Graveyard Dirt: Two Worlds and In-between

Hexenhaus

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Evisceration (Revisited)

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The dehydrated remains of TTC (aka Tourist Trap Crow), and the eyes'n'ears from Love and Sorrow's mature rabbit. All of the ritually eviscerated organs* were naturally sun-dried, and what I wasn't able to use of the rescued wildlife was immediately returned to the earth.

* How the fuck have I managed to ritualize the process of roadkill reduction, rot and resurrection? Start with the journal entry Tourist Trap Crow, and then sink your teeth into the Asphalt & Entrails archive.

Exhuming the Dead

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My first crow - my first death, my first rescue, my first funeral, my first tears - freshly exhumed from a ritual growing container (some years wheat, some years dill) after five long years of earthbound sleep.

Trade-Off

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This year my Lammas fox didn't arrive until Harvest Home. The trade-off? An unshattered skull instead of a shattered body.

Bluebell Funeral for a Blackbird

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All Effin' Fronts

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The angelic hosts would weep in divine despair if they had an inkling of how motherfucking behind my earthly ass is right now. We're talking on all effin' fronts: journal writing, photo editing, replying to emails, responding to comments, answering direct messages, sending snail mail, fulfilling promises, working on trades, finishing projects, decorating gifts, bone working, gardening, performing funerary rites, baking homemade offerings and observing my personal Harvest festivities'n'rites.

Fuck, I'm even behind on foraging despite putting in full-time hours every effin' day of every effin' week since mid-July. It's not that shit isn't getting done, because I've never been so goddamn productive in all my motherlovin' life. It's that I'm attempting to give a billion things my undivided attention, and anyone with a rudimentary understanding of mathematics will see that my attempts to force division and fractions to ignore basic Universal rules just isn't working. (Ah, well, back to my areas of expertise: sex, death and perfectly boiled rice.)

Usually when one aspect of work slips I throw more fuel on the fire to help raise an extra dose of energy. It's a panic move, but it shocks my ass to the next level and I find I can close the distance between myself and the belated deadlines that are tormenting me. There's a cost for that expedition, though. Dipping into emergency reserves usually means I experience a burnout period that lasts anywhere from two or three days to two or three weeks. It's a tradeoff I'm more than willing to make (and often do), but one I can't afford to exercise during Harvest since my priorities are solely focused on my sovereign duties.

Normally I don't labor this shit, but recently quite a few folks have dropped my ass a friendly email and most haven't gotten a reply (yet). And because I'm of the pessimistic persuasion I've convinced myself that every-effin'-one of them has come to the very wrong conclusion that I'm deliberately ignoring them. (I'm not. Honest to all that is motherfucking holy, I'm not.) So I'm taking a quick second - er, eight paragraphs - to assure anyone who's still waiting for a reply that 1.) I'm totally not avoiding you, 2.) I'm really sorry I haven't been able to find time to respond to your email and 3.) I really fucking appreciate that you took the time to contact me because receiving a friendly email is like getting a giant fucking internet hug whenever I feel down and unmotivated.

I knew that 2011 was going to be a challenging year because it was the year that we decided to finally go pro. ("We" because I couldn't do this shit entirely by myself. Italics has funded all of my projects, kept me company during foraging sessions/roadkill sweeps, helped pick, process and prepare the majority of the non-gross shit I do, acted like a 24/7 springboard for all of my half-baked ideas and, most importantly, kept me going with regular offerings of support, serenity-inducing shots of sativa and cup after motherfucking cup of freshly prepared calming tea.) What I didn't know, though, was how those challenges would manifest because neither of us have any experience with opening a business.

We're aiming for our first post-Harvest/pre-Midwinter sale in November (save those pennies, guys, and be sure to join the announcement-only mailing list so you don't miss the event!), and I'm on the verge of being able to provide private roadkill services for people interested in adopting one of my resurrected animals. I try to promptly answer any questions regarding my work (i.e., rescued roadkill, Hedgerow Hooch, wild Scottish mushrooms and/or any items featured in Second Hand Sundays), but, right now, I can't afford investing time into journal entry-sized responses, so don't take it personally if my reply lacks its usual epicness.

So, in conclusion: it's totally cool to email my ass and say hi, I absolutely love getting email and I'm sincerely fucking sorry I'm so work-focused right now that I can't find the time to reply to personal correspondence (I'm working on that, though).

Pictured above: fresh toadstools (Amanita muscaria), a partially eaten pomegranate surrounded by more fresh toadstools, dried toadstools just out of the dehydrator, a homemade oil made from edible plants (chives and a single dandelion) growing out of #01's buried remains, two bottles containing the recently strained Simple Strawberry Wine and, lurking to the very right of the picture, the dehydrator that's dried more than 100 toadstools just this year alone (and that's only the agarics; I'm still weighing all of our dried boletes and chanterelles to get an idea of how much we've managed to find and preserve.)

Processing #01

#01's mummified body was a mystery to me. I was use to fresh; fresh fractures, fresh decapitations, fresh trauma. My scavenging teeth had been cut on the grisly and grotesque to ensure my ass had the necessary fortitude to work with pungent, unsavory remains*. (<- 2009's Lammas fox is a good example.) After a year of rescuing roadkill I was familiar with new death, and all of the sordid sights'n'stenches that inevitably accompanied it. Old death, though, was completely foreign to me, so everything about #01 and his dehydrated carcass was greeted with autistic curiosity.

* Just incase you're wondering: old death has its own unique, musty scent, unlike fresh death which has a tendency to smell like sauerkraut that even Ukrainians wouldn't eat.

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To free #01 I had to break him. He was lost to some forgotten phantom zone, and it was my job to find'n'drag his spectral ass back to act as my woodland king, forest guide and otherworldly mediator between me and my land. So with bare hands and feet I broke his twisted body - joint by joint, bone by bone - to release him from the fatal mid-leap he had been trapped in since his death.

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This is all of #01's body broken down into smaller, more workable segments. Some of his teeth, jaw bones, toes and the one ear I managed to salvage are sitting in a small glass dish on the bottom left corner of the tarp, and above it you can see his skull, legs and an assortment of his other skeletal remains. I was able to save most of his dehydrated golden retriever coat for personal use (bottom right corner of tarp), but what couldn't be used was ritually buried in my container garden to return some of his physical remains back to the earth.

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#01's skull freshly exhumed from its mummified cocoon. (<- Is he fucking gorgeous, or what? Over a year later my cunt still skips a beat whenever I see his pictures. Goddamn if that motherfucker doesn't have some in-your-fucking-face presence!)

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Future #01 fetishes: an ear to hear, toes to run and teeth to bite and grind.

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I managed to strip off most of the dehydrated flesh'n'fur from #01, but an infuriatingly tiny piece of skin just beneath the right antler remained steadfastly glued to the skull.

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Rather than risk damaging #01's fragile remains (even though it isn't entirely obvious, the skull suffers from several internal fractures; I mean, his dead ass is roadkill, after all) I left the flap of skin attached to his forehead knowing that it'd eventually fall off during cold water maceration. (<- My favorite bone cleaning method.)

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A gratuitous close-up of #01's skull to make gluing in his teeth a little easier.

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A second gratuitous close-up of #01's skull to make gluing in his teeth a little easier.

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The third and last gratuitous close-up of #01's skull to make gluing in his teeth a little easier.

The two teeth missing are the only calcified relics unaccounted for. Within a day or two of discovering #01 I returned to his death site in the hopes of finding the fuckers, but I left empty handed. (Well, sort've. #01 is still the only roadkill stag I've found whose antlers weren't obliterated despite his unfortunate hit'n'run end.)

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The fatal damage #01 received reverberated through his skull, shattering the mandible (lower jaw) and weakening some of his cranium's sutures. Due to the trauma I'll never be able to piece his skull fully together, but at least I have all of the fractured components in my witchcraftin' arsenal.

PS: For obvious reasons none of #01's remains will be offered for sale. But, if you're serious about becoming a caretaker of one of my roadkill rescues I can help make that a dream a reality.

Oven-Ready Roadkill Pheasants

I'm not sure how to delicately phrase this, so you'll have to forgive my ass for getting right to the effin' point: would any of you UK folk seriously consider buying an oven-ready roadkill pheasant from me? (<- These birds? Don't taste any different from the ones you'd buy at a market or butcher. In fact, we prefer eating roadkill because there aren't any hidden shots to break your fucking teeth on.)

I already have three fuckers in the freezer, and if I keep every consumable bird I find I won't have any room for other roadkill. (<- Winter pelts? Take up a lot of motherfucking space). Every bird has been Ms. Dirty cared for* (i.e., funeral rites were performed, offerings were made and the processing took place in a ritualized setting), properly butchered (I do the skinning, gutting and cleaning) and sealed in a heavy duty, airtight bag (like this).

I'm not ready to sell, but if there's genuine interest I'm more than happy to make this offer a reality. Right now I'm just sort've testing the waters, but I can take names from folks who are sincerely interested in dipping their toes into this scavenging thing. If you'd like to be on that list just drop a quick note to graveyarddirt@gmail.com, and I'll get back to you as soon as I can.

* Check out the journal entries Stone Throne Pheasant and Harvest Home Pheasant for more in-depth information (and pictures!).

Ablutions for the Dead

I never got the chance to bathe my dead mother's body. Sometimes I think all of this - i.e., the entire rescuing dead animals thing - can be traced back to the fact that I never got to say my silent good-byes to the person who had birthed, loved and raised me.

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Even in the muddy haze of grief I dimly appreciated the gut feeling of wrongness when encountering the distance put between the living and the newly dead. Not bathing the body that had once bathed me felt wrong, not dressing the body that had once dressed me felt wrong, not sitting in wake with the body that had once lulled me to sleep felt wrong.

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My mother unexpectedly died, had an autopsy performed, was cremated and had her life commemorated with a small memorial service at a funeral home; but, at no point was I allowed to see, touch, or say good-bye to her lifeless body. Our modern attitude towards death created a wall that I just couldn't scale, and six years on I still grieve for the intimate closure I never got.

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So it's with a sense of loving duty that I do what I do, and why the quiet act of embracing every broken body that passes through my resurrectionist hands allows me to observe the one meaningful rite that I never got to perform.

Pictured above: the newly exposed skeletal remains of Tourist Trap Crow and Love and Sorrow's mature rabbit.

A Life Once Lived

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Calcified relics of a life once lived.

August 27th, 2011

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Last year's fallen king has risen.

August 27th, 2010 II

The August 27th, 2010 story doesn't actually end with the discovery of #01. (What, you were expecting an easy fucking read? Honey, I'm Ms. Dirty - every-motherfucking-thing I do is overly complicated and supremely fucking epic.) After a week of non-stop Harvest work - i.e., from dawn till dusk foraging, late night (and early fucking morning) wild mushroom processing, fleshing roadkill, bone cleaning, graveyard garden hooching and preparing my container garden (aka Gothel's Garden) for the inevitability of winter - I had to throw my towel in early last night due to some low energy levels.

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I mean, what kind've weak ass initiatory experience would have me running down a Scottish country road at six in the fucking morning with Chippy strapped to my back - all, like, papoose-style - as the mummified remains of a roadkill deer ecstatically swing in a plastic bag hanging off my arm for all the early commuters to see only once? To ensure that I'd forever be emblazoned as the crowned queen of fucking weirdos to the very local people of this community the Universe decided I needed to repeat the performance, stat.

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Within an hour of cramming #01's dehydrated body into a grocery bag and running breathlessly to my car with a muffin-top of bones'n'fur (much to the confusion, disgust and wonder of passing drivers; which, hey, is to be expected, but if you ask me - I'll just pretend you did (you're welcome, btw!) - the real confusion, disgust and wonder comes from the crazy fucking idea of spending 6-10 hours in a cage thinly disguised as a semi-personal office cubicle), I was, once again, running breathlessly to my car with another plastic bag bulging with the dried remains of a second roadkill deer (#02; a juvenile).

My motherfucking trunk? Packed. (<- Just FYI: I'm still talkin' about the car, although that statement's totally applicable to other areas of my life...ahem.) Despite the severe lack of trunk space - it's not like my ass wasn't warned, right? - August 27th, 2010's day of initiatory experiences wasn't over just yet.

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I didn't know at the time, but I had one more significant find to make because I had one last niggling curiosity to sate.

It was curiosity that pulled on my fucking reigns as I began passing the familiar skank ass carpet, so I slowed the fuck down until the rolled up offcut transformed into the motherfucking deer I had been waiting for. It was curiosity that lured my adrenaline-buzzing body out of the effing car and into a coniferous hedge with hopes of locating a basket worth of pine-lovin' boletes that lead to #02's discovery (and subsequent rescue), and it was that same siren song of curiosity that drew me out of my car one last fucking time because I had to know just one more goddamn thing before going home that day: what the fuck did the Black Laird's loch look like?

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It wasn't growing on the banks of the Devil-ridden loch, but along the moss-covered footpath leading up to the manmade reservoir. Nestled snuggly between the fairy tale dimples of a shadow-filled forest was one perfect toadstool (Amanita muscaria) swaddled in woodland down. It was the first fly agaric I had ever seen, ever touched, and ever held, and when my deer-scented fingers sank into the damp cool of the earth to accept the chthonic (psychoactive) gift I suddenly understood the intrinsic connection between me, the deer, the Old Woman, our land and the ancient, conscious entity living beneath our collective feet.

This is how I became the Old Woman's resurrectionist butcher, and its story of initiation, death and rebirth? Has finally been told.

August 27th, 2010 I

"...but, where are all the deer?" I once asked, because as a 17-year-old (and 18 and 19 and 22 and 25-year-old) the veil was still thick and opaque. They existed, but out of my reality. They were living woodland ghosts, and I wasn't a paranormal investigator. Eventually, though, our separate realities merged-fused-united, and once that overlap occurred I found myself living side-by-side Her quiet cattle.

It was like the last layer of obfuscation was finally lifted, and when that obstacle was removed it revealed the whole fucking picture. I wasn't just standing on the outskirts of the pitch next to the sidelines, I had actually been standing in the middle of the fucking field the entire fucking time but I just couldn't see it until that last blinding caul was drawn off.

This is how I became the Old Woman's resurrectionist butcher, and its story of initiation, death and rebirth has been waiting to be told since August 27th, 2010.

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There's an anecdotal preface to the story, so starting this roadkill yarn on the day I was formally inducted into rescuing the Cailleach's cattle is jumping into the tale head effin' first (all, you know, literary gothic-style). To give the full fucking picture I need to step back one whole 24-hour period to August 26th, 2010:

"...but, where are all the deer?" I asked as we foraged, and Italics dipped back in his not-so-distant youth to tell me stories about the fucking piles of complete skulls and naturally shed antlers that were regularly found when his family went up north to enjoy the isolated country and moorlands. I sighed an unrequited sigh, sulkily dropped a shoulder to brush the underside of my magic wooden basket against some wild bee balm and wondered, out-fucking-loud, when my scavenging ass would finally be rewarded with the remains of a local deer.

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#01 didn't just magically appear in a Faustian puff of sulfur-tinged smoke. He predated that Jiminy Cricket of-the-fucking-heart wish I made in the woods of a broken crow, wild mushrooms, forgotten feathers, misplaced bones and, once upon a time, seven lousy rabbits. In fact, that motherfucker had been dead for months by the time I wondered my great August 26th wonder. And if that wasn't enough to retrospectively blow my fucking mind there was one more HOLY SHIT, WHAT?! thing: I had already seen my woodland king on multiple occasions.

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My favorite toadstool hot spot's littered with drive-by trash: empty booze bottles, plastic gas cans, shoes, food wrappers, tires and, once, an entire Lord of the Rings-themed Trivia Pursuit game. Encountering roadside garbage - and inevitably hauling it the fuck away (this sovereignty thing? ain't always glamorous) - is a common fucking occurrence when you routinely run the same roadkill route. So when I finally noticed the rolled up carpet casually dumped at the base of a fucking tree I clenched my teeth at the sheer fucking laziness of humanity and made a mental note to pick up the discarded covering at a more convenient time.

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...but it wasn't carpet. And it wasn't until August 27th, 2010 when the familiar flash of dusty red-gold tucked beneath a towering pine transformed into something entirely different: a motherfucking roadkill stag. I had been driving the same effing route, passing the same effing spot and duly noting the same effing "garbage" on a near-daily basis, but it took one simple expression of desire to finally turn that rolled up carpet into flesh, fur and bone. My 24 hour old wish had been granted before it was even made.

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Everything knew before I did. #01 knew, the Old Woman knew, the land, the towering pine tree and the Universe knew. Christ, even Chippy fucking knew. When I buckled his fuzzy ass in the passenger seat that morning he made a comment about needing a lot of truck space that day. Like a fucking retard I laughed and asked if I was finally coming home with a deer. It didn't occur to me until later that Chippy had never before eluded to the result of any roadkill sweep or foraging session.

Somehow he knew. I might've had no motherfucking clue, but everything else? Did.

Crowhawk

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Crowhawk; it's what all the stylish carrion crows are wearing this season while decomposing at triple cemetery crossroads.

One Goddamn Picture

Two days ago I: made an edible anointing oil from herbs growing out of the garden container with #01's remains, used one of my in-laws' crystal vases to macerate some pheasant bones (if you don't tell them they'll never notice), finally pulled out all the motherfucking fireweed and ragwort that's been driving Italics's allergies in-fucking-sane, made an executive decision to prune all the effing patio shrubs Mr. Awesome's been ignoring, tackled five years worth of invasive ivy that's slowly destroyed our fucking fence, seriously contemplated the possibility of pulling Mr. Awesome's non-hedge hedge out and planting something actually useful (i.e., elder), recklessly bounced way too enthusiastically for far too long on an epic mountain of garden debris (to compact the shit into a bag...well, mostly to compact the shit into a bag), freed one of the plum trees from being completely swallowed by a neighbor's tall line of monster fucking cedars and then watched the setting sun illuminate portions of the backyard for the first time in fucking years.

And I didn't take one goddamn picture.

Yesterday I: dragged my sore fucking ass outside to examine and flesh the heads of #08, #09 and #10, shallowly buried the decomposing remains I removed from their skulls so our fox(es) have access to a quick meal, packed the three flayed deer heads into my upgraded roadkill altar to begin the process of rot, checked on the assorted pieces of #01, #02, #03, #04 and #05 macerating in one of the outside rooms, potted on some home-fucking-grown comfrey seedlings, excavated the skeletal remains of Love & Sorrow's mature rabbit from one of my gardening pots, transplanted one of my container lavenders using some of the decayed rabbit dirt, dressed my sage, bay tree and tiny little gooseberry plant with leftover rabbit dirt, paid a visit to the roadkill graveyard situated beneath our office window (where fleshy remains are buried until they become bone), clipped small coniferous tufts from huge motherfucking juniper branches (pruning casualty; why let good magic shit go to waste?) and spent the next eight motherfucking hours in the fucking kitchen rubbing my hands raw by squeezing juice out of seven motherfucking pounds of wild necro-gooseberries - by fucking hand - to make four different motherfucking types of Hedgerow Hooch.

And I didn't take one goddamn picture.

Today I: swore my supremely sore fucking ass that I'd take the day off until I remembered the last time I performed any sort of mushroom sweep was last Friday (work is work, Internet), cackled madly - and even paused to call Italics mid-picking - at the completely unexpected porcini harvest, stumbled across a new bolete-tastic hot spot situated between two other bolete-tastic hot spots, indulgently savored the first mothereffin' brambles of the season, paused to admire the late evening sun reflecting across the ripe blackberries' latex shine, briefly returned home for Italics so we could toadstool hunt together near the banks of the Black Laird's loch, crawled through low-hanging boughs of birch and pine, and scrambled over crumbling, lichen-encrusted walls filling a second magic wooden basket with cherry-red agarics, a birch bolete explosion of massive fucking proportions and the incomplete remains of a carrion crow, single-handledly cleaned - and processed! - 1085 grams of porcini, 1194 grams of mixed boletes and 8 effing toadstools for dehydration, stirred every fucking 2011 Hedgerow Hooch (all (lucky) 13 of them), made a helluva meal which included homemade holubsti (Ukrainian stuffed cabbage) inexcusably smothered with leftover Poulet Marengo sauce and a quick chorizo-smoked pancetta-homegrown sage chicken thing, prepped #11's body for its future funeral and watery interment, and preened vainly in the mirror all evil sorceress-style when I caught the secondhand stains of midnight sex smeared garishly across my lower face.

And I didn't take one goddamn picture.

Ms. Dirty's Day Off

A day off - Ms. Dirty-style! - in ten pictures:

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First item of order? Exhuming the skeletal remains of #01 (body), #02 (skull and body), #03 (skull), #04 (skull and body) and #05 (skull) from the roadkill altar, and submerging the lot into water-filled buckets to begin the process of bone cleaning.

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Second day off duty: shaking up the contents of my Hedgerow Hooch. (<- Sticky, but satisfying work.) Pictured above is my plain wild necro-raspberry gin, the other batch of gin's been flavored with a vanilla bean and spices.

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After soiling myself with dead deer - and accidentally anointing myself with homemade hooch - it was time for my favorite chore: cooking. In this case, it was a very special meal made with homegrown and locally foraged ingredients for a Mercury-talented husband.

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Since Poulet Marengo is a braised dish I swapped the chicken for our first guinea fowl (from Gressingham Food's; if you're in the UK be sure to check this welfare-concerned company out, most major grocery stores seem to carry a portion of their catalog, and I can personally vouch for the quality of their products), but before I could braise anything I had to pan fry guinea fowl portions in olive oil and butter until crisply golden.

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Even though I was involved in some serious cooking my ass couldn't resist a quick break to admire the rainbow cresting over our crossroads rowan tree through the kitchen window.

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Something dark and sweet to mop up boozy dinner juices*: a gluten-free quick bread made with buttermilk, brown sugar and molasses.

* Both Marsala and brandy are featured in this dish, along with fresh mushrooms, tomatoes and homemade vegetable stock. The end result? A sauce that'd ecstatically inspire the heavenly motherfucking host.

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Another day off duty: prepping even more recently picked chanterelles for the dehydrator while the guinea fowl braises and the Boston Brown Bread bakes.

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The braised guinea fowl's become so tender that it's begun pulling away from the bone.

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A special dinner requires a special atmosphere, so the kitchen lights were turned off, the stars were turned on and I further illuminated the room with the soft glow of candlelight.

Our ancestors, friends and roommates with benefits (you know, the folk that never leave: Papa, Chippy, et cetera) were invited, but their setting wasn't as grand as the ancestral altars I usually build during special feasts and holy days. On more low key occasions their table setting is just as fancy as ours, but I always situate the bread next to them because I know where I get my ravenous bread appetite from. (<- Ukraine? Is known as "Europe's Breadbasket". In fact, our flag has only two colors: blue for the sky, and yellow for our fields of wheat.)

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And the last day off duty of the day? Sitting down with 30+ cookbooks to yank out every motherfucking recipe that involves gooseberries and black currants since both of those have recently come into season at my graveyard garden.

Casa dels Ossos (House of Bones)

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Casa dels Ossos (House of Bones) was our August harvest.

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Some of #05's incisors on a recently acquired graveyard spade.

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Fresh crow remains from a fragmented find (large glass), a shattered piece of jawbone from a roadkill badger (small glass), Stone Throne Pheasant's cleaned wishbone (on the plate) and miscellaneous bones found while foraging in the woods.

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The cleaned skull of Love and Sorrow's mature rabbit waiting to be glued back together.

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The wishbone, keel and several wing bones from an incomplete forest find.

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The skeletal remains of Stone Throne Pheasant which, once cleaned, will be used to decorate gifts and projects (see Bones, Twine & Feathers).

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#04's alien head peering silently out of the murky water.

Lost'n'Found

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How do you locate a lost cairn? Take a loaf of bread, a pomegranate and a bottle of water to the projected location and walk around until you trip over absolutely nothing. Lost cairn? Found.

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Other things found on this adventure: more porcini and fly agarics, an unseasonal badger roadkill (too far gone to take, although I did manage to rescue a piece of jaw with some teeth), nearly ripe currants, crazily ripe raspberries, almost ripe gooseberries, blooming comfrey and two new mushroom hot spots.

#11

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Today my toadstool hot spot revealed one of its partially buried secrets: #11, a juvenile roe deer. (How my ass managed to miss a skeleton worth of bones beneath the long line of firs I've been foraging at for two fucking years is beyond me.)

Mercury-Ruled

What happens when your partner's Mercury-ruled? You get to fight fire air with motherfucking fire air. Three cheers for Italics and the two sleepless nights he spent working on my computer to make it virus-free, and to anyone who felt momentarily bad for me. (<- Pity TOTALLY counts as prayers in my book!)

Now that this week's retrograde crisis is over Graveyard Dirt can return to it's Harvest-driven schedule. Normally I don't hint about future content, but since this is a Site Shit post it gives me a rare chance to step out of journal entry mode.

With that being said, I'm: prepping for Bolete Lesson #3 (how to preserve), getting ready to announce GD's first ever giveaway (hint: it involves homework; have you been doing yours?), selecting a few more wild edible recipes to share (mushrooms, raspberries and maybe even gooseberries) and clearing space in my crazy fucking week to finally sit the fuck down and finish up a parade of delayed promises and projects (i.e., dressing up jam jars and hooch bottles, decanting and decorating some of last year's toadstool oil, sending away packages and a stupid amount bone cleaning).

Herd in a Handbasket

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#08, and March's twitterpated couple (#09 & #10) are getting ready to follow the rest of the 2010-2011 herd (#02, #03, #04 & #05) into macerating buckets.

Evisceration

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The still-moist remains of TTC (aka Tourist Trap Crow), and the eyes'n'ears from Love and Sorrow's mature rabbit. All of the ritually eviscerated organs* were naturally sun-dried, and what I wasn't able to use of the rescued wildlife (the entrails, primarily) was immediately returned to the earth.

* How the fuck have I managed to ritualize the process of roadkill reduction, rot and resurrection? Start with the journal entry Tourist Trap Crow, and then sink your teeth into the Asphalt & Entrails archive.

Stone Throne Pheasant

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Last week's Stone Throne pheasant was a gift from the land after I finally executed the very last of my spring-flavored obligations. "Harvest's come early this year," I kept telling Italics, and the Universe promptly confirmed all of my seasonal suspicions in one unexpected roadkill find.

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Normally we don't find pheasants until the local gaming estate releases their new stock in September. The first few birds we bring home always turn out to be inexperienced juveniles totally unsavvy to the dangers of the outside world. It's a brutal massacre; most of the dead aren't fit for human consumption, so I spend a lot of time moving mangled remains to ensure hungry scavengers don't share a similar fate.

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This pheasant, however, wasn't an inexperienced juvenile (they haven't even been released yet); she was a mature hen. I very rarely find an old gal like this (the majority of the roadkill pheasants I bring home are either newly released hens or unlucky cocks), and I've never found one this early in the year. She was a fucking treasure, and when it came time to ritually reduce her body into usable parts I gave my heartfelt thanks while stroking her feathery chest.

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A broken wing with mostly undamaged feathers.

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Feathers overlapping feathers.

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One of her thighs sustained superficial damage.

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The injury to one of her wings was bone-shatteringly traumatic.

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The pheasant's crop contained remnants of her last meal (bilberries; a kind've sort've wild cousin of the blueberry), which was set aside for planting. The berries - along with a portion of the bird's body - will be sown in the hopes that they'll germinate into fruit-bearing shrubs; a living legacy of the pheasant's life (and death).

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A pheasant first: underdeveloped eggs! They - along with the heart, gizzard and liver - were extracted from the body, cleaned and frozen for future witchcrafting. The salvaged organs were appreciated more immediately by our black magic cat, Mr. Mistoffelees.

What we couldn't use of the roadkill pheasant - the entrails and bruised meat - was left outside for the newest generation of corvids (certain families have been using our property as a fledging playpen for years since it's safely situated on a quiet dead end - admittedly, the rich pickings are a huge incentive to visit daily). Everything else - the feathers, feet, bones, meat and head - was saved, and will eventually be used for something, or serve some sort of purpose.

PS: I realize that the entire roadkill thing is a niche interest, and that not every visitor to Graveyard Dirt is going to understand or accept my practices. That's cool, I totally get that. But if you ARE interested in learning about how I incorporate roadkill into my feral version of witchcraft (what I do, why I do it, etc.) two good places to start are my roadkill Flickr set and my Asphalt & Entrails journal category. More pheasant stories - just in case you're interested - can be found here and here. Happy scavenging!

Feather Blessing

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When Aepril Schaile - bellydancer, musician, witch, animal rights advocate, astrologer, shaman, performance artist, bird watcher and all round renaissance woman - made the horrendous fucking mistake of letting my ass know that TC and my expletive-studded crow tales had actually proved to be inspirationally useful for one of her new corvid-themed projects I immediately threw open my dubious flasher witch coat and asked if she'd be interested in some naturally shed carrion crow feathers for good luck.

(Of course they're genuine! Just nibble on the quills; Corvus corone, the real fucking deal! Do I look like the sort've person who'd pass off junk I found like it was a handful of magic motherfucking beans? On second thought, don't answer that.)

Before I could send the feathers away to Aepril I had to select them (a mixture of old and recent Pine Hedge Rookery finds), tidy them, ritually cleanse them and seek an Otherworldly blessing by those who've already passed on. Now that they've been given the corvid seal of approval they're ready to travel Stateside to bestow a ridiculous fucking amount of good luck and success to a fellow devotee of our Blessed (Underground) Mother.

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Offerings of fresh borage, cornflower, foxglove, harebell and loosestrife from my container garden.

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Beech Hedgerow Crow's skull was my corvid link to the dead, and one of TC's recently shed wing feathers provided my corvid link to the living. Behind my relic anchors are a pair of blue glass chalices filled with offerings of food and water which - along with either a nice piece of diced meat or a mostly intact roadkill animal - will be left at the Pine Hedge Rookery for the carrion crows who generously shared their excess plumage with me.

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Dried flowers from a previous blessing, mixed with fragrant grains of Oman frankincense and white copal.

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A homemade incense blend with air-themed resins and herbs that was used to sanctify and purify the shed carrion crow feathers.

Blessed By the Dead

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Shed by the living, blessed by the dead.

Almost There

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Tourist Trap Crow's almost there.

Giving Thanks, Revisited

I give thanks for the meat that'll feed us, the crop full of bilberries that'll grow into fruit-bearing shrubs, the underdeveloped eggs for fairy tale witchcraft and the special heart, liver and gizzard offering for our Saturday night black magic cat (Mr. Mistoffelees). Thanks for the feathers, bones, flesh and feet that'll be turned into project-ready parts, and for the vitamin-rich internal organs that'll feed and strengthen the new generation of carrion crows, rooks and magpies that visit us every day.

I give thanks for a life I didn't take by ensuring that its death isn't wasted.

Touché, Universe

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On July 14th this fridge drawer was finally emptied of grossly belated Hieros Gamos offerings (beer, phallic resurrection bread, homemade Peking duck, organic beef mince and Peeps), overly ripe roadkill birds (one carrion crow, one European blackbird) and - PSA: y'all with junk might want to grab your vomit bag right about now; ready? - a bottle of duct-taped* menstrual blood-infused water that's been rolling around since June 7th (I'll explain later).

For the first time since motherfucking Easter this space was vacant, clean and totally sanitized, and it managed to remain in that pristine fucking state for two goddamn hours before it was unexpectedly filled with brand fucking new roadkill (a pheasant hen).

* I didn't want anyone mistaking it for iced tea, although it would've made one holy fucking hell of a story.

Giving Thanks

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Giving thanks for yesterday's hedgerow bounty.

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When Inclined

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It seems that our friend Tourist Trap Crow is more than capable of feeding itself.

First Feeding

We're busier than I'd like to be. Shit's begun piling up again, and the rooms that were once 96% clean are slowly degrading into a post-apocalyptic mess of epic fucking proportions. The constant running in circles (from living animal to dead animal, from chore to errand) has left us both of us exhausted as fuck - as you've probably noticed since my journal entries haven't been exactly stellar in the past few weeks - but we've got to keep on pushing; once berry'n'mushroom season hits (late July) there'll be zero time to get the house in order.

(TRANSLATION: If shit ain't complete within a month, then shit won't be complete until AFTER Christmas, and I really fucking hate even having to consider the fucking notion that my ass'll still be spring cleaning in motherfucking January of next fucking year.)

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I've been holding off writing this entry because I wanted to explain the biological process of maceration, and all of my rituals, rites and spiritual practices that coincide with the grand pageant of reducing rotting flesh to clean, sterile bones. Unfortunately, I'm just too fucking busy to devote that much time and effort to one journal entry (unless I've got a serious motherfucking axe to grind). So, for now, you'll just have to settle for a handful of pictures with a quick explanation of what's going down in each image.

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My altars are usually elaborate fucking things, but those sacred spaces tend to be spread out on giant fucking plateaus of furniture so they aren't normally constrained to cramped, tiny ass areas. (First unspoken tenet of witchcraft? Work within your means. Sometimes that means setting up shop in an undesirable space, sometimes that means using clean, flat bed sheets instead of fancy tablecloths and sometimes it means rummaging through kitchen drawers to see what you have on hand, or what's currently available to you.)

When reducing roadkill from flesh to bone I use my Bean Nighe bowl (actually, I put the macerating pot'o'animal in the bowl, but you get the point), but seeing how Peck-Man's (aka TC) currently living in the fucking thing it's unofficially out of commission until further notice (or until a heavy fucking duty emergency). Instead, my decomposing animals were ritually interred into Second Hand Sunday purchases, and then placed at the feet of my Santa Muerte black rabbit (the head honcho of my rabbit militia) who'll oversee the rite of rot.

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Tourist Trap Crow's (usually abbreviated to TTC) skeletal frame slowly sinking into its watery womb of transformation.

Before submerging the crow's body I ritually stripped it of soft tissue to help expedite the maceration process (which, hopefully, won't be too long since the warm weather should really encourage the bacteria to make short work of decomposing muscle). To learn more about TTC, my rite of reduction and how a fully feathered roadkill crow will eventually turn into project-ready pieces (i.e., bones, preserved skin (complete with tail feathers and wings), organs and blood) be sure to check out my Tourist Trap Crow journal entry.

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Unlike Tourist Trap Crow, the rabbit head that was ritually interred in this Second Hand Sunday vessel sank like a motherfucking rock. (In fact, the pot turned out to be just a little too tight for TTC - it was inhibiting the crow from sinking properly, which doesn't sound like a big deal but a waterline could potentially stain a bone (or so I've heard) - so it was carefully rehomed to a roomier maceration pot until it decomposes to the point of bone separation.) To learn more about the roadkill rabbit, how it came into my possession and how I sent it off Ms. Dirty-style be sure to check out my Love and Sorrow journal entry.

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I ritually feed, water and interact with the animals as their physical remains decompose and separate from the perishable to the preservable. (It's not so much "taming" as it is luring them into a sense of familiarity; I don't "break" them, I make them comfortable around people and modern living. After all, these are wild fucking animals whose natural disposition is to be wary of human beings.) These pictures are from the roadkill animals' first feeding, a semi-ceremonial event that normally happens once or twice a week (regardless if it's the first, third, tenth or last feeding).

Left section (based on a carrion crow's diet): locally grown oatmeal (dry, cracked grain), Rice Krispies, mealworms and a scrambled organic'n'free-range egg

Middle section (based on a living organism's diet): fresh water

Right section (based on a common rabbit's diet): locally grown oatmeal (dry, cracked grain), Rice Krispies, organic parsley and organic celery

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My Santa Muerte (literally translated to Saint Death) black rabbit, with wispy tendrils of incense smoke woven around her head. To understand this black rabbit you have to understand the Black Rabbit, and to understand the Black Rabbit you have to understand the Black Goddess, and without the entry Black Rabbit Altar none of the above is fucking possible.

Next Big Thing: Ladders

I posted this over on my Tumblr blog the other day (<- think of it as Graveyard Dirt lite; I write less, but update more), and it's so fucking OH, INTERNETS! ridiculous that I had to record it here for posterity (and to ensure - once this shit goes Llewellyn mainstream (snort) - that I'm remembered as the originator of the altar ladder fad):

How to Make a Halloween Altar @ eHow

Or, more accurately, "How to Make Ms. Dirty's Halloween Altar". (<- Do you think the eHow writer knows that the use of ladders isn't standard practice, and I have a very personal, very ancestral reason for including the item in my rituals and beliefs?)

PS: LOL @ "THINGS YOU'LL NEED...A LADDER". Christ.

PPS: Pictures of my completed Halloween altar can be found here (lights on) and here (lights out).

PPPS: I resent the fact that the difficulty's been listed as "easy"; the fuck it is! How many motherfucking ladders has this eHow writer dressed with multiple cloths, garlands, fairy lights and dangling paraphernalia? APPARENTLY NOT MANY (OR NOT WELL).

Aug. 31st, 2010

Two days ago my oldest friend in the world got married (oh, we go back to the first fucking day of 3rd grade), and my fat, psychopomp-attractin' ass wasn't there. (<- Long story involving lumps (of the worrying HOLY SHIT, ONE'S IN YOUR FUCKING TESTICLE?! kind), broken cars, the lack of a valid driver's license and a certain injured crow (who, incidentally, has begun perfecting its trepanning technique).)

And the worst fucking part? I mean, other than not being there in some sort of vampire-goth-witch designer dress (she made a special request that harkened way back to my teenage years) to exercise all the liberties that only the oldest fucking friend in the world can get away with? She admitted that she was going to force me - in my vampire-goth-witch glory - to read from the good fucking book during the marriage ceremony.

(Cue a never-fucking-ending string of Cartmanesque GODDAMMIT, GODAMMIT!, with each repetition being more fucking ridiculous than the one before. <- But, like, ~forever~.)

Why the fuck am I even mentioning this? Because without her there would be no Ms. Dirty. Or, at least, the dirty wouldn't be the grimy-nasty-algae-scented-sloppy-mud-splattered-nude-body-running-through-the-motherfucking-hedges-and-feral-fields-with-a-recently-found-detached-deer-leg dirty y'all love (and/or hate) today. She might've not created the spark, but she definitely cultivated it, nurtured it and encouraged it to flourish.

Too young to be self-conscious we tore through Midwest thickets around her small farm with wild, half-naked abandon decimating quiet, peaceful patches in irrigation streams (until the clear water ran brown with disturbed silt), scaling deformed, toppled willows bare-footed (much to the chagrin of buzzed deer hunters who had a slightly harder time clambering up to their tree house hunting lofts) and always returning home muddy, bleeding, and tired, but full of anecdotal tales which, to this fucking day, we still reminisce over as if they happened last effing week.

(Our parents, in particular, loved our WE ALMOST GOT EATEN BY WILD FUCKING HOGS! story. <- For fuck's sake! THERE WERE MOTHERFUCKING PIGS IN THE MOTHERFUCKING WOODS! How the fuck were we supposed to know they weren't fucking Cujo hogs? Jesus.)

So, for soppy, sentimental reasons this entry - in which I introduce you lot to my little secret hedge - is dedicated to my first, oldest and most beloved hedge sister: Nicole (even though she has no idea this site exists*, and that I finally found a way to profit off my eagerness to get naked, get dirty and get as goddamn wild as Nature will let me).

* She's just married into the FBI; the less they know about my amphetamine-fueled gardening sessions the better.

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This hella expired bolete mushroom's a lot more fucking useful than it seems. In the cutthroat world of mushroom hunting (you think I'm fucking joking?) it's known as a flag; a large specimen that alerts would-be pickers that they're in prime mushroom country. Normally flags are too deteriorated to consume (although there are occasional exceptions), but they do provide valuable information about the different sorts of mycelia underfoot. When you find one of these fuckers - and it's of an edible variety - take note, that's a spot you'll want to return to next year for a fresher crop. The bolete season in this hedgerow had already past by August 31st, which means it'll be one of the first stretches of local land to provide the very first fungal fruits of 2011.

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While trying to sniff out younger boletes (which I found, but they were also too far gone for a pleasant eating experience) amongst old beech trees and grass-encrusted rock formations I spied something excitingly old and fabulously rusty nestled amongst moss, lichen and stone.

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Internet, I give you Thor's motherfucking hammer. (<- Actually, it's an ancient-as-fuck piece of bicycle that somehow miraculously draped itself across a small boulder for Christ knows how fucking long until I found it (TRANSLATION: not Mjöllnir), but you get the point.) Leaving it would've been a waste of a perfectly good symbolic omen, so it got tucked into one of my magic wooden baskets and hauled back home for future witchcrafting.

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One of the many spectacular views from my secret little hedge. In the distance you can see the purple bloom of wild heather hugging the exposed cap of a nearby hill, and the all-to-familiar ragged line of pine trees that farmers use to separate forested wilderness from open agricultural fields.

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Amethyst Deceivers (Laccaria amethystea); they might look poisonous, but they're not. I was so goddamn focused on BIG EFFING GAME (i.e., porcini and toadstools) last year that I never allotted myself any other edible wild mushroom harvest time. Hopefully this year I'll remember to bag myself a couple of baskets of deceivers when out foraging in the woods. (These fuckers? Love beech trees. Find a row of beeches and you'll almost always find amethyst deceivers, toadstools and a variety of boletes.)

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What's good about a single fucking bilberry (also known round these parts as blaeberry and whortleberry)? One's all you need to help you realize you're standing in a patch of wild motherfucking blueberry bushes. You can see I JUST missed out on 2010's crop, but now that I know where I can locally source wild blueberries (they are slightly different from blueberries, but they're close enough for me to be fucking lazy about it) we're planning multiple trips this year to ensure a bottle of homemade liqueur, a batch of hedgerow jam and enough dried reserves for multiple installments of my new favorite Ukrainian dish: dried fruit compote.

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If my ass goes into the wild you can be sure of two fucking things: I will come out with an assortment of bones, and I will desperately have to take a motherfucking piss within two seconds of entering any sort of woodland. (That last curse? Has dogged me all of my goddamn life. I'm so naturally fucking pushy that I can't help but mark my territory wherever the fuck I go.)

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While crawling through the hedgerow - just after being knee-deep in bilberry bushes - I stumbled across the whitewashed remains of a long dead deer. I scoured the area for other whiter-than-fucking-white pieces, but only found a single rib bone and part of the spinal column. This wasn't the only encounter I had with deer on the 31st; after my hedgerow expedition I rescued my first skinnable roadkill doe (#4; my lactating doe), so in addition to everything I found, foraged and ferreted out in my secret little hedge I also had an adult roe deer to wrestle with once I got home.

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The sun - partially obscured by towering pines - eased through branches and crevices, leaving marks of dappled light along my shadowy, fern-filled path.

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A miniature forest of infant beeches bursting out of their protective braces.

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Too afraid that the forest would steal me away I stuck to the darkened, shrub-choked hedge and gingerly tip-toed around the illuminated paths (<- sometimes shit's overly inviting for a reason) as I made my way back to the car.

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Something managed to enjoy this fly agaric (Amanita muscaria) before I could, so I left the partially eaten toadstool behind. When I returned for my second dose of hedge exploration the local rabbits were kind enough to leave a little magic out for me.

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Chippy; my foraging companion. When Italics can't join me in my rural adventures I take Chippy to keep my ass company (laugh if you want, but he's got a sharp fucking nose for roadkill - he's successfully nailed several outcomes before I managed to start the goddamn car). For obvious reasons he spends the majority of the time strapped to my back like a motherfucking papoose, but he gets his 15 minutes of freedom when it's time for lunch. (<- I try and keep him leashed; cattle and sheep react badly to my presence when I'm out "walking" him, so to spare us from a stampede he's not allowed free reign outdoors unless it's in the yard.)

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As if the first exploration of my secret little hedge wasn't successful enough, I found the chthonic nesting site of stinging, parasitic insects. (<- It takes a true witch to see potential in all things, and it takes a really fucking hacked-the-fuck-off witch to flex that potential.)(<- Consider that one of the few warnings I ever publicly make, Internet.)

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I'm an equal opportunity forager to the point that scavenging has become more of a lifestyle than hobby. It doesn't matter what the fuck it is - i.e., dropped jewelry, rusting farm equipment, dead animals, reduced-to-clear-food and, in this case, the remains of a pheasant egg - if it's in my path then it was most certainly meant to be. In addition to being a bone magnet (snort), I have a weird ass talent for finding discarded wild bird eggs. (Psst! If you're looking for eggshell fragments from carrion crows or game birds I'm totally your dealer.)

Moulting

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May 10th, 2011

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I'll be completely fucking honest with y'all - I love every effing aspect of my roadkill work (from building altars, exercising funerary rites, to carefully fishing out still-warm organs with my bare fucking hands - which, BTW, isn't recommended, but it does give you a better entrails reading) except for having to tackle pictorial logs of our rescue expeditions. Because, really, what the fuck do I have to cleverly offer other than "OH, HEY, CHECK IT OUT - ANOTHER DEAD ANIMAL WE FOUND" with each passing picture? So it goes without saying that I deliberately leave the tres undesirable work* for as long as fucking possible in the hopes that somehow it'll miraculous write itself up (hey, it could happen).

* When you designate evisceration, flaying and psychoactive-fueled butchery as "FUN AND AWESOME WORK OMG" there's only one direction for the coma-inducing boredom of record keeping to go - it becomes the dirty work you try to avoid with almost every motherfucking inch of your life.

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Even though I've had my eye on it for years, May 10th was the first time we managed to explore this particular carrion crow rookery. It's very local - by car, anyway - although it's set back in agricultural fields and scrub woodland so the nesting sites (there seem to be several very large clusters) are a safe distance from the hustle and bustle of human life. (<- I've seen way too many fledglings flattened by cars due to rookeries being built over areas of heavy fucking traffic.)

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I haven't had a chance to sort, edit and upload the funeral pictures - so I can't check my Flickr photostream for verification, and I'm too goddamn lazy to hunt down my physical roadkill journal/log - but I think we left the rookery that day with the remains of 10 carrion crow fledglings that died a natural death. (Not necessarily a painless, comfortable or easy death; just a death that wasn't at the hands - whether intentional or not - of humans.) My roadkill crows tend to be unlucky adults or inexperienced juveniles, but my fledglings are almost always found at the base of their nests. (As you may have already guessed, birds have a devastating infant mortality rate - something like 1 out of every 3 or 4 actually make it past a certain stage of life - so the body count isn't abnormal, even if it is heartbreaking.)

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OH, HEY, CHECK IT OUT - ANOTHER DEAD ANIMAL WE FOUND! (Snort.)

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Even though we pass by this field every effing time we perform any sort've roadkill round-up we've never, ever noticed this so-suave-it's-super-fucking-natural stallion. The second it caught sight of us walking back to the car it immediately began posing for pictures, and we couldn't help but stop for a few minutes to immortalize the uber ridiculous vogue-like flaunting (oh, that motherfucker was workin' it).

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The majority of our rookery excursion was beneath a heavily overcast sky, but - and I kid you not - the second we became aware of the suave stallion's presence the rolling clouds parted and a single ray of sunlight broke through the crevice and fell like a heavenly beacon RIGHT ON THE MOTHERFUCKING HORSE. We stood mesmerized as that solitary beam expanded, engulfing the entire field with warm, radiant light while Euan Garlogie, wonder horse extraordinaire, effortlessly stole the moment by striking many a pose.

By Ribbon and Thread

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Learn more about TTC (Tourist Trap Crow) here.

Tourist Trap Crow

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There's twenty-four mothereffing photos internet-stapled to this particular journal entry, so I'm going to ditch the overly verbose shit I'm usually known for since the pictures should, for the most part, speak for themselves. If you're looking for a wordier explanation regarding my, uh, unique spiritual practice of rescuing, butchering and working with roadkill you'll probably find some of your answers in Reduce, Reuse, Recycle which explains the process in better detail. Be sure to also check out my roadkill specific journal category (Asphalt & Entrails), and its correlating Flickr set for even more stories, information and images.

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If you've been visiting Graveyard Dirt for over a week - hi, hello and thanks for coming back for seconds (or thirds or fourths or, you know, whatever) - chances are you're already acquainted with Tourist Trap Crow in some form (see Panikhida). TTC's the "saturated, spring chicken" carrion crow Italics and I found during one of our recent roadkill rounds (May 31st, 2011), and since bringing the soaked-to-the-motherfucking-bone bird back home I've conducted various funerary rites (Corvid Funeral), ritually prepared the bird for decomposition (Resurrection) and ceremonially interred its skeletal remains into a decay-inducing womb (The Black Rabbit's Cauldrons).

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Just by gently examining roadkill with my bare hands I usually get a fair idea of the internal condition of the body, and, sometimes, where the animal received the fatal blow. The only noticeable external trauma was the compound fracture blithely jutting from one of TTC's feet, but, despite feeling solid, I found more broken bones beneath feathers and flesh.

Even though it isn't 100% apparent in the photos below the carrion crow's sternum was slightly crushed and its wishbone cleanly snapped in two (it doesn't take a mothereffing genius to figure out what part of this bird collided with a fast moving vehicle). To ensure no more bones were broken during the ritual of reduction I very carefully worked at joints to disconnect appendages naturally so the only damage visible in the skeletal remains is the damage it sustained when getting nailed by a car.

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A ribbon was tied around the crow to restrain, comfort and relax it during the rite, and then, after prayers, libations and multiple cleansings it was unraveled to release TTC's spirit from the burden of its physical body.

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A sideways peek at TTC's white beard.

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A much better shot of TTC's white soul patch.

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I used a blend of several incenses throughout the ritual of reduction. (The miniature bird-footed bottle is probably familiar, but I think this was the first time I busted out the vintage Russian cruet set that Italics gave me for Christmas.)

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The bowls, tools and brushes used during the ritual of reduction. (I only nicked myself once during the first incision - accidental blood offering, ahoy!)

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TTC's ribboned body resting on layered plates. (One set down for the flayed feathers'n'flesh, and the other to hold its skinned body.)

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Whenever I work with one of my roadkill animals I try to document its appearance and any visible trauma through photographs for two reasons:

1.) It's a quick reference guide that illustrates the condition of the animal which allows me to decide how best to reduce the animal without having to dig it out of the fucking freezer to physically examine it multiple times.

2.) It allows the caretaker-to-be* to develop a bond with the creature they'll be opening their home to.

* I know it probably sounds hella retarded, but I really fucking despise using the word "owner" when referring to people who'll eventually give my critters new homes; these roadkill animals aren't property, and if anything's going to do the owning you better fucking believe it'll be the animal that decides if it wants you.

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TTC has a set of beautiful fucking wings, although this photo only relates half of the glory because there was no effing way to effectively keep the wings spread while taking a picture of them at the same goddamn time. (Shame about the ratty tail, although those feathers can easily be cleaned. <- I try and leave some "grooming" jobs for the caretaker-to-be; perfect animal'n'human bonding activity.)

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More of that white motherfucking soul patch that I love so damn much.

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May 31st, 2011: Appearances can be really fucking deceiving. When we picked up the juvenile carrion crow (aka "Tourist Trap Crow") it was nearly frozen and soaked to the motherfucking bone. Despite its saturated, spring chicken state we picked it up anyway - it was a clean hit; skull unfractured, no bodily ruptures or glimpses of internal organs - making it the first official roadkill crow of 2011. After some serious TLC (which required 24 hours of gentle feather fluffing while breathing onto the cold body to warm and dry the bird) the roadkill crow magically transformed from an ugly (dead) duckling to a taxidermy worthy specimen.

From ugly duckling to slightly-ruffled-around-the-edges swan.

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I have such tender affection for TTC, and every fucking time I see this photo my black, shriveled heart somehow manages to swell with love. I don't want to get all, you know, magic-woo-woo on you, but the rituals of release and reduction were so effortless and smooth that the entire process left me with the biggest sense of affirmation, serenity and happiness.

I'll be honest, there've been countless times this past month when I was at the end of my sharing-my-life-and-office-with-an-injured-fucking-crow rope and all I could do to deal with the stress of the routine-shattering detour was throw my hands up to the sky demanding FOR MOTHER LOVIN' CHRIST, WHY?!. It wasn't until after TTC was spread out in front of me that I understood where that feeling of intimate connection came from: TC.

By devoting time, energy and emotion to a living crow I've created an association that, like it or not, unlocks my maternal instinct whenever I interact with them. Every crow - dead, alive, roadkill or natural death - is now, and forever will be, the injured fledgling we rescued, lived with, cared for and loved, and because of that I can't help but work more carefully, more gently and with the greatest amount of compassion when handling any crow.

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When inspecting TTC's body I noticed an egg-like bump bulging out from its lower abdomen. The force of the impact had caused the internal organs to distend down - ultimately tearing the thin abdominal sheet between skin and viscera - into the lower abdominal cavity. In this picture you can see the liver, gizzard and the tattered remains of the thin ass membrane that once protectively covered the organs.

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TTC's flayed skin in one complete piece (feather side up).

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TTC's flayed skin in one complete piece (feather side down).

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Carrion crows have bristle-like "hairs" that grow along their upper beak (in the opposite direction of their other feathers), and thanks to an extra sharp medical grade scalpel I was able to include those feathery "hairs" in TTC's flayed skin.

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TTC stripped down to muscles, bones, organs and feet. (Sorry about the intestine spillage; I, uh, wasn't wearing gloves - DON'T BE LIKE ME; ALWAYS WEAR FUCKING GLOVES WHEN WORKING WITH ANY DEAD ANIMAL, OKAY? - so I didn't want to gingerly tuck in entrails with my bare hands.)

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TTC's feet, cleanly separated from the body without breaking any bones or inflicting any new damage.

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Most of TTC's organs waiting to be separated into two piles (the skin's already been removed, and I allow the brain to liquefy within the skull as the remains macerate in water): the shit that's kept and dried, and the shit that's returned back to the earth. I kept the heart, liver, eyes and tongue (which is still attached to its trachea), and buried the other internal organs in my borlotti bean container. (Magic crow beans, anyone?)

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TTC finally reduced to muscle and bone.

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To help expedite the maceration process I removed as much soft tissue as I could from TTC's body. Whatever was cut off ended up in the shit-that's-kept-and-dried pile to be used at the discretion of the eventual caretaker (for obvious fucking reasons I don't recommend treating the dehydrated breast steaks as homemade jerky).

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After a long ass afternoon of serious motherfucking work TTC had been ritually reduced to six distinct parts: the muscle and organs I kept (blue glass bowl), its flayed skin, complete with soul patch, beak hairs, wings and tail feathers (ceramic oval dish), five giant blood clots (paper squares), feet (rectangular white dish), skeleton (blue glass dish) and the muscles'n'organs I returned back to the earth (white metal bowl). Nothing, as you can clearly see, was wasted or thrown out.

...but that's not the end of Tourist Trap Crow's story, because, really, it's only just begun. Like I mentioned in Panikhida, I'll be updating Graveyard Dirt over the next few weeks with pictures of TTC's progression from cold, wet roadkill to naturally cleaned, project-ready parts (bones, feet, blood, organs, skin and feathers). So if you do come back for seconds - or thirds or fourths or, you know, whatever - you'll be able to witness the slow transformation of flesh to bone.

The Black Rabbit's Cauldrons

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Manmade wombs cradle the newly dead as they sleep beneath a still sheet of filmy water.

Love and Sorrow

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On June 3rd the Orthodox Church observes the feast day of The Vladimir Madonna. This particular Mary's called Vladimirskaya (to us Slavs, anyway), and it's her heartrending expression that simultaneously reflects maternal love and sorrow that's made her one of the most highly revered icons of all Orthodoxdom. As a devout witch I have unending respect and admiration for what the Blessed Mother stands for, and I regularly drag my city-hatin' ass downtown to church to invite Her influence of mercy, compassion and love into my life. (Praying for those virtues is way, way easier than practicing them. <- I'd normally cap a statement like that with "just trust me on this", but I don't think you need to be wearing the Ms. Dirty dress to get where I'm coming from.)

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My holy day of reverence began with the old dead (love), and ended with the new dead (sorrow). The sad, autistic reality is that mercy, compassion and love comes easily when you can cradle fur and feathers to your chest, but those qualities'n'characteristics - which pour out naturally for wild and domesticated animals - isn't a default response when dealing with people. I could probably give you one million and two reasons why I do this entire roadkill thing, but at the heart of it I sometimes wonder if it's all an exercise in relating, understanding and, ultimately, forgiving.

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I found the youngest of the two rabbits at the base of a small crow rookery built in tall pine trees towering over a heavily trafficked country road. One or two fledglings had already met their asphalt death, and to ensure that the same deaths weren't repeated I removed the bunny from the road to eliminate any scavenging temptation. Unfortunately, this rabbit's skull was shattered, so I skinned the body, took the fur, feet and tail, and buried the rest of its physical remains in one of our sweet corn containers (which'll then be emptied at the end of the year for the insect-cleaned bones).

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Graveyards have a tendency of leaving gifts for me - even new, unexplored ones - and to foster a feeling of goodwill I always reciprocate with something in return. Most cemetery visits are planned (working out that shit in advance gives me a chance to bake an appropriate offering), but when they aren't I can always fall back on the individually wrapped candy, cookies and oatcakes that I keep in my magic wooden basket.

I very nearly didn't take anything when exploring this kirkyard since it was our first introduction (and because my magic wooden basket wasn't actually with me; I didn't think I needed it while haunting the cemetery at 5:30 in the motherfucking morning), but I couldn't resist the celestial dead bell in my path. Sometimes a gift's just a gift and you need to suck it up and simply say DUDE, THANK YOU! least you upset the generous, non-expectant gesture.

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The elder of the two rabbits found on the 3rd wasn't as immaculate as the first (one of its hind legs had burst open - presumably upon impact - revealing the gravel-embedded muscles beneath), but its soulful, doe-like eyes hinted of wisdom gained through experience and I found myself returning, again and again, to stare into the dead eyes of the roadkill rabbit. Unlike the bunny this mature rabbit's head was in perfect condition, but, as I soon discovered, the sustained internal injuries far exceeded the more obvious external damage.

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To be perfectly blunt, the organs had exploded and were floating in a sea of vegetative chyme in the abdominal cavity. I salvaged 2/3 of this rabbit's coat (it was impossible to hygienically skin the lower third) leaving its two front feet attached (like a hand puppet), took its head (the eyes and tongue to dry, and the skull to clean) and buried the rest of its physical remains in Papa's tobacco container (which'll also be emptied at the end of the year for the insect-cleaned bones).

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Most roadkill I find is usually hugging the sidelines, but this fledging carrion crow with three white nails (see them?) was brazenly spread eagle in the middle of a small country road. It seemed like a clean kill until I gently turned over the dead bird's body and saw the majority of its entrails hanging out in a tangled knot. Skinning was an option, but the head - just like the young rabbit's - was crushed, which meant there wasn't much of a skull to retrieve, and I would've had to been insanely careful about flaying it thanks to the bacteria ridden organs hanging out. Since it was already partially eviscerated I decided to hollow out the rest of the bird to prepare it for my first foray into homemade mummification.

May 31st, 2011

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I've been so fucking busy that I've been shying away from the inevitable dirty work that comes with my spiritual practices. Finding the effort to drag my sorry ass out of the house at 5:30 AM to do my roadkill rounds is a piece of motherfucking cake, as is collecting mangled animals, building and creating altars for their funerals and then working with each animal individually (which includes rites, cleansings and, eventually, ritual dismemberment to ensure there isn't any physical baggage keeping the animal anchored unnecessarily to our world).

It's recording shit here in Graveyard Dirt - I mean, past posting "One A Day" photos - that's always felt like a divinely foisted curse that I've had to suck up and endure. Some days there aren't words, but there aren't enough photos, either, which means I have to strike some sort of balance between the two. Today's one of those days where my brain just isn't on (probably because I've been ankle deep in dead wildlife, and, after a while, funeral fatigue starts setting in) and I'm just not feeling this entire journal writing thing, so, like, apologizes in advance if this entry seems sort've flat and listless.

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It's not any secret that Scotland's fostered a strong hate towards wildlife for most of its history. Nature was an enemy, and certain indigenous species were deliberately hunted to extinction due to their pest and/or fashion status, or because folks felt that the animals posed a threat to either humans or livestock.

Recently there's been renewed interest in reintroducing species that had been previously obliterated (i.e. beavers, wild boar, etc.), but any introduction seems to be met with resistance (mostly from people who own serious amounts of land and don't want to see their property affected by animals setting up camp in their territory). Some gamekeepers are still poisoning raptors (predatory birds) despite their protected status, and some farmers seem all too fucking eager to scapegoat and condemn any animal that seems to benefit from living on the fringes of human habitation.

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Here in Scotland (I'd say "in the UK", but Scotland and England have differing wildlife laws, so I'm only versed in what's applied to me and my work here in the northeast corner of the country) it's completely legal to hunt crows, rooks and magpies provided you follow a few simple rules and go about the business as humanely as possible. What I wasn't aware of was the practice of using hunted, dead corvids as scarecrows to deter birds from fields.

We only managed to liberate this hooded crow; there were just too many posts to check and morning traffic had picked up which meant our rescue operation was in plain view. Whoever this farmer is, they're the first to go on this witch's very personal, very local shit list (enjoy your agricultural blight, motherfucker).

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Crow nests are known for being unstable fucking things, and dangerous, to boot, because they build them high up in towering trees which means a tumble out of the nest can be fatal, but even living in the nest can be deadly - it's easy to get picked off by predator birds when you're young, defenseless and sitting on an elevated platter.

This year has been particularly hard on this generation of birds because we've had some seriously unseasonable weather including frequent gale force winds. We suspect that TC was a victim of one of those unusual storms, and after falling out of the nest - or gliding, since it was definitely in its fledgling stage when we found it - an animal tried to grab it by its wing but failed to make a meal out of young crow.

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Appearances can be really fucking deceiving. When we picked up the juvenile carrion crow (aka "Tourist Trap Crow") it was nearly frozen and soaked to the motherfucking bone. Despite its saturated, spring chicken state we picked it up anyway - it was a clean hit; skull unfractured, no bodily ruptures or glimpses of internal organs - making it the first official roadkill crow of 2011. After some serious TLC (which required 24 hours of gentle feather fluffing while breathing onto the cold body to warm and dry the bird) the roadkill crow magically transformed from an ugly (dead) duckling to a taxidermy worthy specimen.

The second corvid from the left - the one with grey shoulders and back - is the hooded crow that we liberated from the farmer's field. (Some people use "hooded crow" and "carrion crow" interchangeably even though hooded crows were granted a separate species status back in 2002. It's hard to change a conception that's been around since the beginning of time - especially since the reclassification happened less than a decade ago - but I feel its important to acknowledge the differences between the species and not lump everything together under a giant umbrella.)

Hooded crows in particular are associated with the Morrigan, the Cailleach (more like "veiled crows"?) and fairies, and it was once custom to throw a variety of shit at one to weasel out information from the Universe about your husband-to-be. I'll be the only one chucking shit at this hooded crow, though, since it's the first of its kind and I have a hard'n'straight rule about keeping firsts for myself.

From left to right: juvenile carrion crow (roadkill; near "Tourist Trap"), adult hooded crow (hunted; field), fledgling carrion crow (natural death; Pine Hedge Rookery) and an undetermined rook (natural death; Pine Hedge Rookery)

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The third corvid from the left is the fledgling carrion crow that we found at the Pine Hedge Rookery later in the morning. It was one of two birds discovered at that particular nesting site, and the first to be spotted as we clambered over the fallen stone wall into the peninsula-shaped hedge. Still hot to the touch I papoose-wrapped its warm, limp body in a clean towel just incase it hadn't finished the processing of passing over (although I didn't feel any sort of pulse). I'm not sure if it was just barely alive (or just barely dead) when we found it, but it was certainly gone by the time I performed the outside funeral.

The fourth and final corvid found that day was also discovered at the Pine Hedge Rookery. It was much further along the decaying process than most birds I pick up - you could see the emaciated, almost mummified body beneath ratty feathers - but its body seemed perfectly intact and I felt like I could still gently break the carcass down into bones. So the stinking rook - which I didn't know was a rook at the time since I didn't get to examine its head to spot the hairless beak, but I did know it stunk to high fucking heaven in that familiar HOLY FUCKING SHIT, HOW CAN SOMETHING ORGANIC AND NATURAL SMELL LIKE GODDAMN BURNING TIRES?! dead mothereffing animal way - was taken home, along with all of the pine needles, beetles and dirt attached to it.

This is the first rook I've found, so its remains - like the hooded crow - will be staying with me.

From left to right: juvenile carrion crow (roadkill; near "Tourist Trap"), adult hooded crow (hunted; field), fledgling carrion crow (natural death; Pine Hedge Rookery) and an undetermined rook (natural death; Pine Hedge Rookery)

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When the weather becomes more favorable I perform the majority of my funerary rites outdoors (naked, usually - I'd rather wash blood off my body than out of my clothes), which is especially useful when you're bringing home multiple animals and can't use the garage as a giant refrigerator due to rising temperatures. (<- Winter in Scotland is a scavengers dream. But the second summer rolls around? You got to either work with your roadkill animals super quick, or cleverly hide them in the fridge until you're ready to start and finish the process in one go).

We make offerings to visiting wildlife on a daily basis - now two times a day since fledglings have left their nest and are being taught foraging skills by their parents - and on this occasion I used breakfast cereal to create edible veve-like patterns around the bodies of the dead to feed both the crows and the wildlife that the food would inevitably attract.

Garden Funeral

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Panikhida

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One of May 31st's carrion crows (the more mature one that was hit by a car): Tourist Trap Crow. Over the next few weeks I'll be updating Graveyard Dirt with pictures of TTC's progression from cold, wet roadkill to naturally cleaned, project-ready parts (bones, feet, blood, organs, skin and feathers). Once I perform the last and final panikhida all of this white-bearded carrion crow will be offered for sale.

Corvid Funeral

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An open air funeral for four corvids (two carrion crows, one rook and one hooded crow) found on the 31st of May.

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Only one of the birds - the more mature carrion crow (bottom right) - was roadkill. The hooded crow (top left) was found hanging from a fucking pole in the middle of a farmer's field, and the rook (bottom left) and infant crow (top right) were both natural deaths.

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Resurrection

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Scarecrow

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At first I thought NO FUCKING WAY, IT COULDN'T BE, but by the third body it was undeniable - some barbaric cunt actually made real life scarecrows out of dead fucking birds. And the worst fucking part? IT WASN'T EVEN EFFECTIVE.

The one goddamn thing it succeeded in doing? Bringing down a hardcore case of agricultural blight straight out've the 16th fucking century. In fact, I'm ready to Janet Horne this motherfucker and ride his bridled ass across country until nothing's left except ashes like I'm some mothereffing Wendigo.

August 26th, 2010

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The woods of a broken crow, wild, edible mushrooms, forgotten feathers, misplaced bones and, once upon a time, seven lousy rabbits.

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(Un)Salvageable

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Salvaging the unsalvageable.

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

I start each of my roadkill animals with the best photographic intentions, but by the time I'm elbow-deep in muscle, fat and skin I forget to reach for my trusty camera to document each stage of skinning and - if the meat's safe for human consumption - butchery. So one thing you'll notice with most of my processing-themed images is that the set's never the whole production, just a slight tease of a few steps before I obviously became too engrossed with my work to continue snapping pictures.

While I wouldn't consider this particular set of processing images "complete" (it's missing the all important gutting stage), it does give you a good idea of what skinning an animal's like and how ungross, unbloody and ungrotesque it really is. (I'll be honest - it can be a messy affair. It all depends on how the animal died and where it received the hardest trauma. But a complete, unruptured, fresh animal usually yields a clean and almost effortless job provided you have a sufficiently sharp object (I work with a pair of kitchen scissors and a medical grade scalpel) and comfortable amount of space to work in.)

Over the next 16 images you'll be able to see how I reduced the pair of badgers we found on March 7th from abandoned roadkill to pelts (for tanning), meat (for consumption) and bones (for use in our personal practices) while wasting nothing in the process (unless you count the small amount of bruised, overly bloody badger meat that I offered to my corvids and visiting scavengers as "a waste"). These images aren't gratuitous; in fact, I barely consider them "graphic". If you can stomach eating meat, working with meat, visiting a butcher's shop and watching culinary-based TV shows where entire sides of animals are whittled down to roasts, chops and ribs then you can definitely digest this entry without feeling queasy.

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The night of the badger funeral. I've now conducted roadkill funerals (which involves everything from altar creation to ritual butchery) in the bathroom, kitchen, backroom and directly on my roadkill altar outside beneath The Shango Tree. This was the first time I used the bathroom, and it would've been fucking perfect - a toilet, sink, and bathtub only a stretch away, not to mention the ability just to wipe laminated floors and tiled walls clean in an instant - if the room wasn't so goddamn small.

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Bee (sometimes known as Beh) was one of our pet rats who had an overwhelming compulsion to dig up the fucking carpet. ("BEE! FOR FUCK'S SAKE! STOP TEARING UP THE MOTHERFUCKING CARPET!") When she passed on we chose a badger toy to represent her, a sort've magical effigy, or spirit doll. Within fucking months I discovered that someone - or something - was repeatedly digging up my goddamn outside altar and tossing heavy shit like Stone Cock aside. And then we caught that thing red-fucking-handed; a badger, on our tiny little subdivision property, digging up the fucking yard. ("BEE! FOR FUCK'S SAKE! STOP TEARING UP THE MOTHERFUCKING GARDEN!")

Not every pet rat became a woodland toy animal, and not every roadkill animal has a correlating rat spirit living in a stuffed toy. Bee's a little special in that way, and that unique connection was hard to overlook. So instead of invoking Chippy - who normally helps me with ritually processing wildlife - I called on our Busy Bee to act as a psychopomp for our March 7th pair. It must've been an exhausting fucking job, because the stuffed badger actually looked wrung-the-fucked-out after the ritual and she kept falling over without anyone knocking into her. After an offering of fresh water and a peanut butter'n'pumpkin seed sandwich Bee looked less ragged and finally stopped tipping over without provocation.

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This was the first badger we found on March 7th, the female. She was in worse shape than her possible mate (we found the other badger, the male, within eyesight the female), and was much larger, dustier and more battered (she had been hit multiple times).

She had exaggerated teats and extensive mammary tissue, which lead me to believe that there was probably a den of orphaned pups that had been left behind. (Whenever I pick up a female that was obviously lactating I always make an extra offering of rich cream to her offspring, because I know that their food source - their mother - won't be returning home to nurse them.) Her absence will ultimately result in their death, and that's something I always try to keep in mind when working with my roadkill animals: death doesn't just take the hit animal, sometimes it takes its mate and/or children as well.

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This was the second badger we found on March 7th, the male. Rigor mortis hadn't set in, so when I lifted his skank ass - and, Lord, it was fucking skank (three potent and intense "M" words: male, mating season, musk) - he rolled into my arms like a cuddly teddy bear, all soft limbs and bristly, pliable fur. He was visibly smaller than the female, and weighed less which meant I carried the motherfucker around the house like my baby for as long as I could. (Or, uh, bear. I mean, even the fucking MUSCLE of the male badger naturally stunk to high heaven, and not because he was so old he was "off".)

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Badger feet, they get me every fucking time. (Aren't they fucking adorable?) Whenever I see them I immediately think of Flower, from Bambi. (Although we don't have Flowers here, or raccoons, or possums, or even chipmunks. We're also very, very lucky to live in an area where wildlife diseases don't run rampant, so, for me, the risk of running into something is very low. Rabies, for instance? Practically non-existent here.) When I skin most roadkill I leave everything intact, so along with the face, head, tail and external reproductive features I also leave things like the paws attached so the animal's entire body is present in the flayed skin.

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...if you have a better fucking suggestion of how to weigh large roadkill animals I'd like to hear it. Until then, though, I'm sticking with "old plastic trash can sitting on top of the house's communal scales". The female clocked in at 2 stones ("stones" is a legitimate weight system here in the UK, medieval or what?) and since a stone's something like 14lbs that roughly made her about 30lbs. The male weighed around 10lbs less, and didn't seem as at home in the trash can. (I didn't get a picture of it, but when he went in to get weighed his arms stuck up and out of the container and beseechingly stretched to me like a toddler desperate to get out of a playpen.)

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For me, blood's inevitable at some point of flaying large roadkill because I can't bleed the animal before skinning it (I don't want to ruin the pelt, either by staining it or introducing marks, cuts or holes that'd detract from the fur's eventual appearance), and because it has a tendency to pool around the site of massive trauma (i.e., where it got hit) and form pockets on the side bearing the animal's weight (the parts of the body touching the ground). If you work carefully with a crazily sharp object (I use a pair of kitchen scissors and a medical grade scalpel) you'll find that skinning an animal - even one as big as a badger - doesn't necessarily have to be a Bathory bloodbath affair.

(If you look really fucking closely you can see a dark stripe running along the male badger's neck - that's blood. It's still neatly contained because I didn't puncture the artery, which is why working slow and with a seriously sharp instrument is highly recommended when skinning unbled animals. You can literally skate around some of the major blood vessels in the body if you just take your time.)

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Like I said earlier, skinning in the bathroom was almost fucking perfect but there was only one drawback: not enough leg room. I processed the entire male badger in the bathroom, but when it came time to work with the female I set up camp in the backroom. It was far more comfortable - and relaxing, I plugged our MP3 player directly into the turntable's speakers and listened to The Moors while flaying, gutting and cleaning - but the lighting wasn't as great, so the pictures below look darker and less detailed than the ones above.

I tried taking a few pictures of the mostly skinned female badger to give people a sense of anatomy, but flash photography isn't the best way to show off the intricate weaving of nature and evolution. A badger's jaw is hinged in a way that can't be dislocated unless physically broken, so the skull and upper vertebrae get a tremendous amount of support from an insane amount of muscles (which is clearly visible in this picture). The abdominal cavity isn't open, although you can see some of her internal organs just peeking beneath the disrupted mammy tissue towards the back legs and tail (the muscle holding them in split in one or two places along the inner thigh).

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While the female badger's skull looks undamaged, it was actually in fractured pieces. (The only thing holding the skull together was muscle.) The male sustained much less damage, although his jaw was severely dislocated. In this picture you get a good fucking idea of how goddamn robust a badger's neck is; it doesn't taper down gracefully, and the thick, muscular layers extend straight from the skull to the shoulders.

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The flayed pelt of the female badger. What you see is the entire animal: her fur, feet, ears, whiskers, nipples, asshole - everything. I haven't yet taught myself how to tan hides and furs (that's one of my 2011 goals), but when it's time to preserve her I'll be working with her complete skin. In fact, out of respect to the animal I won't be "grooming" my furs for symmetrical appearance, but that's just my personal feelings as the caretaker of my animals.

(In addition to selling the bones and feathery remains of my roadkill animals I'll also be selling their preserved pelts, although the decision to pop in lower jaws or groom furs will entirely be up to the animal's caretaker. Any pieces trimmed away would be kept - either by myself or the caretaker - to ensure that all of the animal's preserved remains were properly honored.)

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One of the female badger's beautiful little paws, studded with five super long nails that once ripped through the earth to find food and create homes.

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Meat is fucking meat, and we're carnivores, so I don't expect anyone to be blown away by the fact that we eat roadkill (provided that the animal's safe for human consumption). There are certain animals that we won't eat for spiritual or legal reasons, but everything else is fair game. And to be completely honest? If given a choice between hunted food and roadkill food I'd always prefer the roadkill option. (I've eaten hunted game and had to spit out fucking shots; there ain't no bullets to accidentally break your fucking teeth on when eating a roadkill animal.)

People might not believe it, but eating roadkill has drastically changed our diets and personal beliefs of how an animal - one destined to be eaten - should live and die. We've always been concerned about animal welfare, but I've always felt - at least until recently - that two people couldn't really make that much of an impact on industrial farming.

I'm now entering my second year of scavenging and we no longer eat full-priced meat from battery operations (we only purchase the reduced-to-clear shit that's on the verge of being thrown out - our feelings are that letting the animal go to waste by being dumped in a landfill would be the bigger crime), we've drastically reduced our intake of pork and beef, we've instigated vegetarian-only days (which is really fucking hard when you're a flesh-eating troll like me) and drastically raised our intake of local, welfare-assured meat and indigenous game (not just roadkill).

Even though I'm not responsible for the roadkill animal's death, I feel like I make peace by using the dead body. And that's what this picture's all about: communion.

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In these last four pictures you'll see how I reduced the female badger's body down to bone and meat. She isn't 100% complete; her body was so badly damaged I had no choice but to take off her lower legs and bury them with her internal organs. To the right of her partial carcass is a section of her spine, one of her arms (she sustained serious injury to her head, one of her shoulders, her back and one of her hips) and a sheet of fat I managed to rescue off her otherwise inedible lower third.

If you're a meat eater (and, most importantly, a cook), you might be able to pick out familiar cuts in the image above. The most obvious are the ribs which flank the spine on either side, and the two fleshy medallions of meat hugging part of the vertebrae are the tenderloins. Tenderloin is also known as "fillet steak" (here in the UK), or "filet" (French); it's the most tender - and most expensive - cut of meat you can get. Filet mignon comes from tenderloin, so, essentially you're staring at what was eventually removed and made into badger filet mignon.

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Before I could extract those two prized strips of tenderloin I had to remove the excess fat hiding the meat, which is a prize within itself. Pure animal fat is gold in a motherfucking jar to a witch and cook, so I take my adipose harvesting really fucking seriously. Once I have enough reserves from a certain type of animal I gently warm the solid lumps until they've melted, and then strain the liquid fat clean into glass jars which are kept in the fridge. One of my goals is to be able to offer rendered fat from roadkill animals to the witchcraft community through my store-to-be, but first I have to find a supplier of tiny jam jars to see if the idea's even viable.

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By this point I've removed the fat, extracted the tenderloins and removed most of the edible meat from the bones. Because I wasn't sure how to separate the ribs cleanly from the spine (we're totally having BBQ badger ribs) I left the spinal column intact for later butchery.

Her fractured head sits in the middle of the photo, and to her right are her practically meatless bones which will be cleaned for divinatory purposes (I'll be digging up her leg bones once the flesh has rotted off). The two bowls crowning the towel hold fat for rendering and meat for eating, and the clear bowl at the bottom of the towel holds the small, inedible portions which was offered to fellow scavengers. (Picking up roadkill means taking a prospective meal away from carrion eaters, so I like to right the balance by sharing remains with them.)

The ritualized funeral'n'butchery process is hella involved, but it allows me to make most of the unfortunate deaths I come across and, as you can see, nothing - not even a scrap of membrane - gets wasted.

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...and here's most of the female badgered butchered, cleaned, portioned and vacuum sealed. Her head and bones were kept together for cleaning, her fat gathered up into one neat pile for rendering and her spinal column and neck were left whole for future BBQing. The other air-tight plastic envelopes contain meat, and they was separated by cut. (Thin, fleshy flank steaks and thick, chunky casserole bites.)

For the curious, I haven't had badger yet, but I can tell you that it smells like any other red meat. I wouldn't describe the scent as "gamey", but I did detect a faint lamb-like aroma when my mouth began watering. (And, holy fuck, it watered. It watered often.) I'm keeping the tenderloin pieces for something special (badger stroganoff, anyone?), so our first foray into roadkill badger eating will probably be shish kebabs using the chunkier grade of meat flavored with a Mediterranean-style marinade.

Flesh to Bone

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From flesh to bone.

Fledgling

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My baby's turning into a fledgling. Soon it'll be time for Beech Hedgerow Crow to leave this nest and enter the loving home of a new caretaker.

Four Funerals and a Bath

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The badger funeral was conducted in our bathroom, and was overseen by Bee (our pet rat who turned into a badger after death; the stuffed toy is Beh's spirit doll, which was invoked to act as a psychopomp for the recently deceased). Offerings were a fresh bowl of cold water, resin-based incense and a shared peanut butter and honey sandwich with raisins on gluten-free brown bread.

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The pheasant funeral was conducted in our kitchen (if the animal's fit to be eaten, then it's fit to be butchered in the culinary heart of our home), and its spirit was ushered outside with the rest of our "chickens" who we regularly feed using old bread, table scraps and Rice Krispies. Offerings were a fresh bowl of cold water, stick incense and a bowl of locally grown oats (not that this motherfucker needed any more food with how much wheat he had stuffed in his crop).

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The rabbit funeral was conducted in our backroom, and was overseen by my Santa Muerte rabbit (the head rabbit of my five black rabbits). Most animals that come into this house end up being processed in the kitchen, but because I'm not allowed to eat rabbit - and because we both picked up an initiatory illness from one that lasted a fucking month - I try and do my rabbit butchery as far away as possible from where I prepare food for consumption. Offerings were a fresh bowl of cold water, a carrot, resin-based incense and a little gem lettuce and parsley open face sandwich on gluten-free brown bread.

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The deer funeral was conducted in our backroom, and the twitterpated couple spent the entire evening nuzzling one another over a shared sandwich as I worked on the female badger in the same room (our tiny bathroom turned out to be too cramped to process a nearly 30lb animal, so I relocated my skinning operation to a larger area with more leg room). Offerings were a fresh bowl of cold water, resin-based incense and a little gem lettuce, parsley and hummus sandwich dressed with some of my "uniquely special" fly agaric/toadstool oil on gluten-free brown bread.

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Amidst the mourning there was some bathing. A few days after our March 7th roadkill haul we stumbled across the mud-soaked body of a dead male pheasant who, despite being plastered with gravel, was still in fairly good condition. We took him home and I Bean Nighed its ass in my orange roadkill bucket filled with cool, sudsy water, rinsed him until the water ran clean and then preened some of his feathers back into place before reducing him down to bones, feathers, meat and feet. I think it must've appreciated the care; this particular pheasant was practically odorless (either that or I've become totally desensitized to the sour, bile-y scent of busted crops and internal organs).

Badger Butchery

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Badger meat is gorgeous, with sheets of creamy, dimpled fat and the most subtle - but not gamy - wild lamb scent. March 7th's male was unsuited for human consumption, but the female was a prime candidate for roadkill butchery so I spent the better part of this afternoon processing her carcass until she was nothing more but meat (to eat), fat (to render) and bone (to clean and use in my personal practices). Everything reduced has a purpose-to-be, and nothing - not even a scrap of membrane - went to waste.

Roadkill Roast

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A special birthday dinner for a friend.

Twitterpated

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For obvious reasons these two (#09 and #10) will be sold as a set.

The Day of 7

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Here's a sterling example of my recent streak of bad fucking luck: within days of passing its mothereffing MOT - which took longer than fucking usual, so we were without access to a vehicle for something like 1/2 a week instead of the usual overnight - my car broke. I mean, like, within 48 effing hours of being returned home. On our first foray out after a long nocturnal period I lowered all four car windows to clear them of condensation and only three came back up. And then the door of the non-working window began whining, even AFTER I turned the fucking engine off. My ass? Never even left the effing driveway that day.

We sealed the open window with a trash bag (a sight I haven't fucking seen in something like 15 or 20 years; Scottish people are notoriously car-vain, so you don't see dirty ass beaters chugging down the highway with homemade plastic windows like you do in the States) and I braced myself for the inevitable: the frustrating disbelief of how much fucking time would be necessary to fix what was, essentially, a small fucking problem. Because that's what happens with this car. (Last summer? It was out of commission for nearly a fucking month because the speedometer stopped working. Not a complicated problem, but, LOL!, the repair guys ordered the wrong part, couldn't fit the used one they found and...)

I'd totally agree with you about needing to be more laidback and zen about this shit, but with our fucked up sleeping schedule - which has been in place for over ten fucking years, so it ain't gonna change anytime soon - there are month long periods where we're up exclusively at night. And being up at night, in Scotland, during the depths of winter means I have to abandon my roadkill duties entirely until our bizarre way of living finally falls in synch with the normal world for a few long weeks. In reality, I actually have a very small window of opportunity to engage in those duties (at least during the darker months of the year), so I begin biting my nails when the car suddenly goes down just as our schedules align with the ability to go out.

Within a half a fucking hour Italics had already pegged what had gone wrong. Apparently, my make of car is notoriously fussy about moisture. Water got into where it shouldn't have been when I lowered the windows, and a fuse freaked. But we aren't mechanics, so the car had to be turned over to professionals who wouldn't listen to Italics, and therefore spent over a motherfucking week taking shit apart going "WOW, WE REALLY DON'T KNOW WHAT'S WRONG WITH THIS THING".

After 8-9 days of nail biting we finally get a "LOL! HE WAS RIGHT ALL ALONG! LOL!" call from them, and I tried really, really fucking hard not to see red, but it was hella hard, internet, when I finally got my fucking car back only to find that the repair guys busted our radio and internal clock. Which means it needs to go back to the shop. Again. So something else can break within a week of bringing it back home.

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(The serious fucking kicker? My father did all of the mechanical upkeep of our cars, but when I asked to be taught those skills he laughed the idea off. Neither of my parents took the time to talk to me about drugs, alcohol or sex, so you'd think they'd try to strike a balance by teaching me something useful like simple auto repair, but...no.)

Anyway, this entry isn't solely about me bitching about my car, I just sort've wanted to give you an idea of how life can get royally fucked when I don't have one when we're up during the day. (I suppose I could've been succinct and said something like: no car = no roadkill work, nocturnal mode = no roadkill work.) And this time of the year is a crazy special time because all of the hibernating animals are sluggishly coming to, which means certain species are getting hit as they groggily stumble around.

(Roadkill definitely has its "seasons", and right now we're knee-deep in badger season. It's not that badgers don't get hit off-peak, it's just that during this time of the year they're slowly waking up, emerging from their dens and diving headfirst into mating season. In badger world it's a crazy motherfucking time, although it's an unfortunate time that often sees a high body count and leaves many badgers windowed (they mate for life). 2011 is my second year of scavenging, and in that time - at least until yesterday - I've only come across two roadkill badgers and both of those were found in early March of last year.)

So, like, that's why the car's broken window had me biting my motherfucking nails: badgers (the dead ones, anyway). Because, fuck, we love badgers. Seriously. Out of all of the indigenous wildlife here in northeast Scotland they secured the biggest chunk out of our collective hearts. They're amazing, wonderful creatures burdened by medieval beliefs. They're maligned animals - much like foxes - and seem to have become the farmer's scapegoat. For all of those reasons and more we place badgers pretty fucking high on our roadkill pedestal; to be given one is a tremendously huge gift, and one we don't take for granted.

But badgers aren't the only animal of this story, (roe) deer play a pretty significant role, too. During this past Yuletide season we created an altar beneath the Christmas tree (an altar beneath another altar? talk about motherfucking talent!) around our Yule log, and we used apples, oranges, pears, plums and foil-wrapped candy to decorate the space. After the holidays we split the food into three lots: one was offered to the kids at the boarded up orphanage and home for disturbed children, the other went to the cemetery cairn for Papa, our ancestors and the locally buried dead and the last and final lot - comprised of 6 plums and 1 pear - were set aside for the roadkill deer I found, and, subsequently, took home in 2010.

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So, yeah, okay, it took my fucking ass three motherfucking months to finally execute the ritual (I ended up freezing the fruit to preserve it), and you'd think there might be some residual hard feelings about the delay, but even before we began leaving each deer its offering (at its death site; we left a whole plum - a significant choice because my roadkill altar is beneath a fruiting plum tree which means my spectral herd got a-fucking-lot of fresh, homegrown plums as offerings during last year's Harvest season - wherever we found the body of one of my deer) we stumbled across the ruffled - but unruptured - body of a male pheasant. (I mean, that find in itself makes a successful roadkill haul.)

Within minutes of dropping the first plum and ringing the deer bell for the first of 6 times (I spent 21 fucking days last October "herding" these motherfuckers with Chippy to get them to associate the sound of the goddamn bell with food) we came across the near perfect body of a wild rabbit. Unless you get them early on, roadkill rabbits tend to get mangled within an hour of death. Miraculously, this one - who wasn't warm to the touch in the slightest - somehow managed to remain unscathed, which meant I found my first intact rabbit of 2011. (Two usable roadkill animals in one day? That's a hella successful roadkill haul.)

After approximately placing #2's offering down (it was a drive-thru operation; I drove, and Italics rang the bell and tossed the plums out the window in the general direction of where the body had been found) I caught the dingy, yellowed belly fur of a large animal. "BADGER! BADGER! OH MY GOD, OH MY GOD! BADGER!" I started screaming - almost swerving - because all I needed to see was that dusty, ivory stomach hair to know what animal was lying at the side of the road for me.

I cried. Just a little. It was a weird mix of grateful, happy and sad. I would never, ever choose anything but life for any creature, but when death happens in my little kingdom-territory I want to be there for the animal. When I use the word "happy" to describe how I feel when it comes to roadkill, it's only because I'm relieved that the animal isn't lost and wasn't deprived of a funeral with mourners. I'm "happy" because I made sure that the animal wasn't forgotten, and that its death wouldn't have been in vain. I'm "happy" because I know how much love it'll get once it gets home (I admit it; I'm autistic and hug things, especially roadkill animals), and how much love it'll receive when it's time for me to transfer responsibilities to a new caretaker.

But, fuck, yeah. A badger. Pristine. Huge. A mother of a mother, in fact. (Teats; she's got them.) She had a somewhat shitty ass that needs to be babywiped, but otherwise she was in perfect condition. I moved the roadkill pheasant and rabbit aside and gently laid her giant corpse in trunk of the car, stopping to caress the depth of her winter coat. (Three usable roadkill animals in one day and one of them's a motherfucking badger? That's a crazy hella successful roadkill haul, even if she did unceremoniously fart in my fucking face as I loaded her into the car.)

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Before I could make my third offering - literally, just around the road's bend from the badger - I caught the battered remains of a deer in a ditch. So Italics, for the fourth time, had to patiently wait in the driveway of someone's house as I assessed the new animal. The buck (#9!) was too old, too broken and too gutted (his stomach had been hollowed out, but was filled with bloodied water) to be carted home, so I dragged his mangled-shattered-eaten remains far from the side of the road to give me - and fellow scavengers - a safe place to do our business. Despite being somewhat bruised his head seemed otherwise undamaged, so I decapitated him, took his head, released his spirit back into the wild and left the rest of his body tucked under some budding gorse for Nature.

I just barely pulled out of that motherfucking driveway when my eyes caught the all-too-familiar tuft of yellowed belly hair. Another badger, within seeing distance of the other roadkill badger and deer. Perfect. Amazing. Soul-crushingly teddy bear cute. And when I lifted it up into my arms, spying his little package, my heart almost broke. We found a male and female badger within less of a 1/4 of a mile of one another; it's very likely they were a mated pair.

On one hand you think "well, fuck, at least they're together, you know?", but on the other hand you think "fuck, what must've it been like to experience your mate for life get killed? and then to be killed the same way as you stumbled around confused and grieving?" and that second thought still causes everything in my chest to ache. So it was a little downbeat in the car as we inched closer to home, because finds like that really make you appreciate the serious prices that need to be paid for a "crazy hella successful roadkill haul" and that an animal's death doesn't just impact that specific animal, it potentially spells disaster, death and loneliness for offspring and mates as well.

Within a few miles of offering #3 (we've found two deer and one badger in that spot; I'm going to do my goddamn hardest to get some sort of animal crossing sign put up at that deadly bend to see if I can lower the wildlife body count) I caught the bristly hair of another deer (#10!). For a second I thought I hallucinated the crumpled body because, fuck, who finds 6 motherfucking usable roadkill animals within a 15 mile radius of their fucking house in one fucking drive?

#10 remained a questionable hallucination for about a half an hour; with no more room in the trunk (2 badgers, 1 pheasant, 1 rabbit and 1 decapitated deer head) we had to make a quick pit stop at home to unload our haul just in case the phantom deer turned out to be a reality (a tangible reality that was complete enough to take the entire body).

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Plum offering #4 was made on our way home, and then plum offering #5 was made on our way back to the maybe-for-real-but-who-knows? roadkill deer. She - #10 - was a rare fucking find; a treasure. Only 3 of the 10 deer I've found have been female, most of my herd's made up of young males. While Italics became acquainted with another driveway (just so I'm not giving the wrong impression: Italics is crazy active and helps me with most of my physical work, but yesterday his bad back was acting up so I benched his ass) I got out to inspect the very real deer.

Her state was near identical to #9's, which we found less than 10 minutes away. My guess is that both had been dead between 2-4 days; long enough for the eyes to turn milky white, to give scavengers a chance to empty the abdomen (but not make a huge dent in any other area of the body) and to be a little too far gone to take home and process in our little Scottish kitchen. (My mother-in-law? Just LOVES sharing her white kitchen with my roadkill.)

Her head, like most hit'n'run deer, felt solidly intact, so I dragged her partially eaten remains up a hill - jamming my fucking wrist against the ground when we both started sliding down the steep dirt mound - where I performed my decapitation/release ritual away from speeding cars and prying eyes. (Cause, like, the last thing people want to see is my fat fucking ass hanging out of my fucking jeans while beheading a dead animal at the side of the fucking road.)

A secondary surprise came in the form of detached wings, which I found on the way back to the car. Not even full, proper wings, but the very tips made up of a handful of bashed feathers on either side. But it was only the tips, plus a few nature-cleaned bones still attached to the structures, that I found. With no other feathers or scattered remains it seemed like something had carried those remnants from the original site of death. From the looks of them, they came from a rather large bird. (I have my suspicions, but I haven't had a chance to actually ID them yet.)

No offense to the trunk full of dead animals we were carting around, but fuck were we shattered after finding #10 and the tattered wings. That particular roadkill route usually takes me about 30-40 minutes to perform. Yesterday? It took three fucking hours. You would not fucking believe how thankful we were when it became clear that the roadkill slot machine was finally empty.

The last deer offering (#6) was made on the way home, and shortly after - just down the road where I pick the majority of my fly agarics/toadstools - a seventh offering was made (a large pear), because, as we all know, "7" is way, way more magic than "6". And it wasn't until later that night I realized that I had arbitrarily chosen March 7th to make my 7 offerings, which, in turn, rewarded me with 7 animals. 7 usable roadkill animals in one day? That's not just a crazy hella successful roadkill haul, that's a seriously magic roadkill haul from a Universe that evidently doesn't hold grudges.

PS: I realize that the entire roadkill thing is a niche interest, and that not every visitor to Graveyard Dirt is going to understand or accept my practices. That's cool, I totally get that. But if you ARE interested in learning about how I incorporate roadkill into my feral version of witchcraft (what I do, why I do it, etc.) two good places to start are my roadkill Flickr set and my Asphalt & Entrails journal category. Happy scavenging!

Wild, Full and Fertile

Three days before celibacy I'm sprinting barefoot across the recently swept March-cold patio, past the just-planted tobacco, the sleeping fruit trees and crowning foxgloves, past stainless steel offering bowls, buried remnants of roadkill animals and Stone Cock's vacant throne. Naked and flushed from sex I run from the comfortable heat of the house into the cold of the night; wild, full and fertile holding-gripping-cupping the precious fluids trickling warmly out of my well-loved cunt to bless and consecrate the King's divine seed lovingly sowed over the shrouded remains of a long dead crow.

Being Tolerated

There's a bunch of website bullshit running through my head (big changes, big overhauls, big updates - but more on that later), and combined with my occasional diversions streak my brain hasn't felt securely bolted to my skull in fucking weeks. The invisible behind-the-scenes work for Graveyard Dirt is mostly occupying my mental facilities, but I thought I'd try and push through a quick entry to keep the content kind've sort've fresh round these parts.

But, fuck, where do I start? I've got to go back farther than dead deer, August 27th and 2010. Maybe as far back as December, 1997 when my 17-year-old gothed out ass crossed the metallic threshold of the airplane onto Scottish ground for the very first time. (Slightly buzzed, I should add, because the British Airways stewardess couldn't give me pain medication for my menstrual camps, but she COULD give me mini-bottles of white wine. And in those days - before my period symptoms drastically changed - I would've taken anything an adult gave me for fucking pain.)

Yeah, 12/1997 is a good start, because that was my first introduction to Scotland. Granted, the time spent was only two weeks (Christmas vacation; it was the first and last year I had a motherfucking Yuletide turkey), but it eventually lead to frequent trips, long stays, and inevitably settling in Italics' home after five long motherfucking years of international traveling. (My ass has been haunting Scottish soil since 1997, but it wasn't until 2001 (when Italics and I had a shotgun immigration wedding) that I became a permanent fixture in this country.)

2009 is-was-is another important year, because that was the year I finally managed to ram my foot in the doorway of independence. After petitioning for nearly 13 motherfucking years Italics' parents - my in-laws - finally buckled and exchanged one of their two cars for a car I could actually fucking drive. My new found freedom coincided with Harvest Moon, and I celebrated the event with an impromptu joyride that took us on a small rural circuit that looped around the local landscape as the Manhunter full moon rose in the distance.

I hit the ground running in 2010 and I never looked back. As the hours of light extended I spent time exploring every little country lane within a 15 mile radius of our home. I got to intimately know the landscape we live in, and I carefully learned the rhythm of the natural world surrounding us. Within months I knew the semi-local countryside better than my in-laws. I knew the forgotten bends and secret stretches, and I knew the distinct personalities that imbued those meadows, thickets, stone walls, hedges and forests.

By late August, 2010 the miniature outside freezer was already packed with roadkill animals. My introduction to what eventually evolved into my roadkill duties first reared its head around early Harvest of 2008 (when we stumbled across the near perfect remains of a wild rabbit on our way to steal some potatoes), and within a year the freezer that once stocked frozen pizzas was stuffed to the brim with rabbits, crows, foxes and even a badger, but nothing remotely deer-related.

That's the thing, though. Deer were curiously scare around these parts until about a year ago. In all of my trips, outings, visits and explorations in those 13 years of confinement (sponsored by my in-laws who'd drive us, park and then sit and fucking read - or sleep - while I had my one or two hours of "freedom" in the wilderness) we never came across a body or even the remains of a deer. They were invisible woodland entities that I knew existed, but they seemed to live without a trace.

I mean, it took me something like ten fucking years before I saw my first deer in the wild. And that? Totally blows my rural Midwest mind because white-fucking-tailed deer were everywhere growing up. Those motherfuckers were so fucking blasé about man and the modern world that you could catch a small fucking herd just grazing within miles of O'Hare airport. My USA association with deer wasn't just rural, they boldly encroached on urban settings and barely gave you a second glance as you whizzed by in your car.

I'd almost go as far as saying that American white-tailed deer were weirdly domesticated in the sense that they just don't give a fuck about humans. ("People? Fuck those motherfuckers." <- How very Ms. Dirty of them.) Their Scottish counterparts, though, are considerably less brazen. They're fleeting, feral mirages that appear and disappear in the transient gloam of twilight, and the first misty vestiges of a dusty pink dawn. The deer I know and now live with are wary of humans, cars and the modern world; they still retain their bestial innocence and untamed wildness.

My relationship with the deer of Scotland evolved as my personal flavor of witchcraft evolved. The deeper I crawled into the earthy rabbit hole the more relaxed nature seemed around me. I'm not talking miraculous Dr. Doolittle shit where overly friendly wildlife swarmed me with affection and song the second I stepped into the wild, but the more I worked with roadkill - and the more familiar I became with the heart and soul of my slice of countryside - the more nature opened up to me.

I was gradually made privy to an entirely different way of life, and even though my presence was a disturbance it was no longer taken as an immediate threat; foxes sat and waited for me in meadows, and deer - unimpressed with me and my car - would look me over once before totally dismissing me by returning to eat unalarmed. It was like nature didn't have to hold its breath when my ass was around; even if I wasn't accepted, I was being tolerated and that was more miraculous than sewing mice and duet singing bluebirds.

Lunch & a Funeral

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#7 - Italics' little cheeky devil - enjoyed a fresh basil, Chinese cabbage and romaine lettuce heart open faced sandwich on a slice of multi-grain brown bread (served with a generous trickle of my toadstool oil), and a bowl of fresh water before we embarked on our six hour funeral rite.

Blood, Bone & Water

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Valentine's Day Funeral

I know I've mentioned it before, but there's this curious phenomenon I experience after a long period of nocturnal-related absence from my roadkill duties: on the first day out I'm always given some sort of gift. In winter it's usually a pheasant, in summer it's usually a rabbit but on February 13th we stumbled across the broken body of a young roe buck at Dead Animal's Curve (so far we've found one adult badger (Under the Bed Badger) and two adult deer (#6 and now #8) on the bend; like the oldie song goes "it's no place to play") bringing my roadkill deer total up to 8.

By the look'n'smell of him I could tell that he'd been at the side of the road for a few days. Thankfully the cold snap we've been experiencing helped preserve his body, so the scent was more "old meat getting more old" than "rotting, bloated corpse". Unlike #7 who had a cheeky little glint in his beady eyes (he's a mischievous little fucker; trust me) #8's corneas were glazed over-milky, and they had already begun the process of retreating back into the skull.

Scavengers had obviously not wasted any time tucking into the free, nourishing meal. (In fact, an entire flock of crows took the air as I approached the deer's body, ferociously cawing down at my ass from naked beech trees for disturbing their Sunday brunch.) A huge patch of fur and flesh had been stripped from #8's body leaving a section of his ribs exposed. Something had also perforated the deer's abdomen revealing a couple of strands of puffed up intestine. Needless to say, this particular buck wasn't in any condition to take home. So I took the one body part I could "save": his head.

After apologizing on the behalf of the human race for what happened (you're welcome, human race, and if you're going to send me a box of chocolates as a thank you I totally prefer "dark"), and asking the Old Woman (the Cailleach) for strength and speed I furiously began cutting through inches of fur, skin, fat, muscle and bone (winter coats are a motherfucking bitch to work through) with my dinky little hacksaw. (Because, like, that's totally what people want to see on their late Sunday morning drive in the country: a woman with her fat ass hanging out of her pants while decapitating a roadkill deer.)

Once the connection was completely severed I bagged the head, slapped the buck on its ass to encourage his spirit to take off (I release animals back into the wild instantly, but they do occasionally get rounded up - herded by Chippy in the case of my spectral deer - to be fed and watered) and dragged the decapitated body deeper into the beech hedge to give scavengers a safer place to consume the deer's remains. (I mean, the spot's been nicknamed "Dead Animal's Curve" for a reason.)

Because it was so late in our "day" (we're still rocking weird, nocturnal hours but we're slowly inching to a more normal sleep pattern) I left #8's head in the garage overnight so I could perform a proper funeral the day after (Valentine's Day) without feeling rushed by my early afternoon bedtime. The pictures below are of that funeral ritual, which, by this point - if you've been following Graveyard Dirt for a bit - should probably look sort've familiar. (Why mess with a formula that works?)

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Normally I hold wakes outside on my roadkill altar, but that's only if I'm physically in the backyard keeping an eye on the dead animal (or dead animal part). Despite living in a rural subdivision our property's a hotspot for wildlife activity (everything from hedgehogs, badgers, foxes and deer), and it's forever being patrolled by every goddamn cat that lives in a five mile radius. So it goes without saying, if I'm not able to keep a hawk's eye on the funeral (and the bodily contents that make up the funeral) then the shit comes into the house - no matter how god-fucking-awful the scent is.

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Dying is an exhausting process, so to help my roadkill animals overcome the disorientating sluggishness of death I always juice them up with offerings of incense, fresh water and a freshly prepared sandwich. I have yet to explain it (I'm several years behind on stories), but I have a magic little deer bell I ring to alert my spectral herd that it's feeding time. (The process of them associating the sound with a free meal took 21 fucking days and was a huge pain in the motherfucking ass.)

#8's open face sandwich was made up of organic little gem lettuce and fresh dill on a slice of gluten-free white bread served with a generous drizzle of my "uniquely special" psychoactive toadstool (fly agaric) oil. (<- Reindeer aren't the only deer that enjoy the buzz from consuming the hallucinogenic mushroom, although they're probably the most well known for the behavior.)

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The damage sustained to #8's antlers. Even though you can't tell, the one that looks intact - the one on the left - was actually loose and slightly floppy. I've "rescued" four bucks since starting my roadkill duties, but only one - the first deer I ever found - came with a pair of antlers that didn't suffer major trauma.

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Roe deer - what this young buck is-was-is - was the original Bambi. Walt Disney swapped roe for white-tailed deer because the species was more familiar to American audiences.

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Tiny, adorable antler nubs. When I eventually rot #8 down to retrieve the skull I'll try my best to retrieve any broken or shattered parts of the antler so the person who ends up buying the head will also receive the fragmented bits which they can add to a mojo bag, place on an altar or carry around in a pocket or purse.

Year of the Rabbit

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2010 was one helluva fucking year in this house. And even though I was sorely out of practice, I rode that motherfucking wave fearlessly. Granted, my legs might've buckled a few times, but they never gave away and I shakily coasted the roaring monster without wiping out once. After such a tre-fucking-mendous ride I figured 2011 would be more laid back, since, you know, the first time around always seems to be crazy-intense-fast.

That sense of respite was spectacularly obliterated when I realized what animal was slated for the new effing (Chinese) year. Standing victoriously at my figurative beach with my 2010 board in hand I watched in abject horror as an Old Testament tsunami of fluffy tails and floppy ears thundered towards me, and as the towering avalanche of SEX'N'DEATH advanced and grew I could only sum up my gut reaction in two words: "fuck" and "me".

(Year of the motherfucking Rabbit. Holy fucking shit. I'd ask for God's help, but he sent the Leporidae plague in the first place so the joke's on my fucking ass while he sits back with a case of fucking beer.)

Since Bride's Day - the eve of the Chinese New Year - I've stayed deathly silent on that non-existent beach, and like an ostrich with it's fucking head buried in the sand I've been standing completely still with eyes firmly covered by both hands as diabolical rabbits hop around my feet. I don't even need to apprehensively peep through the cracks of my fingers to know what's going on - I can feel it, I can hear it. "ONE OF US," they say, again and fucking again, "ONE OF US."

It's true, I'm a Rabbit. Well, technically, I'm a monkey (both Italics and I are since we were both born in 1980), but the first time I went Underground I was informed, all no uncertain terms-like, that my motherfucking ass was a rabbit (amongst other things). And while I might not get - and totally, totally resist - the other animals/concepts that supposedly define me and what I'm doing, I feel like I understand (or at least MOSTLY understand) the entire rabbit thang.

But, fuck, rabbits. They're a hot fucking mess, you know? They're a boon and a disaster, a blessing and motherfucking curse. Singularly they're innocent and easy to control, but once they start multiplying you're totally fucked, son. Unchecked they can ravish and lay land to waste (that's a sort've running theme in a lot of my "special" animals) and that's when the death part comes in - for both the animals and the ecological system they're potentially destroying.

With no real predators left here in Scotland they had to use biological warfare to eradicate overpopulation problems, and the end result - myxomatosis - was grisly, and, ironically, hard to contain and control. To this fucking day the disease still resurfaces and PSAs aren't uncommon to warn pet owners of the resurgence of the contagious virus. I have yet to encounter a wild rabbit - either dead or living - infected by myxomatosis, but for Italics and his brother it was a common sight when playing in the countryside as kids.

But it ain't all about death and disease; that's just one side of the coin. You flip that motherfucker and renewal, regeneration, reincarnation and rebirth's waiting for you. I mean, if you're dying that fucking easy - and, dude, trust me, rabbits are always fucking dying somehow, that's 1/2 of their cosmic job - then it goes without saying that the waiting line for rebirth is going to be hella fucking short. If you think about it, even sex is followed by la petite mort ("the little death").

So, to help me embrace the inevitable (and there are so many fucking inevitables when working with/being an effing rabbit), I decided to honor and welcome the Old Testament tsunami of fluffy tails and floppy ears on the Chinese New Year by creating a rabbit-themed altar on top of my sparse Bride's Day altar. (Building a sacred space over a previously sacred space? How old world Christian of me!)

And then like a good little rabbit I fucked Italics in front of the altar to ensure that they completely, totally, for really real understood that in this motherfucking house there'd be more fucking than dying during their 2011 reign. (Do as I say, but also do as I fucking do. In this case, literally.)

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Good fucking Lord, where the fuck do I begin?

Let's start with Pot Bunny, the plush toy rabbit who lives in the ceramic vessel it's perched on. (If you've been reading Graveyard Dirt for some time, you might already be familiar with P.B. - it was the terminally wounded rabbit we found last summer. I knew a special rabbit would come to me to breathe life into P.B., but I never expected it'd be (mostly) alive and that I'd have to personally euthanize it to get the ball rolling.) Pot Bunny's my messenger-in-training, but I haven't had a chance to really start working with it yet.

Next to Pot Bunny is my rabbit flower pot, which I filled with organic lettuce and fresh basil as a food offering to the rabbits. Squat next to the two ceramic vessels is Chooch, who, okay, isn't really a rabbit (she was one of our pet rats - our last pet rat - who died just before Halloween), but goddamn if the garden ornament's chubby little cheeky face wasn't reminiscent of a chuffed Choney. (Chooch's effigy is a rabbit, while Shakey Bear turned into a surprised looking armadillo and Wuzza became a sour-faced, mischievous weasel.)

The glass of water, empty vase, glass of sparkling cider and cutlery are all parts of my Bride's Day altar, but the illuminated plate held more offerings to the rabbits. In addition to the fresh lettuce and basil I also left out miniature carrots I pulled up from my roadkill graveyard (I grow vegetables and herbs over the bodies of buried animals to make sure they're always well fed), a small container of water and several handfuls of dried tormentil root (a type of cinquefoil).

(The tormentil thing is a huge story I haven't tackled yet, but the gist of it is: when I contracted a disease from a raptor-killed rabbit the fucking thing actually had motherfucking medicine in its mouth that would've combated the gastric/intestinal symptoms I experienced. Unfortunately, I was so goddamn sick - for an entire fucking month! - that I didn't have the energy to identify the strange yellow flower still tucked in its mouth until AFTER the illness ran its course. And then? And then I felt like a complete and utter retard. <- Initiation is a bitch, but I defined what was - and wasn't - acceptable, and now I've got to live with the decision.)

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My beloved little pot-bellied chiminea, the tiny ceramic bird, the pewter chalices and the small, decorative platter they're sitting on are all part of my Bride's Day altar. Everything else, though, is year of the motherfucking rabbit related.

Because rabbits are such a big fucking deal in this house I snatched up five plastic garden ornaments years ago and spray painted them black (in honor of the Black Rabbit), and we've been using them in various altars and rituals since. To keep them in line - control and contain, baby! - I selected a head honcho rabbit, and it got a second coat of spray paint which gave its ass (and other assorted body parts) a golden sheen. It was then adorned with my Santa Muerte pendant, and a skull prayer bead mala made from carved bone.

The two stacked boxes contain all of my plant seeds, which probably SEEMS counterproductive to bless on a fucking rabbit altar but death and disease goes hand in hand with life and prosperity so, really, asking the rabbits to impart some of their divine powers to all that I grow and nurture isn't totally out there. Sitting on top of those seeds is one of my many rabbit skulls (this one in particular was found behind the boarded up disturbed children's home and orphanage), and protectively guarding the lot is one of last year's chocolate Easter rabbits who was shortly after melted down and transformed into a chilli-chocolate-espresso-roasted almond cake bribe to ensure the team we bet on won the Superbowl.

(They did. In fact, they won within 6 points - something Italics predicted and bet on as well - which resulted in even more money. <- Papa? Hates to lose, and a homemade cake with a generous serving of cheerleader-flavored Superbowl sofa sex only sweetened the deal.)

Sunday Morning Drive

Things NE Scotland doesn't need to see: my fat ass hanging out of my motherfucking jeans while hacksawing through the neck of a dead, rotting deer at the side of the fucking road.

Witchcraft

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What's Ms. Graveyard Dirt's witchcraft made of? The lost, the found, the harvested and foraged. The chipped, the dusty, the once buried and rusty. The splintered, the broken, the discarded and forgotten. That's what Ms. Graveyard Dirt's witchcraft is made of.

Bones, Twine & Feathers

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Right before the flu benched my fucking ass I was running on some crazy effing energy and actually managed to complete several long-promised packages to friends and fellow witches. The one damn thing I DIDN'T accomplish before being swept out to Influenza Sea? Taking pictures of the finished products. That event finally happened a few days ago in the backroom, which means I can officially box everything up and ship it all out in the next day or two.

Normally I loathe ruining surprises, but I wanted to familiarize folks with my bizarre decorating style before anyone buys anything from me so they at least have a general idea of what to expect. As beautiful as new bottles, lace and fancy charms are, they're expensive, so almost everything in my embellishment repertoire is second hand. I've used, saved and sterilized all the bottles'n'jars, and a lot of the ribbons, trinkets and organic paraphernalia I use I've either found, made or grown.

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I know that this picture is shockingly similar to the one above, and the only reason why I'm double posting the same(ish) image is because I was a complete and utter retard who forgot to take a proper fucking close-up of my hooch twins. (In my defense? I was totally rushing because natural light was fading fast.)

Both mini-bottles of booze are homemade; the dark one is a coffee-vanilla bean vodka, and the transparent yellow one is a raspberry vodka made from wild apricot-colored raspberries that grow near the boarded up disturbed children's home and orphanage. Both were created in 2009, so they've had more than a year to flavorfully mature in my magic closet.

I've decorated the repurposed fruit juice bottles with twine, feathers from roadkill pheasants and some of my nature-bleached outside bones*.

* The weathered, whitened remains of offerings I made from previous years. The bones get kicked around by visiting wildlife until it's time for a YARD CLEANUP. When a yard cleanup happens I round up all the bones I can find and add them to my growing collection. Eventually I clean them and use them for divination, decoration and projects; they were offered to the spirits and ancestors as gifts, consecrated by nature and the weather, stirred, moved and chewed on by wildlife and, after all of that, still managed to return to the hand that gave them away.

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A large handful of dried, wild mushrooms (my "Wild Woodland Mix" that combines at least several types of boletes, including porcini) and a pair of preserved pheasant feet for a friend, carefully wrapped up with an outside bone, pheasant feather, twine and wooden rabbit ornament (a clearance bin purchase) to celebrate the new Chinese year.

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More of my Wild Woodland Mix tucked in brown paper, and secured closed with twine, another outside bone and one of Papa's homegrown Ring of Fire chillies. (Note: If you're (un)lucky enough to receive one or more of my dried chillies, you can totally grow plants from the seeds within. In fact, I've found that indoor chilli plants make the easiest houseplants, and they provide several rich harvests. Just be sure to tickle your flowers with a brush or finger to ensure they're probably pollinated and you'll be rewarded with an avalanche of peppers.)

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Partially wrapped in brown paper and twine is one of my last jars of rose hip, apple and cinnamon jelly made from wild rose hips that I personally harvested back in mid-September of last year. The consistency is just a touch too thick - it was my first attempt at making homemade jelly and I overboiled the mix - but the flavor makes up for the lack of looseness. (The cinnamon lends a hint of fragrant, smoky wood to the candied apple sweetness of the fruits.)

I huffed second life into an old vanilla extract bottle by filling it with some of my chlorophylltastic sycamore oil. (<- What happens when you let several giant handfuls of tightly closed leaf buds infuse in organic grape seed oil for almost a full fucking year.) And then I decorated the emerald elixir with twine, a copper goddess charm (it just seemed more Ms. Graveyard Dirt to hang the charm ass-first), yet another outside bone and a found feather.

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Can I confess something? I was genuinely apprehensive about taking pictures of my bizarre creations. I'm insufferably in-your-fucking-face Aries confident about everything I do, with an exception to anything that falls under the "creative output" header. A lot of my projects and hobbies sit in stagnant limbo for an inexcusable amount of time because I allow my supernaturally perfectionist tendencies to get the better of me.

In short? I'm terrified of producing something shit, and even MORE terrified of the prospect of not realizing that I produced something shit. As lame as it sounds, forcing myself to take and post pictures of my decorated creations has been a tre-fucking-mendous exercise in letting go and getting on with life. Hopefully the recipients of my feral witch gifts will look past the use of dusty bones and ragged feathers and feel all the love I put into those poorly tied bows and recycled glass bottles.

Me and #7

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If I still smell like wet ass deer fur, this is probably why.

Before & After

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I still have a bannock to bake, a bed and altar to create for Bride, and one roadkill deer to skin and butcher, so this "before'n'after" entry's going to be hella short. (I was expecting to bake and create today, but I so wasn't anticipating working with any sort of roadkill beside Beech Hedgerow Crow. <- Whose macerating water, by the way, smelled like nasty ass morning breath today. Just incase you were wondering.)

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After several post-flu infused days of cleaning for the Bride, my work was finally done late yesterday night. Now all I have to do is create a bed for Her on the couch, put together an altar for Her (and Spring) on the tiled coffee table and somehow break it to my mother-in-law that in my inscrutable wisdom I've decided to skin and butcher the roadkill deer on the motherfucking kitchen floor.

#7; Italics' Ultrasound Deer

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...like I totally didn't have enough to do in the next 48 hours.

Cleaning for the Bride

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Holy shit, whoa, we aren't actually inching nearer the winter-spring threshold, are we? A part of me can't fucking believe that it's that time again, yet I found my sick fucking ass in the backroom yesterday engaged in the yearly tradition of cleaning up for the Bride. (I made a dent. Sort've. I don't have any "after" pictures yet, but I promise you that it'll look like I achieved a lot fucking more once I move the exercise bike and Rock Band drum kit out've the room.)

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Everywhere you fucking turned there was a project-in-progress to be found.

In this photo I'm macerating two organic, free-range chicken wishbones for a couple of Junkyard Amulets, and drying off a few pieces of Beech Hedgerow Crow (the two shriveled, jerky looking bits are his breast meat, and the feathered boa is actually his skin and feathers which I washed, dried and preserved in one piece). Just beneath the wooden table - to the right of the picture - you can see part of a cardboard box that, until last night, contained a pheasant's head buried in a mixture of cornmeal, salt and rosemary.

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Here's Beech Hedgerow Crow macerating in one of my old cooking pots set within my bean nighe bowl. (The seaweed fridge block and cheesecloth rubberbanded across the top of the pot help keep the smell down while bacteria does its thang.)

To its left is one of my homegrown dragon's blood trees (well, "plant", anyway - I think my friend Carolina said they need about 15 years before you can harvest any resin from them), and in front of it is B.H.C.'s offerings of food (coarsely ground local oatmeal, popcorn and wheat I personally grew) and water. To its right is my Victorian (I think?) fox trivet, and sitting on top of it is a miniature enamel casserole pot that I use for incense burning.

Before the flu snatched away my health I made a point of spending time with B.H.C. every other day by burning incense (yesterday I burned kyphi for both him and Egypt), speaking to it, playing records (by this point there's no way it WON'T respond to classic Neil Diamond) and generally living my life around it to help it become accustomed to the daily noises and actions of human beings. (What, you think all it takes to create a spectral companion is finding a dead animal? I'm afraid it's not that simple when dealing with undomesticated wildlife.)

Even though it doesn't have anything to do with B.H.C., I should probably mention the preserved sycamore leaf buds in the butterscotch-colored ceramic dish. Last spring - before they sprung open - I harvested a small basket of buds and covered the motherfuckers in organic grapeseed oil. Just a few days ago I finally strained the two jars of oil, and the physical remains were then added to our ritual bonfire trash can for this year's Lent fire. (<- To make ashes for Ash Wednesday. Yeah, I'm on the verge of getting all Russian Orthodox Catholic on your asses again.)

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It's not even fucking February, and I've already busted out one of my wooden foraging baskets. Just before I got sick I went into the country to leave a major offering to my fellow scavengers, but the usual place where I piss and leave food (so my scent's associated with a free meal) was blocked off. I parked elsewhere, and trampled out to a lone rowan tree growing between a wheat field and the gradual opening of a boggy woodland.

The tree's significant because that's where I laid 1/2 of #4's (the lactating doe) remains. Last year I totally wasn't expecting the good (bad?) fortune of working with roadkill deer, so I had to make some hefty sacrifices. Because we live in a small house in a subdivision I had no fucking room to bury the bodies of six fucking deer, so I took what was most important - the head, and, in one case, the entire skin - and then hauled the bodily remains to various forests and woodlands to give back to nature what I didn't have room to work with.

When I went back 5 months later she was still there, but in scattered pieces. As Italics waited in the car with the flu I plucked bones from the frozen ground and filled my basket for the first time this year, happy to see how much of #4 was coming back home with me.

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What became of last year's didukhy (decorated wheat bundle) when this year's didukhy was made. The straw was scattered beneath our Sviata Vechera table, and all of the heads - containing the untreated wheat kernels - carefully sealed in a bag until spring planting. (I'm, uh, working on getting something a little more ceremonial than a Ziploc bag. These things take time, okay?)

Beneath the bag'o'wheat are my Midwinter greens, which LOL, weren't actually harvested on Midwinter for Midwinter celebrations (aka Sviata Vechera) because there was too much goddamn snow. This is all the evergreen that graced my 2010 altar (cedar, ivy and yew), dried and ready to be bottled up for 2011 uses. (Anything brought in from outside to decorate any altar is normally dried and stored for future witchcrafting since it carries with it an essence of season and purpose.)

PS: The rubber handle of the plastic basin? Chewed to fucking bits by some very bad, very rubber-crazed rats. (Shakey Bear was eventually redubbed "Rubber Robber" and held the title for several long weeks before succumbing to mammary tumor complications. RIP, our little rubber robbing bear.)

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After I gave thanks and purified the two roadkill pheasants we recently found I spent an afternoon ritually breaking down the birds into usable parts. I literally skinned the hen and kept her in (mostly) one piece, but I clipped the tail feathers and wings off Jan. 14th Pheasant because he was a motherfucking beauty.

While she dries au naturale for crafting purposes (everything's in tact - all her feathers, feet, wings and head), I carefully pinned the cock's tail feathers and wings to cardboard to dry in a spread position. We braised his body in red wine, herbs and wild mushrooms and after three hours in a low oven he became our first homemade post-flu meal after four days of serious discomfort. The rest of him - feet, head, skin and body feathers - is sitting in the freezer, waiting for a final decision.

To the left of the wings you can make out Sviata Vechera's kolach peeking from beneath the table. In a day or two - once our strength properly returns - our asses will be pilgrimaging their way to the local graveyard to leave Midwinter offerings for the dead. (In other words: racing against fucking time to get all of the winter shit taken care of by the first day of spring, no matter how seasonal (or unseasonal) it may look like.)

Smoke Bath

I'm still sick, so I'm pushing through the post-flu phase as gently as possible. Not yesterday, but the day before - the first day back on my feet (even if only for 3 hours) - Italics helped me pot roast the gorgeous roadkill pheasant we found on the 14th. Even though the meal was only a fraction of the size of Harvest's celebratory dinners, it was the first proper serving of real food either of us had in something like five fucking days and I thanked the fuck out of the bird for providing us some hardcore nourishment after a severe wave of illness.

Until I'm fully recovered I'm going to have to pick my daily battles carefully. Now that the brisket's finally brining, my sole focus is cleaning the backroom (currently stuffed with cardboard boxes filled with bones, dried "edible" mushrooms and dried fly agarics, not to mention several sets of feathers pinned to boards, dried Midwinter evergreen that needs bottling up and a basket full of gifts decorated with twine, feathers and bones). But, I can't clean the backroom until I'm finished with the communal lounge, and that motherfucking room can't get the ALL EFFING CLEAR! stamp until I've taken down all the Christmas decorations, boxed them up and tossed them back into the attic for another 11 months.

In lieu of a proper journal entry I've decided to post a short video of me ritually purifying Beech Hedgerow Crow's dried feathers (two wings, one set of fanned tail feathers and one feathered head hood) in an incense smoke bath with Chippy's help. (I suppose I should thank Enya for providing a dated, easy-listening soundtrack for the event? <- Storms in motherfucking Africa!) After we had worked our way through the separate pieces I jokingly held the spread wings against Chippy's back (he's my "air" correspondent, in his original form he has two sets of raptor-like wings) and my ass was instantly met with three booming, crazily enthusiastic words: "BUTTERFLY, WOMAN, BUTTERFLY!"

Good fucking Lord. After several thousand years of existence, Mr. Lord of the Flies - disease, pestilence and famine himself - wants to be a motherfucking butterfly. I can't say I'm surprised (he does have an awful fondness for cuteness), and one of his favorite things to do OTHER than watch Christmas music videos is sit outside near the butterfly bush and wait for his winged friends to visit him. (I, uh, inadvertently domesticated the undomesticated. It's amazing what can be achieved with sex, homemade soup and flying kites.) So, on our belated Christmas Morning, we granted that wish and helped him become an honorary Lepidoptera member.

Carrot Dildos; Phantom Rabbits

Witchcraft in this house: "I NEED A FUCKING CARROT DILDO SO I CAN START FEEDING POT BUNNY (SPIRIT HELPER-IN-TRAINING) REGULARLY."

2010's Harvest Meals

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January 14's roadkill pheasant find (and what a fucking find!) reminded my ass that I never got around to writing a formal entry about our special Harvest meals of 2010. (Food, if it already isn't obvious, is my favorite sort've daily magic.)

The majority of my fall-winter/winter-spring celebrations and holy days have a menu set in stone. (We'll always have Brunswick stew and bread on Halloween, either gumbo or a glazed ham for Fet Ghede, turkey on Thanksgiving, Ukrainian shit on Sviata Vechera, goose for Christmas and homebrined corn beef for Bride's Day.) It's the complete fucking opposite for spring-summer holidays, though, and our Harvest meals - neither summer or winter - fall somewhere between those two opposing camps.

I can't permanently chisel a course into my yearly menu because I never know what the land's going to offer throughout the warm months leading up to Harvest. Our celebratory autumn meals focus on what we've grown, gathered, foraged, picked and butchered, so it's very much dependent on my relationship with the local land that year. (The more time I spend outdoors working in the wild, the more opportunities I get to find mushrooms, berries, fruit, roadkill and edible plants'n'herbs.)

2010 was a bumper fucking Harvest thanks to finally having a car. Up until last year nothing was accessible to me; everything was just one or two or three miles away too far to walk. (The trio of standing stones I recently mentioned? A five to seven minute drive from the house, but to pilgrimage to that shit on foot? Nearly two fucking hours.) Last year I finally had the ability to really get to know the land I'm living on, and it seemed to reciprocate my excitement by ensuring I never came home with an empty basket.

In fact, on Harvest Moon (which fell on the autumnal equinox last year) I actually found one of our meals: a roadkill pheasant hen. After performing a funeral, and ritually butchering the wild bird I plastered homegrown bay leaves to the breasts, wrapped the carcass with strips of fatty pancetta and roasted her over Scottish grown root vegetables (it's very important to me to use as many local ingredients as possible).

Once she was cooked I added the contents of the roasting pan into my soup pot and made stock from the pheasant and vegetables, and once THAT was cooked I strained the stock, shredded every bit of meat, cleaned off the bones (a gift for a friend) and offered the remains - the vegetables, with some token pieces of meat - to the wildlife that visits our back garden. (If I take a meal from my scavenger brethren I make sure I compensate them somehow, which is why we have foxes and a variety of corvids reeking havoc in the back fucking yard.)

We made a risotto out of her lovingly prepared body (along with homegrown garlic, homegrown herbs and wild mushrooms - porcini, the queen of feral fungi! - we had picked and dried ourselves), and it was the best goddamn risotto we've ever fucking eaten. (Seriously. We're STILL talking about it several months later.) My in-laws wouldn't touch it, though, so a small portion ended up rotting in the fridge because neither of them had the balls to tell me that they were apprehensive about eating "wild food" even though they watched both Italics and I enjoy the meal without so much as a burp of fucking indigestion.

Our second major Harvest meal involved another roadkill pheasant, although Mr. Two Cocks was actually a January find. Because he was so beautifully large (and fatty since he was killed during winter) my hoarding instinct kicked in and I ended up stashing him in the freezer for "something special". I sat on his vacuum sealed pheasant ass for 8 to 9 fucking months before I finally decided that I was giving the Universe the wrong fucking signal.

(Surely the best way to get MORE of what you want is by actually using and appreciating what you were given, right? So far, so good. Since deciding to use him back in fall we've stumbled across 10+ roadkill pheasants, 3 of which were fit for human consumption (4, actually, but I lost one due to being sick, so I buried his body in my little roadkill cemetery to retrieve his bones at a later date). While I'm planning on freezing one of the two currently hanging in the garage, the other one is destined for an imminent casserole grave.)

So, during the peak of the Harvest season I finally defrosted Mr. Two Cocks, and both Italics and I paused for a minute to give thanks for all we were blessed with before making a meal out of herbs from my container garden, garlic that I grew in the dirt yard, wild mushrooms picked by Italics and I, locally grown, organic vegetables and one roadkill pheasant we found on a windy fucking day in late January. (I have a horrible fucking stoner memory, but one thing I don't fucking forget? Where I pick up my roadkill animals.)

It was a dinner so fucking perfect - so fucking delicious; everything tasted ~MAGIC~ and all of the flavors (from the sweetness of the swede to the nutty crunchiness of the skirlie) melted together perfectly - that I actually began crying while eating, and I had to take a minute to compose my damn ass in order to continue. (It wasn't just me! Italics said, without any emotional blackmail or manipulative prodding, that it was one of the best effing meals he had eaten in a long time.)

Maybe I'm just being sentimental (because I love this land, Italics and our endless adventures), but it was a gratifying experience to be able to sit down to a meal that I found, I cleaned and I prepared. Sure, the lemons and balsamic vinegar weren't local, but what really counted - the backbone of each dish - I discovered myself. That dinner happened because I dug my fingers deep into the earth to pull out bulbs and mushrooms, because I stopped my car to lift the dead body of an animal off asphalt, because I allowed myself to be covered in dirt, blood, feathers and death. As a being who lives on consuming, it was the most profound, most personal experience of communion I ever had the honor of participating in.

Pictured above: red wine-braised roadkill pheasant casserole with porcini, herbs and balsamic vinegar, porcini & white wine gluten-free bread stuffing, boiled swede topped with toasted gluten-free breadcrumbs, skirlie; a traditional Scottish dish of broken oatcakes fried in fat, and lemon & rosemary roast potatoes.

Pheasants of Love

What? You didn't know Kate Bush's Hounds of Love album and ritual butchery go hand in hand? Well, you do now.

Jan. 14th Pheasant

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While there are definite roadkill seasons (we're currently rocking the game season which is primarily pheasant in this area), it doesn't always mean I'm going to come home with an animal. One thing I have noticed, though, is after a long period of absence I'm often gifted with something on the first or second day of returning to my regular roadkill rounds.

(In summer our shifting nocturnal habits don't influence going out in any way because we only experience 3-4 hours of darkness, but in winter - when it's only light for something like 5-6 hours a day - my ability to go out is nearly non-existent if we're up at night, and we can be up at night for sometimes a month, or a month and a half.)

As morbid as it might sound, I view the offerings of roadkill as a welcome back gift. I think sometimes my longing to be back in my element is so palpable that the land reciprocates the lonely pining, and when I announce OH, HEY, NATURE, I'M ~BACK~! it makes sure I'm not psyching it out by enticing me to stay.

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Usually on my first outing I find something; it wasn't any different on January 13th. After not having done any sort of roadkill sweep or state of the kingdom drive since late October I was desperate to get out and refamiliarize myself with all of my favorite haunts, all of my favorite spots that I've never physically visited, but've lovingly appreciated every fucking time I drove past.

At the end of our epic drive (I still need to post the other pictures, but I did manage to post one a few days ago) we stumbled across the remains of a young deer. Its head was crushed (no skull to retrieve), and its abdomen had apparently exploded on impact. There wasn't much of a mess because a scavenger had obviously come along and eaten their fill, but what I couldn't understand was why the carcass hadn't been dragged away.

And then, when trying to remove the body from the side of the road, I finally understood why: the fawn was frozen to the ground. I mean, frozen fucking solid to fucking asphalt. I'm a strong motherfucking woman - Italics says I'm an obvious Slavic power lifter - but I couldn't budge the fucking thing. With mixed emotions all I could do was rest a hand on the dead deer's body and apologize for what was done, and for what I couldn't do.

(I very rarely delve into the darker, more emotional aspects of being a steward of the land, but there's this crazy, rabid need to "make things right". Someone came along and killed something I love, something that brings me joy and inspires a sense of maternal protection (which, in itself is an amazing feat since that sort've response isn't something autistic people are known for) and I'm the one who has to pick up the fucking pieces.)

(I pick up the equivalent of wild pets, and sometimes - when I'm sobbing and cradling a broken fox to my car - I hate with a vengeance. (My first roadkill animal ever was my black dog, who I found at the side of a crossroad intersection on the day of my senior high school exams.) I'm responsible for a kingdom and everything that resides in it, but I'm powerless when it comes to protecting the inhabitants from people who are speeding to get home five minutes earlier than usual.)

(I try and ease the ache by working with the animals, but not every roadkill animal I discover I can bring home (too decomposed to safely handle and transport in the back of the car), or even move off the road (not enough left to be able to physically remove any real remnants). While I feel like I'm making a difference, it's still an emotionally draining job that has serious drawbacks like having to euthanize an animal yourself because it was road-broken-beyond-repair rather than roadkill.)

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So, on the 13th we came back empty handed, without really coming back empty handed. (There was a gift, I just didn't have a magic fucking ice pick to free the body from its roadside prison.) On the 14th, though, we didn't. Less than a quarter of a mile from the frozen deer - just meters from where I found #5 (the broken antler crossroads buck) last year - was the most glorious fucking pheasant cock I've ever fucking seen.

I WISH I had a picture at how fucking ridiculous his body looked lying on a grass mound; it was as if someone dropped something garishly colored out of a grocery bag on the most predominant spot in the landscape. And because he was fresh - so fresh, in fact, that he was still hot to the touch - he looked more like a narcoleptic pheasant than a roadkill animal. I won't lie; I totally banged a fist off the fucking steering wheel and shouted the most enthusiastic THANK FUCKING YOU! into the air.

(Fine, I admit it. I do love watching pheasants doing their wild bird thing in the fields, but, to me, there's a difference between a pheasant and a fox. I see game birds as free-range food living as it should, and knowing that their hit'n'run deaths are pretty fucking instantaneous compared to larger animals makes their passing a little easier to swallow. (Ahem.) That doesn't mean I respect them any less than any other living creature, it just means their death serves a different purpose for me: food and, ultimately, survival.)

I've been so fucking busy I haven't had a chance to ritually butcher him and prepare the remains for my casserole pot. Today's the day I'm finally going to have to bite the effing bullet and MAKE some goddamn time because we found a second pheasant yesterday (a female; no pictures of her yet, though) and I seriously need to attend to the pair before they get too gamey for my tastes.

In fact, instead of going on about what I need to fucking do, I should really be getting started to do what I need to fucking do...

Today, We Didn't

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Yesterday we came home empty-handed. Today, we didn’t.

Beech Hedgerow Crow

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"Do you wanna park?" I asked Italics as we loaded the car with our grocery shopping. It was just after 10PM in early July, which meant the natural lighting had dimmed, but it wouldn't truly be dark for another hour or so.

(We live far enough north to experience dawn breaking around 2:30AM during summer; night doesn't properly fall until around midnight, and even then - especially around Midsummer - there's this luminous blue ribbon that hugs the tiny space between the horizon and sky that doesn't disappear during the 2-3 hours of darkness.)

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So I drove to the small country lane that begins with crossroads and ends in a 3-way junction, where my wild roses grow, where I ritually reap wheat, where we pick up roadkill pheasant for dinner, wave to the familiar cattle, get followed by the local raptors and occasionally pilgrimage over to the trio of standing stones that've seen countless generations live, die and work the sacred land that the ancient stone monuments inhabit.

We pulled into the beginning of a blocked off, feral road (nature's reclaimed the unused stretch of asphalt, and now it's covered with grass and wild flowers providing the local rabbits a lush playing field) and parked, but hot'n'heavy car action didn't come into play because I was dying for a piss. (I'm a woman of many curses, one of them being the inexplicable need to fucking urinate the second I'm in the fucking country.)

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In that dimming July night we broke through the tricky hedge separating open country and forest, and spilled into the twilight hushed woods. Silent and eerie we maneuvered around pockets of pooled water, broken pine boughs and the dilapidated remains of a pheasant coup as we explored new, uncharted territory.

(One of the reasons why I find so many goddamn pheasants is because we live a few miles off an estate that provides hunting, so the gamekeepers artificially inflate the number of birds by introducing human-reared pheasants into the wild.)

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And then we did what we always do when it's just us and nature: we fucked. This time against a tree as I simultaneously tried to keep the position (the second I lost the perfect angle his cock would pop out) AND not slip off the two different dirt mounds I was standing on. We both laughed, we both climaxed and we both ended up having to pick bits of broken bark from our hair once we finished our amorous encounter.

As I scooped the combined sexual fluids trickling out of my cunt to offer it to the ground - to the woods, nature and earth - we found the remains of a solitary wild rabbit skull, perfectly cleaned and white washed by the elements. (Which is usually standard for us. For whatever reason the wild likes to repay favors, and it repays them pretty fucking quickly. The year before we ended up having ritual sex in another pine forest, and as we left a hunter gave me seven shot rabbits for free.)

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We did manage to park despite our unintended foray in the woods, and we sat - side by side - in the front of the car passing a bottle of chocolate milk back and forth while I enjoyed a reduced-to-clear apple turnover. (<- Post-sex munchies!) And when it was time to leave, we came home via the tiny, old village that we often walk to in order to visit the local graveyard (and abandoned wall garden, the ruins of an antique chapel, the beech hedgerow, the field where I first ritually reaped wheat several years ago and the disturbed children's home and orphanage).

Even though it was much darker than when we originally set out "to park" I instantly identified the black anomaly resting against the low stone wall separating the beech hedgerow from the road: a youngish carrion crow. I quickly pulled into a partially barred field opening leaving Italics (and the running car) to quickly jog down the length of the stone wall to pick up the roadkill bird to take home.

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(Corvids nest in that particular hedgerow, but I'm not sure of the actual type. The bird I picked up was definitely a carrion crow - it's kind've easy to misidentify/mix up juvenile rooks and crows because rooks don't develop their garish, gray-colored beaks until adulthood - due to the beak beard it sported. (<- Carrion crows, regardless of age, will always have a smattering of bristly feathers growing along the top of the beak.) I can't say for certain that this crow lived in those beeches, but it was a lot smaller than the other crows I handled later in the year so the assumption that it was a youngin' from that group of nests isn't exactly unfeasible.)

Once home I promptly ignored all the fucking groceries that needed to be unpacked and sat my ass down on the kitchen floor to release and ritually deconstruct the dead crow. First the two sets of gravel-crusted wings were clipped from the body, then its tail feathers (they're still attached to a dried bit of skin so instead of being reduced to loose feathers they form a tiny fan), and once the major appendages had been removed I carefully skinned the bird's head with a model craft scalpel to save the feathered hood to dry.

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Having never actually seen the internal anatomy of a crow - or any wild bird, for that matter - I gently opened Beech Hedgerow Crow to take a respectful peek inside, although its small body sustained massive trauma which reduced the majority of the internal organs to a pulpy mess.

(When you get hold of a larger roadkill animal it's always obvious where it got hit. Internally, I mean. The smaller the animal, the more damage it takes throughout its whole body, so instead of having one isolated area that's bruised and battered the entire fucking body can get beaten up and liquefied.)

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The youngin's clipped feathers and hood were pinned against cardboard, salted and dried. I bagged the more perishable remains - the body, feet and head - and immediately froze them, leaving the eyes and tongue in tact for later extraction. (Waste not, want not.)

And in the outside freezer Beech Hedgerow Crow still sits with the other corvids, waiting for the day when a witch comes along and knows in his/her heart'o'hearts that this lovingly prepared roadkill crow was meant to come home to them.

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Just incase this entry grabbed your interest:

I'm selling both the wild rabbit skull and all of Beech Hedgerow Crow's parts. Currently both of its wings, its tail feathers and hood are dried and ready to be shipped, although they do require a little TLC to remove gravely bits. The skull, bones, few internal organs and feet aren't ready, though, so they require some processing time before they can be mailed. (I know, I know, I hate waiting too, but at least the tradeoff is knowing I'll be working on those parts especially for you.)

I have video footage of me ritually cleansing the wings and feathers that I need to post (not to mention an entire fucking folder of still photos), but if you already feel strongly about any part of this carrion crow (or the rabbit skull) you're more than welcome to contact me (graveyarddirt@gmail.com) about reserving or purchasing your desired piece(s).

Pine Hedge Rookery

The pine hedge rookery, where a lot of our local crows live. This is where I often get the ones that die a natural death, where I pick up pristine feathers from, and where I leave special offerings. (Which is really sort've pointless since all the damn crows hang out in our yard thanks to all the fucking food I put out for them on a daily basis. <- I even got the motherfuckers eating borsht out of a bowl. Seriously.)

Last year - when this was taken - grain was grown next to the rookery, and I spent a very early morning ritually reaping a large bundle to take back home to work with. (You don't want to know how many effing feathers I had to untangle from the sheaves.) Halloween, Fet Ghede, Thanksgiving, Sviata Vechera, Christmas and New Year celebrations sort've overwhelmed me, and I haven't had a chance to sit down and finish that particular project yet.

In 2010 I collected between 5-7 complete crows (a mix of natural death and roadkill), so there's a good chance that some of my freezer crows are actually present in this video. (If you're planning on buying one of my frozen corvids it's totally cool to wave hello to the birds because there's a good chance you'll be waving to your crow.)

Stigmata

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"From now on let no one cause me trouble, for I bear on my body the marks of Jesus." ~ Galatians 6:17

2010 Altar

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2010; a year of bones, a year of death, a year of green and wheat, a year of animals, a year of roadkill, a year of wild mushrooms and berries, a year of hedges, a year of forests, and a year of graveyards and standing stones. 2010 was the year my land reached out to me, initiating an intense period of acceptance which I clutched in my tight-fisted hands as if it was the only meaningful thing in the entire motherfucking world.

So how the fuck do you gratefully wave good-bye to a year that's given you so goddamn much? You deconstruct it, piece by piece, gift by gift, until you're left with the raw basics that built it. With bones and seeds and leaves and musty, fall-scented fungi I created and layered an altar of thanksgiving, working on the tangible hymn up until the last few minutes of the 31st. (<- Something better've duly noted that I worked to the very fucking end, OR ELSE.)

"2010," my voice cracked, overcome with emotion. Italics didn't say anything, but he draped an arm across my body in comforting agreement. And we silently stood, side-by-side, before our altar of adventures, trials, victories, failures and achievements as husband and wife, king and queen, god and goddess and - my personal favorite - devoted shepherd and loving (even if somewhat willful) goat.

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I first started with the kitchen's stark fucking naked altar. Traditionally evergreen is brought indoors during Holy Supper to decorate the table (I use a mix of ivy, yew and cedar - all from bushes growing on our property), but because we were buried under an insane amount of snow around the Winter Solstice I couldn't get out to our shrubs to take cuttings. (<- That's why the window's Sviata Vechera altar looked so fucking bare on the 21st.)

On the 30th of December the snow had receded enough to let me take clippings from outside, so on New Year's fucking Eve I finally got to tangle a variety of evergreen up and around my Khokhloma pieces, candleholders, skulls and candy. (Better late than never?) With the layer of greenery set, I embellished the curtain of foliage with homegrown wheat, the first set of deer bones we ever found (I, uh, still need to write this particular story AND upload the pictures), two homegrown chili peppers, the conjoined bolete triplets we found in October, my jar of "uniquely special" toadstool (fly agaric) oil created on Halloween and one of the miniature kolaches baked for Sviata Vechera.

Harvest Moon Foraging

I woke up this morning with a Yuletastic list of things to do (bring the decoration boxes down from the attic, make the templates for this year's gingerbread house and start on the motherfucking Christmas cards), but all that's really on my mind - other than FOR FUCK'S SAKE, WHY DID -OUR- GODDAMN SHOWER HAVE TO BREAK?! - is red and orange dotted with delicate flecks of white. (Fly agarics, if my description of the "white-specked motherfuckers" doesn't sound familiar.)

Two nights ago I finally filled my digital camera to capacity, and when exporting shit over into my archive folder I caught myself sentimentally flipping through photos that were taken as far back as September, and goddamn if nostalgia didn't rise up and bite my motherfucking ankles like a PMS-inflicted viper. With just a few green-tinged images ("HOLY FUCKING SHIT, LOOK HOW FUCKING GREEN EVERYTHING STILL IS IN SEPTEMBER AND OCTOBER!") I found myself sighing longingly for a time as recent as two months ago, when the land stood on a precarious cusp of neither summer or fall and it wasn't buried beneath four feet of motherfucking snow.

Even though everything's sleeping beneath a layer of white and we've already played the first festive song of the season (Run With the Fox, by Yes) I find myself looking back to Harvest, and the one thing I consistently find myself missing is the thrilling sight - it IS thrilling; it never got fucking old or boring, and I doubt it ever will (ladies and gentlemen, I give you the passion of mushroom collecting) - of partially hidden toadstools burning like tequila sunrises beneath mottled birches, purple-blooming heather and sphagnum moss.

So I thought FUCK IT, I'M GONNA INDULGE THAT FEELING OF BABY PICTURE SENTIMENTALITY and earmarked the set of pictures I took of Harvest Moon's foraging expedition (which, by the way, fell on the autumn equinox this year, so these magic mushrooms are totally SUPER magic) near the banks of the Black Laird's loch for today's Graveyard Dirt entry.

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You wouldn't believe how many "HEY, ASSHOLE..." speeches I wrote ~in my mind~ to the fucktard who decapitated my fly agaric patch in mid-September. I was particularly excited by this crop; I had been nurturing them for almost a week, but then I came down with a cold and couldn't check on them daily. By the time I was well enough to crawl out of the house someone had gotten to every fucking toadstool growing along this stretch of land leaving me nothing but broken, bulbous stems.

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The toadstool genocide has a happy ending, though. When I pitched a fit at the Universe for fucking with my wild crop the local land intervened and placated my tantrum by providing me with one of my largest mushroom hauls of the season. So I lost one patch of fly agarics, but I gained one Harvest meal of lamb shanks braised in herbs, tomatoes, red wine and fresh, wild mushrooms.

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There are three toadstools hiding in this picture, can you see them all? (Give yourself an extra point if you find the sacred beer can which was ritually offered by a spiritual pilgrim through their SUV window as they drove (and drank) pass this stretch of nature-blessed land.)

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All of these guys grow along a thin, but long, strip of land right next to a small country road. Because it's off the beaten path I never found beheaded fly agarics, but I did often find them popping up next to discarded junk thrown out of car windows. One of the super fantastic fairy tale toadstools Italics and I found together actually had cellophane from a cigarette box - complete with gold "ribbon" for easy opening - plastered to the fucking cap.

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Alice has already had a bite.

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The fly agarics growing in moss - or the sandy, loose soil beneath firs - are the easiest to ease out of the earth. The swollen base of the stem can sometimes get firmly lodged within the ground, so it takes a little finger digging to encourage the mushroom out in one full piece, but no excavating was ever necessary for the toadstools growing in moss or loose soil.

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How can something so naturally beautiful be so fucking reviled and vilified in our modern society?

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My foraging basket (with a not-to-fucking-shabby amount of "edible" wild mushrooms) and four more hidden toadstools, can you spot them all?

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Parent and child. (They look fused together, but they weren't. The bond between them seemed pretty apparent, though.)

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This picture gives ZERO indication how fucking massive these mushrooms really were. (Try BABY, WILL YOU TAKE A PICTURE OF ME SITTING ON THESE FIBERGLASS TOADSTOOLS TO COMMEMORATE OUR VISIT TO SANTA'S VILLAGE? big.) If I remember correctly, the one on the right - the larger, orange one - was a son of a fucking bitch to dig out of the goddamn ground.

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The largest, most impressive fly agaric specimens seemed to grow beneath ragged heather bushes. Since they were always partially buried beneath musty old leaves, brittle twigs and layers of scrubby heather the ground would release this rich, moist scent of earth, mildew and organic decay when the soil around the mushroom was disturbed.

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A witch is never really alone in the woods. (I love the daddy long legs poised beneath the rim of my basket all Little Critter-style. <- If you aren't familiar with the Little Critter series every page had a spider - and I think a mouse and a cricket (or was it a grasshopper?) - tucked away within the illustration for you to find.)

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This isn't an abnormal sight from August to October in my neck of the woods. You can get an idea of how fucking huge those two mushrooms really were when you compare them to the other fly agarics in the photo. I mean, Christ, just look at the fucking girth of the orange toadstool's stalk!

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Some are fire engine red, some burst into orange-yellow flames and others are golden egg yolks served sunnyside up. What they never are, though, is "boring".

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There's an unwritten rule about mushroom collecting: if they're easy to pick/unearth, then they're going to be a fucking bitch to get to. You don't even want to know how many times Chippy got slapped in the face with a bough of fresh fir (when I'm out foraging I tuck him into my leather book bag that I wear on my back all papoose-style) as I forcefully pushed past natural barriers made of pine branches.

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I won't lie, if you were born with a sharp eye you're fucking miles ahead in this mushroom collecting game. Throughout the season your eyes need to filter and sort through a huge variety of neutral, natural shades, and the only thing between you and a sore fucking back is your eyes eventually adjusting to the spectrum of fall colors lying at your feet.

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Because the grass was goddamn green where I was collecting I never even thought of crossing asphalt to see what was growing on the other side of the road. On the autumn equinox I finally tip-toed over and found yet another stretch of land ripe with fly agarics and various boletes. If it hasn't already been made abundantly clear from my previous journal entries and pictures: my little sovereignty kingdom is wild mushroom fertile like whoa.

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September's full moon (Harvest Moon!) foraging expedition ended on an even more bountiful note when I came across the first edible roadkill pheasant of the year. (I follow two strict rules with small roadkill: if scavengers have already had a chance to put a serious dent in the carcass I won't eat it, and if the body's ruptured open revealing internal organs I also won't eat it. If the animal doesn't fall into either of those categories it's fair, culinary game in this house.)

This hen had just the tiniest scratch in her skin which immediately destined her for the kitchen. In fact, you guys are already acquainted. This is the Mabon roadkill pheasant hen that became one of our Harvest Home celebratory meals. You've already witnessed her funeral, and followed along as I explained how I ritually broke down her body into usable parts without allowing any of it go to waste.

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Her head and asphalt-scuffed beak (now currently drying in a box of fine cornmeal and salt).

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One of her unearthly, scaly feet (which are also drying in a box of fine cornmeal and salt).

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One of her car-tousled wings (which, along with the other wing and her flayed skin, is pinned onto a piece of cardboard in the garage beneath a layer of cornmeal).

Death, Disease & Bacteria

This entire roadkill thing isn't about picking up dead animals from the side of the fucking road. Or waving their battered remains over eye-stinging incense. Or finding poetic ways to justify modern kitchen butchery. It's about stewardship and sovereignty of the land, and all the life that exists within the boundaries of the territory I've carved out and claimed for myself. It's about responsibility, sacrifice and a pretty heavy fucking commitment to playing out an unsavory - but necessary - role that has to be performed to maintain balance.

I know I make this shit look easy, which sort've worries me because I haven't had a chance to delve deeper into my personal practices regarding the spiritual processing of physical remains and my continued work with the animals long after the bones are clean and flesh has rotted the fuck away. What I do isn't as easy as having a strong enough stomach to pick up decomposing bodies, or owning the right tools or space to carry out rites and rituals, or having an innate fucking ability to convince others that everything's executed "with the utmost respect".

I'm not going to make any friends by saying this, but this shit's got to be said: blindly throwing yourself into scavenging - regardless if it's because you think it's cool, you're enthusiastically inspired by what I'm doing, or you've always felt a distant longing to work with Death - is one of the dumbest motherfucking things you can do, not to mention seriously dangerous for your fucking health and the well-being of those around you.

There. It's finally been said.

You're exquisitely retarded if you think engaging in this roadkill thing I'm doing is as easy - on a non-spiritual, basic level - as finding a dead animal and taking it home. There are hazards and difficulties with any interest or practice, but this one in particular can have disastrous outcomes which can ultimately prove fatal for either you or a loved one. There's zero room for you to be cavalier about picking up, handling and processing roadkill; it's not a game, hobby or way to idly pass fucking time.

I'll be completely honest - no matter how thoroughly anal you think you've been about disinfecting yourself and your environment (I have YET to see any tutorial or how-to site unapologetically rag on readers to carry sanitizing products IN THE MOTHERFUCKING CAR so you can IMMEDIATELY clean ANYTHING your roadkill hands have touched, including YOURSELF) you still stand a chance of getting seriously sick. I know because I've been there; twice.

Thanks to going into this shit blind - see? I'm bitching at you FROM MOTHERFUCKING EXPERIENCE - I was completely unaware of the hazards of working with wild rabbits in Scotland. Because I didn't know better both Italics and I contracted a disease from one; a disease that the UK government's actually fucking around with for bioterrorism-based warfare*. We were agonizingly sick for a month, but we were lucky. Some people with the same illness suffered complete kidney failure within 48 hours of picking up the disease.

It'd be dishonest of me to not acknowledge that getting sick, for me, is an initiatory process. I've tried focusing on the non-magic aspect of working with roadkill in this entry to scare everyone into the reality of exposing yourself to dead, bacteria-ridden bodies and how fucking dangerous that sort of activity can be to your health (which includes getting hit by a car yourself; animals frequently get wiped out in blind spots and bends, what makes YOU any different crouched on the edge of asphalt scraping up physical remains?).

Sometimes, though, no matter how carefully I wipe, wash and clean it's not going to be enough when it comes time for me to "walk" with my animals. But that's the sacrifice I make; that's the difference between what I do and what other people do. I pay the price with my own flesh when Death enters me. My skin sweats and burns, my joints and muscles ache and throb and I claw tiled bathroom walls while projectile vomiting over the toilet, floor and myself as my living body goes into labor, splits open and purges itself of Death transformed. I'm willing to undergo the pain, discomfort and delirium because nothing special is worth having if you don't fight and bleed for it.

I know I make shit seem easy, I know I exude a bizarre Pied Piper vibe that excites and inspires people to do things they normally wouldn't, but to live like I live, to do what I do requires not only a calling, but some common fucking sense and a lot of fucking research. Please don't go swinging around roadkill without first educating yourself on any governing laws, known diseases local animals carry and how to find, transport and then process your animal as safely and efficiently as possible. Witchcraft and spiritualism aside; surrounding yourself with death, disease and bacteria comes with some fucking heavy duty risks, and you'd better be willing to pay the price when Death finally comes knocking.

* See Tularemia, Tularemia: Natural Disease Vs. Act Of Bioterrorism and Wikipedia's entry for bioterrorism.

Thank You

For the folks who've decided to stick with me despite last night's roadkill content: thanks - no, really, thank you.

I really wanted to introduce people to what I'm doing, why I'm doing it, how it's affected me (despite being hardcore carnivores - fuck, we pick up dead animals from the side of the road for dinner, how much more of a carnivore can you get? - this entire roadkill thing has brought about a new lifestyle for us which actually involves eating LESS meat than we did before) and reveal that the entire butchery process isn't as Texas Chain Saw Massacre as you'd think.

If you enjoyed last night's entry (Harvest Home Pheasant), then you can look forward to future entries along the same vein involving crows, rabbits, badgers, deer, foxes and even more pheasants (think of them as the chickens of the wild). The majority of the images I've taken follow the same effing formula - dead animal laying in wake, close-up shots of fur'n'feathers and then, in most cases, what the animal was reduced to (usually pinned wings or a flayed pelt spread out on the ground).

There are only four instances I can think of where I actually documented the entire process of skinning and dismembering a roadkill animal (a fox, a rabbit, a crow and pheasant - all animals you guys are likely to come across yourselves so I wanted to write a Ms. Graveyard Dirt-flavored tutorial for any budding scavengers), and those were only done for purely educational reasons. (I'll be completely up front with y'all - I might not warn people of "tame" roadkill pictures in the future, but I will definitely warn people in advance if there's more gratuity than you guys are familiar with.)

If this entire witchcraft-based roadkill thing really caught your interest I have an entire diary category devoted to it on Graveyard Dirt (Asphalt & Entrails) and a Flickr set that should be MOSTLY up-to-date (Roadkill). The majority of the animals that pass through my hands - and in front of my digital camera - will be for sale at a later date (their bones, skulls, feathers, organs, feet, teeth, fur, nails, toes - you name, I can produce it), so if you're keen on acquiring your own specimen you'll actually get a chance to become acquainted with your animal through diary entries and photos.

I know the unnatural passing of animals - and using them in spiritual practices - can be a touchy, sensitive subject. If you have any questions or concerns I'm happy to address them, just shoot me over an email (graveyarddirt@gmail.com). One word of warning, though - my ass is seriously fucking backlogged in the email department. I do my best to reply to anything super-crazy-important, but I've got to juggle a lot of fucking shit on a day to day basis and "responding to email" is always the first thing that falls off my TO DO list when it's running a motherfucking mile long (not that you guys don't already know that, heh).

Harvest Home Pheasant

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A word of warning that's totally unnecessary, but I'm feeling unusually nice today so I'm stamping a disclaimer on this shit just in case someone wakes up screaming in the middle of the night because they couldn't handle what food looks like before it appears shrinkwrapped at their grocery store: this journal entry involves a dead animal; specifically, a roadkill pheasant I found and then ritually butchered for one of our celebratory Harvest meals. This is probably one of the tamest, least gratuitous entries that falls under my Asphalt & Entrails category. There are zero fucking pictures that involve blood and/or gore, so readers with a sensitive nature should be mostly okay with the content within provided they can handle feathers, raw meat and a stainless steel dog bowl full of internal organs (in the non-grossest way possible).

Right. So. Now with that out of the way, allow me to introduce to you my Harvest Home hen. Come to think of it, you guys are already acquainted. Back around the autumnal equinox I posted Funeral for a Pheasant which incorporated a short video clip and an explanation on why the fuck I was posting a video where nothing (seemingly) happened.

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Not every roadkill animal I pick up has the pleasure of being ritually processed in the kitchen (rabbits are a non-negotiable "NO", but I MIGHT be able to wrangle a pensive "WELL...OKAY" for something less bioterrorismtastic), but every roadkill animal that I pick up is given the same treatment regardless of their physical condition, what they are and how they died: a period of getting to know one another (I visit them frequently while they "lay in wake" on an altar, petting, stroking and taking to them so they recognize I'm not a threat), offerings of food and water (usually a sandwich; deer get lettuce sandwiches, badgers get peanut butter'n'honey and foxes get smoked ham on whole wheat - you think I'm joking?), ceremonial cleansing via a smoke bath (frankincense, usually) and then, finally, release (of the spirit) through physical dismemberment.

Pictured on the altar: my favorite kitchen knives (which I ended up not needing since I rely so fucking heavily on my ritual scissors), locally grown pinhead oats (oats in whole form that haven't been flattened into flakes) and water for the pheasant, my ritual scissors (consecrated by my own effing flesh and blood), one of Chippy's outside offering bowls (I needed something to read entrails in, and since Chippy was already involved he suggested using one of his stainless steel dog bowls), a piece of thin roofing slate that came off a ruined building we discovered earlier this year (with a glowing charcoal block on top of it) and, finally, the hen.

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See? No effing gore, just like I promised. (Unless you count the "flesh wound" on Chippy's nose; we learned Choney liked to bite-play thanks to that particular run-in a few years back.) In under an hour I was able to hold the pheasant funeral, butcher the wild bird and reduce it to six usable pieces (entrails, body, feathers, feet, head and seeds) without wasting one part of the animal. I kept the entrails to read (haruspicy!) and the body to roast (dinner!), but everything else - feathers, feet, head and seeds - were set aside for a friend. (I actually need to get on drying the feet and head for her because everything else is ready to go.)

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Her head, which is currently sitting intact - feathers, beak and all - in the freezer until I can get my hands on a bag of fucking cornmeal. Sometimes I pick up roadkill with no visible wounds, but, on most occasions, I find big and little reminders that the animal didn't die a natural death (i.e., broken antlers, crushed skulls, split skin and scuff marks on beaks (above) and feet). I'd be lying if I didn't admit that the smaller, almost unseen injuries always affect me the most.

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Her feet, which were bound with ordinary white string so I could hang her in the garage until I was ready to process her. I've always suspected that I liked my game fresh, but it wasn't until she accidentally hung* for almost a week to confirm my suspicions. The scent was...intense. Not rotting, or sick, or "like farts" (I know it's incredibly childish, but that's really the best fucking way to describe the internal scent I get from the combination of organs - it's like sour/bitter farts); just intensely robust with a sneaking waft of smoke.

* Long short? I caught a fucking cold the day I picked her up. Normally I hang the birds for only 2-3 days, but in this particular case I had no choice but to leave her until I was well enough to handle her properly.

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She looks elegantly swan-like, doesn't she?

Within the glass bowl are grain seeds I removed from her crop, and feathers that fell out during the butchering process. Pheasants initially store food in their crop before digestion (you know that pocket space between the start of the bird's breast? just in front of what remains of the neck? that's where food's deposited and momentarily kept). Depending on how much your bird has (or hasn't) eaten you might have A LOT of fucking seeds to scoop out, or, in this case, not many at all.

I always save the grains - along with any feathers or particles of skin and meat that are too small to cook with - and plant them the following year (seeds, feathers, skin and all) so the grains germinate from the physical remains of the dead bird. (<- Death and rebirth, baby.)

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Her internal organs and entrails that were read in Chippy's bowl. Once I finished the positively fucking medieval dead of haruspicy I offered the contents of the bowl to my crows. To say they "tucked into the leftovers" would be putting it delicately (which, admittedly, isn't usually my style, but I'm kind've sort've eager to get this entry written in entirety in one fucking day because this sort've shit can drag on and fucking on).

They took everything but the stomach - and part of the intestine still attached to it, but for simplicity's sake let's just say "stomach", okay? - and left that delectable blob of dead tissue sitting in the fucking rain on the motherfucking patio for three fucking days. I eventually had to admit defeat and respectfully dispose the unwanted remains via container garden burial. (Thanks, crows, because Christ knows I already don't have enough to do.)

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Her body, which was then plastered with fresh bay leaves, seasoned and snugly wrapped in smoked, fatty pancetta strips. I roasted her over a bed of sweated rooted vegetables and fresh herbs, and then made brown stock out of everything. The stock was strained (and then frozen), the carcass was stripped of all of the meat (and then frozen; the meat, I mean) and then the leftovers - cooked vegetables and pheasant bones - were either left as offerings to visiting wildlife (vegetables) or cleaned off and dried for gifting purposes (bones).

Because she had matured longer than I originally intended I had to trim a few pieces of discolored meat from the body (only because it smelled just too damn strong for my palate), but those pieces were added to the organs and entrails. In fact, I caught one of our magpies happily making off with one of the blue-green tinged pieces of meat, so even if I couldn't get any use out of those small bits it still managed to feed another life.

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One of her wings, prior to being pinned to a piece of cardboard to dry. I clip them ridiculously close to the body - essentially giving up one of my favorite eating parts of a bird; the wing - so if you end up buying a preserved specimen from me you'll be getting the complete deal. I was a total retard and forgot to take pictures of everything pinned down prior to cornmealing (although I do have a set of fixed wings and feathers from another pheasant); I'll try and remember to take a few photos when I finally remove them and dust them off.

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Pheasant's such a lean fucking meat you generally need to cover it with a source of fat to keep it moist as it roasts. Because the skin's going to be hidden beneath a layer of smoked pork fat there's almost no point in retaining the skin (which is blasphemy, I know, because crispy skin and fat is, hands down, my absolute favorite part of eating meat), so when I butcher pheasants I don't really bother plucking - I flay them like any furry creature.

Pictured above is the hen's skin - with all her feather's still attached (except, of course, the pair of wings) - which I peeled off in one piece. I then turned it feather-side down (to expose the inner flesh), pinned the Leatherface atrocity down and covered it in a stupid amount of cornmeal. That way my friend now has all of the pheasant's feathers without the threat of them snowglobing her house upon arrival.

Oct. 2nd, 2010

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It blows my fucking mind that I've been doing the same things since late July (picking wild mushrooms, working with roadkill, harvesting wild food and preserving everything that comes into the house) and I haven't had the time to recap one day worth of "work". I've posted solitary pictures of what I've been up to, but I've never fulfilled the numerous "I HAVE AN ENTIRE FOLDER OF PHOTOS, SO EXPECT A MUCH MORE IN-DEPTH JOURNAL ENTRY SOON" promises made. (Uh...sorry?)

This particular foray started a 9AM in an old Scottish cemetery, and ended, at home, around 5PM when I brushed clean the very last porcini mushroom picked on the grounds of a local castle. (I was absolutely shattered. This was my first full 24 hour day in a long ass time and we hit a cemetery, visited/made an offering to my wild rabbits, did some grocery shopping, visited #6 (and discovered she was gone), did some garden center shopping, picked mushrooms at a castle, took clippings from the castle's woods and stopped at the standing stone circle/cairn to leave an offering.)

October 2nd had tremendous ups and downs, but it finished on a familiar note - a basket full of mushrooms, the remains of dead animals and a fistful of chlorophyll-powered flora.

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Currants and cemeteries seem to go hand in hand here, but I haven't figured out the connection. Usually you find them bordering the old, old cemeteries, and those are the graveyards that typically have yew and beech. Because they haven't been pruned or kept for fruit, the bushes have grown into towering shrubs that produce very little berries. (When you do see them they're egg-shaped and hairy; a little bit more primitive looking than the cultivated currants we know today.)

To propagate currants all you have to do is take an appropriately sized clipping (about a foot, but it needs to be new growth), and plant the motherfucker. Even though I'm not a fan of black currants (too menthol) I can appreciate how special these fruiting bushes are, so I've begun taking clippings to grow my own graveyard currants at home.

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Back in August we visited this particular graveyard and I came across the remains of two rabbits. (One on the wall leading into the cemetery, another tucked behind a pair of headstones.) Because we spent the visit picking wild raspberries I didn't want to handle the decomposing bodies. So both were left, although I did offer a thank you and explanation (the graveyard was so freakishly welcoming that day that I felt it would've been rude if I hadn't acknowledged what was given).

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The remains of the rabbit within the graveyard, just behind the two headstones, was hard to leave behind. I had just learned that the feet of a cemetery rabbit was some serious ju-ju. (Which makes sense since I've always associated rabbits and hares with two things: death and sex. Why? Because fucking and dying are the two things they excel at. So to find a pair of back feet within an old Scottish graveyard? Holy shit, magic.) Having tumbled down the rabbit hole once (it was an entire month of gastric agony) I wasn't keen on revisiting that particular journey.

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When I returned, two months later, the same remains were sitting in the same position in the same fucking place. Unthwarted by my first polite refusal the graveyard kept the rabbit tucked away for me, and on my next visit - on October 2nd - I thanked the cemetery for a second time and took the gift of what was left of the dead rabbit. (If you click on the image to view larger sizes you can perfectly see its long, grey nails.)

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Strange gifts from strange places for a strange witch. This particular graveyard brought toads into my life, gave me wild raspberries growing out of open mausoleum, dropped a rusty nail (which look HELLA old) in my pocket, provided currant clippings for my patio garden and kept half a rabbit for me until I was ready to take it home. (I think this means we're going steady?)

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My graveyard goods: three currant clippings, my foraging basket (which serves as our Easter basket when I take Easter Sunday's brunch into town on Holy Saturday to have the contents blessed by a priest) and the sodden remains of the cemetery rabbit. Everything's sitting on a mortsafe - a protective guard that kept the bodies of the deceased safe during the Burke and Hare era of body snatching. This particular graveyard has three or four mortsafes in front of crazily large (and crazily impressive) mausoleum.

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After our cemetery jaunt we were back in the car working our way across the country to check on #6 beneath her oak tree. We stopped at a wild rabbit colony I discovered when exploring an out-of-the-way beech hedge back in August.

When I first stumbled across the warren I found two rabbit skulls while poking around a creepy dead zone beneath gigantic pines. After being nervously ushered to leave by Chippy (that's a whole story within itself; he kept insisting that the spirits of the place found me "shiny" and I shouldn't stay long for that very reason) I found two perfect fly agarics, joined at the base, growing out of the cliff face that marks the beginning of the colony. (Rabbit magic, remember?)

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Whenever I take the roadkill route (I have various routes I take depending on the weather, season and time of day) that passes the beech hedge and cliff-dwelling warren I always stop and leave an offering for the rabbits. (They're my messengers, so I try and stay on their sweet side.)

Since the skull/mushroom day I haven't returned to the dead zone area of the colony, but that'll change once I manage to locate a pair of old ass rhinestone earrings that once belonged to one of my grandmothers. (The spirits want shiny-sparkly? I'll give them something shiny-sparkly that has significant value.)

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By this point in the day we had already visited the graveyard, stopped to make a rabbit offering, picked up a few groceries at a farmer's shop, checked on #6 (only to discover that she was gone), sullenly made purchases at a garden center (organic manure, rooting powder and buffalo wing-flavored pretzel bites) and made our way into the ancient oak hunting grounds of a local castle to take more currant clippings.

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Earlier in the year we discovered currant bushes inexplicably growing just off the beaten path beneath an oak tree. The patch was much more obvious pre-bracken; I actually walked right past it a few months ago because the shrubs had been swallowed whole by pre-historic looking ferns. (If you look closely you can see the grape leaf-like leaves of the currants growing beneath the canopy of bracken.) Next year I'll make a point of clearing the ferns to give the bushes a chance to breathe to see if they'll produce any fruit.

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My second round of currant clippings (another three), the foraging basket you're already acquainted with and my "out in the country" leather backpack that has everything I need when I'm doing my thing in the wild. (i.e., hand sanitizer, baby wipes, plastic bags, Tupperware boxes, a knife, scissors, paper towels, foil-wrapped candies (offerings), my camera, a bottle of water and a ball of string.)

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While Italics was having a slash it occurred to me that I've never really posted pictures of Drum Castle before. Next year, when we get a National Trust* card, I'll focus some of my attention to local landmarks and heritage sites since we'll have a pass that'll allow us indoors to take guided tours. (Visiting the grounds is free, but going within castles and houses costs money.)

* The National Trust of Scotland manages historic sites that have either been donated to the organization or "loaned" (in some cases families still maintain ownership but can't afford with the upkeep, so they move off the property during tourist season to allow NToS to do it's thing and then move back in once the site closes down for the season).

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The oldest part of Drum Castle is the tower (it's supposed to be one of three oldest unaltered tower houses in Scotland, built in the 13th century), everything around it was tacked on later. When you walk around the perimeter of the castle it's insanely easy to spot the Jacobean and Victorian additions. Despite visiting the castle numerous times (it's one of my personal favorites) I've only been indoors once.

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I think that's the castle's well in the corner of the building. Drum - no longer seasonally inhabited by the family - shuts down for the year in October, along with most other historic/heritage sites owned by the National Trust. You can see that the windows' wooden shutters have been drawn for winter.

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I think MAYBE these were stables once, but they're public bathrooms now. (I don't know about the men's bathroom, but the women's bathroom always has a bouquet of fresh flowers cut from the castle's walled garden during tourist season.)

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This is the Victorian addition to Drum Castle. To left is the tower (obviously not pictured), and "behind" the Victorian addition is the Jacobean mansion (also obviously not pictured). I totally forgot to snap a photo of the south-facing Jacobean addition. Once Italics was out of the bathroom my attention turned to mushroom picking (there were comically large fly agarics growing along the driveway leading into the castle that I wanted to snatch up) and I forgot to lazily document the rest of the castle's structure.

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The various buildings that make Drum Castle create this perfect little courtyard enclosed by mortar and stone. That's passionflower trailing up and over the side of the wall and arc.

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I love the turrets and old stone decorative work that dot and accentuate the historical houses here in Scotland.

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One last picture of the castle while migrating towards the toadstools we passed when driving into the grounds.

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Visually, the gigantically domed fly agarics are awe-inspiring, but they're a pain in the fucking ass to dry (I try and maintain the shape as much as possible, which is super easy for small mushrooms but requires constant care and pampering if the toadstool's larger than your palm). The much smaller ones are less fairy tale looking, but they retain their shape perfectly and, unlike the larger ones, never seem to get infested by larvae.

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These were some robust motherfuckers that immediately caught our attention as we drove along the castle's driveway to the parking lot. I was torn between picking them immediately (I lost an entire cropping of fly agarics about a month back when someone decapitated every single toadstool I had been nurturing) and hiking out to the currant bushes. Eventually we decided to deal with the cuttings first, and I bit my nails the entire fucking time worried to hell that some retard would come along and stomp/kick/squash the two prime specimens while I was busy in the oak woodlands.

We actually ended up startling someone by racing down the driveway shouting "NO! NO! THOSE ARE OURS!" when another castle visitor stopped his car in the middle of the driveway and got out to inspect the pair of fly agarics. As it turned out he only wanted to take a picture ("I WAS TELLING MY GIRLFRIEND HOW MUCH LIKE TOAD FROM MARIO BROTHERS THE MUSHROOMS LOOKED AND I WANTED TO GET A PHOTO.") and I had to sheepishly explain why I was so protective over those particular fungi.

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Unearthing potatoes along the castle's driveway? Not quite, but close.

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It's the second most beautiful fruit of the earth in Scotland; porcini (also known as "ceps"). Porcini are considered the king of the mushrooms; an extremely prized fungi whose only real competition is the elusive truffle. The thing about ceps, though - as with the entire family they belong to (the boletes) - is they can't be cultivated. If you've ever enjoyed a porcini risotto, or a cep-spiked autumn casserole you're eating wild mushrooms picked by someone. (Some people have a fear of eating things from the wild, not knowing that some of the food they enjoy is actually from the wild. Porcini is one of those things.)

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There's a strange delight when it comes to picking fly agarics, I think it has to do with the modern's world perception of toadstools. When I see the unmistakable white-specked orange-red caps I see treasure lying out in the open, and an entire world completely oblivious to the brightly-colored gifts dotting the countryside.

I hear "poison" whispered behind my back when people pass as I'm carefully unearthing agarics (I try to keep as much of the mushroom intact as possible; there's something special about the bulbous end of the stalk and I try and retain the toadstool's shape in entirety), and I can't help but feel sadly disappointed. In under two thousand years Man's already forgotten his link to the divine, and what was once sacred and the highest form of communion is now fearfully kicked aside like garbage.

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Porcini are a joy in every respect - finding, picking, cleaning (as with any mushroom you never wash them, to clean them you simply dust debris off with a brush), slicing and drying (I have to use the oven right now - on a super low setting with the door open - but I'm hoping to make enough money from my mushroom sales this year to buy a dehydrator for next year). Boletes are sturdy motherfuckers, and ceps in particular - even the large ones - remain rigidly firm when you cut into them.

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When I performed a Passover ritual a few days earlier I used lambs' bloods from three hearts bought at the grocery store. I wasn't sure how to dispose of the organs - especially since they sat on the sheepskin altar with the blood, blessed herbs and holy water - so I decided to take all three to a local stone circle/cairn as an offering. The ancient, sacred site? Ecstatic with the gifts. (Why else would it have immediately reciprocated the favor by giving me a tiny field of fly agarics growing within its boundaries?)

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While I was carefully digging the motherfuckers out of the ground Italics wandered around the short pine alley leading to the circle snapping photos of the toadstools on my behalf.

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Toadstools past their prime. I took the fresher looking of the two hoping that maybe it wasn't as old as it seemed, but once under the oven's slightly warm fan it quickly disintegrated into a orange-red puddle of larvae mush. Sigh.

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Nature's blazing Eucharist.

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Fresh lambs' hearts situated in the center most ring within the standing stone circle. (There's something like 8 clusters of small, roundish cairns within the larger stone circle.) In all my years of visiting this particular sacred site I've never seen offerings left by anyone else. (If you ever visit this Bronze Age monument and find powder sugar-dusted almond croissants or internal organs you know who the guilty culprit is.)

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There's a farm that's gently envelopes the sacred site, so the stone circle's flanked by pasture fields and a homestead. Almost every time we visit we're eventually greeted by a dog - usually a friendly Jack Russell, last time, though, it was an exceptionally energetic (and enthusiastic) border collie - that has to be coyly distracted from the stones with playful engagement, although I know it's only a momentary fix. The second we're gone the dog probably trots back and enjoys the "people food" I've left on a cairn. (That is, if the crows who roost above in the pines don't get it first.)

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As we were leaving I realized I've never actually posted a picture of the stone circle before here in Graveyard Dirt, so I had Italics turn around and take a quick shot. To the left there's a rowan tree growing (the birds always get the damn berries before I do), and to the right's the homestead (unseen). The long shadow stretching across half the photo is being cast by the small alley of large pine trees leading up to the circle.

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All that remains of my lost #6. When we discovered she was gone we spent part of the morning scouring the entire woodland hedge, but all that was found was this leg. I carried it by her toes as the scent of burning tires trailed behind us (OH, THE BIZARRE SCENTS OF DECOMPOSITION!), crying, while trying not to touch/wipe my wet face with rotting flesh hands.

I know how to guide her spirit back to my herd (so she isn't completely lost), but because I don't have her skull - or anything else - I've decided to keep her permanently and not sell any part of the remains I did manage to find.

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I think this fall under "cosmic compensation", but my personal preference would've been getting my goddamn deer back rather than receiving two baskets of mushrooms. I thanked the Universe anyway, and underlined the fact that deer will ALWAYS have priority over mushrooms; just in case there was any doubt or ambiguity.

In addition to the two baskets of mushrooms (one batch picked from castle grounds, the other from the pine alley leading to the standing stone circle) we also came home with six currant cuttings (three from the graveyard, three from the ancient oak hunting grounds) and the remains of the cemetery rabbit.

We were out of the house by 9 AM and finally back by 4 PM; a long fucking day of work, especially since I had gotten up between 1-3 PM the previous day which meant I was rocking a 24+ hour day.

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The fly agarics in this smaller basket are/were the ones picked at the stone circle/cairn.

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The largest of the toadstools that were picked at Cullerlie (the circle/cairn). I was hoping that I might've just caught it before it got old, but that wasn't the case. (You can already see how "soft" it looks in the center.) Like I mentioned earlier, this particular fly agaric disintegrated once I began drying it out. The other ones, though, were in good condition and dried without a hitch.

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The smaller "button" toadstools. It's tempting leaving these guys behind to bloom fully, but it's a risky gamble. The older/larger mushrooms are more likely to be infested with larvae, they're harder to dry and people are way too fucking tempted to decapitate, smash or kick the fly agarics into oblivion. I harvest them in various stages of growth, but for purely aesthetic reasons the smaller ones are preferred.

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Something's already enjoyed some of this toadstool. I found it growing where the crows nest, which is sort've fitting since the first thing I "saw" when examining the nibbled top was the head of a baby bird. (Can you see it? With the pointed beak and the bulging eyes?)

This particular mushroom has a lot of strong animal attachment - from the critter who previous dined on the fleshy cap (rabbit? mouse? those look like tiny, precise incisors chipping away), to it's location of growth (beneath a crow rookery at a sacred Bronze Age site) and the pattern gouged into the mushroom's dome.

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We actually weighed our bounty (almost all of them are porcini/ceps, but there's three that aren't - they're all from the same family, though, which is "bolete") and then I lost the fucking paper I wrote the total on. Suffice to say, this is enough to make any mushroom picker a little green with envy. (If you buy those packs of dry porcini from your grocery store you already know they're EXPENSIVE motherfuckers.)

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Processing the basket of porcini was a fucking nightmare. By the time we returned home I had already passed the 24 hour mark and then I ended up spending over an hour bent over the kitchen sink deliriously cleaning/brushing everything we picked. (I felt insanely deranged at the very end. Italics had to herd me to bed. In fact, I don't even have any fucking recollection of GETTING to bed. Oi vey.)

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I won't deny it; this is flat out, disgustingly gratuitous porcini porn.

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These were the biggest of the bunch, but they've recently been dwarfed by a mammoth of a cep I discovered growing at the side of the road that ended up weighing 503g (that's half a fucking kilogram/just over 1lb!). We ended up enjoying some of these mushrooms in a homemade (gluten-free) bread stuffing and red wine-braised roadkill pheasant casserole when celebrating Harvest, but more on that later.

Giving Thanks

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...for all that grows, for all that lives, for all that gives.

Pictured: a roadkill pheasant I personally butchered and cleaned, organic celery and carrots grown in Scotland, porcini mushrooms Italics and I gathered from local castle grounds, fresh herbs from my container garden and garlic that I grew this year in the front yard.

Harvest Festivities & Rites

itmoons asked: Hello! I've emailed you before and I am a great admirer of what you do. My boyfriend and I have been discussing the old ways and pagan holidays and such things and decided we'd like to celebrate them correctly (we did an informal ritual for mabon). With samhain coming, i was wondering what you did for mabon and what you will do for samhain. also, any sources you can direct me too would be helpful. apologies if these questions are too forward/personal/presumptuous. just two lil pagan boys lookin to give the goddess her due.

Ever since I received this question I've been hella excited by the prospect of answering it, but I've been so knee-fucking-deep in various observances and celebrations (and work - will the mushroom season EVER FUCKING END?) that I haven't had a chance to address it. (I'm actually pushing this question to the top of my list because 1.) it's seasonal and 2.) it provides an explanation as to where my AWOL ass has been for the past few months.)

At this point in my life my Gregorian year is split into halves. In the first half, the Light Year (spring and summer), I'm the virginal Bride who marries the divine king and throughout the growing months we reign together ensuring fertility and new life. The second half, the Dark Year (fall and winter), I'm the great Whore who sacrifices her husband, consort and king (wheat, vine and bull) and harvests his blood, flesh and seed for consumption and resurrection.

(This is a really quick, basic breakdown to give you an idea of where I'm coming from. I've addressed the Virgin/Whore dynamic and perpetual tug-of-war far better in previous diary entries. If you hit up the categories BRIDE and CAILLEACH you'll find more thorough explanations that I'm much happier with.)

Because we live in a mostly rural setting and I work with the idea of female-based sovereignty the majority of my Harvest (from Lammas to Mabon to Samhain to Fet Ghede) is agriculturally themed. Rather than just focusing on our little patch of property I've incorporated this entire area that we live in as my land, and I routinely drag Italics across the local landscape to perform various rites and rituals in the Scottish countryside we see every day out our windows.

The following is a list of activities, rituals, celebrations, observances and traditions that we try and nail every year. Some, it goes without saying, are more important than others, so we prioritize things and keep our schedules flexible for unplanned disasters (i.e., bad weather, catching a cold, family drama) to ensure that the most important shit is executed. (<- Like Italics/the divine king, har har.)

* Reap wheat; Every year I ritually reap wheat from local fields and from containers in my backyard patio garden that I've personally grown. The wheat is then gathered into a bundle and decorated with a blessed cloth embroidered with traditional Ukrainian designs. The venerated bundle - also known as didukh in Ukrainian (pictured here) - represents my ancestors, this land, my sacrificed king, consort, and husband. Throughout the Dark Year the bundle's featured in every major ritual and altar until spring, when I dismantle it and plant the king's seed I've been protecting and holding since Harvest. (See Cereal Mariticide and The Widow is Born.)

* Change the guard; Our companion for the Light Year is Chile Bird, but when it flies the coop for winter it's replaced by Cobweb Spider. Around the time of the equinoxes I remove everything from our office/computer room windowsill altar, wash everything (the objects sitting on the space, the window (inside and out), the frame (inside and out), the ledge (inside and out) and even the hinges, handles, blinds and areas of the wall touching the window), return the permanent altar shit and swap to the appropriate "guard". (See Changing of the Guard.)

* Clean bedroom; Before I drag out our vintage coffin cover to keep our asses warm throughout winter I have to thoroughly clean our bedroom to remove traces of the Bride. I've jokingly referred to the ritualized act as "cleaning up after the Bride" since I have a tendency to leave incomplete projects scattered across any flat surface. But this is serious, crazy magic cleaning that involves blood, sweat, urine and protective washes. (See Cleaning Up After the Bride, Cleaning Day I and Cleaning Day II.)

* Plant garlic; I use a lot of garlic in my cooking and magic work (not that cooking isn't magic), so I've started to grow my own which allows me to add "special" ingredients to the soil for themed bulbs. Garlic's the only thing I plant as the Whore that the Bride harvests.

* Turn down the yard for winter; During the Dark Year my major altars are located within the house, but during the Light Year my major altars are located outside of the house. When it's time to begin moving indoors I "turn down" the yard for winter which involves planting garlic, cutting the grass (for the final time), raking leaves, collecting seeds, emptying pots, straightening up sacred spaces (i.e., the Shango Tree roadkill altar and the patio altar) and covering vulnerable plants from extreme weather.

* Move Stone Cock; At first snowfall Stone Cock (and his black pebble balls) is brought indoors (this year He sat at the base of my peach tree as my patio altar's centerpiece), where he'll stay until the first day of summer. On May Day (Beltane), He'll be paraded out with blessed ribbons (that decorated the "maypole"; nudge, nudge, wink, wink) which will then be hung on branches of fruiting trees.

* Cut the grass; Which, understandably, doesn't sound hella magic, but I then rake up the grass and dry it so I can offer homegrown green (albeit dried green) to local lactating ewes on Bride's Day (Imbolc).

* Harvest from the backyard; I usually choose a single day to complete the majority of my backyard harvesting. Half-naked and high I burn incense on my patio offering pillar as Italics helps me pick plums, cut herbs and gather other backyard food we've managed to grow during the year. Everything is then washed, processed and divided into what we keep, and what we give as tribute. (See 2009 Harvest.)

* Create a Harvest altar; I created a Harvest altar for the very first time last year (pictured here) and it kicked so much fucking ass that I really regretted the fact that I was too busy this year with roadkill, mushrooms and berries to raise it for 2010. Fingers crossed that next year I'll manage my time better to give myself a chance to recreate the place of thanksgiving.

* Create a Halloween altar; The only time I've ever missed constructing a Halloween altar was several years ago when both of us came down with a serious case of influenza that lasted the entire Halloween vacation (and then some). (<- Because we cohabit with my in-laws I'm only able to have a spacious altar four times a year when they're away on holiday: Easter, summer, Halloween and Christmas. Creating altars is a huge fucking deal for me because I normally don't have the ability to dedicate spaces to elaborate setups for any real length of time.) Oops! I just realized I never uploaded any pictures of last year's altar. I have one photo, but the job's only been partially done: 2009 Halloween altar construction.

* Perform the Whore's Black Mass; At some point in our Halloween vacation we celebrate the Whore's Black Mass which involves various intoxicants (pot, MDMA, mushrooms, nitrous and alcohol) and ritualized marathon sex in front of the Halloween altar. When we celebrate Hieros Gamos (the sacred marriage), the drugs'n'sex rite is a ceremony of union, which I've always found to be gentle, loving and tender. Black Mass, though, is all about out-of-your-fucking-head screwing for the pure sake of pleasure. (Reproduction be fucking damned, let's see how far you can force your fist into my cunt!)

* Observe Fet Ghede; My Harvest ends with Papa's feast, Fet Ghede, which I celebrate on November 1st and 2nd. We bake Pan de Muerto for the occasion, using the dough to fashion offering cakes to those who've died since last Fet Ghede. (We then take the bread to the local graveyard and leave it on a cairn.) I also whip up a special meal specifically geared for Papa. Sometimes it's homemade gumbo, sometimes it's baked ham, but there's always cornbread, rum and Hoppin' John. (Not to mention pot, cigars and sexy lingerie.)(See Fet Ghede, 2008.)

* Pay tribute; It's important for me to give back what I've taken or have been given throughout the Light Year as the Bride. It's a thank you, a tribute and a celebration of everything I've done and achieved. With baskets and bags I take a fraction of the roadkill I've found, food I've grown (and gathered) and bread I've ritually baked to the nearest standing stone and leave my tribute at the base to give back to the land that's fed me, and to show my gratitude for all that I've been given. (See Harvest Home Offering.)

* Steal potatoes; The local farmers don't know it, but they pay tribute to me. When the wheat turns gold I reap from their fields, and when the potato plants shrivel up I unearth potatoes. It's a teeny, tiny price to pay to have a witch personally looking after your crops (and the land they're growing on), especially when all of the agricultural land here is either grain or potato. "Stealing potatoes" is more of a LOLOLOL tradition, though, and nothing more than a bit of fun to fluff up our celebratory Harvest meals.

* Bake Castle Pie; One of the local castles has an annual sale of produce grown within its walled gardens. Every year we go to buy plums and apples, walk the castle grounds, visit the bees still hard at work, have sex beneath the same tree and return home to bake Castle Pie together. (The yearly event must be magic because Italics isn't really into fruit, but I often find him picking at the pie when no one's looking.)

* Visit the apple and pear sale; Once a year, on one day only, a pay-to-enter heritage site holds an apple and pear sale selling fruit grown within its gardens. This is the one chance to get a hold of really old varieties I've never heard before ("cat's head" and "bloody ploughman" come to mind). We normally buy three bags of fruit and then take a long walk along a path that circles and winds around old stone walls, farming fields, hedges and beech woodlands (usually pausing to pick blackberries because, holy shit, dude, you would not believe the size of the motherfuckers that grow there).

* Bake Baba's Ukrainian apple cake; Using some of the apples purchased from the heritage site sale I bake a traditional Ukrainian apple cake for my (now deceased) Ukrainian grandmother. My grandparents fashioned themselves a slice of "the old country" in southeast Wisconsin which meant I spent my growing years running around barefoot in a fruit (pear, plum, cherry and apple) orchard, so I have a strong, sentimental attachment to autumn fruits and how they're incorporated into festive cooking and I've tried to keep that tradition alive in my own way. (See Dreading Mortality.)

* Bake bread; Wheat is enormously significant to me; it's the face of my God, my husband, lover, consort and king. With one hand I kill Him, and with another I resurrect Him. I drink His blood, I crush His bones and I eat His flesh. When He's alive and living (Light Year) I refrain from baking bread, but once I perform the reaping ritual I'm allowed to use His body until resurrection. My baking season begins with a traditional Ukrainian bread (paska or babka; babka's like paska plus, using more butter and egg yolks) during Harvest, and ends on Easter (with the same bread, although this particular loaf gets toted off to church on Holy Saturday to be blessed by a priest) when I bake my last and final loaf for the year.

* Prepare celebratory meals; The only thing more celebrated than sex in this house is food. We try to eat seasonally, and as locally as possible. (Pretty goddamn "local" when you're digging up your own potatoes, plucking berries off bushes just yards away from your house and picking mushrooms only a few miles from your rural subdivision.) We have several Harvest related feasts (not including Fet Ghede), and when preparing those I focus on incorporating as much wild or homegrown food as possible. This year, for example, we're roasting a roadkill pheasant with the "stolen" potatoes, and we'll also be making homemade wild mushroom and pheasant risotto using boletes I've picked throughout fall and a roadkill pheasant I picked up on the autumnal equinox.

* Transition from Bride to Whore; Because my hair takes for-fucking-ever to grow I only cut it two times a year: spring and fall (the same goes for Italics, although I usually cut his hair for him while my hair is trimmed by a professional). In addition to getting my hair lopped off I also get my eyebrows done (threading all the way, baby!), and thoroughly rub my ass down with a homemade purifying scrub out of salt, olive oil, honey and rosemary essential oil. (In spring I give my physical appearance a boost because I'm a bride getting ready to be married, but in fall I become a mistress, so my preparations are less wedding based and lean more towards "super extended night on the town".) During the Dark Year I use henna to dye my hair darker (Whore), but during the Light Year I use henna to dye it red (Bride).

This year's Harvest has been crazy mental, but insanely rewarding. I've never experienced anything quite like it because, up until recently, I didn't have a car. I spent nearly a decade fantasizing about a way of life I was desperate to live, repeatedly telling myself "IT'S OKAY, YOU'LL GET TO DO IT ~NEXT YEAR~, IT WON'T ALWAYS BE LIKE THIS" to keep it together. 2010 has been a breakthrough year for me; it's been the year I officially began to live and everything I've done and experienced has been a complete and utter joy and revelation.

My boyfriend and I have been discussing the old ways and pagan holidays and such things and decided we'd like to celebrate them correctly (we did an informal ritual for mabon).

If you're exercising a Choose Your Own Adventure-style spiritual journey there isn't a right or wrong way to celebrate and observe special days; it's an experimental process that evolves yearly. If you're involved in a religion with a hardcore set of beliefs I'm sure there is a "correct" way of doing things, but if you haven't committed yourself to a one specific path you aren't obligated to follow anyone else's instruction manual.

The beautiful thing about going solo and doing what makes sense (to you) is that sometimes it'll work spectacularly, and sometimes it'll end disastrously funny. But - BUT! - no matter what the outcome, it's always a learning experience that ultimately shapes the rest of the game.

My suggestion? Do shit. Do a lot of shit. Do stupid shit, do funny shit, do crazy shit, do serious shit. Just do shit, and keep the shit that makes you laugh, cry, and feel alive and work on that shit so next time around you'll laugh even harder, cry more meaningfully and feel so fucking alive that the very core of your being is on celestial fire.

also, any sources you can direct me too would be helpful. apologies if these questions are too forward/personal/presumptuous.

Man, I'm the worst person to come to when resources are involved. I've written my own mythology, created my own gods and crowned myself a divine queen in my world. And the worst part? The Universe is playing along. (I guess that means my "script" has been optioned?) I can tell you what I believe, what I do and the meaning behind everything, but I'm not a quotable resource.

What I can do, though, is direct you to the blogs, diaries and journals of witches, pagans, spiritualists and rootworkers that I follow who are a LEETLE less out there that might be able to provide different views and approaches to celebrate this time of year. (Hit up the index page of Graveyard Dirt; you'll find those links on the left under the "READING" category.)

I'll also point you towards my Amazon wishlist so you can get an idea of the reading material that most interests me. (I always feel weird providing the link, but I've had a lot of people ask for it to discover new material to add to their own personal wishlist.)

Right! I hope I've been slightly helpful (or at least moderately interesting). Whatever you guys do, just make sure it's coming from the heart (and/or gut), because that's the shit that sculpts your beliefs and transforms your life. Good luck with Halloween/Samhain, and thank you for prompting me to finally sit my ass down and write about our Harvest festivities and rites. (I actually began drafting an entry along those lines to explain my absence, but with all of these new activities, all of the old traditions and taking care of our tumor-ridden pet rat, Choney, I just haven't had a chance.)

PS: Just FYI; when you're the type of person who posts a picture of yourself barebacking the New Year roast, naked, there's no question that's "too forward/personal/presumptuous", *winks*.

Deer #6: Midmar Roe Doe

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As late August passed into early September I stumbled across six roe deer roadkill (two bucks, two does and two fawns) in just under a week. The first was the mummified remains of a male, stiffly compressed into a crumpled jump until I came along, took him home and gently broke his body free from the leaping pose he was frozen in. The sixth, a doe, was the freshest of all the deers; the complete opposite of the first. Warm and pliable I carried her to the car, panting, envisioning roasted venison haunches for Midwinter.

Unfortunately, there won't be any venison haunches for Midwinter, because Italics said "THERE IS NO EFFING WAY, DON'T EVEN THINK I'M GOING TO LET YOU". (The smaller the animal the more likely the fatal trauma occurs to the head, which doesn't spoil the meat. (Which is why it's really fucking hard to get a skull from a roadkill fox, badger or rabbit - everything liquifies into a creamy grey-pink-white mess.) But a larger animal normally doesn't die of a crushed skull, so any internal injury usually involves organ-based explosions which taints the meat.)

So there won't be any haunches, but there also won't be any bones, toes, teeth and skull because I lost her. I lost my sixth deer, the doe we picked up feet away from where we discovered Under the Bed Badger back in March. I have nothing left of her except three leg bones, connected by rotting tissue. I had gently laid her to rest and then, one day, she was gone. All of her, save the amputated leg I found amongst the rusty-colored bracken.

My stomach's been in knots for days - since Saturday, when I first discovered I lost her. By the time she came into my life there was no aspect of myself that wasn't exhausted. Even before she arrived I had found the complete bodies of five other deer, I had already spent every day for almost a week going out, finding a deer, carrying it to the car, lifting it into the trunk, driving back home, lifting it out of the trunk, hauling it through the garage into the backyard, processing the body and returning the remains back to nature. All the work - the moving, lifting, butchering, everything - was done without help from anyone.

After the fifth deer - the crossroads buck with broken antlers - I was worn out to the core. Physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually. You name it, it profoundly ached. I took the glut on the chin, Pollyanna-style. Two, three years ago I was bedridden due to my broken stomach, and now, suddenly, I was well enough to haul the dead weight of roadkill deer for a quarter of a fucking mile. I overdid it, even at the time I knew I was precariously close to some sort of brink, but the deer felt like such a significant gift that I felt driven to PROVE myself. Who the fuck was I to say SHUT THE ASSEMBLY LINE DOWN; SMOKE BREAK, MOTHERFUCKERS! when the Universe saw fit to keep me working?

We were out for a romantic day in country (no roadkill, just a spot of rural exploration because in northeast Scotland you're only ever a few miles away from some sort of holy well, graveyard, standing stone, neolithic monument or ancient ruins of some sort) and within ten fucking minutes of being out we found #6 lying in the same bend where we had found Under the Bed Badger earlier in the year. "I, UH, CAN ALWAYS GO BACK FOR IT," I assured Italics. He gave me his blessings and we turned around, parked in someone's driveway and I hauled her to the car.

She was the freshest, but she was also the one that sustained the most trauma. Carrying her back to the car was a chore within itself - I was wearing nice clothes and her lower abdomen had burst open. No entrails were apparent, but it was obvious that the intestines had ruptured since gritty, henna-like body fluids were oozing out of the gaping wound. With my hands pinching her toes together I lifted* her and waddled back to the car where Italics was waiting (just in case the homeowner came out to investigate the strange car parked in their driveway).

(* I never, ever "drag" even if I use the word when telling my stories (HEY, THERE'S ONLY SO MANY SYNONYMS TO USE, OKAY?). Dragging a dead animal along the asphalt it was killed upon seems like major disrespect. I always make a point of physically carrying roadkill back to the car in my arms, only ever letting the body momentarily pause on some grass if I need to catch my breath.)

I wanted to butcher her, but that was a no-go. ("OKAY, OKAY, OKAY. WHAT IF I ONLY TOOK THE MEAT FROM THE ~FRONT~ INSTEAD OF THE ~BACK~?" Yeah, he didn't buy that either.) I wanted to skin her despite the unhygienic condition of the body (we've caught two insanely overwhelming illnesses from roadkill animals I've picked up, and since our last run-in Italics hasn't allowed me to act on my default cavalier attitude of working with bodies that've ruptured open exposing torn organs), that was a no-go, too.

Eventually I kind've sort've worked him down to allowing me to maybe skin the front half of the deer (starting at the head), but because she was in such poor condition between her back haunches I couldn't really take her home which meant I had to find a private, secluded spot that was easily accessible by car to rest her body. Further up the road was a significant spot for us featuring a standing stone, a stone circle, graveyard and church rolled into one that gently backed into an oak hedge that extended into rolling farmland.

She was lifted, for the last and final time, and lovingly placed beneath a young oak tree, hidden from view by gnarled roots and indigenous vegetation. I stroked her warm body and assured her that I'd come back for her to take her home. I never actually managed to skin her like I wanted. After handling her - she was the heaviest of all six and I had a helluva time moving her - my body shut down; my back and shoulders were on fire for days. "Fine," I thought, "not flaying her is a sacrifice I'm going to have to make. At least I'll have the rest of her to work with."

I was unsure about leaving her. Anyone - anything - could take her. Italics assured me, on several occasions, that she was just too big to move, and, after a point, she'd become too decomposed to do anything to her other than let her rot. I checked up on her almost daily. Every fucking time I visited I was tempted to decapitate her and at least take her head home so I could perform a proper funeral service, but I was afraid I'd get scolded for beheading her when she was so far along (and in doing so exposing myself to another round of roadkill sickness).

"Are you absolutely sure?" I asked again and again, and got the same answer every effing time. I guess deep down inside I was reluctant to believe him, but I wanted to. What would stop scavengers from tearing her apart? What would stop wild animals from dragging portions of her body away? She was a free fucking meal, sleeping beneath a crooked oak tree. But, at the same time, the first two roadkill deer I found were absolutely complete (the fawn still had all of its fucking teeth for Christ's sake). So instead of acting on my secret paranoid fear I didn't do anything other than visit, wait and piss (not ON her, but I repeatedly marked my territory whenever I swung by for a social calling).

And then? And then, one day, she was gone. All of her. There was nothing beneath the moss-encrusted tree except a few ghostly hairs. I wanted to throw up, but, instead, I began crying. I stood in the dark imprint left by her body, surrounded by dying nettle and bracken, and realized, with a guilty, irresponsible horror that I failed her. I promised her I would be back for her, I promised her I would take her home. I promised her I would set her free. In the end, though, I had done none of the above.

We combed the area. I sobbed, off and on. Twigs and dried leaves crunched and snapped beneath our feet, but despite our efforts we found nothing. There was simply nothing left of her except the putrid leg bones, which I clutched mournfully in my hand while searching and crying. She had simply vanished, leaving no trace whatsoever. We don't even know if it was wild animals or people. We don't know anything, other than something took her and I let it fucking happen because I'm a retard who should've known better.

I'm now down one roe deer leaving me at five. I don't expect to find another one this year. Roadkill, like everything wild, has its seasons. The badgers are hit when Winter groggily shuffles into early Spring. The crows are hit throughout Spring and Summer when food becomes plentiful. The deer are hit during rutting season, when hormones and natural instincts override usual caution. Foxes and rabbits are the unlucky creatures whose season is never officially over.

I'll be honest, there's a small part of me that's going "...BUT THE MONEY! BUT THE GOODS! BUT THE MONEY!" but that's mostly eclipsed by "I AM A HORRIBLE HUMAN BEING WHO CAN'T KEEP HER PROMISES TO DEAD, WILD ANIMALS". I willingly gave up her hide, but I never signed away the rest of her. By being down "one deer" I have one less to sell, and that means one less skull, one less set of complete bones, one less set of teeth, one set less of organs and one set less of toes.

I won't lie; my primary interest, right now, is to profit from what I find, release, process and clean. I'm not afraid to admit it because the Universe has said - in its own way - that what I'm doing is completely cool. (I mean, being given SIX roadkill deer in SIX DAYS isn't exactly a slap on the wrist for being bad.) I want to continue doing what I'm doing, but at this time I'm working with a pair of fucking house scissors, a cheap ass plastic hack saw and a rusty scalpel set that was made for model plane making. (Seriously. Everything I've broken down, skinned and flayed has been with one of those totally unprofessional items.)

I need things, and things cost money. For every animal I process I need a new pair of surgical gloves and a dust mask. I need buckets filled with hot, soapy water. I need environmentally safe detergent. I need antibacterial wipes and hand sanitizers. I need salt, borax and cornmeal to dry wings, tails and feet. I need ziploc bags, vacuum sealing bags, permanent markers and clothes that are just for roadkill projects. (The pants that I'm wearing right now? Have forever been stained with fox brains because I only own TWO pairs of house pants.)

I want to be able to tan my own hides, but that requires special preserving solutions. I want to be able to macerate bones throughout winter, but that requires a fish tank fitted with a heater. I want to be able to skin animals efficiently and quickly, but that requires a proper skinning knife and a set of stainless steel medical-grade scalpels. To do what I'm doing costs money, and in order to afford buying the basic things I desperately need I have to go balls out with this roadkill thing because I'm currently using the equivalent of theatrical props to get shit done. (And, man, I am getting some serious shit done, but I could get it done better if I had the proper tools.)

So grieving over #6 is a mix of unsavory emotions. I can't help but revisit the empty space beneath the oak tree in my mind, and the feeling of gut-wrenching shock doesn't subside. It's so much more than just losing money, it's about losing one of my herd. I was a bad shepherd and didn't keep the wolves at bay. And even though animals don't need my "help" to relieve them of their excess (physical) baggage, it still feels like she's lost in the grey wilderness between life and death.

I've learned my most valuable lesson so far - there is no code of conduct, or unspoken etiquette amongst scavengers, just a fleeting sense of ownership until the next opportunist comes along.

Graveyard Work

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One of my various "offices" spread out through the Scottish countryside. (I need to get a coffee mug that says "YOU DON'T NEED TO BE DEAD TO WORK HERE, BUT IT HELPS".)

This past Saturday Italics and I spent 5-6 hours foraging in old graveyards, ancient oak woodlands and stunning castle grounds collecting bones, taking plant clippings and harvesting wild mushrooms. I have a stupid amount of pictures to share with you guys, but I haven't finished sorting through all of them. This photo's just a teaser of what's to come.

Pictured: my foraging/wildharvesting basket that also serves as our Easter basket for Holy Saturday (Ukrainians traditionally take their Easter Sunday brunch to church on Holy Saturday to have it blessed by a priest in a special ceremony), the remains of a rabbit (graveyard rabbit feet are supposed to be hella magic) and clippings of currant bushes that grow around the cemetery (to plant at home in my container garden).

Everything's sitting on a mortsafe, which was once used to guard the bodies of the dead as they decomposed during the infamous Burke and Hare epidemic. (How morbidly appropriate that I eventually settled in the body snatching capital of the world.)

Funeral for a Pheasant

I'll be completely honest with you guys: I don't actually consecrate and sanctify every piece of clearance meat I buy over billowing incense before cooking and consuming it. (In a bizarre way (which makes absolute, total sense to me) I feel that I make amends for "taking a life" by choosing to primarily eat reduced-to-clear meat that would otherwise be thrown out. It might be a lame excuse for my carnivore ways, but it's also one less wasted life unapologetically rotting in a dump.)

Roadkill, however, gets the red fucking carpet treatment. The butchering process combines several rituals in one act. While breaking the physical carcass down I'm also holding a funeral, releasing the spirit, spiritually cleansing the body (to bless and purify the meat that'll be eaten, and the various parts (i.e., organs, feathers, feet) that'll be used for future witchcrafting), giving thanks (to the animal) for the gifts received and, if time/situation permits, I usually sneak in a quick haruspicy (aka entrails reading) session.

I'm planning on dedicating a much larger journal entry to this specific roadkill ritual, so I'll save my trademark wordy ass explanations for then. In the meantime, you can marvel at the once-in-a-blue-fucking-moon cluttered state of my windowsill kitchen altar. (How do you know when an autistic anal aries witch has too much going on? When you can't see the surface of her altars/work areas.)

Gluten-Free Buttermilk Gingerbread

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Since the gingerbread was baked as an offering we can't have any until AFTER our ritual supper with the Cailleach tomorrow night (might as well get on Her sweet side early). In a few days we'll take the remains - along with some deer bones and the mummified hide off my first roadkill deer (the stag with a sexy skull, remember?) - up to Her home on Mither Tap (the tallest point in this region) to return them to Her until their vessels (skulls, bones, body parts and hides) are ready to house their spirits.

Broken Deer Funeral

The funeral of a broken deer found at a crossroads.

Death's Lunchbox

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In this house? Offerings of sandwiches transcend species. Ask the fox (smoked ham on whole wheat), ask the badger (peanut butter and honey on white), ask the deer (organic romaine heart on handsliced pieces of gluten-free bread).

Death; Rebirth

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A new deer priestess is born.

Roe Deer #01

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The Old Woman, either confident in my abilities to keep up with this pace of life or deliberately positioning my ass for a nervous fucking breakdown (seriously, how much can one fucking person do?), saw fit to send me one of Her (exceptionally expired) deer. (Actually, She saw fit to send me two - within 20 minutes of picking up this roe buck I stumbled across the remains of a toddler-aged fawn.)

Fox's Funeral

Fox's offerings of omani frankincense, a bowl of organic milk and a smoked ham sandwich (on whole wheat, naturally).

Fox-tongued Witch

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What do you call a witch with two fox tongues? Anything she slyly - but eloquently - charms you into saying.

Until the Fucking End

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Make them take you down snarling; fight until the fucking end.

Be Careful w/Your Machines

"This cannot be. The worlds of magic and logic must exist side by side; not destroy each other. Take care! Be careful with your machines, I say!" Carolinus, Flight of Dragons

There's a scene in the animated movie Flight of Dragons where the green wizard, Carolinus, watches helplessly as a swan's dragged under the powerful current of a watermill. He wades out to the broken bird and resuscitates it while shouting "TAKE CARE! BE CAREFUL WITH YOUR MACHINES, I SAY!" to the oblivious workers within.

Whenever I encounter roadkill that particular scene is always the first thing I think of, and while carrying the dead animal back to the car I'm haunted by Carolinus' words which still loop in my head after 20+ years. But they were never as real, never as poignant until I found myself in the backroom at 4:30 AM, sobbing, cradling a paralyzed rabbit that we had to euthanize because its spine had been broken by a car.

Take fucking care. Be careful with your motherfucking machines. Please.

Deemed Worthy

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Outside of this rural subdivision, past the dental practice, old berry farm and butcher stands a tiny little hamlet of a forest on a busy country road surrounded by wheat fields, industrial complexes and new housing. It's recognized woodland, protected and cared for by the government (official trails tricked out with wooden walkways, painted sign posts indicating various routes, sections actively cleared for conservation purposes) and a favorite haunt for nature-lovin' locals.

(Walking and being in the wild? Super huge big here in Scotland. I've never encountered people so passionate about land and their inherent RIGHT to access it. <- Like I said before, Scotland doesn't have any trespassing laws. You go where you want, when you want, provided it's done respectfully and within reason.)

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The most active corvid rookery I know about - at least "just out the door" locally - is located there. In a tiny stretch of peninsula-shaped land between the parking lot and wheat field exists a cluster of long-needled pine trees, and those coniferous trees have provided nesting grounds for countless generations of crows.

I've always avoided this particular patch of woodland; too popular, too busy (especially being situated on a narrow country lane way too fucking small to accommodate the full-blown trucks barreling down the broken asphalt), too noisy and too fucking messy. (<- Some Scots love nature so fucking much they'll wheel their McDonald's all the way to the fucking woods to have an idyllic backdrop for lunch, but then they'll follow up their appreciation by tossing their garbage out the car window and into the grass, or parking lot, or the very fringes of the forest.)

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I didn't want to get attached to it because people, over the years, have transformed the first section of the forest into a litter-specked wasteland and it's only gotten worse thanks to all of the new houses backing straight up to the woods. I didn't want to be privy to people's love-hate relationship with nature, so I went elsewhere. I spent the last several years exploring the countryside's secret places - far away from people, parking lots and padded trails - which still managed to stay hidden behind crumbling stone walls and overgrown hedges. We haunted the places where you had to slip beneath barbed wire, wade through knee-high grass and scale ancient drystane dykes.

Not this past Saturday, but the weekend before Italics and I visited the rookery in the woods. I knew from previous visits that it wasn't too uncommon to find dead crows there, and seeing how they hadn't moved to a new location it seemed like a prime spot to find the remains of expired birds who died a more natural death (as opposed to being hit by a fucking car). My hunch was right; within minutes of scouting we found one. (A black crow with two white toenails - how's that for auspicious?)

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The next morning I projectile vomited all over the fucking bathroom. Italics almost immediately copycatted my ass, although his execution was a lot less spectacular than mine. Our response was so violent, so fucking immediate that there were only the crows to blame. (After finding the one at the rookery we came across a second further down the road with its head partially bashed in, so we actually came home that Saturday with TWO dead crows.) But that's a story for a different entry (because I've already tangented off my original intent).

So we got sick. "Wretchedly sick", if you remember. We couldn't eat for a whole 24 hours (I was deathly afraid to even drink water in case it set me off for a third time), and when the most extreme aspect of our illness passed our appetites only allowed us the occasional bowl of soup, or piece of plain toast. (Not that I didn't try. Italics watched in horror as I voraciously gobbled down steak, tortilla chips, vanilla ice cream and frozen Reeses Pieces. I spent the next two days regretting the binge, but, hey, the homemade DIY Blizzard was a-fucking-mazing after an entire day of not eating jack shit.)

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I had several huge meals planned - homemade buffalo wings with hot sauce, gingered duck stir-fry with fresh vegetables and a hearty steak dinner complete with slow-baked potatoes - none of which either of us could stomach. I managed grilling the steak, but I couldn't save the poultry. The defrosted portions of chicken and duck pathetically sat in their protective vacuum sealed bags until I decided to haul them out as offerings for the crows (a lame "thank you for only making us sick and not killing us" gesture).

When we were finally well enough to leave the house for an extended period one of the very first things we did was make a pilgrimage to the rookery to express our gratitude for the bodies and experience they gave us. (Initiation, dear and gentle readers, has its price. In this game you rarely get shit for free; if it's worthwhile having, then it's worthwhile suffering for. Admittedly, I regret that Italics had to bear the same discomfort, but I suppose that's the ultimate price he pays for trying to tame and domesticate a half-feral witch who brings dead things into the house.)

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A gift was waiting for us. (Two, actually, if you count the crow we scooped up all Navy Seal-like on the busy, narrow country road.) Beneath the towering pines a lone fledgling laid dead, still soaking wet from the torrential rain that had hammered the countryside a day before. A tiny thing, a wee thing, drenched to the bone and wide-eyed. (It's never pleasant discovering a dead animal, there's always a part of you that wishes you had come earlier as if you somehow stood the chance of saving it if you had only been motivated to go the same route an hour, a day, a week before.)

We tore open plastic bags of rotting meat and neatly piled the offerings into a stinking pyramid of poultry. While I swaddled the baby crow in Ziploc bags Italics poured out a libation of elderflower cider over the meat (which was a particularly nice touch since several bushy elder shrubs grow beneath the collection of nests) as new housing owners jumping on a trampoline with their kids suspiciously looked on. (IT'S CALLED WITCHCRAFT. LET ME SPELL THAT OUT FOR YOU, W-I-T-C-H-C-R-A-F-T. DID YOU GET THAT?)

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Our original intent was to stay for a few hours to get acquainted with the place, but after a short amble on a hella easy path we found our energy reserves declining and decided it was better not to push ourselves after being so goddamn sick. I managed to find the first raspberries of the season, but only two berries (all of the others were still tight green buds despite the two having reached perfect ripeness) and on the way home we managed to pull of a roadkill retrieval stunt that surely deserved a round of applause.

(The road? The narrow, crazily busy country lane flanking the woods? The one with enormous semis tearing down patchy asphalt? Even busier than usual. They closed a major intersection that the public uses to access the only grocery store in town, and the diverted traffic is now being funneled ("funneled" because the route is bordered on either side by two massive stone walls) down that tight, dangerously claustrophobic track. Even without the pressure of added commuters the stretch of road is known for recklessly fast driving despite the twists, bends and blind spots.)

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(A crow - a huge ass motherfucker of a crow - was nestled against one of the walls, seemingly unsmashed due to the protectively solid nature of the dyke it was leaning against. Italics and I had to time our actions just right, in perfect sync. We couldn't get out of the car, let alone really stop it. Like Falkor snatching Atreyu just as Gmork was closing in Italics partially opened the car door as we coasted past, never moving from his seated position in the car, and lifted the dead bird from the side of the road and into his lap. One, two, three. It was over before it began.)

July 22nd was a long ass day. It was our first full non-Saturn Return day (Saturn left Virgo on the 21st and entered Libra; as far as old man Saturn goes he's someone else's problem for the next 30 years) and, I think, the day the sun entered Leo (which is my ascent, I'm part ram, part fish and part lion). Despite just getting over a serious bout of sickness we both found ourselves pottering around outside even after our forest walk and a spot of grocery shopping. I harvested thistle and feverfew growing outside in the front yard, and then let Italics loose with the lawn mower to take down the meadow my in-laws don't want to see (they come home in two days, SIGH) while I ritually dismembered my fridge full of dead crows.

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There was something special about the larger crow we picked up that day. It was a lot of things, the absolute desperation to rescue it despite its awkward (and damn near impossible) positioning, how perfectly preserved and utterly flawless it remained despite having spent several long hours at the very edges of the busiest road in town, it's eerily life-like, frozen appearance. When Italics successfully lifted it from the road I enthusiastically cheered and told him, half-joking, that for all of his effort he could keep it.

It spooked me with its beady, glossy eyes still coal black and sharp (as a roadkill scavenger I'm more used to the frosty, glassy eyes of death). Stiff, but warm, it groggily glared through half-open eyes at its surroundings, dead but very much alive, caught in a bizarre "DON'T ASK ME HOW MY FUCKING DAY'S BEEN" limbo. It must've been hit while walking, and in death it retained its fatal gait. The only obvious trauma it suffered - at least in a superficial appearance - were a few partially twisted toes, and because it wasn't mangled or broken it needed almost no coaxing to stand.

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As ridiculous as it sounds, I was hesitant to dismember the crow. It was dead, it was OBVIOUSLY fucking dead, but something was there. Half-aware. Dazed. Alive. I knew it was dead, but a part of me was terrified that it'd awaken mid-decapitation and I'd only realize, after it was too late, that it had only been stunned for the 3-5 hours it remained perfectly still, perfectly stiff. I processed the oldest two first, and then the baby as the large black crow blearily looked on from its container garden roost.

When I finally severed its head from its body fresh, uncoagulated blood trickled from the decapitated bird and thickly pooled at the tips of my toes as if its heart had only just stopped beating. A gift. A truce. Acknowledgement that I had walked through fire and stayed on course, that even if I didn't follow them into death I sacrificed enough as I accompanied and comforted them as best as I could on the long, painful walk to the other side. Through sickness I was tested, they were satisfied and the blood that trickled from the beheaded crow was my initiation.

I anointed myself and wore the bloody cross with pride; I was deemed worthy.

Obsolete

When you don't rely on a handbook and compass it's sometimes hard to know if you're on the right track. No one's left a reference book for you at the crossroads, so when you wander down the perpendicular lane to the eternal line cutting through your path it's just you, wilderness and your gut. Guidance and confirmation comes from hours-days-weeks of patiently watching out for signs while schizophrenically dismantling secret codes found in every day (seemingly mundane) experiences. Sometimes you're rewarded with an immediate response that borders on divine intervention, sometimes you have to spend a month sifting through 28-31 days of shit just to find two ("n", "o") or three ("y", "e" & "s") simple letters.

Because my beliefs haven't been built on a foundation based on external sources I don't have a definitive book of answers I can refer to. I don't have any commandments, I don't observe any rede. There are times when I have questions - moral questions, ethical questions - and I find myself wondering BUT, IS IT //TOO// MUCH? because a very small part of me is suddenly aware that I'm towing a delicate, practically invisible line. (<- When Ms. Graveyard Dirt - who's normally oblivious to societal constraints and what third parties view as acceptable practices - worries about pushing the envelope then she knows she's probably pushing the motherfucking envelope.)

This game I'm playing isn't easy and doesn't come with a set of rules, but I'd be fucking lying if I didn't admit there are occasions when the other player (the Universe) deliberately shows me its cards to further my ass along. There are occasions when I don't even get the luxury of contemplating the fork in the road; I unceremoniously get shoved in one direction. There's no enticement, no temptation, no snake oil sales pitch. Fuck, there are times when I'm not extended the courtesy of being allowed to make my own "enlightened" choice. Sometimes it seems that the Universe is so fucking paranoid about keeping me on the right path it panic hits auto pilot to ensure there's zero percent chance I'll accidentally detour from destiny.

I inherently know what's right for me. I know, ultimately, that I do what I do because it makes sense, and if it makes fucking sense then I've reached a logical conclusion (to me, I mean) that justifies my actions. Things, however, get a lot more fucking sketchy when I involve someone else because the actions are no longer personal. To me, there isn't anything questionable about skinning roadkill rabbits for their fur (to create a ritual blanket) or eviscerating a dead crow to extract vital organs because I'm doing it for myself for my own use, but if someone pays me for that sort of service does that make me your friendly middleman witch, or a morally repugnant butcher of wildlife?

I know it might not always seem the case, but I take my shit seriously. Crazy fucking seriously. Just because I have an obnoxious ability to see humor in almost all things doesn't mean there isn't a spectrum of depth beneath the superficiality of continuous laughter. I don't worry about what people don't see (fuck, Momma Fortuna had to put a fake horn on a real fucking unicorn so people could "see" her), I worry about what the Universe doesn't see. In fact, I'm even more worried that it sees really fucking well, but unlike the Universe I'm totally oblivious to the truth because I haven't been completely honest with myself about my own motives.

Just incase it isn't entirely clear: I've been agonizing over the entire fairytale hag-witch roadkill thing. A-fucking-lot. Why I should do it, why I shouldn't do it, if people will understand why I'm offering to do it. In many respects I feel like an archaic, mythical figure thrust into a modern, real world. I'm a fear, a nightmare. I work with blood, entrails and bones, my hands are scarred and stained with death. I'm obsolete, a horrific caricature that tightrope walks between the worlds of fact and fiction. I'm not supposed to exist, but I do, and I'm here (for better or for worse) living amongst you.

Only July 22nd I got my resounding YES! from the Universe (no loitering around the crossroads this time), but I don't know if that emphatic confirmation is enough. I don't know if it's enough for the world whose very fringes I live at. When witchcraft has moved onto glitter, gossamer fairy wings and Vogue photo shoots who the fuck is even going to want (or need) crow eyes, rabbit hearts or fox tongues? Maybe my kind is better off contained in stories, and the best possible outcome for us is having our extinction forever immortalized in fairy tales.

Crow Wishbone; Ultimate Wish

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How much would you be willing to pay for the ultimate wish?

Anointed

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"...and thou shalt anoint the tabernacle of the congregation therewith, and the ark of the testimony..." - Exodus 30:26 (King James Version)

Pretty Fucking Magic

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How magic is a black crow with two white nails? Pretty fucking magic, dude.

Foster Care

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So I opened up my big, fat, scavenging mouth and now everyone wants roadkill. From me. Pronto. I've spent years fantasizing about this sort've situation, but now that it's here a part of me's going WHOA, WHOA, WHOA, EASY COWBOY because I don't have anything ready. Business cards? Nuh uh. Label art? Nope. A store name? LOL, WHATEV. (Just between you and me? I'm so fucking green in this venture that if you pat me on the back you'll smudge the fresh paint.)

I think I might be rushing, but Italics hasn't told me to slow down. (<- That's a good sign, right?) I don't know so many things - how to whiten bones (I mean, I know how, I just haven't had the time to experiment), how to fix feet in specific positions (wings are hella easy, all you need is some soft cardboard, salt and a box of sewing pins), how to preserve organs (other than drying them out into shriveled bits of pemican), how to transform frozen, raw fur into soft, downy pelts (which I REALLY need to learn how to do THIS YEAR since I got more than enough rabbit skins to begin the process of piecing together my proposed wild rabbit ritual blanket) and, ultimately, how to taxidermy like a motherfucking pro.

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The response has been overwhelming. Every effing time I pop open my inbox there's more email. ("HI! YOU DON'T KNOW ME, BUT I'VE BEEN READING YOUR JOURNAL FOR A LONG ASS TIME AND I'D REALLY LOVE TO GET MY HANDS ON...") I've always operated under the assumption that only two or three people - who I'm already sort've associated with - bother visiting this space, and even that's only on a totally uncommitted basis. It blows my mind that people are reading this shit and actually coming back for seconds. (Or, at least, frequently returning to watch what they think is a train wreck in perpetual progress.)

I haven't even sealed one deal yet (BTW, y'all might have to Thunderdome it out amongst yourselves re: corvid skulls, cause, like, I think I might have a whole THREE to offer, and I'm probably saving one for personal use) and I'm already worried. Will people be able to tell how much love, energy and respect (even if filtered through my bizarre sense of humor) I offer every animal that I'm privileged enough to be given? Will they be able to tell I ritualize the dismantling of a physical form to help release the spirit from the burden of flesh? Will they feel the incense? My altered state? The offerings I give and make, the funerals Italics and I hold, the continuation of life that occurs when visiting wildlife finds food and sustenance from the decomposing bodies of their deceased brethren?

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I'm worried my work won't feel "alive" to anyone but myself. I'm deathly terrified that someone'll tear open their box from bonnie old Scotland, eagerly pull out the piece they've been anticipating and the entire experience suddenly flatlines because it - whatever it is - doesn't feel special, doesn't feel magic. And no amount of stories (because there's always a story attached to every animal), no amount of pictures (it's important to know and see where it came from, lived and died), no amount of spiritually feeding, nurturing and sheparding energy will be enough to create a connection between someone else and my animals.

In a bizarre way it almost feels like I'm sending my babies into foster care, and even though I can provide the metaphorical birth certificate and baby photos I can't guarantee that any of the additional information will create a meaningful bond between it and its adoptive parent. Fuck, is it weird that I'm being anxious about shit like this? Is it a GOOD sign? Will prospective buyers think I'm mental, or will they kind've sort've get what I'm doing?

Bottom fucking line? I want to be happy, I want the new caretakers to be happy, but, most importantly, I want my animals to be happy.

PS: I haven't had a chance to write about the crow and wild rabbit skull (which was found in fragments) we found about a week ago. I'm on the fence about selling any part of the crow, but I'll definitely be selling the rabbit skull pictured above (and all of its parts; I'll let the new caretaker glue the teeth back in, it'll be a good bonding exercise).

(Roadkill) Cat Out of the Bag

I just finished posting this to my Tumblr account and thought you guys might be interested:

Tumblr, you never cease to amaze me. I didn't expect a half-drunk OH, BY THE WAY...WHO WANTS TO BUY PRESERVED ANIMAL PARTS FROM YOURS TRULY? comment to get any attention, but, uh, it did. (I actually woke Italics up about an hour ago with "OH MY GOD, OH MY GOD - PEOPLE WANT TO BUY MY ROADKILL BABIES*!", no joke!) I'm really glad I did say something, though, because some of these skulls, bones, pelts, feathers, wings and feet desperately need a loving home to go to. (<- I also do eyes, tongues, hearts - if it's internal, gross and still intact I'm happy to retrieve it.)

I have to perform a quick inventory check to see what I have available right now (all roadkill is special to me - it's a gift that I feel very privileged to accept - and I treat everything I pick up with the greatest of respect, but there are a few individual animals that I'm keeping specifically for magic work (a few rabbits, a badger and a fox); I just haven't had a chance to preserve them and their bits properly or get around to consuming body parts**), but I'm totally willing to fill custom requests (I think most people are keen on nabbing corvid skulls?).

I'm ALSO happy to provide specialist ingredients to be used in personal witchcraft. Shells, sand and stones from the North Sea? Graveyard dirt from ancient kirkyards? Dirt or pebbles from cairns or standing stones? Berry seeds from sacred sites (rowans next to cairns, black currants from graveyards, raspberries and gooseberries growing next to - and within - ruined chapels). Wheat heads grown within - and next to - standing stone circles? (<- 100% growable. Out of all of the things I grow for magic, growing wheat from seed is probably the most satisfying.) Dried chilis grown for Papa Ghede in graveyard dirt? I could go on and fucking on (i.e., rusty church nails, small rectangular slates - perfect for burning charcoal tabs on - off abandoned cottages, ruined churches and so on); ask me, I'll probably have something close to what you're looking for (and pictures of the place I'd be gathering - or have gathered - your goods from).

If anything I said strikes your interest please feel free to leave a comment/request in my original entry or, alternatively, contact me directly: graveyarddirt@gmail.com. This is me accidentally letting the (roadkill) cat out of the bag (due to financial reasons - I'm broke, and I want that motherfucking Harry Belafonte record with Jump in the Line (Shake, Senora)) - yes, Ms. Graveyard Dirt is actively working behind the scenes to open up her version of a witch's market complete with dead things (and their parts), organic and inorganic "raw" ingredients (supplying individual components rather than a finished product) and, maybe, if they aren't too lame looking, one of a kind junkyard amulets, charms and talismans made from bits and bobs I've collected on my various adventures.

* They are my babies! If an animal's found within a mile radius of the house you can be PRETTY DAMN SURE it frequently visited our house to eat food I specifically put out for it as an offering. We have two major rookeries in close proximity so any corvid I pick up has probably eaten food I've ritually offered.

** Y'all fucked once I get around to eating my fox tongue. (You think I talk pretty now...?)

4:30 Yesterday Morning

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Things I had planned to do at 4:30 yesterday morning: drive out into the country to pick rhubarb that grows near a local cairn (to make vodka) and harvest linden blossoms (to dry for tea) where the wild garlic grows.

Things I actually ended up doing at 4:30 yesterday morning: driving home to euthanize a wild rabbit (using nitrous oxide) we found which was paralyzed from the shoulders down. (What do you call roadkill that isn't dead? Other than "unlucky".)

Rabbit, Crow and Stag

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Find Your Heaven

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They say rooks "escort the souls of the virtuous dead to heaven". I wonder who - or what - escorts the escorts when their time comes. (Fly off, tiny thing, and find your heaven.)

Checkmate

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Gothel's Garden Reopens

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My (very dry) collection of spring flowers, strawberries and the saddest fucking pots of herbs you'll ever see. The empty space in the corner? Where my six passionflower vines and three artichokes once sat. (<- They unfortunately didn't survive the worst winter in 30 years.)

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Several days ago the weather was so fucking amazing that I jumped straight into the first serious round of gardening this year without taking any "before" pictures. The patio was a post-apocalyptic world filled with dead leaves, mud stacks, empty trays and pots, scattered bones and discarded bamboo canes.

I spent the afternoon weeding my containers, deadheading old stalks, removing leaves past their prime, turning over the soil, potting on perennials, rearranging containers, pulling weeds out from cracks and crevices, sweeping the entire patio, dusting off the patio's pillars, washing the bird shit off the patio's wooden fence, cleaning Chippy's offering bowls, rounding up bones, stacking empty pots, bundling support canes together, excavating rabbit skulls from the Shango tree/phallic worship altar, burying the remains of old offerings that hadn't fully decomposed and packing fresh earth in the altar bed to prepare it for Beltane/Walpurgisnacht. (<- Stone Cock returns home to his outside altar for the length of the agricultural year!)

I secretly wondered if my in-laws would notice the difference; I //think// they did. (<- They spent the next day sunning themselves on the plastic chairs pictured above for the first time this year.)

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The Shango Tree/phallic worship altar - untouched, unblemished and perfectly clean...at least until our resident badger, Bee, returns. (When one of our pet rats die we find a plush animal toy that best represents them/their personality. Bee, our carpet destroying rat ("BEE! STOP DIGGING UP THE FUCKING CARPET!"), took the form of a badger. Just over a year (or two?) after her death a badger began visiting our property and promptly began digging up my outside altar bed ("BEE! STOP DIGGING UP THE FUCKING GARDEN!"). <- HAH HAH, UNIVERSE, HAH HAH.)

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Poppies from my friend in Finland (second year of growth! I wonder if they'll produce flowers this year?), narcissus and Chippy's homegrown strawberries.

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I honestly don't even remember planting a row of narcissus bulbs in with the poppies, but since I combined various dwarf species (tulips, daffodils, irises) in the OTHER containers I know the arrangement must've been my doing.

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Who would've thought that the Sumerian demon of famine, plagues and winds would enjoy gardening? (APPARENTLY NO ONE.) Chippy, for whatever reason, absolutely LOVES strawberries. (And kites and butterflies and the band Chicago...) So as a birthday gift a few years ago we bought him a kiddie strawberry growing kit from the local grocery store.

I *think* this'll be their third year of growth. I spent all of last year pinching off any flowers that managed to bud/blossom to give the roots a chance to establish. After a quick haircut (to remove dead/faded leaves) the plants are looking better than ever. Strawberries? This year? Hopefully. (Probably none more hopeful than Chippy, who takes his gardening V. SRS, okay?)

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Last year I received a packet of forget-me-nots as a free gift with a seed order and even though it was pretty late in the year I sowed them anyway. This spring I spotted the forget-me-nots amongst the growth and transplanted the clumps from their seed tray into a proper pot.

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Terracotta containers, rings of grape hyacinths and budding dwarf tulips in the background. Thanks to the worst winter in 30 years (100 years, in some places) we're about a month behind growthwise. Last year I was able to decorate our Spring and Easter altars with homegrown tulips, daffodils and grape hyacinths. This year? Only crocuses were available.

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OH, DAFFODILS, YOU MAKE ME RIDICULOUSLY HAPPY. I SHOULD REALLY PLANT A LOT MORE OF YOU.

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Saddest motherfucking group of potted herbs, or what? My golden marjoram and Moroccan mint are slowly pushing through, but my oregano (to the right of the rosemary) looks dismally deceased. My rosemary's definitely seen better days, but I remember it looking this dire other years so I'm not in panic mode (yet).

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Mr. Awesome's bay tree which he planted in a sink (NO JOKE! IT'S A PORCELAIN BASIN!) years and years ago. When I first came over to bonnie ole Scotland (over a decade ago) it was nothing more than a scrawny stick, and a it remained a scrawny stick until I began pruning it, using the leaves, watering it and feeding it menstrual blood water. (<- I soak my period rags in water, and then use the blood rich mixture to water plants.)

Since adoption/intervention it's blossomed into the hardiest fucking shrub, ever, and remains a constant source of culinary happiness even in the depths of winter. (NOTE: If you're ever (un)lucky enough to receive a package from me and amongst the bones, rusty nails and dirt you find a handful of bay leaves you now know their origin.)

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When I first moved here I asked for a patch of waste ground that Italics' parents were using as an outside trash heap to grow flowers, vegetables and plants. I was denied the space because they said they were going to build a BBQ pit in the exact spot. Instead, though, they offered to let me use the patio; I could grow anything I wanted in containers.

That trash heap? Still there, 10 years later. (<- I AM A COOL, CALM OCEAN. I AM NOT GRITTING MY TEETH IN DISBELIEF AND FRUSTRATION. I DO NOT WANT TO GRAB EITHER OF MY IN-LAWS BY THE NAPE OF THEIR NECKS, DRAG THEM OUTSIDE AND POINT TO THE MOUND OF JUNK AND SCREAM "IS THAT WHAT A FUCKING BBQ PIT LOOKS LIKE?". DEEP BREATH. HOLD IT. EXHALE. I AM A RAY OF GOLDEN WELL-BEING...)

I began gardening more seriously several years back, and every year I add something new to the already overcrowded space. (Last year? Fruit trees (five apples, one pear and one peach) and fruit bushes (two gooseberries) in pots.) This year I plan to get grape vines, blueberries, a cherry tree and take cuttings from wild raspberries and blackberries that grow locally to grow at home. Within a year or two there won't be a patio. Revenge, dear internet, will literally be sweet (and organic).

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Gooseberries! In flower! Already! I had absolutely no fucking idea how early gooseberry budded or bloomed until this year. We bought two bushes last year from a local garden center and the pair produced enough fruit for me to make a cheesecake and a batch of honey/hazelnut/oat cereal bars. This year I'm toying with the idea of making jam and some homemade gooseberry vodka. Wasps - HOLY SHIT, ALREADY? SERIOUSLY? - seem to love the flowers, the first day they opened there was a swarm crawling over the bushes.

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My immortality tree, my peach tree. We bought her last year (YES, "HER", FOR OBVIOUS (OR MAYBE NOT SO OBVIOUS?) REASONS) at a discount grocery store, and she sat torpid for several months until I was able to plant her into a huge ass container.

I think the late planting affected her natural cycle; she didn't produce full, mature leaves until late summer/early fall and she didn't shed ANY of them until mid-January. (ONLY IN A WITCH'S GARDEN WOULD A TEMPERAMENTAL DECIDUOUS FRUIT TREE KEEP ITS LEAVES INTO THE DEAD OF SCOTTISH WINTER.)

I was hella worried about her throughout the Dark year because I didn't know how well she'd react to THE WORST WINTER IN 30 YEARS! (since peaches aren't very cold-hardy). Throughout the deep freeze I fed her homemade chicken stock, menstrual blood water and water from our bong/rocket bucket. Whenever I went outside to feed the Old Woman I always made a point of visiting my peach tree before returning indoors, occasionally laying a hand (or two) on her trunk in reassurance.

You could easily imagine how relieved I was when I saw the first green buds push past their scaly covering into the light of day. My immortality tree? Survived the deep freeze. Now to gently coax her into flowering and bearing fruit...

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Foxgloves - grown from seed last year - post "haircut". In the past few years there's been a rapid decline in wild foxgloves (at least locally) as housing developments encroach further and further into the country, hedgerows and grazing fields. Missing their elegant presence when walking into the country I decided they'd be the very first homegrown installment of my witch's flying ointment/baneful herb garden.

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Growing lavender, as you can see, isn't my strong suit. I can trace back the spindly, totally unlush appearance to my fear of pruning. After successfully cutting back several of my favorite shrubs and herbs last year (for the first time), I'm totally prepared to take the pruning plunge this year to restart my poor dwarf lavender plants.

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Because palms aren't indigenous to Ukraine the eastern orthodox church accepts a substitute for religious/ritual use: pussy willows. But even before Catholicism adopted pussy willows the tree was considered sacred and spiritually significant to my ancestors. (<- You'll find single, stylized branches decorating a lot of folk art from pysanky (Ukrainian decorated eggs) to traditional embroidery designs.)

Before we had a car we scoured the local countryside (anywhere and everywhere within reasonable walking distance) in the hopes of finding pussy willows (also known as "goat willow" here in the UK). Nothing, nada, not ONE. Desperate for pollen-y catkin goodness I broke down and bought a pair of seedlings last year on Ebay.

Just a few days ago we accidentally stumbled across a towering pussy willow while exploring the countryside. I really, really, really wanted to jump out of the car and hack off a branch to take home, but there was a farmer poking around in an adjacent field and a car riding my ass. I heard they grow at the base of Bennachie - a range of hills religiously important to the ancient inhabitants of this area - so I'm hoping to make it out there within the next week to locate and harvest catkin laden branches.

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One of three apple trees I germinated from seed two or three years ago. (I THINK this is their third year, just like Chippy's strawberries.) I've read that trees started from seed don't normally produce fruit, but I've also read (somewhere) that even getting an apple seed to sprout is-was-is pretty tricky (although that sounds like some dodgy misinformation). Fruit producing or not, I'll find some use for my three trees.

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A bucket of death created in Fall, finally exposed to light and air in Spring. Last year - just after I decided to fashion myself a fur blanket made entirely out of roadkill rabbits - I was given a gift of seven dead rabbits by hunters after engaging in some HOT MAGIC FOREST SEX with my divine male counterpart.

I skinned and froze their pelts, decapitated their heads and buried them within the dirt bed of my Shango tree/phallic worship altar and decided to share everything else - the bones, meat and organs - with my fellow scavengers. The bucket of headless (and footless) rabbits, however, had different plans.

No matter how fucking hard I tried to discreetly dispose of the remains the multiple attempts always fell through. After two weeks I finally had to admit defeat (especially after the car battery died, which REALLY put the last nail in the coffin) and the bucket was carefully turned over to keep the rotting remains contained (within the upturned vessel), but allow the blood and fermented body juices to sink into the earth.

About a month ago I released the carcasses from their prison, but found everything still moist and not entirely decomposed. They got covered again for about two weeks, although this time by a bucket with large vent holes. After "airing" the pile for a fortnight I removed the container and left the contents exposed to the elements to dry (and clean).

My natural instinct is to pick through the debris and collect the bones, but they displayed such an unmistakable preference to stay with me that I'm not sure if I should harvest the remains and treat them as untradable goods or bury the remains somewhere on our property and create a small rabbit-themed garden on top of them.

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Yet more outside bones* that'll need to be cleaned up for divination use. (Although the t-bone, lamb shoulder blade and goose back might be a little too big for bone spillin' work.)

(* "outside bones" = the weathered, whitened remains of offerings I made from previous years. The bones get kicked around by visiting wildlife until it's time for a YARD CLEANUP. When a yard cleanup happens I round up all the bones I can find and add them to my growing collection. Eventually I'll clean them and use them for divination; they were offered to the spirits and ancestors as gifts, consecrated by nature and the weather, stirred, moved and chewed on by wildlife and, after all of that, still managed to return to the hand that gave them away - SOUNDS PRETTY MAGIC TO ME, YO.)

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The Shango Tree's been special for several years now, but on a balmy July evening last year it became even more special after I created a raised garden bed using discarded stones and bricks. (When hunting for appropriately sized sheets of rock I unearthed my Stone Cock, which transformed the "Shango Tree altar" into "the phallic worship altar at the base of the Shango Tree".)

Last year I grew parsley on the earthen altar space, and harvested the herbs - roots and all - on the Autumn Equinox. I buried eight rabbit heads over winter, to allow the essence of SEX'N'DEATH sink into the space, and finally dug up the remains after I was done reorganizing the patio.

The raised bed's been turned over, sifted (with my bare hands because, dude, rabbit bones are SMALL motherfuckers!), added to (fresh compost and soil) and now sits and waits for Walpurgisnacht weekend. (<- I'll be ritually parading Stone Cock - my miniature may pole - down to His outside home where He'll preside over the Light year until Winter's first snowfall.)

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The very happy looking green shoots? Lilies of the Valley, at least what remained after the GREAT GARDEN HOLOCAUST OF 2008. (Long story short? They plentifully grew in the backyard until Mr. Awesome, my father-in-law, dug 90% of them up and simply threw them away. Only a tiny colony was spared and I'm HELLA protective of it.)

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The backyard - where projects go to die. With an exception of the pile of rabbit bones and the empty plastic pots everything pictured within this photo is one of my father-in-law's abandoned projects. From the rotting, wooden balancing beams, to the unfinished pond (which is really a glorified kiddie pool sunk into the ground), to the unkept rock garden, to the slabs of concrete (with no definitive purpose), to the neglected fruit trees, to the potted shrubs that've taken up a significant portion of the already tiny yard (which we were promised were only going to be there "this year" - that? that was over four fucking years ago).

The absolutely worst thing about these forgotten projects? He doesn't want you touching anything, rearranging anything, cleaning anything, or organizing anything even though some of this shit's been sitting around FOR TWENTY YEARS (with ZERO attention from him). I've repeatedly asked for space to grow things to benefit the family, but I've been flat out refused because outside trash heaps, decaying wood and concrete slabs have a higher status in this house than me.

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This is the abandoned rock garden (and the pile of rotting wooden beams) I just mentioned above. He doesn't even bother weeding the space any more, but gets territorial when he sees me cleaning out dead grass and weeds. I know it looks HELLA messy, but it's a HUGE improvement from last year. (Last year? When he was gone for a month? I spent a week seriously weeding and removed debris that was YEARS old. What you see above is what managed to grow within a space of a year.)

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It's amazingly fucking hard to tell this story without my blood pressure rising. So I don't blow a gasket this is totally going to be the Cliff Notes version of the story:

When I first moved in, ten years ago, I noticed an unwanted section of the garden filled with dead wood, broken pots, plastic trays and other forms of garbage. Even though it wasn't the BEST place to grow shit I asked if I could clean it and use the patch to grow flowers, fruits and vegetables.

That request was shot down in a panic. I was told they were going to build a BBQ pit in that EXACT place THAT YEAR. So, naturally, I backed off. The thing was, though, it was never built. I asked the following year if I could use the area since they didn't do anything with it the previous summer, but the second request was shot down with the same response.

Unsurprisingly, it wasn't built. It also wasn't built the third, forth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth or tenth year. In fact, they completely stopped mentioning building the BBQ pit after the third year. The trash heap just sat, growing bigger with every fucking year.

In 2008 the backyard experienced the GREAT GARDEN HOLOCAUST OF 2008 when Mr. Awesome went on a gardening rampage and killed hacked down and destroyed the vegetation that made the space. I lost A LOT of my container garden because he threw EVERYTHING away (without even bothering to consult me about MY plants), and he even went as far as using WEED KILLER ON THE GRASS and DELIBERATELY KILLED THE MAJORITY OF THE LAWN for no apparent reason.

(BLOOD PRESSURE, MS. GRAVEYARD DIRT, BLOOD PRESSURE.)

What could've been the ONLY silver lining to that situation turned out to be my worst possible nightmare. I watched, with baited breath, as Mr. Awesome thoroughly cleaned the trash heap and got rid of almost EVERYTHING. (Finally! After nearly ten fucking years of waiting (and watching the landfill get larger and larger), I was going to get the small patch of yard I requested!) I then watched, horrified, as he PROMPTLY FILLED THE CLEAN SPACE WITH NEW TRASH, RIGHT BEFORE MY FUCKING EYES.

Imagine requesting a piece of waste ground that people didn't give a fuck about. Imagine being denied what was ostensibly a trash heap because people who WEREN'T interested in the space were suddenly VERY INTERESTED in it because YOU WANTED TO DO SOMETHING TO IT. Imagine watching, for ten fucking years, that patch of yard sit - only changing by becoming bigger and more of an eyesore - knowing they were never actually going do anything with it other than not let you use it for something productive. Imagine seeing, a decade later, the waste ground emptied and cleaned ONLY TO BE RE-FUCKING-FILLED WITH TRASH, GARBAGE, DEAD WOOD, BROKEN POTS, WOODEN CHAIR FRAMES AND TORN-UP SEED TRAYS.

My father-in-law? Seriously, genuinely FOR REAL doesn't understand why I seem perpetually pissed off at him. DUDE, TAKE YOUR FUCKING PICK OF TEN YEARS WORTH OF THIS SORT'VE BULLSHIT AND YOU'VE GOT MORE THAN ONE FUCKING ANSWER.

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The one thing I learned from the waste ground/non-existent BBQ pit fiasco? Don't involve the in-laws by asking; just fucking do it. Last year I sneakily appropriated a narrow stretch of land adjacent to the side of the house (just beneath our computer room/office window). I grew garlic there, which did okay, but the area's far too shaded during summer due to the sycamore.

Last year was also the year I got so fucking sick of the fucking dirtyard (Mr. Awesome deliberately killed the front lawn, so for the past 5-7 years we've literally lived with a giant dirt fucking pit as our front yard) that I decided to grow some vegetables in a neat line hugging the side walk. As you'd expect, the second my in-laws saw me sifting dirt to remove stones they came racing out to inform me THEY WERE PLANNING TO PLANT THINGS IN THE FRONT YARD THAT SUMMER/YEAR.

Yeah, I didn't buy it either. Italics invoked HEY, REMEMBER HOW YOU GUYS WERE GOING TO BUILD A BBQ PIT...TEN YEARS AGO? and they sort've backed off, but after one too many "ARE YOU SURE YOU WANT TO PLANT VEGETABLES? WOULDN'T SHRUBS BE NICER?" and "YOU KNOW AFTER THIS YEAR WE'RE GOING TO LANDSCAPE THE ENTIRE FRONT YARD" I walked away from several months worth of effort and simply focused on my container garden on the patio.

This may come as a shock, but...my in-laws never actually did anything with the front yard last year despite all of the hassle I got for trying to improve the crackhouse appearance of our property. Without asking for permission I planted a long line of garlic in last year's prepared bed. In the next day or two I'll be planting beets behind the garlic, and parsley, dill and maybe basil in front of the bulbs. There's another small stretch of dirt that hugs the driveway's curve, and I really, really want to sift the earth there so I can plant a row of carrots.

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There's only one insanely short season when a portion of the dirtyard becomes a proper front yard - early-to-mid spring. Once the snowdrops and crocuses disappear there's only a smattering of squill, and once they're gone their leaves remain green for a month or two before dying back to expose the lack of a lawn beneath.

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Squill, close up and reflecting April's bright afternoon sun.

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This is that "narrow stretch of land" I quietly appropriated last year to grow garlic. I had originally planned to turn the space into a witch's flying ointment garden of baneful herbs, but the lack of full sun might affect some plants so until I do proper hardcore research (into preferred planting positions) the prepared space is in limbo. I'll probably grow a few herbs that don't mind partial shade this year (to keep the patch visibly occupied so Mr. Awesome isn't tempted to reclaim it) while figuring out what'll thrive (long term) in the garden bed.

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Under the Bed Badger's final resting place (of his physical remains, I mean). Near Bride's Day (aka Imbolc) we came across our first ever roadkill badger, which we sadly took home. (<- Just because I pick up and butcher roadkill doesn't mean I don't feel inherently ANGRY, RESENTFUL, PISSED OFF, and SAD when I come across a dead animal on the side of the road.)

I fed, bonded and then skinned the animal, froze his pelt (to preserve and tan myself) and buried his earthly remains in the yard. I intended to go back for the bones within a few weeks (once they were mostly clean), but both Italics and I sort've like the idea of allowing the first set of badger bones to remain buried beneath our office window.

I read somewhere that they're HELLA into bluebell bulbs, so I'm seriously considering creating a tiny badger-themed garden above UtBB's decomposed body to help strengthen our bond with him.

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You harvest garlic relatively early (plant on the shortest day of the year, harvest on the longest day of the year - or so the saying goes), so when I dug up my last bulb the garden bed looked incredibly empty. So empty, in fact, that I was hella worried it'd attract my father-in-law's attention.

Within days of lifting the last garlic plant I sowed beets and carrots to give the impression that the land was still in use, but in reality it was an exercise in marking my place because it was too late in the season - at least for Scotland - to expect any sort of fruitful harvest.

Some of the seedlings survived the winter - mostly carrots - but a single beet somehow managed to live despite direct exposure to the elements. If it continues to grow I'll probably let it bolt to gather seeds since this is a V. special little beet plant.

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An exceptionally tiny row of carrots that, like the single beet plant previously mentioned, somehow managed to survive THE WORST WINTER IN 30 YEARS! without any sort of covering.

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Sycamore buds. The tree just outside our office window has really wormed its way into magic life, so much so that one of the first things I do, ever fucking day, is open the computer room's blinds to glance outside at the sycamore. For over a year now we've been leaving offerings at the base of the tree, and last year we loped off one of the budding branches - together - for a spring-themed broom for myself.

Even though it isn't traditional (at least I don't think it is, but I deliberately stay ignorant of what people do (and don't do) so there's a good chance that somewhere someone's using sycamore buds for something) I'm going to harvest the buds and macerate them. I want to start with buds, move to flowers, continue with leaves and end with seeds to encompasses the tree's yearly growth in one bottle of oil.

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Where the driveway ends and the side walk begins. Last year on Lammas we came across two dead animals along the side of the road - a fox and an elephant-sized (<- APPROXIMATION) hedgehog. I skinned, butchered and processed the fox, but the hedgehog was a little too far gone for any sort of organ extraction so I buried his huge ass directly beneath the rock.

I'm on the fence about digging up his remains. I did bury him with the intent of going back for his bones, but after awarding several other "firsts" with permanent burial status I'd hate for him to feel left out. So, I think Mr. Hedgehog will stay buried in the hopes he'll continue blessing our property with his foraging presence.

(We had a soul crushing epidemic of mutant snails that decimated my vegetables year in and year out until Chippy called the hedgehogs. Before our nocturnal insect eaters arrived you couldn't even go outside at night because the patio was always swarming with snails and slugs. Within months of putting Chippy's offering dishes outside - the contents of which he shared with the hedgehogs - the number of gastropods plummeted. Now all it takes to deter snails and slugs from eating my vegetable plants are a few strategically placed lettuce leaves and the occasional buffalo wing (or two) for the hedgehogs.)

Under the Bed Badger

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After he was stroked, after he was fed, after he was watered, after he was held, after he was told I was going to help him shed the excess baggage he didn't need anymore I carefully lowered his body to the ground.

"DO YOU WANT TO STAY WITH US?" I asked the badger while I sized up his body (trying to figure out where the first incision needed to be made to skin him). "YOU COULD LIVE UNDER THE BED, IF YOU WANT, AND WE CAN FEED YOU DRY CAT FOOD AND AS LONG AS YOU DON'T DIG UP THE CARPET OR MAKE TOO MUCH NOISE YOU COULD STAY IN THE BEDROOM WITH US AND EVERYONE ELSE."

He grunted in agreement. (I know WHY and HOW he did it; that doesn't matter. What matters is that just after I finished asking him the question he immediately answered.) The very first thing I did after stepping out of the shower was push a bowl of dry cat food underneath the bed for Under the Bed Badger.

FUCKING FUCK

IT ONLY FUCKING OCCURRED TO ME TO RENDER THE FUCKING BADGER FAT AN HOUR AFTER I BURIED THE FUCKING THING BENEATH THE OFFICE WINDOW.

THE ENTIRE TIME I WAS SKINNING THE BODY I KEPT THINKING "THIS IS A TOTAL WASTE OF THE MOST BEAUTIFUL FAT I'VE EVER SEEN, THIS IS A TOTAL WASTE..." BUT DID INSPIRATION COME WHEN THE DEAD FUCKING BADGER FARTED IN MY FACE? (<- OH, YES HE DID! I GOT HIM BACK BY CAREFULLY CARVING HIS TESTICLES OUT OF HIS SACK SO THE EXTERNAL COVERING OF HIS JUNK REMAINED IN THE PELT.)

NO, IT ONLY FUCKING HAPPENED //AFTER// I FUCKING HELD A BADGER FUNERAL, BURIED THE FUCKING BODY, CLEANED THE MESS UP, DISINFECTED EVERYTHING, HAD A SHOWER AND WAS WAITING FOR MY FROZEN PASTA DINNER TO COOK IN THE MOTHERFUCKING MICROWAVE.

(NORMALLY? NORMALLY I DON'T HAVE A CHANCE TO BURY THE FUCKING BODY SO THE JOB GETS DONE THE NEXT DAY. TODAY? THE FIRST DAY, EVER, THAT I MANAGED TO SPIRIT BOND, SKIN, BUTCHER, FREEZE AND DISPOSE OF THE CARCASS IN ONE SITTING. FUCK. FUCK. FUCK. FUCK.)

Badger, Badger, Fox

Courtesy of my Twitter account: Scooped up first ever badger roadkill. The second one we found was too far gone. Don't even ask me about the fox. (<- Too, too far gone.) Italics has already forbidden me to eat any of it, but we're still negotiating what I get to do with certain internal organs.

The Last Clean

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Since I don't have the entire house to myself, I steal pieces of it whenever I can. Last year I appropriated the kitchen's windowsill (most subtle Ms. Graveyard Dirt altar ever? probably), but before that I staked my claim to a patch of carpet next to the backroom's patio door. In Spring it serves as a greenhouse for my germinating plants, in Summer it provides the heat needed for Papa's chili plants to fruit, in Fall I spread our harvest out on the ground to dry and in Winter, if I have my shit together (obviously this year I didn't), it's where we proudly display our stoner Christmas tree.

As retarded as it sounds, one of the huge highlights of my day is walking into the backroom and staring down at all of my little "projects". (Satisfaction is surveying all that you own - every piece with its own story - on mismatched vintage plates and trays.) Despite the familiarity I still somehow manage to get excited when soaking in the scene.

I suppose it reminds me that I don't need to wear a label, or know the "technical" name for what I'm doing or what I'm engaging in. I don't NEED to know what everyone else calls it, or what everyone else is doing, or how everyone else is doing it. I'm already doing "it", and I've been doing it for years without anyone's help or without referring to a book. If you took the scarlet word "witch" away from me I'd still live it, I'd still breathe it. It's always been there, regardless of what I or other people call it (as if that wasn't already evident enough).

My father-in-law, Mr. Awesome, returns home on the 26th. It's been a blissful month of a certain sort of serenity. In the past several weeks I know that no one's touched my shit, thrown my shit out, broke my shit, stolen my shit or ruined my shit. That peaceful certainty ends soon, which is precisely why I'm executing THE LAST CLEAN. Everything you see above? The very last of 2009 that needs to be bagged, tagged and put away. I need to sort as much as I can - as quick as I can - so I don't experience the all to familiar "misunderstandings" and "accidents" that seem to dog my father-in-law's existence.

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My foraging isn't limited to indigenous plant life. I'm routinely picking up discarded or lost articles. Stupid things, little things - broken pieces of jewelry, old playing cards, parts fallen off cars or equipment. If it's in my path it's significant, so it gets picked up, cleaned off, bagged, tagged (including the date, where I found it and the circumstances behind the outing) and stored away for future use.

I found the aborted Pac-man coin on a cemetery excursion, and it's nestled in a bag with two black plastic pieces - one rectangular (it reminded me of a blank domino) and one circular (it reminded me of a blank poker chip). There's also fingernail clippings (mine), a pair of diaper pins (the white plastic heads slide over the tucked in needles so they can't spring open), Wadjet's key and Tawaret's steering wheel (we've been trying to get a car for several years now, but it wasn't until I put the toy steering wheel at the foot of my Tawaret statue and a key I found at the foot of Wadjet's statue that the wish actually materialized) which all sits on a white envelope filled with some of my hair clippings.

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I WANT to say these are the very last pieces of dried animal I need to deal with, but that'd be a lie. (If I remember right there's several roadkill hedgehog skins in the outside room (and when I say "skins" I really mean the bristly spines attached to a piece of leathery hide), four sets of feathers (off the most recent pheasant roadkill I scavenged) and I think there's one or two inside-out poached rabbit pelts I found when walking in the woods.)

Buried beneath the two wishbones (the larger, more robust looking one is from our Christmas goose, the smaller, fragile looking one is from a chicken) is Italics' fajita dolphin; we're planning on setting him free the next time we make it to the ocean. The snakeskin looking mess at the back of the dish? One of the Christmas goose's toes. For whatever reason they forgot to remove one of the appendages which meant one very special Yuletide gift from the Universe this year: a goose claw.

(I have pictures of all of this shit uploaded on Flickr, I just haven't had the time to tell the stories yet. If you promise not to appear openly bored when I tell unseasonal Ms. Graveyard Dirt stories, I promise to eventually get around to telling unseasonal Ms. Graveyard Dirt stories.)

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The very last of our offerings to various spirits, entities, helpers and ancestors that need to be disposed of. (The chocolate cigar was given to Papa during Christmas, the chocolate heart is my Aries Valentine's Day chocolate, the toffee candies were placed in offering bowls at the foot of the Christmas tree and the gingerbread man, who totally was Italics' idea, dubiously sat amongst other Yuletide treasures.)

I'm planning to leave the cigar at Papa's grave, and I'm going to leave the toffees for the kids at the disturbed children's home (which we pass when walking to the graveyard). I haven't really decided where I'm going to lay the rest, but when I do it'll either be the cemetery, the cairn at the cemetery, the outside "oven", or the local standing stones.

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Miniature brandy snifters that sat on the Winter altar. The one on the left is filled with Fet Ghede dirt (for a more detailed explanation of WTF Fet Ghede dirt is click through to the journal entry CLEANING DAY 1) and the one on the right is filled with salt (the salt water evaporated leaving crystals behind).

The homemade dirt mix correlates with Papa, who's my chthonic earth representative (Papa's one of the major aspects of the divine male/king that I work with, live with and fuck), the salt water correlates with Tentacle Monster, who's my chthonic water representative (TM represents my spiritual and emotional house). The unpopped popcorn seed in the empty salt water glass? Representative of the garbage my father-in-law dumped on my Winter altar when he was too fucking lazy to throw in the kitchen's trash can. (He got seriously told off for doing it in 2008, so what did he do in 2009? The same fucking thing.)

The Fet Ghede has been funneled back into its jar, but I'll be adding a pinch into the ash mixture and homemade salt scrub I'll soon be making to anoint and purify our bodies and bed frame. (I haven't had a chance to address how I observe Ash Wednesday and Lent, so just pretend you know what the fuck I'm talking about.) I've already rehydrated the salt glass with a mixture of freshly fallen snow (scooped off the top of sprouting spring bulbs) and some icicle water (I collected the most impressive icicles off the house this year and poured their melted forms into a plastic bottle for various witchery) so I can add the moistened mixture to my ash paste and cleansing scrub.

I'm keeping the popcorn kernel, though, because there are some things you shouldn't have to be told twice, Mr. Awesome. (DOES THAT SOUND OMINOUS? GOOD, IT SHOULD.)

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I went outside to make an offering, and when I opened the patio door my stone cock - THE stone cock from my outside Phallic Worship altar at the base of the Shango Tree - hurdled itself to the floor without ANY provocation, smashing one of my ritual plates below. Three days later I still have no fucking clue what "pushed" the heavy ass rock off the center of the table.

Remember? From the journal entry 96 HOURS? Thankfully the tray wasn't one of my super awesome beloved FOR REALS ritual plates (in other words, the little Italian number I picked up last year). I was pretty fucking resentful over the loss, so I left the mess untouched for days.

The dried leaves on the broken dish are off my indoor lemon rose geranium. There's some rosemary, too, underneath the mess (which I swept into the homemade chicken stock I made last night for Shakey Bear). (<- Dying pets are fed homemade soup made with homegrown ingredients, and freshly boiled potatoes mashed with sour cream and cream cheese.)

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This ramekin of dirt has been the bane of my existence for not one, not two, but at least three years. (Long story short? Several years back a water pipe broke in the street adjacent to our property. The event was significant for several reasons, so before they closed the coffin-sized hole I threw in a homemade witch bottle (filled with urine, pins, magic mushrooms, nails, hair and other things) and scooped out some dirt for myself. I mean, it's not every day the crossroads YOU LIVE ON are dug up for your benefit, right?)

Soon, crossroads dirt, I'm going to pry you out of your ramekin tomb, batter you into a fine powder and funnel your ass into an appropriately labeled baby food jar.

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Leaves from the bay tree on the patio. This past "Dark Year" (what I call the time between Harvest and Easter) I incorporated a lot of evergreen growing in our yard into various altars (Harvest Home, for example, and the kitchen's ever-changing Yule spread). I'm an unapologetic bay whore; it goes in EVERYTHING. (Probably because my signature dishes - which I cook often during winter - are peasant-y soups, stews and casseroles.)

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The absolute BEST part of this log? (Other than it being the nicest one we've ever created?) When I accidentally bumped into it and knocked it off its crab pedestal (crabs are a big juju animal for Italics, which is why it's carrying his St. George and the Dragon ritual fire poker and the log itself) about twenty seeds spilled out of the pine cone. Come Spring I'll be planting seeds that came from our Yule/2009 Log, how awesomely magic is /that/?

Last night I carefully tapped 2009's Yule Log seeds out of their ceramic dish into a plastic baggie and tucked the packet into my seed box. I have no fucking clue what I'm going to do with pine trees, but I'm sure I'll come up with something. (<- I ALWAYS DO.)

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Wheat from the crop of the most recent roadkill pheasant we picked up. When I butchered and cleaned the bird I saved all of it so I could plant the seeds in Spring. I also added a token amount of the pheasant (i.e., small bits of skin and tiny feathers) so when I did sow the kernels they'd grow from the remains of the bird. (<- Life, death and rebirth.)

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Hardneck garlic that was SUPPOSED to be planted back in October of last year. (I was busy, okay?) When the month old (and THEN some) blanket of snow finally melted I raced outside to plant the motherfuckers, only to find that my father-in-law had BURIED LEAVES HE WAS INSTRUCTED TO THROW AWAY AT A LOCAL COMPOSTING SITE IN THE SAME SPOT I HAD PREPPED TO GROW GARLIC.

(It's even more involved than that, but I keeping that particular WTF? story for later. Suffice to say - I raked those leaves in November to finish the job he started (and walked away from), packed them in bags for him to cart away only to discover he BURIED A PORTION OF THE GARDEN WASTE in a spot that I OBVIOUSLY HAD PREPARED TO PLANT SOMETHING IN so instead of sowing late, late garlic I actually spent the day RERAKING LEAVES I HAD ALREADY RAKED UP ONCE AND REPACKING THE SAME BAGS WITH THE SAME FUCKING LEAVES.)

The most upsetting part? I mean, other than having to redo the work that I did over three fucking months ago because someone decided they were too fucking lazy to do the easier job (i.e, simply throwing out prepackged waste)? It snowed the day after, and it's been snowing since. I never actually got my garlic in the ground because I had to spend the ONE DAY it was conducive to plant cleaning up Mr. Awesome's mess (which I originally had to do in November as well).

"Pissed" doesn't even cover it. Seriously.

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Some of the shots I managed to pull out of the SEVEN LOUSY RABBITS that the Universe gave me last Fall. (It's long, involved and complicated. My suggestion? Read the journal entry.) These are shots that killed; they're worth their weight in magic gold. (If you don't understand why, then you're probably not cut out for my personal brand of witchcraft.)

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Unshelled nuts that I incorporated into the kitchen table's Christmas centerpiece and dried rowan berries from our tree out front. We're going to split open the nuts and scatter the broken pieces as an offering to the local wildlife, and I'm currently picking through the rowan clusters to finally jar up the dried berries.

(I was supposed to string the motherfuckers, but we were stupid busy this past Fall so they all dried before I could thread one effing berry. NEXT YEAR, DAMMIT, NEXT YEAR. <- Especially since I now have A CAR which means I can gather rowan berries from all of our special places further afield (i.e., near standing stones, cairns and stone circles).)

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Because I chose to refrain from (most) contact with (most of) my family, they didn't bother notifying me when my grandfather died. I got a letter, several months after the fact, requesting that I stop sending my grandfather cards and gifts because he had died earlier in the year. Since I wasn't even given the chance to send flowers to his funeral I spent all of the next year - 2009 - incorporating Didi into my practices and our celebrations.

When I heard he had passed on one of the very first things I did was pick him up a bottle of Heineken (his favorite beer) and I left it - for almost an entire year - hidden behind Papa's headstone. (I removed it when Winter came, so the glass wouldn't break.) The bottle was displayed on several altars throughout the Dark Year to keep my grandfather close to me during his first year of death.

Soon I'll be taking the beer back to the graveyard to pour the contents out as an offering. (HE'S WAITED LONG ENOUGH FOR HIS BEER, RIGHT?) I've decided to keep the emptied bottle, though. I'm planning on refilling it with regular ole water and asking Didi to bless it so I can anoint/water my fruit trees with his expertise and wisdom.

(For those of you who don't know, my grandparents recreated THE OLD COUNTRY (aka Ukraine) in southeastern Wisconsin. I grew up running around barefoot on two acres filled with vegetable gardens, ancient oaks, fruit bushes, manicured flower beds and an orchard. I'm MOSTLY growing fruit trees and bushes because I FUCKING LOVE FRUIT AND I LOVE HARVESTING FRUIT, but also because it's my ancestral link to THE OLD COUNTRY and, in a weird way, I'm sort've paying homage and respect to the memory of the Eden I grew up in.)

The bottle of water? Melted icicles. I harvested the most impressive specimens that grew off the roof this past December and funneled their unfrozen forms into a plastic water bottle. (Sometimes you need Winter in Summer so I store snow and ice in the freezer for various forms of witchery (ranging from weather magic to purification rites).)

I'm almost afraid to freeze the contents of the bottle because I was planning on using an ice cube tray (so I wouldn't have to defrost the entire container every time I needed some Winter), and I know EVEN IF I say DON'T TOUCH THIS SHIT and go as far as STICK A NOTE ON THE TRAY SAYING "DON'T TOUCH THIS SHIT" my father-in-law will still use the cubes in his daily nightcap. (You wouldn't believe how many supplies and bottles I've cleaned that he's thrown out even though I taped a neon sticky note to it (reading "I NEED THIS, PLEASE DON'T THROW IT OUT").)

That Sort've Witch

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One of these days (most likely after I finish up with my Bride’s Day/Imbolc shit) I’ll sit down and tell you all about my first foray into haruspicy (entrails reading).

(OH, HONEY, I’M //THAT// SORT'VE WITCH.)

January 29th, 2010

January 29th, 2010 - the day I read my very first entrails. (It was so beautiful I cried.)

Jan. 27th Pheasant

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This past Wednesday I threw my arms open and said "NATURE, I'M BACK! DID YOU MISS ME?". Evidently Nature DID, because it threw a freshly clipped pheasant at me. (Nature's ALWAYS doing that. Last time? Seven rabbits, no joke.) I guess It heard me say I wanted one last gigantic cock before the season's over...

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The only noticeable flaws of the roadkill were two friction burns - one along the crest of a wing, another just above ear. With an exception of those two frazzled and featherless patches the bird was in otherwise immaculate condition. (We were EXCEPTIONALLY lucky to find him so perfectly intact.)

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My first pheasant was a juvenile cock who hadn't yet molted to his darker hood. This guy? Just by sizing up his tail feathers and the spurs on the back of his feet (which are rose thorn shaped) you can tell he's at least two years old. As morbidly retarded as this sounds...I don't feel that his death is a tragedy. He's spent two full years shacking up with hens and living it all free-range style, how many chickens sold at the grocery store have a remotely similar history? (<- THERE'S the real tragedy.)

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There were tiny twigs still woven into his breast when I pulled him out of the trash bag. After a rinse or two of tap water I managed to get the few splatters of blood out of his feathers. (I didn't save ANY feathers from the last pheasant, so one of my top priorities was to harvest as many as I could from this cock. <- I LOVE SAYING THAT SHIT WITH A STRAIGHT (WELL, SEMI-STRAIGHT) INTERNET FACE.)

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They're so over-the-top dragon scaly it verges on unreal. I haven't decided what I'm going to do with them yet, but I know it's going to be something /special/.