Archive for June, 2009
More Images from the Druid Gathering
June 21st, 2009 | 
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If you are from the Gathering or the Druid Network etc and want the pics to promote the Gathering and such, just click on the vision in white below to go to my photobucket and steal the pics.
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Silly Father’s Day Poem (full of in-jokes)
His name is Jim and he’s my Dad
And yes, yes, yes I am so glad
He taught me how to find my way
East and North and South and West
By gazing up at the stars at night
He taught me how to ride my bike
He taught me how to ride it right
He taught me how to stand up to a man
And never let one take advantage
He taught me how to be stronger than
Most other women can
He taught me how to comand respect
And still act like a sweet lady
And never once has he said
That roast beef has too much gravy
His name is Jim and he’s my Dad
And yes, yes, yes I am so glad
Solstice, Daddies, Puppies and Updates
“Home is the place where, when you go there, they have to take you in”
~ Robert Frost (1874-1963)
Okay so technically we aren’t losing the farm, since a farm is people and critters and such, at least in my case. But it looks like we can’t stay here. This place is a money pit. The mortgage combined with the costs of repairs and such is atrocious. We paid $700 last month for electricity, main due to the faulty well pumps. Terrible! No matter how much I love this place, it’s not worth staying in a money pit.
So we are back to looking at other places that are a wee bit smaller and in better shape.
I’m also hoping to find a place where I can get Mom and her best buds who might be interested in joining her all set up. Then I’d be free to wander off someday, should I decide to.
I’ve been very down in the dumps the last few days over it. Which is not my usual mode, I’m such a cheerful person that I confuse people whenever I’m something other than happy! Sorry about that folks!
So I’m picking myself back up off the ground today and brushing myself off. Rolling up my sleeves and digging in … got so much to do in little time.
Don’t worry too much folks, I am very cat-like, I always land on my feet. Life has thrown me far worse curve balls!
Yesterday I got up dark and early and climbed up the mountain to my grove overlooking the valley. Even though I won’t be staying to place a stone next year, I marked the Sun’s rise with a garden stake anyways. Then I headed back after dinner to mark the sunset. Now that is an experience! Very uplifting, and just what I needed. I shall have to write a poem.
And also, a very happy Father’s Day to all you Dads out there! hugs and kisses
Oooh and it looks like we will be having puppies today. Patches, who was surrendered to us by a lady who couldn’t keep her house, and her dog, after the economy collapsed gave her to us. And, of course, she was in heat at the time. So we couldn’t re-home her right away, we waited and watched and sure enough, she was preggo.
So we are now waiting to see what kind of sneaky neighbour dog got her right before she came to us, hopefully he was a SMALL dog.
Wish Patches luck!
Losing the Farm
Losing the farm, losing my mind
Like sands through the hourglass,
I’m running out of time
Why oh why did the economy have to fail?
I watch the rain drip from my ceiling into a pail
Where do I go, what do I do?
My home a money pit, the land so beautiful
I am a seedpod floating on the wind
I am flotsam caught on a current
Dogs, cats, horses and Mom too
Oh dear gods, what do I do?
I’d runaway, if I had someplace to go
Or no, for no coward am I
I guess I have to stay
Oh sigh,
I guess I’ll just take it day by day
And wish that someday, in someplace
I might know where I’ll be
In a year from that day!
~ Juni
He Wishes For the Cloths of Heaven
Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
W.B. Yeats (1865-1939)
Preview: Interview with the Hedgewitch
Dizzy has handed in her paper and will get her grade on Monday. The instructor said we could post an excerpt if we wanted. I was happy to wait but Dizzy is very excited and proud, so here is a preview. Chosen at random and not the best part by any means:
Dizzy: What are you reading right now?
Juniper: I have a very short attention span, so I rarely read one book just straight through. I usually have two or three on the go and I sort of rotate.
D: Yeah right! I remember you reading a whole book from start to finish in like 6 hours straight on a car ride to Drumheller. It wasn’t an easy book either it was like a history book on the Celts or something. You were reading like a hundred pages an hour or something scary like that.
J: Okay so sometimes I can do that. I don’t think that was a history book, I think that was a mythology book.
D: Please tell me that wasn’t the Mabinogion.
J: Which translation? *laughs*
D: You’re such a nerd! I’ll ask again, what are you reading right now?
J: Lets see, my purse book is a paperback fiction by Anne Bishop, one from her Black Jewels trilogy. A world I’d love to go live in, so long as I didn’t wind up in one of the bottom castes!
My bathroom book right now is “The Quest for Merlin” by Tolstoy.
And my bedside book is “Masks of the Muse” by Veronica Cummer.
D: Cool! And what are you listening to right now?
J: I spent most of the winter listening to a bunch of Alan Watts’s lectures and a few podcasts, like the Crooked Path podcast and I got all caught up on Deo’s Shadow.
Now I’m trying to work through my audio OBOD course, so that’s taking up most of my listening time and to compliment that I’ve started to Celtic Myth Podshow from the beginning again.
D: Oh, cool. I actually meant music though.
J: Oh, sorry I’m such a nerd! I’m going through a Celtic Punk phase right now, lots of Dropkick Murphy’s and such.
D: When we first met you made me listen to lots of Classical.
J: Yeah, I go through that phase every few months.
D: So I am not a very good reader. And like non-fiction books are really hard for me. But to be a good pagan you have to read all these fringing books! Any suggestions?
J: Oh good question! Let’s face it, not everyone can handle non-fiction, textbook style reading material. Some of folks might not have the reading comprehension, the text book style of teaching might not gel with how you learn, maybe non-fiction is just too damned dry for you.
D: Or maybe you’re a student and are sick to death of instructional manuals and stuff. So what do I do?
J: Okay let’s see…
Reference material. Okay, still non-fiction. However, reference materials, such as encyclopaedias are a good non-fiction option for non-fiction haters. In something like “The ABCs of Witchcraft” you have all sorts of information condensed down and in alphabetical order. The wonderful thing about books like this is that even if you only read one or two pages a day, you will still learn something.
D: Ick!
J: Har har.
Poetry. From Homer to Yeats and beyond, there is a plethora of poetry out there chalk full of great folklore and wicked witchery. And that’s not counting our modern pagan poets to be found either!
Podcasts, and you could try to wade through Youtube to find hidden gems…
Hmmm… This is a tough question for a bookworm!
D: So you once told me to pick a tree and look at it everyday. Talk to it and stuff.
J: That’s pretty standard; you see that in a lot of 101 books now, because it’s a good idea.
Hmmm how to put this?
When you are first starting out its like you can’t see the forest because of all the trees. There’s just so much. Actually even when you first get out into a real life forest its like that, not knowing the names of the trees and suddenly wanting too.
But once you start to learn about the trees themselves. This is a spruce, this is a willow it grows near water etc, the more familiar you become with the forest. Suddenly you can navigate and start to feel yourself along.
D: Literally and spiritually.
J: Layers of metaphors there. *laughs*
D: If you want to connect with nature start small.
J: Sure, bite sized pieces. Learning about just one tree can lead to all kinds of discoveries. What kinds of birds live near you, magickal properties of the wood, maybe the berries are edible, watching the life cycle of another living being, maybe there’s folklore attached to that kind of tree, connecting with the land, starting to add a spiritual aspect to your daily routine…
D: All that good stuff!
J: Indeed.
