Monday, June 17, 2013

With Apologies to Kelis

My clover brings all the bees to the yard
And they're like, it's not poisoned like yours
Damn right it's not poisoned like yours.
I'd teach you, and not even charge.

Blessings Darlings!

I'm finally seeing a goodly number of bees in the clover.  Still mostly bumble bees, but the number of honey bees is up.

This will all change on Friday, of course, when the guy mows the lawn.  And he often scalps the lawn, on top of mowing all the wildflowers.

But we persevere.

What *I* ask him to do doesn't much matter, since I don't pay him, the land lord does.

Frondly, Fern

Monday, June 10, 2013

I want a Witches Garden

Blessings Darlings!

If I EVER get my veggie/herb garden to the point I'm happy with it ... and it's no where NEAR that point now ... I want to put in a Witches' Garden. 

This wouldn't be a happy healing/culinary herb garden.  This would be a nice traditional baneful garden.  It would feature poisons and other oddities - deadly hemlock, deadly nightshade, maybe poison ivy (tho usually that's easy enough to find growing around here!), pokeweed, mugwort, wormwood, foxglove, lily of the valley, yews, may apples ....  I might even grow abortifacients like pennyroyal in that garden.

Yes, some of them can be used medically.  But they can also harm folks. 

Just ... because. 

Frondly, Fern

Monday, June 3, 2013

Hard Won Gifts

Blessings Darlings!

As I noted a few days ago, we have a bit of a heat wave here.  Today will be another hot humid day, and we MAY have air pollution warnings - DC has warnings, but I don't know about the Blue Ridge.  But I digress ...

As a result of the heat wave, I was out working in the garden very early today, while the temperature was in the lower 70's.  Oh my goodness, it was sweet outside then.  The birds were chirping, no tractors were running yet (either mowing lawns of my neighbors or cutting hay), the breeze was NOT from the cattle barns, etc. 

I, of course, was sweating exactly the way a pig doesn't.  This is because to be more intimate with my immediate land base I work my garden by hand.  I worked the bean bed again today, with the days work being taking a spade (and not a shovel) and turning what would be topsoil (if I was still in Illinois).  Here in my little corner of Appalachia it is NOT topsoil - it is clay.  Heavy red clay.  I need to do another round with that now broken bed, and work compost into it so it is ready for the seeds.

Heavy Red Clay.  I looked at those first spadefuls, and a soft voice said, "You know those runes you want to make? They can be made of clay."  I went back to the garage and got a bucket.  And a lid.  By the time I had the bed turned I had 4 gallons of great red clay, 13 pieces of quartz .... and a blister.

Because the real gifts of the Gods are their quiet voices.  Not in them doing the work for us.

Frondly, Fern