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Ostara and Life
Mar. 23rd, 2009 10:28 amOn Friday, my family celebrated Ostara, the Spring Equinox. The Ostara bunny hid all the eggs we'd decorated (17 of them!) in various places around the downstairs. Mason had a BLAST trying to find all of them, so much so that he offered to hide them himself and have *us* try to find them -- which we did. He's a good hider of eggs! But luckily, with some coaching we found them all.
Friday and Saturday were warm days in the 50s (F), though we spent much of Saturday in the basement. The basement is one part of the house that is easy to ignore in terms of cleaning. Ours is half-finished. There's a front section that has linoeum tile, where the kitty boxes are, as well as a section for beloved books that have no shelf space upstairs. I also have an area for file cabinets stuffed full of all my various papers and whatnot collected over the years -- writing, conventions... all that. I've been VERY SLOWLY organizing those to eventually be shipped off to Lynne the official Wyrdsmith's archivist. The biggest problem is, of course, I'm still referencing a lot of that stuff thanks to the prequel I'm doing for Norwegian Press.
Still, we made some decent progress, though I still have a ton of stuff to sort through... the organization may have to come later. Just to get through it I've just tossed stuff randomly into labeled folders, no sense of organization yet. So right now in a box might be a letter of condolence sent by the Private Eye Writers of American when I informed them I couldn't attend the Shamus award ceremony due to the death of my daughter right next to a review of Tate's Romancing the Dead from Midwest Muse. Each has thier own folder, but... you see the issue.
Sunday we took a break from the basement to hang out with a fellow WitchSchool student Silver Rowan and her partner. I made the traditional Ostara hot cross buns (that's a SOLAR cross, thank you!) and roasted dill potatoes, the left overs of which I plan to have at lunch. The buns turned out amazingly, if I do say so myself. After hunting many long years, I think I may have found the perfect recipie for hot cross buns in, of all places, a FARM JOURNAL cookbook.
Anyway, we chatted for several hours about life, the universe, and the Goddess and it was kind of like getting to have a second Ostara celebration all over again. Speaking of which, I actually won the Witchschool Study Group 7's contest for best Ostara altar. If you want to see a photo of it, I posted it over at Tate's blog.
Despite high winds and the threat of rain, Mason and I played outside in the afternoon and again in the evening. I raked a bit of the spiral garden, though I'm hesitant to do too much since so much of the ground is wet and the plant shoots are so tender and fragile. It looks as though we may have lost the rhubarb plants completely to the winter, but the orris root irises are coming up, as well as the very tenacious lemon balm.
The Ostara bunny has been helping herself to all the evening primrose shoots as well as munching one of my shrubs down to the bone (which is actually okay, because I put it in a bad place. I'd been planning on re/moving it this year.) I tried leaving her a plate of dill and brocolli, but she turned her twitchy little nose up at my offering and continued munching my garden bits.
Today it's rainy and dark and chilly. The cats still think they'd like to lounge on the porch, but for me, it's inside under a blanket with my laptop and a hot cup of tea.
Friday and Saturday were warm days in the 50s (F), though we spent much of Saturday in the basement. The basement is one part of the house that is easy to ignore in terms of cleaning. Ours is half-finished. There's a front section that has linoeum tile, where the kitty boxes are, as well as a section for beloved books that have no shelf space upstairs. I also have an area for file cabinets stuffed full of all my various papers and whatnot collected over the years -- writing, conventions... all that. I've been VERY SLOWLY organizing those to eventually be shipped off to Lynne the official Wyrdsmith's archivist. The biggest problem is, of course, I'm still referencing a lot of that stuff thanks to the prequel I'm doing for Norwegian Press.
Still, we made some decent progress, though I still have a ton of stuff to sort through... the organization may have to come later. Just to get through it I've just tossed stuff randomly into labeled folders, no sense of organization yet. So right now in a box might be a letter of condolence sent by the Private Eye Writers of American when I informed them I couldn't attend the Shamus award ceremony due to the death of my daughter right next to a review of Tate's Romancing the Dead from Midwest Muse. Each has thier own folder, but... you see the issue.
Sunday we took a break from the basement to hang out with a fellow WitchSchool student Silver Rowan and her partner. I made the traditional Ostara hot cross buns (that's a SOLAR cross, thank you!) and roasted dill potatoes, the left overs of which I plan to have at lunch. The buns turned out amazingly, if I do say so myself. After hunting many long years, I think I may have found the perfect recipie for hot cross buns in, of all places, a FARM JOURNAL cookbook.
Anyway, we chatted for several hours about life, the universe, and the Goddess and it was kind of like getting to have a second Ostara celebration all over again. Speaking of which, I actually won the Witchschool Study Group 7's contest for best Ostara altar. If you want to see a photo of it, I posted it over at Tate's blog.
Despite high winds and the threat of rain, Mason and I played outside in the afternoon and again in the evening. I raked a bit of the spiral garden, though I'm hesitant to do too much since so much of the ground is wet and the plant shoots are so tender and fragile. It looks as though we may have lost the rhubarb plants completely to the winter, but the orris root irises are coming up, as well as the very tenacious lemon balm.
The Ostara bunny has been helping herself to all the evening primrose shoots as well as munching one of my shrubs down to the bone (which is actually okay, because I put it in a bad place. I'd been planning on re/moving it this year.) I tried leaving her a plate of dill and brocolli, but she turned her twitchy little nose up at my offering and continued munching my garden bits.
Today it's rainy and dark and chilly. The cats still think they'd like to lounge on the porch, but for me, it's inside under a blanket with my laptop and a hot cup of tea.