I walked outside to check on my tomatoes this morning. I couldn't believe how cold I was in my long pants and sweatshirt, but when I checked the temperature, it was barely sixty. There are four blue jays that have learned to hang out where I feed the crows, and they followed me around, hopping on my tomato stakes and cage, until I went inside to get a few peanuts. There are two that are mated and I think their fledged kids from earlier this spring. I believe this is the relationship between them because two of them are very loud and want help with their food.
I made a line of more peanuts on my porch railing so all day I can watch the blue of them coming and going and meeting my eyes through the open screen door. They are less afraid of coming into my general human space than the crows, but the crows will come physically closer to my body. I can feel the air from their feathers when they fly with me when I'm running, and if I sit down in the graveyard, they'll gather around me on all sides. I'm not afraid of them, but they startle me sometimes because they come down so silently and are such big birds. They make eye contact like Sven does, not like other wild animals.
It's a good year for tomatoes, at least. The last two have been such busts that it's almost startling to see how much mine have grown. They are higher than my hip bones and covered with green fruit. Most are the usual suspects, brandywines, purple cherokee, stripeys and oxhearts, but I have one weird guy that is supposed to be black with yellow spots like the nightsky. In my experience, cool-looking black tomatoes rarely taste as good as the other ones, but they'll look neat in a basket.
There's a full moon Thursday and I'm thinking about what I want to do with it. The last two moons were such bad ones that I didn't dare work with that energy. Maybe I'll plant a few more sunflowers.
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The world feels like it's moving under my feet a little bit - lurching somewhat. I get dizzy a lot. At least I'm not stalled out between these last two ill-intentioned eclipses, depression, and stagnation. I feel like a dynamic character again. I'm struggling to put something into words, the act of which at least has always made me feel more alive.
This blog has always felt about my experience of nature and practice. This is where I stuff away the secret things that I can't say in my normal life, all the things that I don't have words for but can't articulate. I've felt compelled to record the things that have felt the most connected to in my life, and so often those things were as simple as a dumb bird, a mossy rock sitting out in a creek that's flat enough to create a little shelf. I know where every type of mushrooms grow and I know about other things - a particular patch of trillium that is bright red, a cave behind a waterfall where I could light a fire if I wanted. I keep small items: acorns that fell into a hen of the woods and the fungi grew around it, a handful of yellow feathers, a dried cardinal flower that has kept all of its color. All of these things feel significant. Sometimes they connect into spells.
The last week, I had a little bit of an epiphany about it all - about myself, but about my greater experience of the world too. It's going to sound dumb. Do you know how dumb I am, though? God, sometimes I fucking ache with it.
Nobody really knows about my witchcraft - I've shared it with one, maybe two people in my life. A lot of people assume I'm a witch but I feel odd talking about it. Twice in the last few weeks, a stranger has asked "are you a witch?" - not tarot cards at party or in the joking way my friends sometimes do "oh, she's off being witchy again" - but in earnest, as a serious question, and I haven't known what to say. I was evasive. I've always been secretive by my nature. Growing up in a family like mine, you learn that early.
But I never have really thought of myself like a witch. I've been doing little things all my life, yes. But calling it practice, craft, or trying to solicit a higher power the way that modern witches do; that's all felt like religion, and I'm a little dogbit over churches. If there was a god who wanted to work with me, would it even have any power? If nobody worships except a few instagram witches on the internet, does that reanimate a deity that has had nothing to eat in hundreds or thousands of years?
There's something, though. I'm feeling a little stronger with it. It makes me better, being outside and keeping track of my birds and signs, or maybe it's just the extra vitamin D from the long days and big runs in the sunshine.
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My crows brought in their first fledgling yesterday! I had been so worried. Last year, this time, there were lots and lots of babies, but this year I hadn't seen even one. I was worried they had all been eaten with their proximity to the hawk nest, or maybe they were sick. But sure enough, when I went to give them breakfast in the yard yesterday, they had a squawky, big beggy yellow mouth fledgling with them!
It was also good to see they felt comfortable enough bringing it into the yard. Last year, they didn't even come to the house. It made me happy.
