Mabon 2012 / Feast of Reaping

I was working on the 22nd and honestly lost track of the day. On the 23rd I went a few minutes south (by car) to assist a friend with some work on her new home. On the way home (I wasn't driving) I spotted the sun hanging low and perfect on the horizon. She was bloodshot and almost seemed to pulse, of course the color of the sun was due to smoke from the still raging Central Washington fires. Still I felt struck by how perfect and unmoving the perfect bloody orange sun was and it dawned on me, then and there, the Autumn solstice had occurred the day before. I reflected on the marvel of our world and the Kindred and our portion of the nearly unending cycle of seasons (hey even Sol has to die one day).

So I didn't do a ritual, I didn't offer anything (though I did a brief offering on the 24th and do roughly twice daily incense offerings) but I did, in a profound way, celebrate.

Cascadia Proto-Grove!

Is real, live and approved by the Mother Grove! YAY!

We're set to have our next rite on the 30th so w00t! Part of me is excited that I'll have a group for High Days but mostly I'm excited by the idea of the opportunity for fellowship and a group experience. I know some people are satisfied being solitaries, even prefer it, me? Not so much. I can deal and I generally enjoy my own company but yeah moar druids please!

Plus this is an awesome group of people. We've had two or three rituals, I was involved in one locally at Bradley Park (pouring rain which was a blessing and a curse, fewer looky loos and such though my pal Joe who is totes a non-practicing pagan came along to death-glare anyone who got snippy. I love Joe.) And I've met the core group twice now.

One member has graciously volunteered to drive my carless butt on the 30th but a longtime family friend has said she's going to help me get a car so I am verah excite about that prospect. As of November 10th it will be a year since I've had a car. Which is technically okay 'cause I work from home etc. but yeah lemme ask my atheist father with health problems to drive me to a Druid ritual...uhm no? Unfair and weird much?

So yay! Yay yay yay!

BEES

I've been reading and researching about honey bees for the last few months. I'm still reading and researching but after double checking my local zoning (no goats allowed sadly but poultry and bees are fine) I really want to go ahead and start a hive this spring.

I also want to have poultry again (we had at various times in my childhood, ducks, turkeys, and chickens) but as that's a much greater investment of time and money (hard to leave your poultry for a long weekend without someone willing to check in on them etc.) I'm going for bees firstly.

Also bees are straight up fascinating.

Some of the books I've poured through in preparation are:

Beekeeping for Dummies 

The Backyard Beekeeper

As well as countless posts on the invaluable site www.beesource.com and the incredibly valuable forum for the site.

Books I intend to read ASAP to round out my 'knowings' before I take the plunge, get a hive, and hopefully join the Pierce County Beekeeper's Association in order to learn more, order bees on the cheap and eventually (hopefully) rent the honey extractor owned by the organization and like, be an apiarist, are:

The Practical Beekeeper Vol. 1 Beginning Beekeeping Naturally (hopefully volumes 2 & 3 as well at some point)

Grit's Guide to Backyard Bees and Honey (I picked this up for a song in I think June, when the Mother Earth News Fair was at the local fairgrounds)

Beekeeping for All (I'm leaning toward a modified version of a Warre hive it's a bit like a Langstroth/Warre hybrid but want to see what I may be getting into first)

Better Beekeeping: The Ultimate Guide to Keeping Stronger Colonies and Healthier, More Productive Bees

I should note that a lot of these books have redundant information but so far each (Even those by the same author/s) have been worth reading.

I also found this incredibly charming title from 1914 (apparently originally published in 1901), The Life of the Bee by Maurice Maeterlink at the ginormous used bookstore I venture to every few months. It is practically and scientifically spurious but chock full of loving and vivid descriptions of bees. Mr. Maeterlink clearly loved and was fascinated by bees and nature.

Why bees? A fair question. I use beeswax for all kinds of neat things around the house and such so I could certainly use that up ironically it's the honey I'm mostly concerned about. Like most of us in the good 'ol United States I've grown up on a diet with a lot of refined sugar and never really developed the same taste for honey. Don't get me wrong I *like* honey but I just don't consume much of it. I use it in tea and occasionally on toast but that's really about it. So I may need to either let the bees keep the vast majority of the honey (I don't necessarily see a problem with this particularly during the first year) or make pals with some farmer's market stall owner or some such. Athough, honey has far more applications than just culinary, in addition to being the only food we eat that is made by insects it also never ever spoils. It crystallizes but you can heat it right up and it'll liquefy again. Not to mention it has antibacterial properties and was and is a wound and burn treatment. It's kind of astonishing stuff.

Whatever the case since I can't have a yard-taming goat and I don't trust my brains to be reliable enough to remember to feed and water something that is wholly dependent on me (unlike our two cats, who, as cats do, absolutely make sure they are fed watered and pampered appropriately) bees it is!

Reading for Funsies

It dawned on me not too recently that since leaving the military I have done very very little if any reading for pleasure. Part of this (I suspect) was the slow erosion of my mental acuity due to my undiagnosed / untreated hypothyroidism. Additionally what reading I did accomplish was directly related to school and often involved titillating case studies of environmental law etc. So, as time passed I somehow trained myself into dreading reading.

This is the polar opposite of 'traditional' me. To elaborate...

I was blessed in that I had a parent who read to me (and my siblings) almost nightly when we were children, our mother started with the classic McGuffey readers then moved on to the equally classic Little House series. I loved stories, I was so excited to learn to read that I couldn't wait to get to first grade, I once startled the bejeebers out of my dad (also a voracious reader) by 'reading' the Musicians of Bremen out loud one day while I was home sick from school. Of course, I had simply memorized the story after hearing it read aloud by my mom for ages.

When I did hit first grade I had a horrendous time learning to read, so much so that I was put in a remedial group and, if my five/six year old memory can be trusted overheard talk of being held back. But I got it in the end because I was hellbent on getting to all those wonderful stories lurking on the shelves around me. All the secrets and excitement imprisoned between those glossy and wonderful covers.

I got there too. When I was a high school senior we had to complete a 'Senior Project' in order to graduate. This required several papers and reports, volunteer hours, etc. One of the requirements was an annotated bibliography of books we had read while in high school. I hated the idea of the project, now, as an adult I can see some merit in it but I still think it's an unfair burden on some families that may have to expend vital resources to help their student get to and from a volunteer opportunity etc.particularly in this day of increased poverty. So, out of spite, I went through every book I owned (and had read often, well usually multiple times) and annotated them, then I went to the school library and the local library and looked up as many books as I could recall from there, and of course I added all of our required reading titles from various classes. The end result, including other documents and paperwork, was thicker than a phone book and well over half of that was the annotated bibliography.

So, at one time I was a helluva a reader. I could polish off a novel in an easy four to five hours.

It wasn't just being up to my ears in grief, stress, school reading, and job hunting. At one point I broke down and actually paid for insurance with a mental health clause because I thought I was losing it. I would read a paragraph in a text and have to re-read it three or four times. I was no longer comprehending things. Assuming this was a side effect of the lingering grief from my mom's death (I blamed a lot of symptoms on that, not necessarily inaccurately but it wasn't helpful to say, 'oh it's just grief' and move on, physical symptoms of grief CAN be treated, and ought to be) I had simply ignored it and continued as best I could.

So I had a physical first, mostly because I wasn't sure how to get a shrink or counselor and thought starting with a GP would be wise.

Then she palpated my throat and frowned. HELLO SWOLLEN THYROID.

Things have clearly improved immensely since then. Not only am I on medication to control the symptoms but I landed an amazing job with Amazon.com and have a real life again.

So now I am back to reading for fun. And, let me tell you, I [expletive deleted] missed it.

Okay that's all well and good, sunshine and puppies and rainbows but what the heck does that have to do with my DP? I'm so glad you asked!

I'mma go ahead and bust out the rest of my reading. I've stopped and started An Introduction to Roman Religion by John Scheid numerous times. So, I shall endeavor to complete it by the end of the month. I hope to do a chapter by chapter posting of it much as I did for the Cynthia Eller title I've already completed (and still find to be straight up fabulous), I posted regarding the first chapter ages ago, I'm going to leave that as is and NOT look at it until I've re-read it and made a new post. Compare and contrast so to speak. I think it'll be interesting.  So stay tuned! The kid is BACK.