping, my glasses keep sliding down my nose.

And I fucking love it.

This is building a relationship with our land - this is paying in blood and sweat and labour, in hopes of love in return. Beautiful flowers, the shade of massive trees, some day soon, sweet fresh veg; hopefully cherries one day from our cherry tree. There are some random blackberry canes here and there that I refuse to remove - others sprouting up that may be wild raspberry. And so much wonderful green.

We had a small barbecue for Canada Day, and for the first time I walked barefoot in the grass. My grass. Our grass. I was always a bit shy to, before, not knowing what rocks or sticks or broken glass were back there. But no more. I walked barefoot, sat in it, laid back and looked up at the sky.

I had to pull some roots out of a flower bed - I suspect they belonged to one of our big trees. I wove them into two little wreathes - one I hung, in offering, on the tree - one I brought in for my altar. It needs a re-do, some freshening up, and then I will show you.

<3

Dirt is wonderful.

For the Birds

Spring has finally sprung, perhaps a little bit.

I belong to a birdwatching group/organization on facebook. A few weeks past, a large number of people started commenting on a funny little bird everybody was seeing that is normally a rare sight in the province.

It's called the American Woodcock.

Woodcocks are native to Nova Scotia but normally shy, nocturnal, and live in deeper wooded areas away from common sight. They use their long bills to probe for worms in the ground.

When they got back this year, the ground was still frozen solid and snow-covered. They were showing up in unlikely places, desperate for food, starving, dying.

Somehow, the tale of their plight became a widely known thing, and the plight of all the other migratory birds arriving back after a long journey to find the landscape looking nothing like spring.

The response was amazing.

I've never heard local and national news talk about the plight of migratory birds. I've never heard so many mass calls for people to put out a little something, anything, to help.

My walk to work in the morning takes me through a pretty sketchy, very urban neighborhood. I saw piles of cracked corn and bird seed out in piles on the lawns of apartment buildings. Someone was back in our spot in the woods leaving piles of seed and chopped fruit. (We did as well.) People bought up nightcrawlers and fishing worms at stores to put out in dishes in their lawns. A local store owner bought massive bags of bird feed--and gave them away for free.

It was inspiring to see so many people doing what they could.

Spring is coming slowly now--weeks later--there is a lot more bare ground, green growth, but still so much snow. Things are not as dire, but they are still not great for mid April.

I had placed a handful of peanuts out on the deck one morning, just after (yet another) several inches of snow. I thought perhaps some crows would find them. They went uneaten, until several days later, when the snow had melted away. A pair of Blue Jays came and grabbed them up. I gave them more, they came back.

They're starting to trust me now, and they have me trained--in the morning, I hear a scream or a squawk, around 8am, of a blue jay on the deck wanting his breakfast.

We also keep a feeder out in our spot in the woods. We were there yesterday and saw it was empty. This afternoon I went out with my wife, and my dedicant (who was visiting) and filled the feeder. It took five minutes at most for the woods to come alive around us. Goldfinches, chickadees, juncos, song sparrows, fox sparrows. They were obviously needing the food. It made me beyond happy to see them all, so suddenly, and know that this is helping them even a little. If one more bird survives a miserable winter and this slow awful spring, it's worth all the money on birdseed and the wet feet and traipsing through melting slushy deep snow in April to fill that feeder even once in awhile.

And now it feels and smells and looks like spring is coming.

We'll be all right.

Spring has not sprung at all really.

I changed the name/URL of this blog. I wish it felt less like hiding.I'll be doing something a little more colorful and productive with it shortly.

Ostara took place as a very informal ritual, an indoor picnic and we painted eggs.

The whole foul mess with the nasty email sent me into a sneaky hate spiral more than I care to admit.

I am a person very heavily centered in logic, and also in self doubt, so it's hard not to take attacks of that nature to heart. It's also hard for me to acknowledge that whatever hope we ever had of returning to the community, ever, is squashed now. We're clearly not welcome. We had a small number of people support us--some in private, who then denounced us in public to save their own ass, which is ridiculous. We never called out the person responsible openly--they must have owned up to it, and spun it in such a way as to make them come out on top.

Lesson learned. Next time no prisoners are taken.

I've been trying, largely unsuccessfully, to get out of this winter funk. While the rest of the country seems to be creeping into spring, we're mired in snow, endless snow and more snow and more freezing temperatures. Birds and wildlife are starving to death. Returning songbirds are starving. No trees have even begun to bud. The other day we had a warm flash of 11 degrees, and I only then managed to get most of the 6-inch thick ice off the deck. My plant pots are still stuck in it. Snow banks in places are still over my head.

My dedicant (who initiates in a month!) keeps saying not to suffer the weather, but my god this just drags on me.

But I redid my altar for spring, covered it in silly glitter from my mother-in-law's easter card, sparkling butterflies and ladybugs and bees - and made orgami cherry blossoms to decorate it with, too. I kind've like having things scattered haphazardly on my altar, like they fluttered there.

It is, at least, colourful, to counteract outside still being varying shades of white and grey.

The blue/striped square of cloth behing my keyring on the "Norse" altar was an offering I made for Frigga. It was woven on my little board loom--she wanted one done in blue, and I was to use the striping yarn when the blue ran out, so I did as instructed. I think it suits quite nicely.

Turning the Wheel

We celebrated Samhain with a bang this year. We always do something, if we're not away, but this year we did a fairly planned ritual, and invited a bunch of good friends to join. We made poppets, and buried ourselves in effigy to "lay to rest" a part of ourselves that no longer served. My coven dressed in robes with eerie face paint to play spectres of death, silently joining us on a winding path into the woods and our spot there. We celebrated afterward with a feast of finger foods and snacks. All in all, it was a lovely night. I feel like my focus was more on "running" the ritual and keeping to my part, more so than participating in the intent of the ritual, but that's OK with me. I think of it as a worthy small sacrifice, that maybe this ritual was more for others than for myself. It was a ton of fun and looked awesome, and went off mostly hitch-free. Can't say fairer than that. 

The clocks went back Sunday morning (we observe DST here). The change is an abrupt and jarring one, going from dusky in the morning when I leave for work, to sunny (for now) and it is now dark when I leave. This means I take the bus in the evening now rather than walk, which sadly robs me of a good chunk of my physical activity every day. (My walk takes me through a less than great neighbourhood. I won't travel it alone after dark.) 

The change is a forced reminder that Samhain is the end of fall, that the darkness we celebrate is not just death, not just the memory of those who have gone before, but the coming months of dark with the turn of the seasons.

I have a love/hate relationship with winter. 

I hate being cold, hate a runny nose and burning cheeks and everything hurting for 20 minutes after I've come inside as blood returns to chilled limbs. I hate dragging under the weight of boots and a heavy coat. I hate getting on the bus the morning to go to work on a day to supposed to storm, knowing I may get stranded, may not get home til 3 hours later than I should, knowing I should be home safe and warm. I hate Christmas, a new development. I hate commercial Christmas. Carols start playing here November 1, all the stores are already waving signs in my face reminding me that my love is quantified by how much I spend on my loved ones. 

But I love the pure silence and dark of a night where snow is falling, glittering on the grass, under the streetlights. I love the crunch of hardened snow under my boots. The clean white clinging to trees like they've been glittered with diamonds. I love seeing new birds, birds from the north seeking refuge where it's warmer, but not too warm. I love feeling drawn in close to home and my chosen family, celebrating with food and drink, honouring our heritage, our ancestors, and our bonds with each other. I love being warm inside and watching the wind howl and snow swirl outside. 

I love hearing the earth stir in her sleep.

When I was younger and my life was run by school time, the seasons seemed to have less meaning than they do now. Summer meant freedom, as did Christmas, winter meant the occasional snow day. Fall was the embodiment of evil, the unwelcome return to drudgery and boredom. I had no appreciation for the season itself and what it meant.

 Maybe it's something I'm growing into with age, or as I get closer to my practice and spirituality. I feel the wheel turn, feel the earth in her cycles and know in my heart that every time has a purpose, snotty mittens and all.