Lichenwood Rambles

Moonflower Mishaps

This was the Moonflower bud just two days ago.  I was excited and began to check on the bud every evening at sundown to see if this was "the night".

Last night the bud looked very promising.  It seemed ready to pop open, but when it began to lightly rain I retreated indoors and promised myself that I would get up early and visit before the sun grew strong enough to close the flower.

All that was left was this long drooping stamen.  When I searched underneath the fence, this is what I found.

I am still hoping that during the full moon one of the remainging buds will open and become a moonlight essence.  Stay tuned!

Lichenwood Garden Refugees

This scraggly looking lot is the beginning of a garden exodus.  It's beautiful weather today and by all reports the warmish weather will last far into next week at the least without a frost in sight.  Still, we'll be flipping the calendar pages to October tomorrow.  Realistically, a killing frost will happen shortly.  So today Daryl and dug up 4 Rosemary plants, 2 Rose Geraniums, the Calea zacatechichi, a veritable giant of a Lemon Verbena and 2 of the largest Pineapple Sage plants we've ever grown.  Whew.

The Rosemary plants loved their summer outdoors, roots in the Earth, unconfined.  Look how lush they are!  All I can smell is Rosemary as I type this. Yum!  I am hoping they can make a gentle transition to indoor life.  For now I'll be leaving all the plants outside in their pots while I figure out where the heck they will be living indoors.  Some will need a little trim before they are ready to make the change.

This Pineapple Sage is over 5 feet tall and it smells fabulous.  Most people recommend taking cuttings rather than trying to move the whole plant indoors.  I've had good luck bringing them into the greenhouse where they will bloom right around Thanksgiving time.  I never had two as huge as these beauties though, so I took a little cutting just in case.  I'll keep you posted and hopefully have some stunning red flowers in November.  After the bloom I will cut them back and move them to the unheated basement under the sunroom.

Waxing Poetic

Late September

In the morning gray stillness
Autumn’s damp drizzle coats
leaves turning upward drinking
yellowing last gasps
surrendering to the inevitable
circling and cycling
white black death freeze
seeds dropped in rich red purple fruit
nourished golden roots bundled in brown Earth
longing for green dreams
within the long white night of the wheel year

Close to Home

I feel a bit like this half opened Morning Glory today.  I'm here, but I'm not quite with it!  One of those sudden, brief but intense stomach viruses paid me a visit late last night and hung around until just before dawn.  You know the drill so I won't go into detail.  I have graduated to sipping ginger ale and munching on dry toast.  There are lots of errands that I could or should be doing, but I'm sticking close to home.

The Garden Witch has flown away from the Wild Witch Garden/Mugwort Patch and is now hovering over the Chrysanthemums by the front door.  A brief walkabout through the yard provided me with plenty of interesting natural phenomenon to gaze upon.

Here's a little colony of puffball mushrooms growing near the driveway.  I resisted the urge to stomp them simply to view the satisfying little puff of mushroom spore "smoke".  There is definitely still a 5 year old inside of me that really wanted to experience the fun of it, but the grown up woman that I am actually liked the way that they've arranged themselves so artfully in the woodland debris, so I let them be and will have to be satisfied with memories of puffball squishing.

I think there are more Oak-Apple galls this year than I've ever seen.  I've always thought they were magickal and researched them a few years back.  Another folk name for them is "Serpent's Egg".  They are in reality formed by a species of wasp in early spring on Red, Scarlet, and Black Oaks.  The eggs and larvae develop in the parasitic galls until the wasp emerges in late July and the galls themselves turn brown and dry.

In Medieval times the galls were used to make ink because of their high content of tannic acid.  They have also been used in folk magick to help divine whether your lover is true.  Two galls are placed to float in a bowl of water one is named for each of the people involved.  If the two galls float toward each other, the lover is true, but if they separate, the lover is false.

This Oak-Apple gall has a face!  And looking at it, I kind of know just how he/she feels!  I think I'll have another sip of ginger ale.

Light in the Forest

In the damp areas of Lichenwood, along the brook, Witch Hazel lives with Spicebush and Winterberry.  I took this photo of Witch Hazel's fat buds on my Autumn Equinox walk.  As I wandered through the forest peaking under the leaves I was surprised to see that Witch Hazel flowers are already beginning to bloom.

 

When the leaves fall, the flowers will be easier to spot and will illuminate the darkness of the late Autumn woodlands with their light.

Autumn's Bright Berries

Winterberry (Ilex verticillata) has started its beautiful red berry display in the wetlands.  Native Americans called this plant "feverbush" and used it medicinally to reduce fever.  This is one of my favorite native shrubs because it adds so much interest to the black an white landscape of winter.  The green leaves will fall from this bush over the next few weeks leaving the intense red berries to decorate the barren wetland woods.  Turkey, quail, deer, and winter songbirds will all be attracted to this American Holly to feed on the berries.  The leafless berried branches are often used to decorate windowboxes and whiskey barrel planters during the winter holidays.

These dangling orange/red drupes are Barberry.  This one, growing in First Field, is Berberis thunbergii, an Asian native that has escaped from gardens and is now considered an invasive plant species.  I've also seen Berberis Vulgaris here.  The flowets and berries hang differently from the thorny branches.  They are both medicinal.  Herbalists use root and stem bark for their high berberine content.  The berries can be made into jam, so they say.  Birds and small mammals will eat these fruits too.

Autumn Olive (Elaeagnus umbellata), pictured above, is often planted as a wildlife food for the purpose of attracting game such as wild turkey, pheasant, quail, or doves to an area.  It is now found from Maine south to Virginia, and west to Wisconsin.  Many states consider it to be a dangerous invasive weed and have entered into programs to eradicate it with herbicides.  It can take extreme pruning and continue to flourish.  In September of 2001, the news broke that the berries from Autumn Olive are as much as 18 times richer  in the antioxidant lycopene than tomatoes, and could be an important ally in the fight against cancer and other diseases.  The berries have a remarkable keeping quality and can be stored up to 15 days at room temperature.  About 90% of the lycopene ingested in the United States comes from tomatoes and tomato products, but  we now know that Autumn Olive berries contain the same carotenoids as the tomato--lycopene, beta carotene and lutein.   Beta carotene and lutein levels appear to be comparable to other more commonly ingested vegetables and fruits. When lycopene content is measured, however, Autumn Olive berries contain from 15 to 54 milligrams of lycopene per 100 grams, compared to an average 3 mg/100 g for fresh tomatoes, 10 mg/100 g for canned tomatoes, and 30 mg/100 g for tomato paste.  That is an amazing difference.

Walking the Wall

Yesterday I ventured out to walk along the stonewalls that trail through Lichenwood.  I wonder who put forth all the effort to build these barriers?   They no longer serve their original purpose, perhaps, but the lot line for our property is marked by this wall.  The rocks themselves arrived with the glacier of the last ice age, providing generations of New England farmers with their most famous spring crop: rocks that emerge yearly in cultivated fields, heaved out of the ground by frost.  Our rural stonewalls were immortalized by New Hampshire's own poet, Robert Frost, in "Mending Wall".

Ferns are turning golden brown beneath the Maples, Silver Birch, and Oaks.  There are several layers of life ongoing here: the upperworld of swaying branches, turning leaves, and scolding jays; the middle world of berried shrubs and dappled light; the underworld, beneath the the ferns where Squawvine, multi-hued mushrooms, and Indian Pipe inhabit the hidden realms.

A ghostly forest of Indian pipe spanned either side of the stonewall.  It was the largest collection of these plants I've seen in one location ever.  The signature of this plant tells us much about its use as a flower essence.  When a plant is shaped so conspicuously like a Native American peace pipe, and when all its folklore and even medicinal properties talk about calming, sedation, and peace, the message of Indian Pipe is clear.

Taking this essence opens the heart chakra to receive and experience universal love.  The emotional body is cleansed.  It would be helpful to take this essence if a person was going through a time of feeling unloved or excluded from social groups.  It aids cooperation and a feeling of unity with all life.  Universal love is all around us and available to receive whenever we have need.  This essence has the unique ability to wake us up to the presence of this loving vibration, to take it within ourselves, to bask in its light, and then to become a radiant beacon sending out this love to heal the planet and the strife that exists between her peoples.  Indian Pipe helps us to see our commonality, not our differences.

There is an ancient history associated with this plant’s peace keeping mission.  In the channeled information from Hilarion to Gurudas, it was revealed that this plant was a symbol of peace between the civilizations of Atlantis and Lemuria.  The purpose of this plant when it was created by the Lemurians was to remind the beings of both continents that it was possible for them to have great differences, yet live together peacefully on the Earth.

Thinking of the Indian Pipe and its mission for peaceful relations among the inhabitants of the planet, takes me back once again to Robert Frost and "Mending Wall":

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun;
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
"Stay where you are until our backs are turned!"
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of outdoor game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
He is all pine and I am apple-orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, "Good fences make good neighbors."
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
"Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down!" I could say "Elves" to him,
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself. I see him there,
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors."

- Robert Frost.

Rituals, both sacred and mundane

Blessings of Autumn to all.  Energy is shifting on all levels today.  It’s the second New Moon in Virgo.  It’s the Autumnal Equinox.  The Earth is experiencing a solar eclipse.  Wiccans are celebrating Mabon.

Mabon is celebrated at the Autumnal Equinox, or when the Sun reaches zero degrees of Libra.

Also called: Harvestide, Harvest Home, Autumn Equinox, The Witches’ Thanksgiving. Festival of Dionysus, the Wine Harvest, Harvest of First Fruits, Cornucopia, the Feast of Avalon, Equinozio di Autunno (Strega), and Alban Elfed (Caledonii). The Teutonic name for this season is Winter Finding. Another name for the Autumnal Equinox is Fogharadh - which is a Gaelic word meaning "hospitality and abundance".

Moon phase equivalent:  Third Quarter Moon

Direction: West     Time of Day:  Dusk

Colors: Red, Brown, Orange, Russet, Gold, Indigo, Purple

Herbs: Apples, Chrysanthemum, Goldenrod, Marigold, Milkweed, Myrrh, Passionflower, Solomon’s Seal, Thistle, Wheat

Gemstones: Yellow Jasper, Lapis Lazuli, Sapphire, Yellow Topaz

Themes: Autumn begins as Persephone returns to the Underworld; Root harvesting; Celebration of the Apple Harvest; Feasting on the harvest; sharing the harvest with others, especially those in need; Wine deities are honored; The full moon closest to the Equinox is know as the Harvest Moon; We celebrate the story of Mabon ap Modron, " the son of the mother", the Divine Youth, the Son of Light.

And so, today, there has already been sacred time at the altar, connecting to the energies of the day, acknowledging the balance of light and dark, and giving thanks for all the harvests thus far completed.  The corn hangs by the doorway.  Infused oils and herbal tinctures are stored away.  The flower essences of Summer 2006 are waiting in amber bottles for further meditative analysis over the winter months.

At Lichenwood, we celebrate this holiday in the context of the Witches’ Thanksgiving.  To that end there will be a festive dinner created with the fruits of the Lichenwood garden and local farm stand:  cube steak with tomatoes, peppers, and onions, mashed potatoes, rosemary bread, and apple crisp.  The latest problems with bagged spinach highlight the importance of eating local, seasonal crops as much as is possible.

Today is also marks the time when I will change the display on my stepback cupboard.  This piece was built by my father, at my mother’s direction.  My mother’s crow figures stand guard at the top.  In the light half of the year, from Spring Equinox until its Fall counterpart, there is a display of Stangl dishware from the 1940’s and 50’s featuring flowers and fruit.  My mother selected the Terra Rose pattern as an 18 year old bride in 1947.  By the time I left high school twenty years later, almost all were broken, lost, or discarded, but I always had a nostalgic yearning for the flowered dishes of my early childhood.  I began collecting Stangl after the death of my parents when the stepback cupboard came to live at my house.

In the Fall, I shift the display to a more seasonally correct dish pattern, Lenox’s Winter Greetings Everyday.  This pattern features native birds and botanicals in their winter aspect.  So that will be my mundane ritual for today, the change of dishware display.  No more tea from the Sunflower teapot, or spoons of sugar from the Morning Glory sugar bowl.  Instead, it will be tea from the Cardinal teapot in mugs featuring the Goldfinch, Chickadee, and Nuthatch sitting on bare-limbed berried branches.

I’m wishing all who read this the joys of the season.  May all your harvests be bountiful and nourishing.  May you find joy in celebrations both sacred and mundane.

Seeds for the Black Moon

Moonflower buds are developing on the Garden's Equinox Arch, but they will need to be far larger before the tight spiraled bud unfurls, so I'm hoping for the frost to hold off.  Nevertheless, as I look at the Arch and the gardens, woods, and fields, I'm well aware of the astrological events of tomorrow: a Solar eclipse (7:41am EDT), a New Moon (the second one this month in the sign of Virgo- hence a "Black Moon" at 7:45am EDT), and the Autumn Equinox(9:06am EDT).  Wow!

New Moons are always about planting seeds.  Seeds need the darkness to grow.  In the fertile darkness of earth, of the womb, the depths of the ocean and of space, a spark of divine light ignites.  A miracle comes into being.  Nature is setting seed now to ensure the miracles of Spring.

This time that we live in demands much from us.  We should carefully consider the seeds that we plant at this pivotal New Moon.  Miracles will surely grow from seeds planted with positive intention.  Whatever grows from this potent time, may it be for our highest good.

The Sun ebbs and Dreams beckon

Seeds are forming everywhere in the Lichenwood garden.  The sunflower heads are heavy now and droop toward the ground.  The time of the sunny rayed flower is over.  Black and white seeds are coming into being.

The sun that used to cast its light on the garden during high summer does not rise as high in the sky at this time of year.  The tall pines at the edge of the yard filter the dwindling light and leave dew on the plants, grass, and spiderwebs for most of the day now.

This jeweled web rests in the branching foliage of Calea zacatechichi.  Calea zacatechichi is used by the Chontal Indians of Mexico to obtain divinatory messages during dreaming. Whenever it is desired to know the cause of an illness or the location of a distant or lost person, dry leaves of the plant are smoked, drunk and put under the pillow before going to sleep. Reportedly, the answer to the question is revealed in dreamtime.  I'm hoping to nurture this plant along until it grows large enough to  flower.  This means digging it up very soon and placing it in a pot for the winter.  Currently the Calea plant is quite healthy and about three feet tall.  I'm hopeful that in a sunny location inside I can extend the growing season enough to experience bloom.