Hark

Awakened
        by a Crow
        Cawing in the morning light
I sit up
wresting myself from sleep
        so as to hear their message

        What is foretold
on this bright day becoming
                Light
                upon a smattering of leaves at the edges

                my first sight greeting me from the window

                Crickets
                herald the rest of the vibrant eulogy
                and Cicadas and Katydids soon follow
                for they know in death there is life

All going round
All what is
IS

And with that
I take my first step into the day
one step closer to death
and in that embrace
even more alive than before

With All
I AM.

Cacoethes and 'Roads Less Traveled'

A Bid of Welcome.

Water finds her path to the great body, the ocean, just as we are finding our path back to the Earth.

Many paths, many branches, in the lungs of the Earth.  We share the same breath.

The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost
(I had to memorize this poem with the whole class in 8th grade; it changed me,
guided me, and patted me on the back...)

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

A BitterSweet Tangle.

 ~

Seeing into the distance...a far-away vista of color and sun through the murky wood, then closer...

...it comes into view:  a centered spiral of hay for winter, stored sunshine.

~

For some the way is known.

~

Paths known. - a revisit.

Paths unknown - possibility for the 'morrow...

And in honor of a great author who died yesterday:

"It is good to have an end to journey toward, 

but it is the journey that matters in the end."

 - Ursula Le Guin

A Break in the Rain, A Walk in the Woods - Photo Journal

If you aren't able to get out in Nature at this moment,

may these picture suffice,

bringing you the beauty and solace this walk did for me.

Alder Reflections

It was pouring all morning then this afternoon I noticed it stopped and suddenly the sun came out.  I went outside to bring in firewood, and the raindrops sparkling on everything like gems drew me out for a longer perusal.











On my way down the mountain (I live on a small ridge in the Appalachias of northern Virginia), I stopped at the hives and checked on them as I am wont to do whenever I am near.  I noticed a bee at an entrance with its tongue out getting water from a rain drop.  :)  It's too cold and wet for them to actually leave the hive.

Goodness, I love that green color.

I brave gentle rain to stay out I am enjoying myself so much; it being warm enough in February for this is the new normal.  I'm not even dressed all that warm (sweater and scarf); am a bit cold, but less than a mile from home.

Happy Moss

I went to my most regular woodland sit spot,

the place where when I go there I feel like I am coming home,

home unto myself.  The Self that is everything and nothing at once.

Where the flowing waters wash my spirit clean.

Microcosm within Macrocosm

Tiny fungal start

As soon as I came in from my couple-hour-ramble-through-the-woods it started absolutely pouring, a full-on deluge.  I feel I am on the "right" schedule when my timing is this impeccable.  I was not dressed to be caught out in it; but I was in the moment and willing to take the chance.

 

"Come forth into the light of things; let nature be your teacher"

- Wordsworth

 

This Sycamore tree in the next picture is such a great example of strength and perseverance. Over years the stream has flooded and carved out the earth that used to hold its roots, but still it remains out in the open, exposed and only half supported, but still full of life.

Seeming to sit, perched in the air.

Witch's Butter Brewing

Now that I am constructing this blog, it has turned into a thunder storm with crashes and flashes right outside the window.  This has happened the past couple of winters, but never in my life before, thunderstorms in winter.  "The times they are a changin'."

I am sad to see that there are areas of these woods where the ground, the fertile seedbed of tomorrow, is covered with the invasive Bittersweet berries/seeds (picture above).  This plant was not noticeably here when I moved here over 18 years ago and now it pervades.  It is not readily edible or medicinal, being more on the poison end of the spectrum and wild life does not seem to favor it.  I hope it's not the next Kudzu, because it'd be worse - at least Kudzu is a great edible/medicinal plant.  This next picture shows Sycamore seeds - a beloved tree and one of my first tattoos.

 “I only went out for a walk 

and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, 

for going out, I found, was really going in.”

- ​John Muir

Lake Rorschach

A language as old as these hills

 Update:  The thunderstorm resulted in losing electricity mid-blog, and for 5 hours.  This always drives home how much I/we rely on electricity.  Candles were lit and books read!

Solace and Growth

 “When despair for the world grows in me, and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be — I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds. I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought or grief. I come into the presence of still water. And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light. For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.” – Wendell Berry

Sunshine through Muhlenbergia grass - in the Fall Garden.

"No greater thing is created suddenly, 

any more than a bunch of grapes or a fig. 

If you tell me that you desire a fig, 

I answer you that there must be time. 

Let it first blossom, then bear fruit, then ripen."

 - Epictetus

What I made at last month's Monthly CraftNight.

     

"Create like a god, command like a king, work like a slave."

 - Constantin Brancusi

Birth of an Oak Tree.

"That which does not destroy us makes us stronger."

 - Friedrich Nietzsche

~

Happiness

 
"Capitalism's grow-or-die imperative stands radically at odds with ecology's imperative of interdependence and limit.  The two imperatives can no longer coexist with each other; nor can any society founded on the myth that they can be reconciled hope to survive.  Either we will establish an ecological society or society will go under for everyone, irrespective of his or her status.  Yet we can't stop the process.  A capitalist economy, by definition, lives by growth; as Bookchin observes:  "For capitalism to desist from its mindless expansion would be for it to commit suicide."  We have essentially, chosen cancer as the model for our social system." - Ursula K. Le Guin

"Happiness is an Act of Courage.  Be Brave." 2014 Collage on 2008 painting

"Genuine happiness cannot be achieved through self delusion." - Melissa Sylvan

'Earth is Infernal' 2014 - made on recycled auto magnet, free-form torn collage

November Delight in the Butterfly Garden:  Gentian.

"And now you ask in your heart,
"How shall we distinguish that which is good in pleasure from that which is not good?"
Go to your fields and your gardens, and you shall learn that it is the pleasure of the bee to gather honey of the flower,
But it is also the pleasure of the flower to yield its honey to the bee.
For to the bee a flower is a fountain of life,
And to the flower a bee is a messenger of love,
And to both, bee and flower, the giving and the receiving of pleasure is a need and an ecstasy."  

- from Kahlil Gibran’s 'The Prophet'

Balsamic

 

Mea'n Fo'mhair - Mid-Harvest: Crisp Juicy Apples, Cricket Symphonies, and Recognition

from The Lord of the Rings:
“I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo.

"So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”

In the middle of what is forecasted to be a week of rain, I am getting a chance to write about harvest and share some pictures of recent harvests from the past few days before the rain began...  and to actually stop the outward harvest and look within at my personal growth.

Every day is a day of harvest, but this time of year, Mabon, the time of the Autumnal Equinox, is a yearly time of harvest.  A time in which we gather what we have sown as we prepare to go inward for the winter. A time to recognize and give thanks for what we have.

The Winter's Soups and Mash and Curries...

This is not simply garden talk, but life talk.  Our gardens and its seasons are a metaphor for life and while we may not all have a garden, we all have life.

What have you sown; what are you harvesting; how are you preparing for the coming dormancy?

Goldenrod and Asters:  The Bee's Current Harvest

Aw shucks...looks like it's time for some bingewatching of Bushcraft videos or something.  :)

Mathieu transplanting wild Tansy from the 'soon to be house site' to the orchard where it will attract beneficial insects.

How much of harvest is luck and how much of luck is what we did in the past?
We can be like the Mantis ever ready to seize the opportunity that presents itself at that precise moment when it is offered...

"You think that I am impoverishing myself withdrawing from men, but in my solitude I have woven for myself a silken web or chrysalis, and, nymph-like, shall ere long burst forth a more perfect creature, fitted for a higher society" . - Henry D. Thoreau

Milk Thistle in the Medicine Wheel Garden dropping its seed for next year's harvest...

What seeds are you dropping into the fertile ground of your soul?  Take advantage of this rain to water them in.

 Day and Night are equal right now at this balance point of the year as we go from the Yang of Summer into the Yin of winter.  We offer gratitude to the waning sunlight - the same sunlight that nourished the fruit we harvest and that will nourish us through the coming dark of winter...though hidden deep within it will be...

Sensual Magic - from seeds planted in April.

Enjoying the fruits of harvest.

Moussaka time!

What didn't come to fruition?  How will you ensure next year's harvest?  What seeds do you set aside?

First Year Teasel salvaged from the 'soon to be house site'...

...to be made into tincture for future use...

The summer sun captured in Goldenrod.  It smells like honey - or does honey smell like it?  Medicine for the winter.

Finish old projects, begin new ones...  All things come to an end and in the end is a new beginning.

Mourn the passing, celebrate your success.

                        Balance.                           

                                                                            

The last of the season's beans.

Great Ragweed along the Anacostia River from a recent plant walk I did in DC at Figment;
we sat and communed with this oft maligned plant.  It was magic.

"Go out, go out I beg of you
and taste the beauty of the wild.
Behold the miracle of the earth
with all the wonder of a child."
  - Edna Jaques

Wren says "hi!"

  'He who delights in solitude is either a wild beast or a god.' 

- Friedrich Nietzsche