Imbolc

We might go to Marsden on Sartuday for this – it being only ten miles away – but meanwhile we’ve got a little fire planned of our own.

And candles.

With regard to Imbolic omens, we’ve had deer this week in the woods, right up by the house.

They’re so shy that we only actually see them about once every three years, so it was quite an event. Sadly I wasn’t fast enough with the camera.

Yesterday’s sky

Astounding number of con/chemtrails, making this article seem all the more apposite.

Contrails (condensation trails) dissipate quickly in the air, while chemtrails linger and sometimes billow out, turning a clear blue sky into a hazy, milky one.

Happy Yule

Today is the shortest, darkest day of the year, and so our house has been full of heat and light.

We’ve cooked, eaten, played games, made masks, lit candles all over the place and watched DVDs. We’ve also taken turns to go outside and thaw out the kitchen drain pipe so that we could keep running the dishwasher!

We went for a walk in the -8°c field, and found the snow had made kind of frond shapes on its surface due to the extreme cold:

(You might be able to see them if you enlarge the picture there.) No doubt there’s some science to explain it, but if so then I don’t know what it is, yet.

I don’t think I’ve ever known it to be so consistently cold in this part of the world before.

As for Christmas, December 25th is still a special day for us. Santa will hopefully make his way down our chimney to sample our mince pies in the night, and there will still (hopefully) be gleeful little faces and mounds of wrapping paper in the morning, followed by turkey/ nut roast and the trimmings (unless they all decide again that they’d rather have pizza!)

But the solstice is the day that makes the most sense to me, it being the day it was originally all about. (The birth of a new sun? )

But I’m willing to extend my celebrations to Saturday and beyond, for the full twelve days at least. And then I think I might have another look at Epiphany.

For now, it’s enough to know that the days are getting longer.

A good party

Today we went to a good party, involving cake:

.. and pumpkins, and Piñata, and clue-finding, and crunchy, gooey, yucky things in dark boxes, and dressing up, and trick-or-treating, and good fun and great company and more, which I’m too tired to remember.

We are blessed in our friends.

I never, *ever* do this

– plug businesses on my blogs, that is. Commercially orientated blogging doesn’t really work IMO. Or perhaps it does, but not necessarily if you try to blend it in with the other sort, I think because readers like to know where they stand: are they reading about someone’s life, or are they being enticed to buy something?

In my case, you’re always reading about my life. This is an absolute one-off and it increasingly seems to be sort of part of my life anyway, on very special days. And this is my seasonal blog, which is the perfect place to tell you about it.

It is Cake Secrets, run by Mari who is a good friend of ours. She brought the most heavenly equinox cakes to our field day this week, at which I wish I’d pointed the camera, but I was too busy eating them. In fact, she’s provided cakes for all occasions and they’re just incredibly… well, let’s say it’s a good job I don’t live at their house because there would be nothing left to sell if I did.

I’m putting a link in the sidebar here, but just wanted to do a post to match with love to Mari (who also digs a mean grass patch )

Autumnal equinox

We welcomed autumn in with some good friends yesterday (as I’ve mentioned elsewhere) by variously and collectively picking the last of the blackberries, prodding the bonfire, working on the land, climbing the tree and bobbing for apples, amongst other things.

Thinking back over the summer, I’ve learned – especially yesterday – about the power of community. Instead of (like before) just feeling sad that my extended biological family either can’t, or doesn’t want to get together for events like this, I’m now feeling happy, grateful and elated that we’re lucky enough to know plenty of people who can and do.

Goodbye Summer 2010, which has been mostly peaceful and quite productive for us. Hello Autumn 2010, which has we don’t yet know what in store. Welcome anyway, whatever it is!

Happy Equinox/ Michaelmas/ Mabon to everyone.

Solstice sunset

Candles for Candlemas

Imbolc passed me by, 2/3 days ago, though the stunning full moon didn’t. Nor did the extensive power cuts we happened to have here, which led to an enforced (and very enjoyable) use of lots of candles!

My calendar page talks about Imbolc as being a time for hearthfires, special foods, divination or simply watching for omens (whether performed in all seriousness or as children’s games) and a great deal of candles.

We had all of the above, without planning any of it.

8am and it’s nearly light..

Yesterday, it was nearly 4pm before we turned the lights on here!

One of my favourite activities at this time of year is the clocking of the lengthening days. It doesn’t seem like six months since the Summer Solstice and I think the next one will come around even faster. Time seems to be moving very quickly at the moment – maybe just for me, because I’m having fun, but I seem to have heard a lot of other people say the same.

This is the whole photo you can see cropped in the header, taken from my (very fingerprinted!) bedroom window at about 9 o’clock yesterday morning:

Tom explained the science of that circular effect, which happened by pure fluke on my part, but I don’t retain that kind of information nowadays and prefer to just enjoy the image.

Celebrate

I haven’t been keeping up to this blog very well in 2009, but I just wanted to note that after today, the days start getting longer.

And that’s something to celebrate.