Saturday 23 June 2012

strawberry snaffling and baby cucumbers

I do love gardening, but I live in the city so my garden is not huge, so I have to make the most of what we have.

We have beautiful roses, shrubs, climbers, poppies and an assortment of bedding plants.  Squeezed in amongst them I have lots of herbs, lots and lots - all in pots: rosemary, sage, mint, basil mint, thyme (2 types), marjoram (2 types), bay, tansy, mace, chives and lemon balm.  I harvest all the herbs and dry them for later use, as well as using them fresh in my cooking.  I also collect and dry all the rose petals, marigold petals, honey suckle petals and poppy seeds - all for magical use.

Tucked away in amongst all of these plants are some strawberries and this year also tomatoes and cucumbers.

I am very excited to have baby cucumbers!

There is something about growing your own herbs to use in your own spell working, for one they are pesticide free but I can also add my own energies when I am watering them and tending to them over the months until harvest.

And growing your own food to eat is magic in itself!  OK I am never going to grow enough to feed the family but to pop out to the garden and pick an alpine strawberry to snaffle is fabulous!

Tansy
x

Monday 18 June 2012

Stonehenge, rituals and a blustery day...


On Saturday I had the honour of being part of the Dorset Grove mid summer ritual held in the centre of Stonehenge.

It was lovely to see old friends and new and especially wonderful to share the ritual with my lovely Kitchen Witch sisters - Tin, Raven & Sunchylde.

Thankfully the weather held and we even had some sunshine, although the wind - phew! It was indeed an extremely blustery day!

Although I do my own rituals at home I hadn't been to an 'organised' ritual for a little while and I have to say I had not realised how much I missed being a part of it. Not just a part of the ritual but also I had the pleasure of helping with the Wiccaning and the Initiations that took place too...oh yes and I got to give a gift from my beloved Cailleach too!

It was fabulous to be in Stonehenge of course, but it didn't need to be there particularly, I think I like rituals anywhere! Each different site has it's own energies and each one will add a different energy to the ritual but at the end of the day I think it is the energy of the people there taking part that make the ritual itself.


Tansy
x

Saturday 9 June 2012

Olokun altar

Whilst on holiday last week I found a beautiful figurine that I felt represented an Orisha, so she came home with me.


I asked what Orisha she was and was told "Olokun" so I have set up a small altar for her. 


I decorated a candle with cinnamon and dressed it with coconut oil to stand with her to use when I meditate.  I also put a shell offering dish with crystals inside along with a Goddess stone, a pentacle and a shell.    I have placed a small vase on the altar too that currently has a rose from my garden in.


Olokun is thought of as the patron Orisha of the descendants of Africans that were carried away during the slave trade.   She works closely with Oya (Deity of the Winds) and Egungun (Ancestral Spirits) to herald the way for those that pass to ancestorship.


Olokun is seen as both male and female.   She/he has several human characteristics; patience, endurance, observation, meditation, future visions and sternness.   She is also associated with the ocean.


She is unfathomable wisdom, knowing, learning and also governs material wealth, psychic abilities, dreaming, meditation, mental health and water healing.


Her altar just fitted in the small space I had beside my meditation spot which seems perfect!


Tansy
x

Tuesday 5 June 2012

Anti Nurse

So...on the second day of our holiday my dear hubby hurt his back, quite badly - in fact he is still poorly with it now and can barely walk at the moment.

The question is am I a good nurse, have I been caring to his every need and being the perfect sympathetic carer?  The honest answer is - Nope.

I care of course I do, he is the best husband in the whole world - even after twenty years together I still think he is LOL!  

We could quite happily spend 24/7 with each other and not end in bloodshed ;-)

But, he is the carer in our family, he is the strong one that looks out for us all, he watches over us, he takes care of us, he is an old fashioned gentleman.

So when he is poorly I can't cope, I am not used to it and my whole brain goes into melt down.

I am of course perfectly capable of running the home, lifting heavy bags, opening my own car door, making my own cups of tea and dealing with the children, but I have gotten used to sharing all these things with him and when he can barely walk it leaves me to deal with things I have gotten out of the habit of doing.

So after the initial few days of 'headless chicken, what am I supposed to be doing, how do I deal with this' I think it is about time to just get on with it and take it as a lesson - a reminder that I am a strong and capable woman who can get on with all these things on my own.   I just don't want to get used to it!  

Hubby and I are a team, we always have been and we always will be, this is just a little test to remind me that I can make my own cups of tea ;-)

All I need to do now is stop laughing when the muscle freeze spray makes him jump....

Tansy
x

Sunday 3 June 2012

En France...time out


Well I have just returned from a wonderful family holiday in France.   Beautiful house in a gorgeous setting, lovely family to spend the time with (hubby, children, my parents and my brother) and the weather was amazing!

Spent the week pretty much just relaxing, eating, drinking, chatting, playing cards and generally chilling out.  (Hubby managed to hurt his back quite badly on the second day playing football with the children so he was fairly immobile after that!).

The house we stayed in belongs to my brother, it is in a small village called Rille in the Loire Valley.  It was originally a merchant's house so is fairly large with a huge garden.  The setting itself is very rural but within easy driving distance of larger towns, in particular Samur and my favourite Chinon which also has a castle.  I love the landscape, lots of fields as far as the eye can see, the odd group of trees (which in the area we were in are apparently full of wild boar) and very pretty farm houses.

The house is www.houseinloirefrance.co.uk

It is lovely to spend time with family but one of the things I loved most about the week was....no computers!

I had my mobile phone with me so I could check emails for work but other than that I didn't log into Facebook or Twitter, although I did log into the Kitchen Witch school a couple of times!

But we didn't take any laptops, there isn't internet connection in the house and although there is cable TV we didn't sit and watch it.

The weather was so lovely we spent most of our time sitting in the garden and ate all our meals outside too.

Did I miss the computer?  I have to be honest and say no not really, in fact I think it was a bit of a nice relief not to have it - in a funny way we were all forced to sit and talk and relax and the children spent their time playing in the garden, drawing, learning to play cards with us and on one occasion went out for a walk with Gramps so that they could prod a squashed snake with a stick (which apparently was fascinating).

I can't say I would do without my computer for ever, I wouldn't be able to work from home for a start!  And I would not have met some of my lovely friends without the internet but it was lovely to not have it intruding on our lives just for a short while.

Tansy
x