Graveyard Dirt: Two Worlds and In-between

Bride's Day Eve

It's Bride's Day (Imbolc) Eve. Tomorrow I'll be welcoming the Bride into our home for a homecooked meal (see menu list within), we'll weather predict together and later in the evening I'll turn down a bed for Her so She can stay the night. Since the majority of my Imbolc will be spent in the kitchen (although I'm hoping to sneak out of the house for a snow laced walk to see the local lactating ewes) I did the housecleaning today to get it straight out of the way.

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I honestly for real can't remember the last time the room was //this// clean. (Because it's a secondary room it's the default dumping room.) I'll be making Bride's bed on the leather couch, and decorating the coffee table with some of my ritual linens. (<- It'll be a pretty basic altar: my miniature cast iron pot belly chimney, and a fancy lady-like table setting with Her meal laid out for Her).

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I love this room and already rue the day Italics' parents will "rediscover" it. It's south facing so it's gorgeously balmy in summer and cozily warm during winter. I've lost count how many days I've spent lying naked on a sheepskin rug, high, sunbathing in the light while listening to old The Sisters of Mercy records. (I get excited when I see the room this clean. When I see any open, clean space I feel motivated to do shit, and get shit /done/.)

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The backroom's entertainment unit. Because we're desperate for space the record player has to play witch's closet as the last batch of 2009's wildcrafted goods finish drying.

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The very last of my organic/wildcrafted projects I need to wrap up. The red berries are dried rowan berries from our tree outside, the long tray's filled with almost dried rose-lemon scented geranium leaves (off my indoor plant), the small trinket dish of seeds are the wheat kernels pulled out of the pheasant's crop when I butchered him (there's bits of his feathers, skin and fat mixed in with the seeds so when I plant them in the Spring the wheat plants will emerge from his remains), the small white bowl is filled with crossroad dirt that's so fucking concrete I need to moisten it to break it down more easily and the large wooden bowl is full of the nuts used on/within our kitchen table Christmas centerpiece that we're going to split open and offer to the local wildlife.

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Once I brought my Stone Cock to life I promised him that he'd spend summers outdoors on his phallic worship altar, but during winter he'd be brought in from the cold until Spring had returned. He came indoors the first day it snowed this Winter, and then I bathed him, dried him and glorified him on my succulent altar. (Stone Cock and Harvest Home yam are TOTALLY BFF.)

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Part of Harvest neatly bottled and jared up. Let me see if I can actually make any of this shit out...

I see black currants from the graveyard, 2008's tobacco, dried pot leaves, dried pot flowers and pollen, various chili peppers, lavender buds, wheat collected from local fields, green acorns, Muriel's necromancy incense, outside backyard bones, strips of sycamore bark (off what'll eventually become my Spring broom), plum pits from last year's plum harvest, gun shots out of dead rabbits and a bottle of homemade raspberry vinegar.

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Bride's Day dinner: corned beef, vegetables boiled in corned beef liquid, dill potatoes, skirlie, oatmeal soda bread, Bride's braid bread and, for dessert, homemade creme brulee. (I loathe my handwriting, isn't it awful and totally unspectacular?)

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I was tremendously lucky to find this in tact. (Wishbones are BIG juju for me. Normally they're destroyed due to various forms of cooking (see below), so when I manage to find a wishbone in one piece I extract it VERY carefully and dry the motherfucker out for an emergency.) I spatchcocked our chicken yesterday and popped its chest to break the breast bone so the bone should've snapped along with the ribs and sternum, but it didn't. (SCORE!)

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Candle wax reading.