Ball Party

The Groundhog Ball Party was to celebrate "all the other balls*" and somehow I became a person who decorates, and decorates with a selfie station.  We had arancini, meatballs, snowballs, cheese balls, gougeres, chocolate cake balls, tangerines, Jell-O balls, chocolate balls and cranberry ice balls.  The winner of pin-the-shadow on the groundhog won the Magic 8 Ball.
*Other than sports ball, dancing balls and testicles.

I actually followed directions to make gazing balls
or perhaps they are palantiri.

The topiary ball is on a glass ball with a glass
ball vase with flowers inside it.

Witching still happening

"Disco" Ball and Magic 8 Ball

May One

The first of May is somewhat of a big deal to me.

Growing up, on the first of May I dropped paper baskets full of dandelions on our doorstep, and every so often as an adult send May baskets to friends. One year I made a May pole in my basement.  I consider it the start of my favorite month of flowers and celebrations. 

The first of May marks the beginning of Pediatric Stroke Awareness Month and I often alert folks to the Childrens' Hemiplegia and Stroke Association (chasa.org) and the fact that kids have strokes, too.

The first of May often coincides with the beginning of the end of the college school year (I'm giving a final tomorrow and one Friday, and graduation is Saturday!) and has become the time I catch up on phenology: I can usually report when the Mississippi Kites arrived (not yet!) and can compare flower seasonality because I post an image of big bouquet each year.

Things have felt odd this week.  It has been a gray and drizzly-- exceptionally spring-like and completely out of place for Western Oklahoma.  Monday I gave a final to one of the best group of students I have every had, with tears and thank-yous and graduation announcements exchanged at the end.  Meanwhile I'll be pleasantly surprised if all of the students make it to Friday's final in a similar-sized class.  My institution's fabulous Dean of Students, the woman who assured every student, parent of student, and faculty member, that she would help with their problems, and that she had chocolate in her office if she couldn't herself be of help, died.  I learned of her death yesterday through an awkward e-mail.  Later in the day I learned that the provost's father and Dianthus's PE teacher's husband died and that there are lots of roles needing filled during end-of-year stuff at our schools.

Given my renewed proclamation of my witchy nature and pagan tendencies (a quick "May Day" search of this blog will demonstrate that my love of May Day long precedes witch year), today I felt I needed a May basket, but I was thinking of death as I glumly walked through the wet grass looking for flowers. I picked the iris and bachelor buttons along the alley and peaking out of a kids' digging area overgrown with honeysuckle and vinca were giant fluffy peonies.  They are along a warm south facing wall in an area that isn't seen, so I didn't feel at all bad about picking them.

I found a real basket from a dear friend.  I gave myself a self-inflicted challenge of arranging them in the basket rather than in a vase. I lit the sun and moon candle from Carrie-Ann, my moonbeam (I was her sunshine) who died in September and suddenly we were all there: friends near and far, mother and grandmothers, witches, flowers; light, gray, dark, life, and death, sun and moon.  Spring Re-birth.
And because I'm a product of my time, I snapped a photo, blew out the candle, posted the picture on social media and rushed my sons to their evening activity. 

So May One feels a little more this year.  It reads like the start of some blessing for which I haven't had time to prepare an end:
May one look out for the birds that are bound to come through.
May one recognize that pink fluffiness is transient, but that doesn't make it any less real.
May one light the candles of friendship.
May one remember that death calls us all.
May one recall that just as winter comes, so does spring.
May one always have a colleague with chocolate in her office and may one be the bearer of chocolate when needed.

May one have a great May.

Burning off the winter

The Groundhog Party 2019: A Summoning of Spring, was a huge success.  We had a new winner of pin the shadow on the groundhog, the groundhog apple pie in cheddar crust was as delicious as ever* (and there was enough food that I we had leftovers for breakfast), clouds wafted from the punch, and we twirled fire.

For the 26th year of groundhog parties (the first was in Boulder in 1994), a dear friend drove down from Kansas, we baked gorgeous pies, and we added witchiness to the celebration.  At first the witchiness felt a bit forced-- what can we do to end witch year with a party?  And then I started reading about pagan sabbats and investigating Imbolc and suddenly it all made so much sense because the Groundhog Party has always been a pagan celebration of the coming of spring.  This year we added extra flowers, made the pies extra sunny (traditional Imbolc foods are wheat and round and golden), lit candles throughout the house, and burned away the greens of winter (in this case adding some kerosene to a giant sedge I had brought home from work).  

It was a great party.  I don't think anyone resented that I made them make name tags and did formal introductions because it led to guests meeting other guests and actually talking.  People asked for pie recipes.  We started making plans for practice sessions with the fire torches so that more people will want to pull them out next year.  At church this morning, three weeks after the party, a man went out of his way to thank me for inviting him. 

I'm writing this to remind you (and myself of the future) that people are longing to celebrate.  It doesn't take a witch to bring people together for frivolity and good food, but the synergy can make magic. 

JMM with Shaker Blood Orange Pie

Welcome of witches, hedgehogs, and seasonal
guessing game

Shaker Lemon: J.M. Moody Photo

Flowers!

 *The Sausage Apple Pie and the Shaker Lemon and Shaker Blood Orange are all from Kate McDermott's The Art of the Pie.

That Kind of Witch, Too

"I am not THAT kind of witch," was to be today's proclamation, after I declared yesterday that I am a witch.  And certainly there are lots of kinds of witches I am not.  I am not a magical being (at least, not beyond being a living loving human, which is, in itself, pretty spectacular magic).  I do not cast spells.  I do not wish ill on others.  I'm not a midwife.  I'm not Wiccan.  I'm not an herbalist.  Much as I'd like to, I can't fly, and I have no particular affinity for broomsticks.

But beyond a lifetime of interest in celebrating the seasons and the moon (and Glow Year and Star Year), often right on the pagan holidays, I'm now 33 years into the same Halloween costume, "a witch with a day job". I've always taken photos of fungus, I take great pride in the cakes I bake and I love serving glowing kitchen magic.  I'm those kinds of witches, too, and I haven't even mentioned the herbs, or the roots, or the flowers.

Unbothered by Witch of a Mother

Ohio in July

Kangaroo Jedi

Pomegranate Almond Cake-- Symbolic and Tasty

Nine Layers for 9th Birthday
"Just bake 5 and cut them in half before stacking" said his uncle

7 in July

Almost a Hummingbird

Apparently my Mother-in-Law Knows
(she made this for my birthday)

Thoughts a Sennight Before Imbolc

I have not become more of a witch this year.

Between visiting Salem and staying with a friend with spell books over the summer, it became clear that that sort of witchcraft is not my thing.  And while the year has been emotionally taxing and politically frustrating, my personality is just not that b sort of witchy.

C-A July 2018.  Love is stronger than any craft.

After my dear friend C-A, the friend who had responded with such love to my initial post about witches ["I see the witch theme as having more of a sacred relationship to nature and a focus on the magical essence of life.  Maybe we can collaborate on some ideas for focuses through the year?"] died in September, before we had a chance to collaborate on discussing the sacred relationship to nature, I was nearly ready to stall the pursuit of witches indefinitely.

Yet by December, the seasons had changed again.  I had been given A Discovery of Witches and the rest of the All Souls Trilogy right after I picked up Harry Potter again, and I started reading novels of witches back to back (with a feminist space opera interlude for K.B. Wagers's Beyond the Chaos).  I just finished A Secret History of Witches this morning and pulled out Ellen Dugan's Garden Witchery to figure out what herbs to feature at the upcoming groundhog party.  The groundhog party has become my place to start or end themed years, as with last year's ten pie graduation, and I had already planned on lots of witchy touches to the party: candles, flowers, a cauldron of dry ice punch, flaming torches and the subtitle "A Summoning of Spring"

I flipped open Garden Witchery to the page about the sabbat of Imbolc.  The book, written by a suburban Missouri gardener, has practical family rituals for each of the eight pagan celebrations of the seasons.  Imbolc became St. Brigit's Day became Candlemas became Groundhog Day.  It is halfway between the solstice and the equinox, the time when days really are noticeably longer, when the weather of winter may be fierce but there are cracks in the grip of winter; it is clear that spring will comes.  For Imbolc, Dugan suggests arranging some flowers and candles in the house and then getting outside to watch the sun and do something observing nature, like taking the family to a wildlife refuge to look for eagles.   This sounds familiar.

Not my natural habitat

From all my recent reading, I've learned that witches celebrate the solstices and equinoxes (yep, I've thrown parties for those) and days in between: Imbolc/Groundhog Day as the light returns, May Day/Beltane, the harvest, and Halloween.  I've thrown parties, baked, and lit candles for those as well (many recorded on this blog).

I have been a gardener all of my life.  I wrote my 5th grade research paper on "Medicinal Uses of Herbs in Colonial America."  For 4-H Creative Cooks contents I proposed menus for May Day (with baked lemon bread), Midsummer's Eve (a lemon fool with blackberry sauce), comet watching, and the spring equinox (with a blueberry and kiwi yin-yang tofu cheesecake).  I started sending out Groundhog cards in 8th grade reminding friends to celebrate the season, whatever the season is, and my first party was 25 years ago.

So I haven't become any more of a witch.
I've always been one.

"How many witches were killed in Salem Township in 1692?"

[Flip the museum display board for the answer.]

"Zero."

Thus reads the display panel at the National Park Service's Salem Heritage Site. 

"But," I sputtered.  "But I just read about 19 people killed.  But two of them were my great (x11) aunts!  But that's why we are here!"

Yes, over 200 people were accused of witchcraft in the Salem area in 1692 -1693.  Nineteen or twenty of them were killed, among them my great aunts, by hanging.  None of them were witches.

Somehow the visit to Salem in June was a turning point in witch year.  I didn't do a single tacky-touristy-witchy thing (unless you count taking a photo for this blog in front of the "Witch City Mall" windows). not just because they were tacky-touristy-wastes of money, but also because it didn't feel right.  By most definitions, I am not a witch.  While I would like to be a witch by at least a few definitions (and I am still working on defining a witch for witch year), paying some cloaked actor to talk about "real witches" while walking past the memorial to the (apparently fake) witches who lost their lives to collective hysteria isn't worthwhile witch pursuit.  I'm working out again what is.

[Images to go here include the lichen encrusted rocks with the names of my fore aunts and the dates of their hangings and me at the witch city mall.  We've recently changed computers again, and I don't have convenient access at the moment].

All Sorts of Foolishness

So it wasn't snowing, but it was very cold hunting eggs

Should you have been directed here by my annual letter of the first of April, of course you know that most of it is true (insects, broken wrist, grandparent visit, KU lost, teacher strike, summer travels, study about white privilege at church, witch ancestors) but the amusing details are not (today's snow, asparagus pee genetics, new dessert investigation) and of course there does not exist a June 31, but the Lek Off (a real word for prairie chicken mating dances) and the leeks in the plumbing are now classic and need to be re-used.  At least I'm amused as I repeat myself.

Energy so great it can't be captured in focus
(or something like that)

If you are here for a witch year update: here's a quick one.  I didn't do anything special for the second blue moon of the year, except for re-reading on the setting of dates of Easter and Passover.
I find myself considering many of my necklaces and scarves to be witchy and feel special when I am wearing them, although none of them is new or newly symbolic to me.
I've spent a great deal of time with my familiar, a white cat.
The Mister and I saw magical plants in California over spring break, including coastal redwoods, horsetails, and manroot (Marah, which interested me because it appeared to be closely related to the the squirting cucumber, Cyclanthera, that I study, and which must be useful to witches, because how could "man root" not be).

At magical Muir Woods

I've contemplated more of what it means to be a witch in other cultures as I read the excellent Dovekeepers by Alice Hoffman and A Star Touched Queen by Roshani Chokshi.  More on those someday (and let me know if you've read either so we can talk

Aster's Pinewood Derby Car
Altogether a different kind of foolishness

Manroot

Manroot Flowers

Golden Gate Bridge in Background

).

Witch Pie Books

Alice Hoffman's Nightbird was one of a few magical baking novels read in the summer of 2016 that led me to Year of Pie.   As it is an enchanting novel featuring pies, gardens, birds and witches, a re-read felt like just the right thing to bridge year of pie and witch year. The YA novel is still highly recommended.

A quick Amazon search led to Witch's Pie, a self-published children's book that didn't do much for me and two series that I need to investigate: M. Z. Andrew's Witch Squad Cozy Mysteries, including one entitled Witch Pie and Ellery Adams' Charmed Pie Shoppe Mysteries, which includes Pies and Prejudice.  Having been disappointed by Joanne Fluke's Blackberry Pie Murder, I'm not running out to buy any more baking mysteries, even if they do include witches, but if someone had a copy lying around . . . 

Rats, no pie, but lots of fun

Good book-- but that's not amaranth.

Meanwhile, at my local library, searching "witch pie" yields The Brixen Witch by Stacy DeKeyser.  I checked it out, baffled how a rat-infested re-telling of the pied piper would have anything to do with baked goods.  It was some time before I realized that "pied" includes PIE whether or not baked goods are involved (and I just now realized I could have been looking at pied-billed grebes and pied flycatchers during the bird to pie transition last year).  I enjoyed the book and will be adding the Brixen witch herself to my upcoming descriptions of witches.

Somewhere in the last week or two I also read The Amaranth Enchantment by Julia Berry, a very nice fairy tale that would have been made much nicer if the cover art included amaranth for the amaranth witch rather than an amaryllis (or an odd orchid).  True, the amaryllis is more to look at, but it is no "love-lies-bleeding" and many readers (well, at least this reader) would know that. 

I also finished Ruth Chew's The Wednesday Witch, which, while very pleasant about a witch getting mistaken for a vacuum cleaning repair woman in 1960s Brooklyn, is no What the Witch Left, which is one of my childhood favorites, also by Ruth Chew.

So I've worn witchy clothes at least once a week, I said "no" to a committee I didn't want to serve on, I've read three witch-pie books, two other witch books and ate lots of garlic with The Mister for Valentine's Day.  The year is off to a good start.

On the Eve of the Super Blue Blood Moon

Which year starts tomorrow?

Witch year starts tomorrow!

I think the second full moon of the year (and the month, thus the blue moon) with a morning lunar eclipse is the right time to start Witch Year.

Pie year continue until the lunar new year (Feb. 16), but I'll be starting my exploration of witches wearing black and petting a white cat as I watch the closest moon of the year (super moon) go behind the shadow of the earth.