Early Harvest

And, so, just like that, we're headed, will-we-or-nil-we, towards Litha.

The great Sumer Solstice.

The fire festival, when Sol Invictus stands highest in the Summer sky.

In my tradition, this is the Feast of the First Harvest. (Is it so, for you, as well?) And so I started my day at the local farmers' market, buying (finally!) ripe and green tomatoes, corn for roasting, cucumbers for (mixed with my own parsley and mint) tzadziki, local pickles, and lettuce for which I imagine many a poet could compose odes. I came home and had fried green tomatoes and iced tea (Southern breakfast of champions) on my screen porch and then went out to weed the herb bed. After several hours of v. aromatic weeding, I came inside to make various kinds of simple syrup for all of July's cocktails: mint, basil, lavender, and dill. I harvested enough sage to make smudging sticks for everyone in my circle and enough dill, sage, and tarragon to make flavored butters for my own use and for Son and DiL. I am going to be so sore tomorrow that I may not be able to move. Good thing it's a day of writing, reading, doing more research.

For me, the first harvest is crucial.

We're here, halfway through the calendar year. We've either achieved some of the goals that we thought about/set back at Samhein/Yule, or we haven't. It's a good time to take stock, weed out the (fucking!) sorrel, (Kali-blasted!) bindweed, and (goddess-damn-it!) maple seedlings, and to begin to cut and use the lavender, basil, mint, and dill. It's time to decide if we need a new planting of basil (time on the treadmill, hours writing prose at work, focus on our family) or if we need to plant something else (learning runes, walking outside, networking, meditation) entirely.

We'll celebrate several later harvests, but, by then, the chance to correct course becomes more and more attenuated. Every ancestral cell in my Scandanavian-RNA body adores these longer, longer, longer days and shorter nights. And yet, and yet, and yet, the old women whose genes live on in me: those old women survived those long Winters because they knew how to pay attention to the early harvests and correct course if needed.

Here are my early harvest course corrections: Even more time on the treadmill, lots more time polishing legal prose, more spontaneous fun, and even more time at my altar.

What's up for you?

Picture found here.

Litha's Coming

I woke up this morning aware that we're only a few weeks out from Litha, the longest day of the year. Here in my corner of the myth-crammed MidAtlantic, the period from Yule to Imbolc seems very long, and then, from Imbolc until Beltane, although things speed up, it seems as if I still spend much of the time looking, hoping, dreaming, wishing: focused on every tiny sign of Spring, turning the appearance of a single snowdrop or a haze of green on the bleached-bone frames of the beech trees into a cause for celebration. And then, ABRACADABRA, it's here and time seems to speed by.

It's likely my Swedish ancestors dancing the spiral dance in my DNA, but I have to admit that I love, best of all, these long, long, long sunlit days. In Sweden, I read once, no one sleeps when the sun near the Arctic Circle stay up in the sky all day. People have late picnics in the woods and gather berries and get in boats to row across to Denmark to get beer. I don't really care whether or not it's "factual"; in my cosmology, it's "true" and I've picked those berries and rowed those boats often and often sitting at my altar or knitting sweaters in the dark of deep Winter. Something about Litha connects me deeply to that place where "I've" never been.

This time of year is, as well, an amazing time to just sit out in the evening and enjoy the garden. The voodoo lilies are just finishing up. The magnolias that worried me so and over which I did so much magic are in bloom, an embarrassment of lemon, vanilla, and gloss. The herbs are almost out of control. The Dutch iris have replaced the bearded iris. The astilbe is a white, lacy froth of abundance; the gardenias are still going strong, and the day lilies have giant buds that will open any day now. I should have lilies -- Casa Blanca and Adios Nonino -- in a few more days.

Soon, too soon, the days will start to get a bit shorter, but the daisies and black-eyed susans will show up, the sunflowers will exult, and the purple obedient flowers will make the bees and hummingbirds happy.

And then, and then, but, no, I'm not going to go there -- yet.

For now, I'm going to sit in my twilit garden, smell the magnolias and gardenias, listen to the birds, watch the wisteria bushes creep towards each other on the top of the garden shed, and store all of this up. It's an old magic that I do, creating the ability to get myself through those hard-as-iron February days when I've seen nothing blooming for months and I know that I still have a ways to go. I'll release them the way you release any spell from the magic bottle into which you crammed and stoppered it, set aside for when it's needed.

I shan't be gone long. You come, too.

Picture found here.

Go Look

National Geographic has great Solstice pics from all over Gaia.

Blessing Of The Sacred Day To You

Holy Mother, has there ever been a more perfect Litha day? Here in the nation's capital, it's sunny and hot, but not too muggy, and there's a lovely gentle breeze doing the most loving dance with all the leaves. The fae are still lingering from last night, just as the magic of good company still lingers on my porch. The daisies, day lilies, thyme, and basil are all abloom and my deck is a constant visiting place for robins, morning doves, blue jays, cardinals, hairy woodpeckers, and an occasional chipmunk. What a change from Yule, when my wonderful circle of amazing women couldn't get together due to a freakishly large blizzard, I couldn't even open the door to get out and feed the birds, and all the plants were buried under feet and feet of snow.

Litha is, when we live our lives in tune with the seasons, the time to appreciate how well our lives are going. What we planted at Ostara and Beltane should now be in bloom, and, of course, I don't mean "just" our herbs and flowers. If we've planted a regular daily practice, it is beginning to flower. If we've planted good works, kindness, and love, we'll be reaping those fruits.

If we're not happy with what we've got, there's still time for a mid-course correction between now and, say, Mabon, Samhein, Yule. As the days diminish, what needs to diminish in your life? As the nights grow long, what part of the mystery do you need to cultivate? What do you want to water? What should wither away in the late-Summer heat? How will you accept responsibility?

Picture found here.

Sunday Dance Blogging

Saturday Poetry Blogging

Summer Invocation

~Trish Telesco

Fireflies and summer sun
in circles round
we become as one.
Singing songs at magick’s hour
we bring the winds
and timeless powers.
Turning inward, hand in hand
we dance the hearth
to heal the land.
Standing silent, beneath the sky
we catch the fire
from out God’s eye.
Swaying breathless, beside the sea
we call the Goddess
so mote it be!

Picture found here.

Rosewater

I love, love, love these long, sun-kissed days just around Litha, when I wake up bathed in golden light and fall asleep while it's still barely dusk. For this year's celebration, I'm making Aprhodite's Cakes, which use just a hint of rosewater (now available at Whole Foods so don't give me that "where the fuck would I buy that?" stuff) from a recipe that I pulled, years ago, out of Sage Woman. Surfing the web, I was delighted to find a post by the original author.

Remembering that all acts of love and pleasure (including, especially, eating) are rituals of the Goddess, you should go read the whole thing.

Here's a tiny taste:

[Rosewater] is particularly effective when combined with its kin, the bramblefruits: raspberries and blackberries. Because they are cousins to roses, these fruits really shine when they are kissed with the essence of the Queen of Flowers. Rosewater is subtle with these fruits, sliding into the flavor mix like a nymph sinking into water, until she is but a shimmer beneath the surface: you know it is there, but you cannot tell what it is. It is only a flowery scent, a flicker of something familiar that is just maddening to the senses, but that cannot be grasped: the nymph dances laughingly beyond the satyr’s reach.

Last year, my friends, the very friendly and very healthy hippie organic farmers at the farmer’s market, had a banner crop of blackberries, so they were selling these plump, shining beauties for next to nothing. These berries were so soft, so yielding and so full of sugar, that you could barely pick them up without bruising them and being stained with roseate juice. Just driving home with them filled my car with a miasma of sweetness, and when I brought them into the house, my kitchen smelled like the very tumescent essence of summer Herself.

I ate some by themselves, but I also decided to create a fitting frame for these lovely wonders. I baked a batch of sweet cream scones, a very rich and short pastry that is still moist, due to the addition of cream. They are not overly sweet however, because they did not need to be: the berries were dripping with fructose by themselves. I took some of the berries, the prettiest, and left them whole. The others, I macerated with just a touch of sugar to get them to release their juices, a squeezing of lemon juice to balance the sweetness with a note of acid, a goodly dollop of Chambord to add richness, and a few crystalline drops of rosewater to deepen the flavors.

I split the scones while they were barely warm, and spooned macerated berries over the first layer, then laid a spoonful of softly whipped, barely sweetened cream over it. I capped it with the top of the scone, added another spoonful of berries and juice, then the cream, and topped it all with three whole, perfect berries.

The recipe for Aphrodite's Cakes is available at the link above. The one bit of advice that I'll give is to use about half as much rosewater as you think you should use. There's a very, very, very fine line between an orgasmic sense that you're consuming the essence of a water nymph dancing just outside the grasp of saytr and a "need to go get a drink" sense of having consumed perfume. But, seriously, how can you not make them when you read this:

Chef Rainer, who is also from Bavaria, took a bite, and had a bit of a swoon. He finished it, opened his eyes, and said, in his accented baritone “It is like going to Church. It is better than communion. What do you call it?” I said, “Aphrodite’s Cakes.” And he smiled, and said, “Which would you rather eat, Christ, or Aphrodite?” I don't know about you, but even as a very straight woman, I know the answer to that.


How are you going to celebrate the longest day?

Picture found here.

Make A Playlist

If you made a playlist for an All-Out-Push, what songs would be on it?

Mine includes, inter alia:

Proud Mary

Simply the Best

I Am A Patriot

Defying Gravity

Gwion Bach

Magic to Do

Virginia

I Need to Wake Up

Put Me In Coach; I'm Ready To Play The Game

So only a few more precious days of longer and longer sunlight and then we reach the Solstice. At that point, will we or nill we, the days will begin to get shorter and the nights will begin to get longer and longer. After last Winter, I've especially treasured this Spring: warm days, the growing plants, the extra daylight hours to sit out on the porch and sip iced tea. Be nice to me, Summer. This ain't my first time at the rodeo.

The coming week, especially with the waxing Moon, seems like a great one to make an All-Out-Push. Go back to the goals you set at Samhein and take stock. Are you where you'd hoped to be? What could you accomplish if you gave it all you've got this week, between now and the Solstice? What if every single day this week you: did your daily practice, met your exercise goal, worked at getting your finances in order, were kinder to yourself [insert goal here]?

Yeah, of course, slow, steady, regular progress is how most things happen and it's what we all strive for. But in my world, at least, shit happens. A crunch at work means there's not time for much beyond working, sleeping, and the basics. A bad cold sends me to bed for days and, even when it's over, it takes a while to get my energy back. I get discouraged. And it's long been my experience that having a week (or even a day or an hour) devoted to the All-Out-Push is a great way to jumstart stalled goals, revitalize my practice, make enough progress to get me motivated to hang in there for the longer haul. Maybe you can't keep this pace up forever (or maybe you'll find out that, indeed, you can do a lot more than you thought you could do). But that's not the point. Just find out what it means to go all out on your promise to yourself.

What could you accomplish by the Summer Solstice if you devoted this week at an All-Out-Push?

Saturday Garden Blogging

The first day lily to bloom is a Sir Mordred.

Midsummer Night's Eve

See as thou wast wont to see:



The young Hellen Mirren. Sweet Mother.

What Says Litha To You?

And, right on schedule, the daylilies, my Litha flower are budding like mad.

Maybe I'll serve this to my Litha gathering:

DAYLILIES STUFFED WITH ORIENTAL
CRAB SALAD
1 cup fresh bean sprouts
2 medium cucumbers, peeled, seeded and
sliced into matchstick-sized pieces
1/2 pound crab meat or crab substitute*
1 tablespoon sesame oil
2 tablespoon light soy sauce
1/2 teaspoon sugar

* Blanche the bean sprouts by dropping them in
boiling water for about a minute. Then cool nder cold running water. They should still
have a crunch.

* Combine all ingredients thoroughly and
refrigerate. You can even make the crab salad a
day in advance.

*When you are ready to serve,
spoon several tablespoons of the salad into the
center of each daylily flower. You may also top
each filled daylily with a scattering of toasted
sesame seeds or finely chopped scallions for a
more colorful presentation.

* Smaller daylily flowers require less crab
salad, so this recipe makes enough to stuff two
dozen large daylily flowers or 30 smaller
flowers.

Recipe found here.

Photo by the author; if you copy, please link back.

Litha's Harvest

Here's a nice article that explains the science behind the old Pagan custom of harvesting herbs on the morning of the Summer Solstice


And there's another factor with herbs. Many of them hold their highest oil content at this time, before the heat of summer causes much of it to evaporate out of the leaves.

A cool, still midsummer morning is the traditional time to harvest herbs for drying and storage to use in winter. If they are cut all at once, quickly, before the rising sun hits the leaves, the maximum amount of oil is retained. Both sun and wind can cause oils to evaporate out of freshly cut material very quickly. For this reason, you want to cut herbs and get them into the shade before sunrise. The goal with herbs is to move them inside to dry right away. It's far better to cut some and move them indoors, then go back out and cut more. Otherwise, the herbs are likely to wilt as they build up in your cutting basket.

The entire article is well worth a read.

I will harvest mint and distill it in vodka for a full moon, then chill the vodka for drinking from glasses of ice on Yule morning. What will you harvest tomorrow?

Photo found here.

Summer Solstice by Donna Kane

The light stretched and tangy, up on its horse
and riding through the ripening meadows,
buzzing the leaves and the
birds who’ve been at it for hours.
Light that in its excess has become something else.
The way Cranberry Falls is so frothed with runoff
it doesn’t look like water anymore. The way you look
from a hill’s highest point, your head full of chlorophyll,
heart shucking winter like a clayload of guilt,
like pollen with its open fire policy
compensating loss. You exceed yourself,
tanked on the light and the birds
who’ve been singing forever.


Poem found here.

Picture found here.

Unmanned Drones At Stonehenge Solstice Celebration

Summer Solstice (Litha) occurs here in the nation's capital at 1:45 am on Sunday, June 21st. Litha is one of my favorite holidays and one that, I admit, makes me a bit "homesick" for a place I've never been. Long before I knew that I was a witch, the Summer Solstice was firmly associated in my mind with Stonehenge. Pillar of the Sky, which I read in my twenties, is still one of my favorite books. I am sad to see how England plans to police this year's Stonehenge celebration.

A big police operation involving an unmanned drone, horses and drugs sniffer dogs will be launched at Stonehenge tomorrow as huge crowds descend on the ancient site for the summer solstice.

Because the celebrations fall over the weekend and fine weather is predicted, bigger crowds than usual are expected and Wiltshire police have said they will clamp down heavily on antisocial behaviour.

Restrictions are being placed on the amount of alcohol revellers can bring in and police have said they will not tolerate illegal drug taking or unlawful raves.

The force's no-nonsense approach, after a more relaxed feel in recent years, has raised fears that there could be clashes.

Some peace-loving druids have told the Guardian that they will be staying away because they fear the combination of large crowds - possibly more than 30,000 ‑ and the police's stance could lead to trouble.

Can you imagine any religious group other than Pagans that the British government would dare to police on a high holiday with unmanned drones, for the love of the Goddess?

The local police don't have a great history of dealing with those coming to Stonehenge.

Picture found here.

Solstice Sunrise, Stonehenge 2008

The BBC has pictures from this year's Summer Solstice at Stonehenge. A bit cloudy, but still lovely. Also, today's Google logo has a big, bright sun.

Even more, here.

Another Poem For The Longest Day

It doesn't interest me if there is one God
Or many gods.
I want to know if you belong – or feel abandoned;
If you know despair
Or can see it in others.
I want to know
If you are prepared to live in the world
With its harsh need to change you;
If you can look back with firm eyes
Saying “this is where I stand.”
I want to know if you know how to melt
Into that fierce heat of living
Falling toward the center of your longing.
I want to know if you are willing
To live day by day
With the consequence of love
And the bitter unwanted passion
Of your sure defeat.
I have been told
In that fierce embrace
Even the gods
Speak of God.

~ David Whyte ~
(Fire in the Earth)


Art found here.

Little Summer Poem Touching The Subject Of Faith

I read, well, this is an understatement, a lot of poems. I've never found a better poem for the Summer Solstice than this one. When you read it, it helps to know that Oliver's talking about corn, although corn is not the subject of the poem.

Every summer
I listen and look
under the sun's brass and even
into the moonlight, but I can't hear

anything, I can't see anything --
not the pale roots digging down, nor the green stalks muscling up,
nor the leaves
deepening their damp pleats,

nor the tassels making,
nor the shucks, nor the cobs.
And still,
every day,

the leafy fields
grow taller and thicker --
green gowns lofting up in the night,
showered with silk.

And so, every summer,
I fail as a witness, seeing nothing --
I am deaf too
to the tick of the leaves,

the tapping of downwardness from the banyan feet --
all of it
happening
beyond any seeable proof, or hearable hum.

And, therefore, let the immeasurable come.
Let the unknowable touch the buckle of my spine.
Let the wind turn in the trees,
and the mystery hidden in the dirt

swing through the air.
How could I look at anything in this world
and tremble, and grip my hands over my heart?
What should I fear?

One morning
in the leafy green ocean
the honeycomb of the corn's beautiful body
is sure to be there.

From West Wind: Poems and Prose Poems, by Mary Oliver. Published by Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston. Copyright 1997 by Mary Oliver.

Picture found here.

When The Moon Hits Your Eye Like A Big Pizza Pie, That's An Illusion

There's a full moon tonight and it's going to be giant! Go see it!

The full Moon of June 18th is a "solstice moon", coming only two days before the beginning of northern summer. This is significant because the sun and full Moon are like kids on a see-saw; when one is high, the other is low. This week's high solstice sun gives us a low, horizon-hugging Moon and a strong Moon Illusion.

Sky watchers have known for thousands of years that low-hanging moons look unnaturally big. At first, astronomers thought the atmosphere must be magnifying the Moon near the horizon, but cameras showed that is not the case. Moons on film are the same size regardless of elevation. Apparently, only human beings see giant moons.

Are we crazy?

After all these years, scientists still aren't sure. When you look at the Moon, rays of moonlight converge and form an image about 0.15 mm wide on the retina in the back of your eye. High moons and low moons make the same sized spot, yet the brain insists one is bigger than the other. Go figure.

More here

Hat tip to R.

Image found here.

Blessed Summer Solstice to You II

I said this last year and I'll say it again:

This week, I believe that I can state unequivocably, is my favorite week on the wheel of the year. This is the last week during which the days grown longer. Next week, we come to the Summer Solstice and, immediately thereafter, the days begin to grow shorter and shorter again, leading inexorably to the freezing dawn when I will stand with the wonderful women of my circle, bang pots, shake tamborines, yell, and generally make as much noise as possible to wake the Yule-time Sun. We drink schnappes or whiskey or some other throat-burning booze from glasses made of ice and then we throw the glasses on the frozen ground to shatter into a million diamond shards before heading off to a greasy-spoon on Capitol Hill or a pancake house in Arlington for a v. hearty breakfast.

But, for now, the sunlight pays the world the great compliment of lingering until almost nine o'clock in the evening, the flowers bloom, the grass grows, and the lightening bugs remind me, if I ever forget, that I live in an enchanted forest, full of mysteriously-blinking lights, leading me into shadowy and deep mysteries. The herb bed swells with herbs, the farmers' market bulges with riches from blueberries to tomatoes to cucumbers, the birds flit and float about, and, and, and, there's lots and lots of daylight!!!!

. . .

I know that I should be equally happy to see the beginning of Fall and Winter, and, yet, I cannot help but to rage, rage (a bit) against the dying of the light.

Happy Summer. Happy sunlight. Happy long days of summer. Enjoy. It's everthing. It's all real. It's all metaphor. There's always more.

Art (and more by this amazing artist) found here.