Same Shit, Different Pagan Year.

 Blessings, Darlings!

There might be lots of typos tonight - new computer, not yet the best ergonomic set up, new keyboard.  Anyway - 

I'm in the midst of a very busy week of Samhain work here.  Starting with ritual Samhain Eve, starting daily work with the Planetary Powers on their appropriate days and during the appropriate Planetary Hours, done one major Tarot reading for the coming year and have 4 more to do, doing Jason Miller's Hallows of Hekate ritual (got that done today), etc, all leading to the closing on November 7.

Busy, busy witch.

Oh, the tarot readings?  One card pulled for every month.  The first round was for 'general'.
Next round will be 'personal'.  Then "Local'.  Then a round for National.  Then a round for World.  

I'd also like to re-start doing daily offerings a la Jason Miller but I put that down somewhere and can't find it, and my husband and I need to go over our living wills/end of life directives at this very appropriate time, but he's sick so isn't really available . . . he's also been supposed to decide on a date for us to go over and re-assign the household chores, but he's been ducking out on that over and over and over and over and over and over again - rather like he does on actually DOING the chores, eh?

He has a pass while he's sick.  And while he was tested for Covid earlier, I'm making him test again tomorrow.  Because I'm tired of this shit.

How are things with all y'all?

Frondly, Fern

Disorderly Conduct

 Blessings Darlings!

As I've mentioned before - I am where organization goes to die.  For example - today my NEW journal disappeared.   Can't find the damn thing anywhere.  It's amazing how fast this happened.

So when I tell you that the goal I set for this month (which I set late, on the 16th or so and is detailed in my journal), is to deep clean the kitchen and dining room - just think of all the disorder in those rooms that I'm trying to tame.  And I'm doing this in the midst of harvest season, when I'm using the dining room for dehydrating (because the big dehydrator is on that table, and I can hang bundles of herbs on the chandelier.)  

But I AM making progress.  In the past week or so I've gotten a bunch done and the areas aren't intimidating me as much.  Am I getting any help?  No, of course not.  Well, for once the cat hasn't barfed on any newly cleaned area, so maybe the counts.

How's your life going?

Frondly, Fern

Is there an echo in here?

 Blessings, Darlings!

I don't usually invest my blogging time on religions other than my own, but I DO often invest it in rants, so I guess what follows is going to still be on-brand.  

This is inspired by a Facebook post by an ex coworker and now Facebook ex-friend.  He  posted that humans are not animals.  As one would expect, I took issue with this idea.  Since he's one of those people who didn't take well to me disagreeing with other things he posted on his timeline, I disagreed with it on MY timeline, and tagged him in the discussion.  

I posted the OED (Oxford English Dictionary, my main religious text!) definition of 'animal' into the discussion, "a living organism that feeds on organic matter, typically having specialized sense organs and nervous system and able to respond rapidly to stimuli", and didn't include other details like embryology, oxygen breathing, etc.  This left room for him to bring up and defend the concept that 'humans are more than 'just' animals' - which is a different concept than the one I was objecting to, but would be interesting to discuss.

I asked him for his definition of animals and to state what he meant when he said that humans are not animals.  He repeatedly refused to define animals, but said that humans aren't animals because we can't breed with any other primates, and that 'all other animals can interbreed with others in their family'.  While that seems to be true about humans (I am assuming that some scientists got funding to see if human sperm and eggs could fertilize/be fertilized by all other primates), that even among primates only like 30% can interbreed to begin with.  And in the Canine family alone (don't ask why I have this factoid in my brain) foxes can't breed with any other species, and most coyotes can't breed with most wolves.  

Interestingly enough, while he didn't bring this up in the discussion OFF of his timeline, ON his timeline he brought up the idea that 'all other animals just go by instinct' and humans don't.  Since I was choosing to nor harsh him mellow on HIS time line I didn't point out that this idea was blown away by the fact that animals can be trained, they can LEARN to do things that increase their survival chances.  My cats, even the barn cats, know what noises I make to tell them I'm giving them food right now for example.  This is different than a cat's instinctive knowledge of 'cat sounds'.  I've never known a cat that had to be taught how to hiss, or what it means - THAT is instinct.  

At this point, he said that MY timeline is an echo chamber, because I had previously posted a meme saying "Not everybody has to like me.  I can't force you to have good taste."  I disagree with lots of my friends on a LOT of different topics, and they are all welcome to air these differences on my timeline.  In fact, I celebrate some of my friends exactly FOR calling me out when we disagree and pushing me for more information and my logic behind my opinions.  As it happens one of them, Tony Brown, was reading the thread and spoke up pointing this out.  He is probably the #1 person I invest time disagreeing with - because disagreeing with people and citing sources and logic IS A GOOD THING for me.  Wrestling vigorously with topics of all sorts is valuable in my life, for many reasons, the biggest of which is that you learn when you are hiding from looking deeply into your reasoning.  You recognize your 'hiding' behaviors and emotional reactions.  Now, those hiding behaviors and emotional reactions might be instinctive reactions.

Now, it turns out that he has a big investment in this 'interbreeding' issue.  I saw him post elsewhere that 'what people mistake for evolution is animals interbreeding and spreading genes to new species within a family'.  It's really a shame we didn't get to that - I could have gone on about Covid.  And, of course, I'm going to go on about it HERE, because, well, it's my blog.  

SARS-CoV-2 has been mutating since damn near day 1.  It doesn't matter if you think it escaped from a lab, or was released from a lab, or come directly from animals.  From the original strain, mutations have occurred - mutations, not 'they merged genes with other microbes' - to form new variants.  Different symptoms, different proteins in the spike, etc.  Not enough to be SARS-CoV-3 yet, but constant mutations never the less.  But he feels that 'all mutations are deadly'.  None can make something better at what it does.  And yet - here we are, with constant mutations  going on and we are finding out that some of them make the virus 'better' at spreading.  Are most of the mutations leading to variations that can't reproduce at all, or can't infect humans at all?  Probably.  But that is exactly the way Nature works.  Nature over produces and lets the variations fight it out.  Winner keeps reproducing.

For that matter, there are the Suffolk Pink and Winter Wonder apples.  Both are 'sports' - apples that came from mutations on existing trees of different varieties of apples.  Chance mutations that turned out to be darn fine apples, even if the Winter Wonder will never be available here in the US.

To get back to the original disagreement:  Are humans animals, or did he really mean that 'humans are more than 'just' animals?  For us pantheists/panentheists - animals (and plants and rocks and planets and etc.) are all infused with God-stuff, so even animals are 'more than just animals'.  I'm guessing that my ex-FB friend would say that either animals don't have souls or spirits OR that the souls/spirits they have aren't eternal, and only humans have eternal souls or spirits.  I also suspect that he thinks that there are no other sentient tool using species like humans anywhere in the universe, because that would be problematic for him - maybe Jesus would have to visit every planet and repeatedly die (and yes, I just got an image of Jesus as the Highlander)?  But since he didn't just unfriend me - he blocked me - I can't continue the conversation with him.

Yes.  They guy who I had said weeks ago was only interested in an echo chamber, and then accused me of only being interested in an echo chamber . . . blocked me for disagreeing with him and asking him for definitions and to cite his sources.  Welp, you KNOW I feel that proves my point.  

Frondly, Fern

Cats and Disorganization and Life, Oh My!

Blesssings Darlings!

My goodness, it's been over a week since I last blogged.  Time sure flies in harvest season.  And I'm havin a really hard time keeping up with all the tomatoes and Swiss Chard.  Which are the only things my garden is giving me tons of right now.  The avalanche of cucumbers is over (I'm still getting occasional ones), and the green beans are in nice steady production.  

We have just trapped the mothers of the 7 kittens we are fostering, and they will be spayed next week.  Which will slow the production of kittens - there is one more breeder out there, but she has very young kittens (like 2 weeks old) and they are hidden.  So while she keeps going into the traps to eat, we keep releasing her.  In another couple of months we'll work on trapping her and her latest kittens.

In my constant attempts to organize my life (ADHD?  Probably) I'm . . . well, I'm trying an approach that failed me before, but I'm SURE that it's going to be different this time.  The difference is that I'm powering it with spite this time.  That's also powering my latest diet - well, that and all the damn Swiss Chard from the garden.  

This new start stuff has been brought on by two different things.  One the purchase of my latest planner.  I buy one every year, of course, and lose track of it.  This year it just came out and the brand has a journal with it, too.  Maybe that will change things!  For those of you who don't know WHICH daily planner I get each year - it's the "Carpe Fucking Diem" one.  

Also - last night was the first cool night in rather a while.  Down in the mid 50's, with low humidity.  AUTUMN IS COMING!!!!!  I'm not a heat and humidity lover.  So I slept really well, and I have lots of cool weather energy today.  And maybe I've got a touch of blessed hypomania, which is always a good thing in my life.

Alas, the 90's will be back tomorrow.  I don't know what the humidity will be like.

That's that for now.

Frondly, Fern

A little this and that.

 Blessings Darlings!

We got heavy rain yesterday!  I fear that most of it ran off the lawn, but I will go out soon and start digging the hole for the elderberry.  At least the ground shouldn't be rock hard, right? 

I'm still being buried in tomatoes and Swiss Chard.  Drying the tomatoes is well underway.  Zucchini should start over producing soon.  Peppers are about perfect right now.

No homes yet for the 7 kittens we are currently fostering.  And the damn barn cat just had more kittens two days ago.  MY spawn has finally heard back and has plans for getting the fuzzy assholes spayed at reasonable cost. 

Music for the start of the day:  Flogging Molly, as backdrop for Sinead O'Connor's funeral.

Frondly, Fern

Still too dry. Soon to be hot.

 Blessings Darlings!

We're heading into a little heat wave here - 4 days in the 90's, at least one currently forecast to be 98. And the rain forecast for today didn't arrive, of course.  The somewhat underwatered basil really really wants to go to seed.  I really, really want it to keep going so I can make lots of pesto.  OTOH, the Chubby Hubby HATES pesto.  OTOOH, the Spawn LOVES it.

 
I've watered the potted plants on the patio, but not the ones in the actual veggie garden and certainly not the herb garden. That's hose work, and the hoses are already tucked away because the mowers the management hired come tomorrow morning. So I'll water after they mow, I guess, tho' the day will already be getting hot by then.  

 
If I was in charge of mowing the lawn - I'd certainly not be mowing this dry grass that hasn't grown at all since we're in the middle of a drought.  But I'm not.

 
I've made more progress in my lazy way to expand the garden (I cover the grass with cardboard, the flattened boxes we use to carry our groceries home from Aldi's). I've covered about another 100 square feet - like a 4 foot by 25 foot swath. I don't know if I'll expand plants into it this fall or wait until spring.

Weed whacking.

 Blessings Darlings!

Holy Moly, it's amazing what I can get done around here when I actually have time!  The feral garden has been weeded and mulched, except for the area by the big Swiss Chard patch.  And THOSE darlings are feral and able to fight back/block the sun from any weeds that dare try to invade.

Today I started work on enlarging the garden area.  Being lazy . . . err, efficient I went down into the basement, started taking all the damn empty cardboard boxes that the Chubby Hubby has down there and never gotten rid of, flattened them, and am using them to smother lawn.  They are currently being held down by bricks I have that I'd INTENDED to use to make a really great Rocket Stove out of. 

See, witches?  INTENT isn't really worth as much as actually TAKING F'ING ACTION does.  Let this be a lesson to us all.  

Later today I'll be running a hose (well, two or three hoses in series) to the faucet by the barn shed and watering everything well.  Then I'll move the hose away from the gate by the faucet, and away from the gate by the garden, and leave it in place by the fence where it won't get mowed or driven over for all future use. 

Tomorrow . . . sigh . . . the Chubby Hubby wants me to start looking for work, because HE couldn't find work easily.  Mind you, HE was looking for a job in his little high-tech niche.  Once he decided to just get a 'job', it took him little time.   

Oh, yeah - I forgot to mention this.  Over the past week we've taken in 7 feral kittens, from two of the three barn cats.  The barn cats that are nieces of our cat.  They aren't feral any more - it's amazing how much they like getting fed and are willing to cuddle and purr in exchange.  They are of course inbred - I'm sure that their daddy was their moms' brother (he was killed by a car since then.)  

Summer feral fertility, going strong.  

Frondly, Fern