Well it’s Spring, the season of delightful colour, warmth and a feast for the senses; except here Spring has not quite fully sprung. Believe me, I am not complaining because I would rather a long, drawn out cooler Spring with a very short summer (I’m a fair skinned redhead…auburn head….so the sun and I have a very unfortunate relationship). The wonderfully interesting thing about Australia is that it is a very diverse land; it’s not an exaggeration to say that we have almost every climate in the world contained here on this continent so the experiences of each of us season to season are very different.
My fabulous friend Sasha (from The Pagan Homemaker) has been sharing her very ripe Uti fruit (also known as Quandong) yet the ones at my Mum’s house are not even close to ripe yet. Sasha lives about 2 hours north from me so even that short of distance – distance being pretty relative in Australia – there is a different climate again. The Mid North of SA comes under the Indigenous Kaurna calendar which is for the Adelaide Plains, we’re a little more arid and a bit more north where we are, but it mostly fits in with what I experience here. It’s something you come to terms with when you begin working with the Wheel of the Year; you soon realise that it has to be heavily adapted to fit where you live and sometimes the easiest thing to do is just experience the seasons as they happen and build your own traditions around that.
I’ve slowly started getting back out into the garden and getting my hands into the Earth, this year I have felt very disconnected from my green path and it’s something of a process slowly building that connection again. The wonderful thing is that my garden has chugged along without me giving it more than the bare minimum. My mandrakes are growing really well, I have a fruit again, I did try to cross pollinate them but time and winter got away with me and it didn’t quite happen. However one Mandragora turcomanica fruit is good, I got 9 seeds last season so we’ll see how it goes this time. I think though, I’m going to focus more on feeding it harder to see if I can get that fruit a bit bigger.
I’ve also embraced growing more vegetables; hopefully I will get some seeds in during the next week. I’m a bit late on the season for getting in seeds but while the weather is as mild as it is, I think it should be fine. I’m going to try and grow some gourds, I might even include them in next year’s Samhain Sabbat box if they grow, ripen and dry off in time. Next year there are going to be some shake ups with the boxes but that’s news for later once I iron out all the details. The Practical Witchery boxes have become a labour of love but my customers seem to really love them which makes it worth it. Next year I am looking at possibly starting a Beginner Practical Witchery box series that helps to build your altar, tools and practice but again, that is an idea that isn’t fully fleshed out yet.
I am really hoping to be more active here, I have neglected my blog for a long time – once upon a time I was quite the prolific blogger – I have lost touch with my love of writing a bit so here’s hoping the muse strikes and I can offer some quality posts….if all else fails I will fall back to my default which is an erroneous amount of garden photos. Between running my business, health issues, personal issues and markets (my last one was Barossa Medieval Fair, a fun yet mud filled weekend of medieval fantasticness) I’ve definitely let some of my passions fall by the wayside. One thing I would also like to be able to point myself toward is slowly building or rebuilding my herbal business The Wild Wortwyf because I do adore making traditional herbal remedies as well as making witchcraft crafts. My to do list is very long…..very very long. So we’ll see how it goes.
Here’s to saying hello to Spring and hopefully, a good close out to what has otherwise been a pretty crap year.
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