Graveyard Dirt: Two Worlds and In-between

2009 Harvest

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THE GAME: 2009 Harvest. THE OBJECTIVE: Get in as much shit as you can before it gets dark. THE CONFLICT: Waking up just after FIVE IN THE FUCKING AFTERNOON, thus giving you only an hour or two to successfully complete the game. THE PRIMARY FRUSTRATION: Lack of natural light forcing the use of flash indoors creating shitty, blurred pictures. (OH, FLASH, WHY MUST YOU BE MY ONLY NATURAL ENEMY?)

Everything pictured above is what we managed to gather before night fell completely. Italics woke up just after six in the evening and immediately clambered up a ladder to help pick the plums out of my reach and dutifully pulled down branches of the rowan trees so I could cut down the berries.

(I WASN'T ALLOWED ON THE LADDER DUE TO MY TINY GODDESS FEET. <- TINY GODDESS FEET DON'T EASILY SUPPORT HUGE ASS GHETTO GODDESS ASSES. MY BALANCE? COMPLETELY AND TOTALLY FUCKED UP BEYOND BELIEF. THAT'S THE PRICE OF MY HOURGLASS FIGURE.)

Half-naked in Summer's waning warmth (NAKED WITCH ENJOYS BEING NAKED BUT ALSO UNDERSTANDS THAT SOMETIMES THERE IS A NEED FOR MINIMAL AMOUNTS OF CLOTHING, LIKE WHEN HUGGING PRICKLY PLANTS AND MOVING SHARP, BONE DRY TWIGS) I pottered around in the garden barefoot, my toes sinking into the cold grass as the scent of Frankincense wafted in the air.

(I had to test if a roofing slate would take the direct heat of a charcoal block so I set up a tiny altar on one of the patio's small columns - the one where I normally leave offerings for the crows - and burned dusty chunks of resin during the act of harvesting, bathing my ritual scissors and gathered fruits, vegetables and herbs in the fragrant, sanctifying smoke.)

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Way, way in the back in the plastic terracotta colored container is my sad looking wheat which looked so pitiful and pathetic that I attempted to cheat out on my wheat growing, harvesting and displaying responsibilities by cruising local wheat fields to see if there were any patches of field left unharvested. (The answer? NO. (NATURALLY OF COURSE!))

With no other option I sat down at one in the fucking morning and cut down my wheat, and sitting on the floor I gathering each stalk - sheaf by sheaf - tightly in my left hand until I created a mace-like scepter. Didukh? Done, and not nearly as awful as I envisioned it'd be. (Last year when we ritually Reaped I cut the wheat down when it was still green and straight in the field so it naturally dried in a desirable shape, this time around I waited too damn long and the majority of the VERY dry wheat slumped over itself in a cascade of honey gold. DESPITE THE USE OF FLATTERING ADJECTIVES IT WASN'T A HOT LOOK, YO.)

The huge yellow-white-green leaves next to the wheat are Papa's tobacco, and the bundle of long, tall stalks resting on top of the leaves is the very last of our dill. The orange-red berries are just a fraction of what's still left on our dirtyard rowan tree, and there were so many goddamn plums that I began running out of containers to keep them in. In the bottom right corner you can see some of the parsley that was cut down, but the majority of the herb got shoved in a giant orange bucket filled with water (CLASSY, I KNOW).

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HERB TRAY, AHOY! (Actually, it's a roasting pan so I guess it should be "HERB ROASTING PAN, AHOY!".) This is the very last of my beloved herbs, cut down deliberately (AND OH, HOW IT PAINED ME TO DO SO!) to offer to the Old Woman. (She gets a portion of EVERYTHING, including all of my culinary herbs.) In the mess you can sort've kind've see parsley, thyme, rosemary, mint, marjoram, oregano, bay and our last cucumber.

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PLUMS, PLUMS, GLORIOUS PLUMS! I waited YEARS for the plum trees in back to bear fruit, and the second I saw masses of white flowers around Beltane I guarded the trees with a crazy insane she-bitch ferocity. ("I'LL TELL YOU SOMETHING, HE [MY FATHER-IN-LAW] BETTER NOT EVEN FUCKING //LOOK// AT THE TREES, OR ELSE, DAMMIT! MARK MY WORDS - //OR ELSE//!")

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That effing basket is quickly climbing "MS. GRAVEYARD DIRT'S TOP FIVE RITUAL ITEMS" list. It was originally bought to transport our Easter/Great Rite ritual meal to church to be blessed (BECAUSE I'M SPECIAL AND DIFFERENT AND A PAIN IN THE FUCKING ASS I COMBINE BOTH SLAVIC CATHOLICISM - EASTERN ORTHODOX PRACTICES I GREW UP WITH - AND VARIOUS PAGAN TRADITIONS WHEN CELEBRATING EASTER / SPRING / THE GREAT RITE / HIEROS GAMOS), but it's since been used for all forms of wildcrafting, carrying fresh roadkill home, moving my witchcraft junk from one room to another (i.e., BOTTLES, MILLIONS AND BILLIONS OF LITTLE BOTTLES AND JARS) and, more recently, gathering the fruits (vegetables and herbs) of this year's harvest.

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A close-up shot of Papa's tobacco, dill, some of the plums picked and the top sprigs of a parsley plant.

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It was nothing short of STUPIDLY BLISSFUL JOY when tugging on the soft, swollen fruits and feeling them separate from the tree straight into my hand. I grew up partially feral in my Ukrainian grandparents' orchard (two acres of oaks, apples, pears, plums, cherries, grapes and vast flower and vegetable gardens), but as kids we never took part in mass harvesting. The only time I picked fruit was for instant consumption, so it was something of a novelty to collect all of the plums off the trees and gently drop them in my basket.

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The Old Woman's portion of my herbs were gathered together in neat little bundles and banded together (YAY FOR RUBBERBANDS! THEY SECURE CLING FILM OVER PITCHERS OF STOCK, OPEN PAIN IN THE FUCKING ASS STUCK JARS AND BUNDLE FRESH HERBS TOGETHER!) to create an herbal posy. This bouquet (GARNI! HAH HAH HAH, GET IT? GET IT? BECAUSE IT'S BAY AND PARSLEY AND THYME AND...oh God, never mind, it's a lame cooking joke) was placed on a miniature altar adjacent to our main Harvest Home altar next to even more parsley, my basil plant and a few bulbs of garlic.

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Fresh, organic herbs! (OH, GOD, HERBS, I WILL MISS YOU V. MUCH DURING THE DARK YEAR AND LOOK FORWARD TO SEEING YOU AGAIN DURING THE LIGHT YEAR.) The last - the best - for Her. (OH, THE SACRIFICES I MAKE TO - AND FOR - MYSELF! <- WHEN YOU WORSHIP YOUR SUBCONSCIOUS AS A DEITY YOU GET THE BEST OF //BOTH// WORLDS!)

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I struck a deal with the Old Woman - anything that touched the earth belonged to Her. So all of the windfall fruit - no matter how viable they were - were instantly turned over to Her and placed in Her offering bowl. And anything that fell out of my hands or basket when I was collecting, cutting and gathering shared a similar fate.

And that system was great and fine and She cheekily stole one or two plums off the branches while I was plucking their siblings, but the super major LOLOLOLOLOL! from the Universe came when there wasn't enough ladder (or Italics) to reach the plums at the very top of the tree and he was forced to shake the trunk to dislodge the last of the fruit. My job? My job was running back and forth at the foot of the ladder like a retard trying to catch every goddamn plum as they came crashing down so they wouldn't touch the ground.

(OI FUCKING VEY.)

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Moroccan mint! (A lot of it!) When bundling up the mint I actually GOT SICK just from the scent clinging to my hands. (Long story short? I have a broken stomach. There's a long list of UH OH! foods that set off my symptoms, and any sort of "mint" is RIGHT THE FUCK UP THERE. Even the perfumed fragrance of fresh mint is enough to get my lame ass stomach worked up.)

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My bucket'o'parsley! I grew a ring of parsley around one of my sweet corn plants to be able to dig them up later - roots and all. The rest of the parsley was planted in the raised dirt bed at the base of the Shango (Bone) Tree and grown exclusively for their leaves. (IF I PROMISED YOU ANY SORT OF WITCH PACKAGE YOU BETTER BELIEVE YOU'LL BE GETTING SOME HOMEGROWN SHANGO (BONE) TREE/PHALLIC WORSHIPING ALTAR PARSLEY.)

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These plums got some crazy love this past year. From Beltane to Mabon I was outside whispering, stroking, murmuring, kissing and affectionately touching the growing fruits. My day wasn't complete unless I went outside to inspect my plants and leave a little bit of love on clusters of ripening plums.

To give something back to the trees that brought me endless amounts of happiness during this year's growing season I'm going to give them an offering of my grandfather's beer (a 40oz Heineken that's been sitting in the graveyard since last year, diluted in a bucket of water), and I'm going to begin burying the carcasses of roadkill in the raised dirt bed that makes up the outside altar.

(That way the tree gets the nutrients from the decomposing bodies, I can grow magic herbs over the flesh and bones of ritually butchered roadkill and, once stripped by insects, I can go back and dig out the bare bones for personal use. <- WASTE NOT, WANT NOT!)