Signs of Spring

Little bits of green have been peeking through the brown and gray.

The echinacaea I planted last year is sprouting back up.

The little critters are starting to wake up and be more active (and get smeared all over the road...)

The Canada geese are coming back.

And the skunk cabbage is blooming.

Counter Charm with Runes

Juniper set up a challenge over at Walking the Hedge.  I'm not too familiar with runes, but this would be my response:

Raido (travel) breaks free from the broken enclosure, and Mannaz (body) becomes Dagaz (breakthrough, transformation) and Ehwaz (horse).

Ancestors

I've never been close to my family. The ones I knew before they passed, weren't the kind of people whose memories I'd want to honor. On the other hand, my family genealogy has been traced back to the 17th century, so I have a decent amount of knowledge to draw from as far as areas of the world where people I'm related to used to live.

I'm basically a mutt. My ancestors came from England, Ireland, and Scotland, but mostly I'm French and German. In researching traditional winter foods, I discovered a lovely-sounding German dish called rumtopf... It's fruit preserved in rum, added to a pot over the course of the year as each fruit comes into season. Little too late to start it for this winter, but I'm definitely going to get some going come spring. The idea reminded me of another fruit dish, compote, which is French. (The word actually has the same root as "compost," which amused me.)

So, into the crockpot went dried figs, plums, cherries, and raisins, with some raspberries and red currants, and when it was done I set out a plate for them, along with a glass of mead that I made, sweetened with my goldenrod-infused honey. (I actually did all this on the solstice. Just a little late posting...)

I was pretty nervous. I felt a little presumptuous, hoping for a good reception when I've basically spent most of my life trying to avoid even thinking about my family.  It was good, though, and I'm glad I did it.

One side will make you grow taller, and the other side will make you grow shorter...

Why Can't It Just Stay Spring?

The seasons are changing again, like they do. I really do enjoy autumn, I just have to keep reminding myself that I do.  Back home, it meant cool evenings, crunchy leaves, and of course Halloween and the family Thanksgiving.  I moved to New England six years ago, and here, it just means it's time to get ready to hunker down for winter.  All our family is spread out, so Thanksgiving is small (and it's effectively winter by then anyways), and the area we live in is so rural we don't even get any trick-or-treaters.  Winter basically starts in November and the spring flowers don't show their faces until March at the earliest.  Almost half the year is cold and ice and snow and cold, and cold.  Spring and fall are my favorite seasons (which makes sense, as they're times of transition) but they really seem to just fly by.

There's a giant patch of goldenrod in our front yard, in full bloom.  I love it.  Yellow is such a cheerful color and the late blooms seem like a last-ditch effort to hold on to summer for as long as possible.  I had planned to make an infused oil of it, to try and bring a little bit of summer through the winter with me, but after reading this post over at When Weeds Whisper, I decided to follow her lead and do an infused honey instead.  I bought some local honey at the farmers market last weekend, and I was really excited, planned to do two pint jars.  Then as I'm out gathering, I see all the bumblebees buzzing around the blossoms, and it hit me - these were the last flowers, and the bees needed them more than I did.  So I satisfied myself with enough to just make one jar.  I probably still could have done both - it really is a huge patch of goldenrod, but I would have felt bad.

I don't know what I'm going to do this winter.  Last year's was ridiculous, we wound up with about eight feet on the ground and had to hire a backhoe at one point to dig us out after the regular plow ran out of room to put the snow.  They called it the hundred year storm - as in, the kind of storm you only see once in a hundred years - and it was certainly record-breaking.  But I'm afraid that this year will be the same.  I almost want to move back to somewhere more temperate, but I've really started developing a relationship with the woods this past year and couldn't just leave them.

I'll just have to keep reminding myself - winter has a place, just like everything else.  Death has a place.  It wipes out the green of summer to make room for the pinks and blues and yellows and purples of spring to peek through again.  If nothing else, it keeps the ticks from eating me up too bad.  I'll have to spend some days out in the forest this winter and pay attention to what's going on, besides everything being dead or sleeping.

The Forest Has Changed

The hurricane swept through Sunday.  We finally got power back yesterday afternoon.  I'm not even back to work yet, they still don't have power, either.  So I've been spending even more time out back in the woods.  Most of what fell was already dead, but we lost a huge elm, a pine, and a big limb off a red maple.  I've been trying to clean up the maple, because it landed on a smaller elm and trapped it bent over.

I'm going to keep a slice of the maple for a frame to make a drum, and I've heard that the bark can be used for dyeing.  I also have plans for some wood beads.

Devastation

Apparently the edge of our property is a major drainage ditch for the town, and with the hurricane on the way they decided to come and clean it out...  I came home from work yesterday to find a giant empty patch of dirt where our bushes, honey locusts, black walnut, blackberry, nightshade, and mullein had been.  Just the tire tracks from heavy machinery and strangers' footprints were left, with the odd stray wood chip.  All the way around the side and into the swamp!  They hacked down a big section of the grapes, and the goldenrod was trampled.  It's horrible.  And so stupid.  The dirt's just going to wash out, it's on the side of a hill.  And the road will go right after.

I'm not in a good place right now.

It's not the season for it, but I'm going to see if I can find some wildflower seed mixes to throw out there.  Maybe I can use the cleared area to build something, maybe a chicken coop or a greenhouse or bee hives or a fish pond.  Silver lining, right?