Happy Harvest!

August 1 or thereabouts, we celebrate the 'First Harvest'. Symbolized by the harvest of grains (corn/wheat etc), but certainly represented by any harvest ocurring now (early vegetables...beans, zucchini, cucumbers etc).

This year, however, mama nature and the spirit of the maple had an additional harvest in mind at my house.

This was about 1/3 of the canopy that came down...but it is highly likely that the whole tree is too diseased to stay.

He came down on Lammas eve ( overnight Friday - Saturday). My husband and I were awakened by the crack and swoosh...

Funny thing is...that when I heard that crack/swoosh I recalled having heard it the previous night too...but my husband doesn't have that same recollection. I wonder.....

Anyway, when we were looking at the photos we had taken, we found this....

Look closely at the bare wood...and see the sad old face.... so we thanked the tree for its shade, its witness over the passage of time and for the harvest of wood it would be bringing us.

My oldest had a harvest of his own this weekend too...his first "naturally" lost tooth...

Happy harvesting!

Samhain 07

Since Halloween fell on Wednesday this year, and the boys are still little enough to be pretty cranky if you try to let them stay up late....especially if its a mostly adult thing they're staying up for....we celebrated Samhain on Sunday.

This year's group was back down to "the usual" friends/family- a gathering of 9 including the kids. Not the extended group we had experimented with last year. It had just gotten too crazy.

Samhain is one holiday I have maintained tradition with for about 10-12 years now. I use the same ritual every year - it's one that the friends I started celebrating with had adapted for use with their kids. It's short and to the point - and everyone gets to light at least one candle to represent the people/pets they want to remember. The celebration uses the symbols of the apple (death with the promise of rebirth - star inside when cut crosswise) and the pomegranate ( life who's shadow is death - seeds kept Persephone in Hades).

This ritual is also closely linked with dinner - so things usually go like this :
I'm busy preparing dinner and I ask my husband to print out the ritual - I know it's the one we always use, so I haven't even looked at it since last year. I run around picking the ancestor pictures from among the others around the house; try to find candles and other things we'll need for the altar...folks start arriving.
We get the ritual going around the dinner table and are calling directions when I remember that South and West are switched from the way we usually call the directions and think - "Oh well I'll fix it for next year".
I get choked up on reading about remembering family and frieds who have passed through the veil.
Someone inevitably has trouble lighting a candle - this year it was DH who commented that his ancestors probably wanted to tell him to pay them more attention!

This year we replaced the usual candle altar - I've used an old vanity mirror/tray and free-standing votive candles for a long time. It was great if you wanted to try and scry in the patterns of the candle wax - however it was a MESS to deal with. Several years it "leaked" the candle wax onto the tablecloth below it and last year the mirror cracked when I was trying to clean it up. It's still in my holiday bucket, but this year I purchased a candle chandelier which can hang or sit on the table - each candle is enclosed in glass. We sat it on the table during ritual and then hung it from the ceiling while we moved on to dinner.

We set the usual ancestor spot and gave them a little of everything we were having...Turkey, stuffing, pasta primavera, and cranberry apple pie. A bit more traditional than the Morroccan style Mabon celebration!

As usual it was good food, good friends and a celebration of the season. Right now, the boys don't participate much - even as far as listening to the stories of their grandparents & great-grandparents, but it is good practice for years when they will finally take an interest and ask questions about those who have gone before us and who played such an inportant role in making us who we are today.

Another thing to mention in relation to the holiday, serendipity etc...
We had recieved a forecast for the first frost - for Sunday or Monday night, so - appropriately - I went out Sunday with the ladies and we harvested the last of the tomatoes and peppers in the garden - two large baskets of green and lightly-colored tomatoes and a couple of bell peppers.

Blessed Be!

Jack-o-Lanterns!

I know - usually these wonderful, magical, carved creations are made BEFORE Halloween and used to light-up Halloween night.

HOWEVER, have I said lately that things have been just a bit CRAZY here??????????

I did take vacation days Halloween week with the intention of picking them up early Monday or Tuesdayand doing this activity with them then....we had purchased one LARGE pumpkin and two smaller ones on Sunday ....then ER came home with another small one partially cut on Monday.

On Monday after I did the music class in the morning - I got involved doing some projects at home that require small curious boys not be present! and didn't finish up until too late to worry about pumpkins - and I had really thought Tuesday would be better anyway....
Then TUESDAY around lunch time I emailed DH and asked him where he had stashed the pumpkins...they were still in his van....oh, well so much for that....and of course we didn't have time ON Halloween....what's a mama to do????
Well, we just carved on Thursday. I left work on time (haha) which felt early, came home, laid out the newspapers and we carved.

DH had a warm, glowing, pumpkin-y greeting when he arrived home from work!

We don't get any trick-or-treaters where we are, so it really didn't matter that we were a day late...the audience was the same as it would have been a day or two earlier.

Happy May Day!

Our family has been celebrating the coming of SPRING for the past two weeks.
With frequent evening as well as weekend forrays outside, much garden/landscape sprucing and even dining al fresco.
The kids have been intoxicated by the breezes running and playing and "helping" with the gardening.
Sunday they helped fling grass seed and chanted words of welcome to the season.
Now that spring is officially here we wish everyone a happy WARM (not HOT) season to enjoy the birds and the bees , outdoor activity and relaxation!
How do you celebrate the season????

Spring is the Thing!!

I know I haven't written much lately - it's those conflicts of work vs motherhood again.I'll write all about it once the conflict (ie the work) has settled down to a manageable level.

On a brighter note - SPRING HAS SPRUNG! - below are some thoughts on these two topics...

For the love of gardening is a seed that once sown never dies, but always grows and grows to an enduring and ever increasing source of happiness. Gertrude Jekyll

Spring Cleaning
Time for tulips, worms, resurrection
The tulips open and close, open and close
Like breathing wings
Testing the possibility of spring
Time for dawn to lick out the last
Of that rich dark bowl of night
And bleed her own colors into the world
Branches that were bare just last week
Shoot volleys of blossom in the sun
And green wood on the apple tree takes off
Like an arrow into the sky
Even old beams in the house begin to softly sing
Of leaves and the fresh arc of wind
Time to take a spade and shove sharply
With your heel in its old rubber boot-
TURN OVER YOUR LIFE
See what survived, shake out the bugs
Get some air in the roots
Throw out piles of papers,
Unfinished projects
Like layers of old mulch
In the morning your heart is still
A cupped leaf holding dew
If you can match that stillness
And look into the sweet water of your own heart
You may catch the wild promise, a goddess just waking
The magic of your own rebirth

Miriam Dyak 1996

There Is a Need to ROAR
So, where do we go to ROAR
Where do we stand and stomp and shout
Where do we clench our fists and bubble like lava
There's no place to ROAR but this white flat page
(which chars at my touch)
To ROAR with such power and rage and anguish
That people run, windows break
Rocks leap, and trees grip the earth
To ROAT with such ferocity and fangs and spit
That the jagged ripples wreck and wreak havoc
Sidewalks split, buckle and grind to dust
Cars flip and collide like toys, asphalt melts and returns
To its prehistoric liquid pit in the earth
To ROAR and vibrate with every angry molecule who already
Exists aching for expression
Summon volcanoes and earthquakes
Tidal waves and tornadoes who wait for just this moment
Join the universal burn
The need to ignite, to change, to start over, to cleanse
Open your mouth wide
Because there is a need to ROAR

Elizabeth Kelly 2005

Happy Imbolc! Spring is almost Here!

IMBOLC

The feeling in this still dark, unstable, muddy time
that the light at the end of the tunnel is my own soul
staring back at me on the inside
and I'm blind as a mole pushing through
some primal unseen path
with my stubby little snout and inexplicable will
If winter is a wide ocean of night
January is the hollow point, the trough
that holds visions too deep to fish up into morning
it is a cave too far down for light or even hunger
life hibernating in me suspended, waiting
and the mind floating free of the body now
like something promising but unborn
I want to lean over my own self to see if I'm breathing
I want to regress into a world of fur and blood
I am as slow as a stone's pulse
Into this no place, no thing
Imbolc comes at the end of forever
and the begining of all time
Suddenly there is one fiercely yellow crocus open
dreams pierce dense and soggy layers of sleep
right up into the thin clear air of day
just like the red torpedo shoots of peonies
pierce the ground by my back door
carrying all the courage that weeks later they will need
to unfurl those painfully delicate new leaves
I am asking for that courage, Mother
I'm ready as I'm gonna be
nothing more to wait for
just hold my hand while my eyes stumble into light

Miriam Dyak 1994

Catching Up - OR - HOLIDAY FRENZY!!!

Whew! It's been a CRAZY RIDE!

The holiday season just blew by us this year - but not without much activity and sharing joy with our kids and family and friends.

Early in December our town hosted a "Pictures with Santa" event. This was the first year that "SANTA" had meaning for both boys...so, we took the boys and watched Santa arrive via Fire engine. Then we waited in line for our turn to talk to Santa and have our picture taken. When it came to our turn Ronnie didn't even hesitate this year - and because Evan does EVERYTHING Ronnie does - he paused only a couple of seconds before joining his brother. This was the first time we actually heard that Ronnie had a definite 'Wish List' and there was only 1 item on it - a tunnel...from that point we had a mission - to find out what he meant by tunnel.
The answer came during the next week - after grammy paged through the TRU catalog with him - it was a TRAIN TUNNEL!

Over the course of the next couple of weeks we had several cookie baking sessions - some which included small boys, and some which did not. Ronnie is a MOST ENTHUSIASTIC participant in kitchen activities, and was VERY proud of his cookie efforts! As this was Mommy's first year in a LONG time to actually bake, it was time very well spent! And MUCH appreciated by Daddy!

We celebrated the Winter Solstice as a family, by noting how far to the south the sun rose (it was to the right of our LARGE pine tree) - and trying to remember where it rose in the summer(much farther to the left over our greenhouse we think). As observed from our kitchen's bay window, this is a VERY wide arc of rising points. In the evening we celebrated by extinguishing all of the lights in the house to symbolize the dark time - then we began to bring back the light by lighting a small candle for each one of us -we then went through the house turning on all of the lights to help us remember that the darkness won't last forever and that the sun's course has changed to bring back the light again.
We bought our tree - in our family's tradition - close to the last moment - Dec 23 - and brought it inside. We decorated it on Christmas Eve when we had another small housefull of guests - Grammy, Grampy and Auntie Jill. The boys were exstatic - and VERY excited! Ronnie set out the cookies for Santa - and both wanted Grammy to put them to bed, but the excitement was so high that it took Mommy and Daddy to do the job that night! Then we had to stay up getting the train table setup and the presents under the tree!

Christmas day was AMAZING this year! The boys loved opening their gifts - were SO happy with everything they got - which was A LOT! And SO happy to play with it all. Nap-time was non-existant - there was FAR too much excitement for that!

We had our dinner at my brother's new house this year. It was delicious and the kids had a blast....all 4 of them running like crazy people around the downstairs hallways!

The boys' daycare closes for the 'week between', so I was home with the boys all week. We got in some play time with friends we don't see very often which was very nice. It was my intent to have Evan pottie trained during this week, but he had other ideas....
And then all too soon, it was New Year's Eve. Again, this year, we played dominoes with a couple of friends - a quiet and relaxing ringing in of the new year.

Hope every one had a wonderful holiday - however you celebrated - filled with family fun and magical moments!