In Celebration

Hawkweed – Shasta County

Happy Lammas!

All though the official first day of Fall is a month and 1/2 away (Did I just hear you shriek? Thought so.), August 1st always feels like the true beginning to me. I have been smelling Autumn in the air, noticing the different quality of light, witnessing the plants slowing down, elderly in their growth. Once brilliant flower tops now have more than a few grey hairs, fuzzy seeds borne away on the wind, and the stems are like brittle bones, dried pods rattling.

Yet the harvest in my own garden has barely begun, the tomatoes stuck in green limbo, thwarted by a completely unhelpful foggy sky. I am still checking my sunflowers obsessively, the Ozma roses have just opened and Fern is still rewarded in her strawberry hunting.

Moth Mullein – Shasta County

Part of the ritual purpose for Lammas and the Fall Equinox was to honor the spirit of the crops and an acknowledgement that once the harvest was borne home, the spirit would essentially become homeless. Long before The Man ever burned on the playa, effigies were created in honor of the fields, the wheat, the corn, the fruit bearing principal that offers sustenance to all life. Just how this was done depended on the rite, but in essence this energy was collected and then returned to the earth, in hope and promise that it would be so generous in the next seasonal sowing.

Flowering Red Lettuce

And so, here is my offering to the crop spirit and to YOU. Above all, this is about FUN and CELEBRATION and you are INVITED.

A BIOREGIONAL SWAP

What have you harvested this year? Do you plan on doing any canning? Did you come across so many feathers you don’t know what to do with them all? Have a favorite sea stone that whispers to you it’s dreams of seeing far off lands? Would you like to receive a care package from an old friend just met, with little magical gleanings from a land your feet may never have touched?

Leave a comment letting me know you want to participate. I will randomly match names together, and then let you know who your swap partner is. You have until October 1st to complete your package and send it out (to give enough time for late harvest canning or seasonal medicinal making!).

Here are some examples to give you an idea what your package could contain: Jam, salve, seeds, artwork, photos, pressed flowers, feathers, stones, bones, tinctures, flower essences, driftwood, poems, mixed cds, special books, homemade brews, embroidery, vintage thrift finds….anything that represents you and your bio region. (It goes without saying, but seeds/plants that could become invasive should be excluded from your package.)

This is an opportunity to not only make a new friend and receive mail goodness, but also for you to deepen into your own definition of how the land you live on speaks to you.

I will announce partners the second week of August. Here’s to US. Cheers!

Love.

~ by marygood on August 1, 2011.