Graveyard Dirt: Two Worlds and In-between

Necro-Squared Motherfuckers

ETA: Sold out!

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It's been a helluva couple of days at Casa dels Ossos (House of Bones). After a six week sabbatical my father-in-law returned home from Florida and immediately began fucking with shit. Within 12 hours of stepping off the goddamn plane the motherfucker managed to mess with some of my altar work, single-handedly compromised the controlled environment we keep the mushrooms in, nearly lost our ticket-receipt for our Christmas goose and immediately returned to "hiding" potentially gluten-contaminated dishes, cooking utensils and cutlery.

(The long-short? Wheat and gluten are intestine-destroying poisons that cause Italics's body to attack itself. Any trace of either - whether stuck on metal filaments of toasters, or dusted across used plates and dishes - is enough to make him seriously sick. Despite knowing how severe his symptoms are his parents never seem to clean up after themselves (I tried getting them aboard on the gluten-free express to make our kitchen more safe, but they won't buy into it), so I'm constantly sanitizing the kitchen because they don't even sweep their food crumbs off the fucking counters.)

(Our #1 gluten-free problem? Mr. Awesome, my father-in-law, doesn't normally use detergent when washing dishes by hand. (Yes, we DO have a dishwasher, and no, I don't know why he refuses to use it.) Which, obviously, is pretty fucking problematic when you have one person with a crazy-serious medical condition triggered by a food group that 1/2 the house indulges in. Worse yet, he's begun "hiding" the unwashed dishes amongst the properly cleaned ones so he doesn't get caught out. To ensure Italics doesn't get sick I actually have to clean every fucking plate, fork, pot and cup before using it because I don't know if it's safe.)

But wait! There's more! (<- Almost all of Ms. Dirty's dealings come with an extra helping of WHAT THE FLYING FUCK and/or ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?.)

In addition to my father-in-law returning home and completely destroying the rhythm of the house, we were forced to give away our Tori Amos tickets because we just couldn't afford the travel cost (our two concert tickets were equal to the cost of a single one-way train ride), I'm so fucking far behind with shit that I have no idea how I'm going to finish up all of my promises, obligations and duties (everything from working on packages for people to making our Last Harvest offerings at various cairns, standing stones and graveyards) before the holiday season hits, let alone hold a motherfucking Harvest sale at the end of this fucking month and - LOL! YES, THERE'S MORE! - yesterday we learned that I might've potentially lost everything I had on my fried computer because, for whatever divinely comical reason, my files didn't transfer properly to our external drive.

(As in, every-motherfucking-thing; my entire effin' life to this effin' point. Projects, notes, my baby pictures, all of our pet photos, recipes I've created from scratch, unseen homemade porn I made for "Santa Claus" and years worth of fucking work (I mean, like, actual career work-work). Everything I ever saved, created, scanned or noted in my 31 years of life was on that fucking computer.)

So things have been a bit...intense...here recently, and because of that some of my goals for this week (i.e., write some VIP emails, finish a few projects and sell all 11 jars of Papa's rum-infused plum sauce) got unexpectedly jostled around. One minor luxury of working for yourself, though, is having the ability to take a step back for a day or two to get your mind correct. After a long ass crying session - and a good night's sleep - I'm feeling a lot fucking better about everything*, and I'm totally ready to hustle some motherfucking sauce.

(* Although I'd really like my computer shit back, Universe. Christmas - you know, the season of peace'n'love'n'good-effin'-will to all (especially those who've worked REALLY FUCKING HARD this year despite those pesky motherfucking rabbits) - is just around the corner, and I know you don't wanna disappoint Santa's favourite reindeer.)

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If you've been rubbernecking my foul-mouthed adventures on Facebook, you'll know that we harvested 24 effin' pounds of plums from our two backyard trees back in September. A third of the crop was used to make my winterspiced plum liqueur (it's the holy amongst holies in my hedgerow hooch collection), another third was was used to create a rum-based libation for Papa (my attempt to make a ritual His'n'Her set) and the last third was deliberately scattered throughout the countryside to return a portion of the fruit back to the earth.

It'd be utterly retarded to just throw out the rum-preserved plums, and since there's no way I'm going to eat eight fucking pounds of hoochtastic sauce in two weeks I thought I'd offer a wee taste of Harvest goodness to you guys. This necro-culinary delight (necro squared; in addition to being a by-product of a psychopomp-themed libation, half the fruit was harvested from the plum tree growing over my roadkill altar) is a simple puree made from only three ingredients: fairtrade sugar, dark rum and death-enriched homegrown plums.

Before you whip out your wallet to make it rain you need to know one thing: I can't send this shit internationally. It's not that I don't want to; I'm just really worried about the lids of these jars. I saved, sterilized and reused a bunch of baby jars not knowing that the tops wouldn't seal again. These fuckers should travel a-okay within Europe, but I doubt they'd survive longer transits. I feel so effin' bad about fucking this up that I've already promised you non-EU folk the ability to pick my next super-special Harvest project in the hopes you'll forgive my sorry ass. (<- Mushroom ketchup made with my Wild Woodland Mix seems to be winning.)

And now for the nitty-fucking-gritty:

* There are exactly 11 undecorated jars; once they're gone, they're effin' gone.
* Jars are £1.50 GBP each; you can buy as many as you like.
* There's approximately 128g worth of sauce in every jar; jars roughly weigh 221g once filled.
* Postage costs are determined by number of jars being sent; sending one jar within the UK is roughly £2.50, sending one jar within the EU is roughly £3.00.

If you're interested in snagging a jar - or two, or six (ahem) - all you've gotta do is send an email to graveyarddirt@gmail.com with the following information: your paypal address, how many jars you want and what country the jars are getting sent to (it makes figuring out postage a helluva lot easier). First-come, first-served and, like I said above, once these necro-squared motherfuckers are gone, they're gone.

All Souls' Day

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Harvest Nights

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Saturday night: Secondhand Sundays inventory check.

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Sunday night: organization of 2011's wild mushrooms (boletes, chanterelles & toadstools) while Papa enjoys a piece of chilli chocolate espresso cake, a homemade chocolate chip cookie, a cup of coffee, a pair of used panties and a bottle of pain medication.

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Monday night: necro-hooch straining, sweetening and bottling.

Necro-Gooseberry Ratafia

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August's gooseberry ratafia - made from seven motherfucking pounds of hand-fucking-squeezed necro-gooseberry juice - waiting to be siphoned, sweetened and aged.

Harvest Home Hoochery

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How I spent my autumnal equinox: knee-fucking-deep in rum, brandy, gin and vodka-preserved sweetheart cherries (aka hoocher's delight). What I don't remember, though, is how the evening ended; that, my Darlings, remains a hazy, fruit-flavored mystery.

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.)

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.

A Growing Collection

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2011's collection of Hedgerow Hooch continues growing as new fruits come into season.

Starting with the largest Kilner jar while moving counterclockwise: strawberry & geranium vodka, wild necro-raspberry gin, a different batch of wild necro-raspberry gin, wild necro-raspberry vodka, cherry vodka, wild necro-raspberry liqueur (vodka-based with vanilla bean and spices), two jars of Simple Strawberry Wine and a wild necro-raspberry ratafia (brandy-based with vanilla bean and spices).

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).

Good Trade?

Today's hedgerow hooch haul total: 1 ½ lbs of wild necro-raspberries, 7 lbs of wild necro-gooseberries and 1 mother-of-a-fucker retrograde virus. My personal computer? Toast. But, hey, at least the car started first thing instead of taking its usual 20 minutes. (<- Good trade?)

Pray for me, Internet; my beloved desktop could really use the fucking help.

Cracklin' Rosie

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Nothing but me, 4 ½ lbs of necromantic wild raspberries*, a bottle of brandy, a bottle of gin, a bottle of vodka, the blessings of Papa's hard fucking cock and Neil Diamond's greatest motherfucking hits. (Oh, we gonna ride till there ain't no more to go...)

* These fuckers? Were picked at an old Scottish graveyard situated near a pair of effin' cairns. Necrotastic, or what?

Simple Strawberry Wine

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I fucking loathe the practice of sharing a recipe through a personal journal without cushioning it with some sort of story or narrative. Capping the shit with a single paragraph makes it worse (those several sentences ain't foolin' no one, babe), and without some variation of hook, line and sinker - whether visual or anecdotal - I find myself feeling like a random cookbook page is getting aggressively shoved in my fucking face in lieu of actual content.

Normally I keep my judgmental bullshit to myself unless someone's dangerously close to treading on my territory, but I'm on the verge of being a fucking hypocrite about one of my major blogging pet peeves so I thought honesty, in this effing case, is probably the best policy. (<- I was baptized and took my first holy communion under the protective care of St. Nicholas in an Orthodox Ukrainian cathedral; I think my ass is just Catholic enough to allow me to participate in repentant acts of public self-flagellation.)

Since I'm being completely honest with y'all I guess I should be super honest and say that, really, I'm not being 100% honest. It's not that I don't have an anecdote, or entertaining narrative, or even a simple fucking purpose behind sharing this recipe, it's that I don't have any fucking time to hammer that shit out. I don't have the time to convince you to hunt down a fucking punnet of local strawberries while they're still deliciously in season, or how enormously tempting this was within the first 24 hours of creation, or how three simple ingredients ritually mixed at the appropriate time with a little devotion and love can create an incredibly satisfying personal libation.

So, in lieu of actual content, I'm going to aggressively shove this recipe out of a not-so-random cookbook into your motherfucking face and cushion this thinly disguised "journal entry" with four or five measly paragraphs to convince you to get off your fucking ass and engage in some simple - but meaningful! - homemade hoochery. Why? I wish I had time to explain, but I've got a mother of a fucking nightmare waiting for me in the backroom, and one flightless crow that needs attention. Besides, the best reason will be the one you experience firsthand when straining albino strawberries out of a jar of wine (or sherry) in six weeks time.

One word of advice: don't waste your time with unseasonal fruit. Seriously. Your end product will sorely lack the flavor you're trying to lock in. Get your strawberries locally if you can, either by visiting pick-your-own farms, haunting farmers' markets/fresh produce events, growing your own (strawberries are something that happily grow in containers, and you only need a few fruit-producing plants to make a small batch of homemade hooch) or by checking the provenance of grocery store punnets.

(I try and buy organic Scottish strawberries instead of organic British strawberries; I know that the UK's a small island, but there's a discernible difference between a strawberry grown 30 miles away and one grown 300, and that doesn't even take account of the extra resources needed to maintain and transport long-distance fruit.)

Cold Winter Nights

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Homemade strawberry & geranium vodka, cherry vodka, simple strawberry wine and, seductively stretched out before the lot, a bottle of recently strained pineapple vodka to help warm the body'n'soul on those cold winter nights.

Late Night Hooching

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Preserving the heart of summer for the heart of winter.

Taste of Summer

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Remember the locally grown strawberries bought on our June 4th excursion? Those insanely sweet motherfuckers were ritually offered to Chippy on his birthday (strawberries are one of his favorite foods), and then they were washed, quartered and thrown into a giant Kilner jar with a fistful of scented geranium leaves, a mound of granulated sugar and two bottles of gluten-free vodka*. This strawberry liqueur - the first homemade hooch we've made this year! - should be ready by Midwinter, which means by Christmas we'll be able to drive away the bitter cold with an intoxicating taste of summer.

* Most vodkas use grains in the fermentation process, but Smirnoff uses maize (corn) making it safe for people who need to exclude wheat from their diet.

Second Favorite Spot

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Papa's second favorite spot to spend time in: our growing closet with my collection of homegrown tobacco, homemade hooch and two types of preserved psychoactive mushrooms. (For the sake of motherfucking decency, I won't tell you his first.)

Supermoon Altar

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If I tell y'all a secret, do you promise not to burn me for blasphemy? (Don't think I don't know how this relationship ends, Internet. Bad things happen when your arrival's celebrated with palm leaves and rejoicing.) I'm not so hot on the moon. There, I said it. In addition to not worshipping any gods/goddesses - or considering myself pagan - my goto celestial body is the sun. (<- Strike three for Ms. Graveyard Dirt! Watch my witchcraft cred plummet like some bad fucking stock.)

The moon isn't for me; it's for Italics. It's his opposite, as the sun's mine. As Darkness I crave Light (I'm totally a day person who seriously goes stir-fucking-crazy if I don't get enough natural light), and as Light he craves Darkness (he, unsurprisingly, is more of a night person who isn't as affected by the lack of natural light). Our opposites complete us, so it isn't that much of a stretch to understand why I'd intuitively reach out to the heavenly body that's associated most with masculine qualities. (Unconvinced? Just ask Diana; homegirl knows all about Darkness coveting Light.)

It's not that the moon isn't present, or doesn't play an active role in my life or beliefs, because fuck if I don't experience firsthand the very special type of lunacy that comes with being ruled - emotionally, spiritually, mentally, physically - by Luna. It's a wild, feral, untamed energy that I can't harness or control, and more often than not it has me screaming and thrashing around like a rabid fucking beast until I get that rampaging animal out. It's worse during full moons, it's especially bad if I'm nocturnal during a full moon, and it's terrifyingly unnatural if I'm nocturnal during a full moon and I'm on my first week of contraceptive pills.

Because the moon brings out the worst in me - the worst which I can't control - I've done everything from gingerly tiptoeing around it to shoving it into a lockable vault and throwing away the key. (<- Proof you don't need to be emotionally mature to be a witch!) It's not the most conducive environment for personal growth, but at least I realize my instinctual reaction to block the moon's influence is a coping mechanism (and, admittedly, an avoidance tactic).

(Translation: I'm not dumb, I'm lazy and willful. And I JUST manage to get away with it because the Universe seems to like "willful". Or, at least, my homegrown version of willful.)

The pill I'm taking is a 3 week cycle with about a week off so I can have my "period". (It's not a really-for-real period, but I bleed for several days every 24-28 days and that's good enough for me. In fact, that was the deal breaker - I'd go on the pill, but only if it allowed me to have a natural seeming cycle since menstruation is crazy important to my flavor of witchcraft.) After 8 days of being off the pill I begin taking them again for the next 21 days, and holy fuck if the first 1/2 of the first week isn't hell on fucking earth (for both me and anyone who needs to be in close proximity to my raging ass).

Rather than experiencing one or two days of intense PMS symptoms before my period, I now get super ramped PMS symptoms that last for nearly a week. There's no fucking doubt in anyone's mind as to what the contributing factor is because it's so goddamn obvious. I'm fine until I take my first pill, and then within 2 motherfucking hours everything changes. Towards the end of the first week the emotional side affects taper down, and by the second week - which is a different set of pills - you'd never guess that I spent the last 7 days terrorizing NE Scotland with my more-beast-than-woman hormonal routine.

So, for reasons stated above, this entire household cringes when I'm about to go on my contraceptive again, and when we're about to get hit with a full fucking moon. And when the two converge? Sheer fucking white-faced panic. (Why they don't shoot me in the ass with a tranquilizer dart is beyond fucking me; it's not like I couldn't use the extra fucking sleep.) Nothing, we thought, could be worse than a grand conjunction of nocturnal mode, full moon and first week of pills...but we were wrong. We were supermoon wrong.

When I took the last effing pill on the 11th of March I counted out my 8 days on the calendar and my restart day - because the Universe enjoys a good fucking LOL! - was the 19th, the day/night of the supermoon. (<- That's not fucking coincidence, that's the Lamb breaking open one of the first motherfucking seals.) But wait! It gets better! On the 19th the full moon was the closest it's been in nearly 20 effing years, which meant without a fallout bunker Italics and my in-laws were woefully unprepared for the unholy union of hormones, autism and repressed lunar rage.

To say I was apprehensive about the event would be the understatement of the fucking year/decade/existence, but it seemed like a major fucking waste to not tap into what was going on - and I didn't feel like kicking myself for benching my own ass - so I reluctantly acknowledged the full moon's positioning by dragging out anything I wanted consecrated by Luna. As light faded I began grouping objects and tools in front of the backroom's patio door, where rays of moonlight would fall through unobstructed glass and illuminate my most treasured possessions as they rested on the floor. (<- Not exactly my standard altar, but this one had a unique purpose so I'm going to let the unsymmetrical, yard sale-lookin' mess slide. For once.)

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I don't know if it's entirely obvious, but my supermoon altar was composed of 3 separate categories: my tools, objects that celebrate a certain aspect of the divine female and super personal magic items that I wanted sanctified by the grace of the moon.

The first altar tier was dedicated to the tools that I use in daily life and in all of my witchcraft-based practices. Resting on my newly acquired vintage tea towel (which is a ritual item within itself, it's already been used to create an impromptu altar at the foot of a sacred hill as we performed an engagement rite on the Spring Equinox): a knife given to me this past Christmas by my godchildren's parents, two vintage trivets I use when burning incense (one's for roadkill work and the other's for more personal affairs), my deer bell to call my spectral herd, a stag candleholder which I use like trivet'n'stand, the miniature enamel casserole pot I burn resin-based incense in, my antique goat's bell (I wear it during sex rites; if I'm already doing the entire fertility goat thang I might as well wear a goat's bell while doing it), the all-too-familiar sickle, a handmade, boline-like knife given to me by a very generous friend (it was originally made for her), the scalpel I use when skinning/working with roadkill, a vegetable kitchen knife for my wildcrafting adventures (the curved blade is excellent for cutting/peeling mushrooms), my crazy-important ritual scissors (I'm more of a scissor witch than knife witch; I'm a sucker for super functional shit) and my machete which usually lives right next to our bedroom door. (<- Yes, that IS a warning and a threat, uninvited guests.)

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More of the tools that I use in daily life and in all of my witchcraft-based practices: my make-up brushes (I rarely wear make-up, so when I do it's usually because something big's about to go down, and on those occasions I use make-up to create a living mask of the persona I'm preparing to embody), my ritual apron (the first time we celebrated Hieros Gamos I wore seven layers of clothing which were gradually removed during the sacred rite, the Scottish-themed apron - the clothing of a married woman - was one of those layers), a rectangular slab of slate taken from the threshold of a ruined chapel (used like a trivet, incense burner and cutting board) and sitting on top of them all is my goat whip broom that's groaned beneath the weight of my naked, fat ass on many a Walpurgisnacht.

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The second altar tier was dedicated to objects that I felt celebrated the divine female, but more specifically a certain aspect of the divine female that I'm stupidly deficient in. I have She-Who-Wears-Pants war-like aggression in spades, but what I lack is the merciful, nurturing patience present in goddesses like the Virgin Mary (and even Hathor despite her infamous moodiness). While the moon's a source of madness, it's also a source of a sort've Zen compassion and if I could only strike a slight balance between the two I know I could curb my werewolf curse.

Sitting on my wooden tray: Tawaret, Ephesian Artemis, the Blessed Virgin, the small figure of Kadesh bears my gold Czarina earrings (they once belonged to Alexandra), there's a small statue of Hathor partially hidden by a ring box fitted with my wedding ring and my new Lent purity/engagement ring, cutlery that'll eventually be used when I make a special table setting for our ancestors, the first piece of pentacle jewelry I ever bought (I bought the ring last year and wear it inverted on my left thumb for the LOLs), the large intaglio lapis goat pendant is normally worn with my chain link bra (another one of my 7 bridal layers), the sculpted vulva is actually a handmade cicada pendant with a feminine twist, the square pendant is a handmade Hail Mary sigil-made-jewelry and the cock'n'lady charm is a Thai fertility pendant.

Within the wooden bowl is my female chalice (there's a hole in the handle that's yoni-shaped), 2 effigies of me (one slightly more tongue-in-cheek than the other), 3 eggs (the first to be laid this year by battery-rescued hens; they're being saved so I can blow them out for pysanky) and everything's sitting on a bloodied kitchen towel that I normally wrap my ritual scissors and knives in. (<- When I accidentally stabbed myself with the scissors a few years back I applied pressure to the wound using that towel, and I've kept my ritual blades wrapped up in it ever since).

To the top right of the bowl is an antique statue of the Virgin Mary, and hung on the spires of the statue are pieces of female orientated jewelry: my moonstone ring that once belonged to my mother, and a triad of pendants - a quartz crystal, a teardrop-shaped piece of moonstone and a yoni-shaped religious medal of the Virgin - I almost never leave home without. To the bottom right of the bowl is a 18th century silver beaker depicting the Blessed Mother brandishing a sword amidst angelic hosts (no, seriously), and my carved head of Hathor peeks out of the antique cup all Oscar the fucking Grouch-style.

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The third and final altar tier was dedicated to super personal magic items that I wanted sanctified by the grace of the moon. Those objects included: my wooden foraging basket (it performs an amazing trick), two boxes of seeds (of poisons, medicines and entheogens), the Santa Muerte black rabbit (see Year of the Rabbit), my ritual Bean Nighe bowl and #01's skull (which is now slowly drying in a dark, cool room). The ass-shaped sabbat cake (it has the combined sexual fluids of both Italics and I), bar of dark sea salt chocolate and shot of my homemade plum liqueur were offerings left for Luna in thanks for the blessings bestowed on my most sacred of possessions.

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.

Sviata Vechera, 2010

It's Christmas Eve tonight in Ukraine, which means I have blood relations sitting communally around a kolach-decorated table celebrating Sviata Vechera only a time zone away. (If you've been following Graveyard Dirt since early December you already know that we celebrated Holy Supper on Winter Solstice's evening.) And even though I SHOULD be in the motherfucking kitchen getting a new batch of pyrohy ready (we decided to informally observe today's Julian calendar date as well) I thought I'd take a few minutes to share the pictures I took of the ritualized evening.

I'd be lying like a fucking dog if I didn't admit that this was my most ambitious Holy Supper to date. A huge part of the pressure I experienced came from intimately sharing the custom with folks who read this journal; I shared, I educated and in doing so I provoked some major enthusiasm which ultimately meant I had to fucking deliver, and I had to fucking deliver spectacularly because I knew people would be watching.

Our Winter Solstice celebrations began with a total lunar eclipse, and as the rest of Scotland was rising for the day ahead both Italics and I were getting ready for bed. (We've spent a significant amount of November and December in nocturnal mode.) We waited until the full moon's luminous, rounded body was swallowed by shadow, and then in that morning's night we crawled into bed and solstice spooned ourselves to sleep. (And in doing so we actually missed ALL of the 21's light; we went to bed in darkness, and we woke up in darkness. <- Longest night or what?)

Before we could even contemplate celebrating anything the entire house had to be cleaned, the kitchen table had to be set, the hay had to be scattered, the ancestors' setting needed fine tuning, the animals needed to be fed, the house had to be fumigated with frankincense, we had to ritually bathe, Light needed to be brought into the house and our ancestors had to be formally invited for the ancient Midwinter feast. And until we welcomed that single flame indoors we kept the house as dark as possible - no Christmas lights were turned on, and only the most fucking crucial lamps were switched on (to their dimmest settings).

In an apron, gold earrings and crowned with traditional Slavic braids I carefully followed Italics' slow and even pace as he lead us through the pitch black house - room by room, starting with the backroom's open patio door and finishing at the same spot - holding a solitary candle, the tiny, burning flame our only illumination as we welcomed Light back into the house with incense and fire as the Russian Orthodox Church's Christmas mass service played eerily in the darkened background. (Inviting our collective ancestors, relatives and friends was a little less solemn and involved carols, ringing bells and blowing through a cow horn.)

Sviata Vechera officially began with a toast of homemade plum liqueur (since Italics can't eat wheat I performed the kutia ceremony privately with my Ukrainian ancestors), and it was when our solstice-chilled drinks clinked together (I decanted some of our homemade hooch into a fancy pants container and partially buried it in the snow on the 20th) I knew we had created something really fucking special together. Holy Supper 2010 was a tre-fucking-mendous success, and I've never felt more in tune with my past, present and future. It was the sort've experience that seconds, thirds, fourths and fifths the motion that you're doing the right fucking thing, even if you're essentially making up shit as you go along.

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The Sviata Vechera altar on my kitchen window ledge seems a little naked because it should've had some evergreen filling up the empty spaces. We were hit with two fucking monumental blizzards in early and mid-December, so the insane amount of effing snow kept us from being able to clip fresh foliage to bring indoors for Midwinter decoration. (We did eventually manage to bring greenery into the house, but that wasn't until New Year's Eve when I built a 2010 altar on top of the threadbare Sviata Vechera altar.)

The long, tapered golden candle in the middle of the ledge was the one that Italics carefully carried throughout the house to bring Light back indoors. It doubled as an invitational beacon for the Wandering Traveler (both living and dead, mortal and divine) to show that we practice(d) the old ways, and that anyone without a home or meal that night was welcome to join us for food, warmth and companionship. (I'm amazingly bad for feeding strays. Even the unsavory sort that isn't welcomed into this house still get a plate and lit candle placed outside on the patio step. <- Sometimes all it takes is a single act of kindness, y'know?)

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It's customary to feed the dead on Sviata Vechera, whether you fix a plate/setting specifically for them or leave the Holy Supper table dressed with all of the traditional courses all night long. We do both in this house, but the ancestor setting is a semi-permanent set-up in the lounge (where the Christmas tree is, where our stockings are hung and where our Winter altar is located) and our invited guests are continuously feed throughout the Yuletide season, not just on Holy Supper.

I use Ukrainian linens to create the table setting, some which I inherited from my mother when she passed on, some which I created and some which I scored off of Ebay for crazy cheap prices. The seed pot featured in this photo is actually Native American in origin, but it has special value because my mother, a professional potter, created it. (We're Ukrainian AND Native American; my Mom went the Indian route and I ended up embracing my Eastern European roots.) When the place isn't set with a plate of food her handmade pot sits in the center of the ancestral altar acting like a bridge between the world I live in and the world she - and the rest of my family - resides in.

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Sviata Vechera is dictated by the evening sky, the meal isn't allowed to start until the first star of the night - representing the bright light that guided the three wise men to Bethlehem - has been spotted. (That's usually the job of the kids; I still remember rushing into my grandparents' house in southeast Wisconsin to announce the arrival of the star.)

Back in the old days you didn't just sit around and wait for the star, though. There were a lot of agricultural rites and rituals that needed to be exercised before your ass settled down at the dinner table. For starters, you had to ensure that all of your animals were generously fed (I've even read that it was customary to mix in everything you ate that evening in the animals' feed), and the table holding the festive spread had to be decorated a certain way.

Holy Supper's table is meant to be decked out with your finest. A hand embroidered cloth with traditional designs is set down, the ritual bread - the kolach - is placed in the center on fresh-cut evergreen and the braided loaf is meant to be flanked by a pair of candles.

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You're supposed to scatter hay beneath the table to remind everyone of the humble setting of Christ's birth, but I like to think of the hay as an offering to all of the animals we've eaten or consumed the products of throughout the year to ensure we never forget how crucial their presence is to not only our life, but the lives of our ancestors.

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Sviata Vechera usually consists of twelve dishes spread out through four courses: kutia, borsht with pickled condiments and bread, the main dishes and then dessert - and they're always eaten in that order. It's considered very bad form not to have a token amount of everything, but because Italics has coeliac disease he's got super special permission not to take part in the annual kutia (which is a glorified cereal made out of whole wheat kernels) ceremony. Which, you know, is sort've fitting since wheat, for me, is a representation of the divine male; it's my job to grow it, nurture it, harvest it and then keep the sacred seeds safe until it's time to plant again.

The serious shit happens right at the start with the first course, where blessings, prayers and ritual divination takes place using the kutia. After the semi-solemn ceremony the head of the house booms "Khrystos Rodyvsya!" (Christ is born!) and all of the peons (heh) joyously respond with "Slavim Yoho!" (Let us glorify Him!). It's at that moment when everyone finally relaxes and begins enjoying the long evening ahead of them.

This year's Sviata Vechera menu followed the traditional Ukrainian Holy Supper formula - 12 dishes (18, in total, this year (it was supposed to be 19 but I couldn't get my hands on any pickled herring), and 15 of those had to be made from scratch) spread through 4 courses, but it also paid homage to Italics' ancestors and the last course (dessert, aka "the only course that REALLY counts") reflected our addition to the annual feast.

(A proper dessert was never really presented to the family after dinner, and it always seemed a little anticlimactic. On our first Christmas "alone" (the in-laws take off for two weeks to Spain so the 21st, 24th, 25th, 31st and 1st are very quiet, intimate affairs between Italics and I) we baked ourselves a chocolate-chestnut Yule Log, and we've made one every year since.)

Pictured above: kolach (ritual bread centerpiece), kutia (wheat-based cereal), borsht (beet soup), bread (gluten-free and sauerkraut'n'rye), dill pickles, pickled mushrooms, holubtsi (stuffed cabbage leaves), kapusta (sauerkraut), kartoplyanyky (potato pancakes), mashed potatoes, mushroom sauce, pyrohy (pierogies), skirlie (toasted oats), swede and a homegrown garlic bulb (my grandfather fucking LOVED raw garlic). For more in-depth information about any of the food be sure to read my Sviata Vechera Menu, 2010 journal entry which breaks down the menu dish by dish.

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We toasted longer days and the return of the sun with a homemade liqueur made from our backyard plums. I decanted a small amount from our maturing reserves into a decorative glass container and buried it outside in the snow where Stone Cock once proudly stood. It sat outside for the duration of the full moon and total lunar eclipse, and by the time it was brought indoors for Holy Supper it was deliciously winter-chilled.

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Ignore Wuzza, she just wants attention. (Trust me on this one.)

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Our Winter altar (which I still need to take proper pictures of). We traditionally exchange a gift on Midwinter, so those've been tucked near the altar's black rabbits. My mother's seed pot was carefully relocated on top of our new church hassocks ("KNEEL TO PRAY") since the ancestor setting had begun steadily filling with offerings of food and drink.

One aspect of Sviata Vechera I haven't had the time to explain is the ceremonial procession of the didukhy (decorated wheat bundle) indoors for the festive season. The didukhy is the last bundle of wheat to be cut during harvest, and the solemn ritual is executed gravely. The bundle represents our ancestors, whom we invite into our homes for the Yuletide season.

Much like my Ukrainian ancestors I also perform a reaping ritual during Harvest, although my personal rendition is slightly more pagan than the already unsubtle pagan practice. After marrying and nurturing the King throughout spring and summer I sacrifice him in fall for the better good, mourn his death and safekeep his divine seed until spring when I resurrect and remarry him which heralds a new agricultural year.

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Because I view our Christmas tree as one of the major Midwinter altars we have a custom of placing all of our spirit dolls - or dolls at least representing spirits/companions/helpers we work and live with - beneath the tree amongst our presents and non-perishable food bought especially for the Yuletide season.

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To formally invite our ancestors over for Sviata Vechera we threw open the backroom's patio door and made an inconsiderate amount of noise (we weren't ready to celebrate until near midnight) to provide a noisy path to the house.

We both took turns on a cow horn fitted with a silver mouthpiece (which makes the most exquisitely bizarre sound since it doesn't have the length to make the trumpeting bellow deep and grand), and I played a beloved Ukrainian carol that would've been recognized by both Christian and pagan ancestors while enthusiastically ringing a bell. (The infamous Christmas classic "Carol of the Bells" is actually based on an ancient pre-Christian Ukrainian chant.)

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...and one fantastically blurred picture of 2010's edible Yule Log just before we cut into our annual chocolate and chestnut tradition, marking the end of another Eastern Orthodox-themed evening of witchcraft and the celebration of Light, family and ancient customs that've never died.

Farewell Sendoff

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A monu-fucking-mental year deserves a farewell sendoff in style: homemade vodka* created earlier this year with locally foraged wild berries and backyard-grown fruits, a dab (or two) of my fly agaric oil that's been infusing since Halloween, a bag of imported pot with a hallucinatory slant and sweaty, friction burn sex on a sheepskin rug that Italics once lay on as a baby.

Pictured Above: plum liqueur, wild blackberry brandy, wild blackberry vodka, gooseberry & cinnamon vodka, wild raspberry vodka and strawberry & geranium vodka.

Sharpie Voodoo

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Drawing Papa's veve on glass vodka bottles with a Sharpie marker? Much harder than you'd think. (But not as hard as Americanizing a British Christmas tree. <- The UK doesn't have affordable strands of lights that plug into one another, so our 6 fucking foot tree has something like 8-12 separate plugs hanging off of it every fucking year.)

Each cap sports some sort've doodled skull, and the bottle on the left has its coffin drawn onto the base. Later tonight I'll be funneling the vanilla bean-flavored coffee liqueur (I used rum instead of vodka) I made on Fet Ghede to age in these consecrated vessels. Once they've matured I'll bury them at Papa's grave, exhume them and decant the homemade Ghede hooch into smaller decorated bottles.

Fet Ghede's Checklist

Things I need to accomplish in the next 48 hours: create a coffee liqueur out of a bottle of rum bought and dedicated to Papa, give the Old Man his Fet Ghede gifts, bake Pan De Muerto (soul cakes this year need to be made for Shakey Bear, Wuzza and the Chooch), visit the local graveyard to make an offering, lay some cards down and create a gluten-free southern-themed meal from scratch (gumbo, crab cakes, hoppin' john, cornbread and sweet potato pie).

Things I've actually done: make a pot of coffee.

Harvest Bites

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Five fucking pounds of wild, Scottish blackberries that were eventually turned into vodka, brandy, syrup, vinegar and a gluten-free, homemade pie. These motherfuckers were so goddamn big that it only took Italics and I an hour of picking - IN THE SAME FUCKING SPOT - to fill half my foraging basket. (I have a feeling that the giant free-range/organic egg does a poor job in belaying the sheer quantity of berries.)

Thanks to "THE WORST WINTER IN 30 YEARS!" everything's late this year. (My patio container garden? Still fragrant with sweet peas, lupins, borage and sunflowers and we're rapidly approaching November.) The blackberries weren't ready this year until AFTER Michaelmas, so to exercise folklore-ish precaution I fought fire with fire.

(The long short? They say Old Scratch claims blackberry ownership by pissing on them after Michaelmas. That might've been the perfect solution when dealing with everyone else, but when a feral, urine-marking witch is involved all bets are off. I called SUPER shotgun by pissing into a spray bottle before gently "misting" the berries with watered-down urine. But I was a good sport and gave the Devil a generous piece of apple, plum and blackberry pie.)

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"In ancient Scottish woodlands no one can hear you scream." (Ridley Scott, I'll be waiting for your call; I've got ideas.)

Someone decapitated this particular porcini and its stalk split into three creating the Alien-like egg.

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This is that monster of a porcini that I mentioned in my previous journal entry (Oct. 2nd, 2010). It was a flag - an older, larger specimen that signals you're in prime mushroom-huntin' grounds - but unlike most flags this particular mushroom was in prime condition.

I noticed the Goliath of a cep growing along a semi-busy country road while castle hopping, but we couldn't stop the first time around due to traffic and road works. On the way home we pulled into a hidden lane et voila, cep heaven. (This wasn't the only one we found; the entire area was COVERED with them. We evidently stumbled across a porcini site no one else knows about.)

This fucker alone weighed 503g (that's a half a fucking kilo, just over an effing pound!) and had practically zero blemishes. I can't remember the super grand weight total - in addition to this large one we managed to find a respectable handful of others (which can be seen in the background) - but suffice to say, it was impressive.

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Every year in September a local castle holds a produce sale over the course of several weekends hocking the fruits and vegetables grown within the castle's walled garden. We've dubbed the event "Castle Pie Day" (Italics buys me apples and plums so I can bake a homemade pie, and in return he gets a piece of - ahem - "pie" beneath a specific tree whose branches are just long enough to keep his pie-eating privately decent) and incorporated the sale into our Harvest festivities.

This year we missed all three dates due to being sick. (Sometimes I think I'm better off getting whacked with the fucking flu. Several days of intense bed lounging and I'm quickly on the mend; the same can't be said of a low-key seasonal cold that annoyingly clings to your ankles for fucking weeks.) Needless to say, I wasn't thrilled. But - BUT! - I still managed to create "Castle Pie" using special ingredients - plums from our backyard, apples from another walled garden sale and the Devil's blackberries.

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Lessons learned, porcini edition #1: if you've going to spend over a fucking hour carefully picking and brushing off debris, for fuck's sake, trim the motherfuckers before you "forget" about them for two days.

In the course of 48 hours the few worms that were in the base of the mushrooms managed to eat their way through all of the stems rendering them useless. If I had circumcised - heh! - the ceps before leaving them for a few days (which I've done before without any problem) the larvae would've never had a chance to work up towards the caps.

Porcini lesson #1 learned.

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Bolete triplets fused together at the stalks, but seamlessly slipping into one another via caps. These guys were past their best, but we picked them anyway to dry out for this year's Yule Log. (We decorate our log with things found throughout the year and that includes mushrooms, berries, foliage and - to the mundane eye - rusty junk.)

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Backyard plums, wild blackberries and apples grown in a walled garden tucked into homemade gluten-free pastry and then liberally covered with a spicy-sweet blanket of brown sugar streusel. I was initially worried about using gluten-free flour - it HATES being overhandled; the more runny your batter/dough is the more likely it'll bake to perfection - but the vegetable fat (I've used all of my "neutral" lard; the only thing left is a sacrosanct jar of lard rendered from a piece of smoked pork fat) rubbed into the mix beautifully and with the addition of xanthan gum everything came together smoothly and softly.

To ensure no one got their slice of "pie" (ahem) before the other I had my first bite while barebacking Italics' cock, masturbating myself with my right hand while holding the ceramic dish up with the left. Some work was required to keep everything balanced ("BITE, MASTURBATE, CHEW, MASTURBATE, BOUNCE, MASTURBATE, SWALLOW, MASTURBATE, BITE..."), but the effort was totally worth the orgasm. (<- I had one of my trademark screaming climaxes, although this time with a mouthful of homemade pie.)

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Agarics and boletes go hand in hand, where you'll find one, you'll always find a variant of the other. (They both share favorite trees: birch, fir and larch.) Once you get an idea of the sort of woodland they like (toadstools don't seem to mind much longer grass and heather, but boletes can sometimes be a bit fussy and like shorter, grassy terrain - especially if moss is involved) it's possible to come home with several baskets worth of fly agarics and bolete-based mushrooms.

Pictured: bay boletes (orange-y stalk and brown caps), birch boletes (large mushrooms), Slippery Jacks (peeled mushrooms; the slimy coating which makes them "slippery" should be peeled back since it causes gastric upset in some people) and itty bitty little larch boletes (I really fell in love with these tiny motherfuckers this year).

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Up until this point of wild mushroom harvesting (I think this was around the autumnal equinox) I had been excruciatingly good about not dipping into my stock for personal use. (My original intent for all of this foraging was to create homemade Christmas gifts for friends - flavored oils, vinegars, booze and jams made with local fruits and herbs from my container garden, and dried wild Scottish mushrooms picked by yours truly.)

When it became increasingly clear that the majority of my friends didn't share my insane love for feral fungi I got, uh, frustrated. ("HOLY SHIT, NOW WHAT THE FUCK AM I GOING TO DO WITH THESE SEVERAL POUNDS OF FUCKING MUSHROOMS?!") Actually, I got militantly frustrated and decided that the entire world needed to be educated about why you don't need to breathe into a paper bag when offered a stash of wild mushrooms (from me, anyway - you know, the girl who is petrified with the very thought of death and would never put herself in a position where that outcome could be a likely possibility).

Even though we're now out of mushroom season - hard frost kills signals the end of foraging, and this landscape's been iced over several times this week - I have folders worth of pictures I'll be posting to help readers familiarize themselves with the bolete family. (<- One of the safest wild mushrooms to pick, even if you're a super novice. And probably one of the easiest families of wild mushrooms to identify.)

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Sugary wild blackberries being funneled into an old wine bottle to make gluten-free blackberry vodka. (<- Smirnoff uses corn instead of grain to make their spirit, so it's one of the only vodkas that's considered "gluten-free".)

Something tells me that my friends won't suffer the same fear of the wild when offered a bottle of this homemade hooch. (Although these berries DID get "gently misted" with diluted urine before being picked. My friends? Damned either way.)

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I spent all of August, September and October picking wild fungi. Day after fucking day I'd return home with the same goddamn mushrooms, and day after fucking day my mother-in-law would ask the same questions ("ARE THEY SAFE? CAN YOU EAT THEM? ARE THEY OKAY?") even though they were THE SAME FUCKING SPECIES SHE SAW ME PICKING EVERY FUCKING DAY.

Did it help that I knew the names of the boletes I was picking? No. Did it help that she heard the same effing names over and over again, revealing that I ONLY PICK WHAT I CAN ONE BILLION PERCENT IDENTIFY? No. Did it help when I explained to her - again and again - that my family and I have eaten these mushrooms all our fucking lives and no one's ever gotten sick or died? No.

Fed up with the constant second guessing - and frustrated with the overly cautious attitude towards wild foods - I finally set aside a handful of fresh woodland mushrooms (bay boletes, birch boletes, larch boletes and Slippery Jacks) for a special meal. (Lamb shanks braised in fresh herbs, wild mushrooms, plum tomatoes and red wine.)

That was about a month ago. Both Italics and I are still living (as is his mother), and no one got sick. In fact, my mother-in-law said it was one of the best goddamn lamb dinners she had ever had. (Not exactly verbatim, but close...sort've.)

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Lessons learned, porcini edition #2: never kiss a motherfucking porcini when a goddamn European's around.

Some Swiss asshole trailed Italics and I when he saw my foraging basket and IMMEDIATELY BEGAN PICKING THE SAME FUCKING MUSHROOMS WHEN HE SAW WHAT WAS GETTING PLACED IN MY EFFING BASKET. Since that fateful afternoon we've visited that particular spot several times, but someone's beaten us every single fucking time only leaving whole chunks of cut porcini bases scattered around the mushroom site.

(Which, by the way, were completely a-okay to eat.)(Apparently, plundering a mushroom site and not leaving anything for anyone else isn't bad enough, some people have to leave evidence of their retardation and inability to share all over the fucking ground.)

Porcini lesson #2 learned.

New Season, New Vodka

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Wild raspberry vodka; graveyard edition.

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".)

RIP, Denny's

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Wuzza passed away last night while we slept. It was totally unexpected, and I'm still reeling from shock. (Pictured above: Denny's first day home with us, about three years ago.)

I swear I heard her shuffle around in their sleeping box when I called her out for breakfast, but when she didn't appear - all dazed and confused - I had to peek into the covered bookshelf. She didn't look like she was breathing, but it was hard to tell because I had only JUST gotten up and was peeking through a sliver of a hole with a fucking flashlight.

I told myself I was being fucking retarded and seeing things (or, uh, NOT seeing things). After cleaning the cage and bookshelf last night I threw in a ragged piece of old, black sweatpants to give her some soft bedding; a flap of fuzzy black covered her entire face. I couldn't see a damn thing.

I had to put down the flashlight, let the cardboard covering snap back into place, shove my arm through their little rat hole and fish around blindly to find and pull back the material. Once I pulled out, pulled open and peeked back in I could see her dead, frosty eyes (not even glossy dead; frosty dead) which had been hidden by her sweatpants death shroud.

That's when the crying began. That's when the grief began. That's when the "BUT I DON'T UNDERSTAND, SHE WAS GETTING SO MUCH BETTER - YESTERDAY SHE LOOKED //SO GOOD// AND WAS BACK TO CHASING PAPER TOWELS AGAIN!" began. That's when the guilty feeling of negligence set in.

(If one could be condemned "negligent" despite feeding their sickly rat smoked ham, rice pudding, homemade Kentucky Butter Cake, honeydew melon and blue Gatorade before saying goodnight and tucking her into her just cleaned cage and bookshelf. I suppose you could book me on the bath she didn't get last night, but was supposed to. <- We spent 4-5 hours harvesting beech leaves yesterday so we were both hella tired and left that one job "until tomorrow".)

In all of our rat years (which, by this point, is MANY) we've never, ever been greeted by death first thing in the morning. Death almost always came from our own hands (by nitrous/laughing gas) when living became too much to bear (i.e., when their respiratory systems would shut down, leaving them gasping for breath which couldn't be drawn into the lungs).

I've always wished and prayed for ONE insistence of "passed away in her sleep" ("her" because we exclusively keep females); for ONE insistence where blood wouldn't be directly on our hands. Now that I finally got it I feel nothing except guilt. (What happened? How did it happen? Did she struggle? Was it easy? Was she alone? Was Shoney's/Choochie with her? Was it because of something I did? Was it because of something I DIDN'T do?)

The most amazingly fucked up thing? Yesterday? For the first time in weeks Wuzza was her old self again. In the past few days I discovered that she could handle more heavy duty food - i.e., chunks of soft fruit, tender pieces of meat, soft bread, crumbly cake - so I began feeding her less and less baby food and more and more "people" food. She looked so much brighter, more healthy, more alert.

Yesterday she chased, caught and victoriously fucked up a piece of paper towel. (Something she hadn't done since getting sick.) Yesterday she bit my fucking hand when I reached in to haul her ass out of the bookshelf. (Wuzza would often engage in sit down strikes when it came time to clean out their enclosed living quarters. Sometimes, when I had to physically MOVE HER FUCKING ASS to clean out the space, she'd nip my fucking hand to try and dissuade me from tossing all of her "stuff" in the trash.) Yesterday, after finishing every fucking course of dinner, she looked up at me with her patented "MORE, PLZ?" face.

And then? And then she PASSES AWAY IN THE MIDDLE OF THE FUCKING NIGHT WHILE WE'RE SLEEPING in a move that was totally unexpected, totally unanticipated and totally Wooch in every single effing way. Jesus, Gary Balls Wuzza, what the fuck? (NO, SERIOUSLY WHOOSH, WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK?)

(The worst/best/most significant part? We spent most of yesterday collecting beech leaves from various graveyards to make a gin-based spirit. At every cemetery I left an offering of Kentucky Butter Cake, water and gin asking everyone and everything to make the sake-like homemade hooch "as potent as possible". Within 12 hours of coming home Denny's died despite her recent upswing.)

(As a rule I try not to view things old testament negative (i.e., our pet was killed in exchange for services rendered), because that's a loaded way to live. Instead, I just try and accept things as being "significant" rather than GOOD or BAD. Yesterday we had an awesome day. We caught a wedding party in the kirkyard of the first cemetery we were going to hit (auspicious or what?), collected leaves at mindbogglingly beautiful surroundings, ate lunch on top of a neolithic monument and created our first bottle of Beech Tree Noyau deliberately using leaves from ancient (and some not-so-ancient, but still pretty damn old) graveyards.)

So.

So as Miz Deniz sits wrapped up in tea towels in a Tupperware container in the fridge (<- THE IN-LAWS ARE HOME; DON'T WANT TO FREAK OUT THE NATIVES) I have to come up with some sort of Wuzza specific death altar. (How the FUCK do I find/make a rat-sized dumpster? WOOSHU, DAMMIT, YOU'RE EVEN DIFFICULT IN DEATH.)

Yule/2009 Log

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Because I'm TOTALLY incapable of doing anything on time we didn't get around to creating our Yule Log until December 31st. (It was eventually christened "2009 Log" with only three hours left in the year. Fuck, at least it got DONE, right?)

High and stuffed up with head colds, Italics and I spent the remaining minutes of the fading year parked on the sofa playing video games and downing shots of homemade raspberry vodka. I think constructing the log was the most "magic" thing we did on the full moon, blue moon and lunar eclipse of the 31st.

(I was SO prepared to become the Whore of Babylon that night, but infectious illnesses thought otherwise. (FINE THEN, UNIVERSE, FINE. BUT DON'T THINK THIS SACRED WHORE WILL BE AT YOUR BECK AND CALL THE SECOND YOU FINALLY DECIDE YOU NEED ME TO PLAY THE GREAT WHORE.))

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Our Yule Logs tell stories. They're like a diary entry, or an old photograph that jogs your memories. Each log is constructed out of things we've picked up during our adventures throughout the year, and each component used, no matter how mundane seeming, has some sort of significance.

This year the log itself came from a semi-local kirkyard (churchyard) and cemetery. It was one of our FIRST official outings in the new car by ourselves, and to celebrate our freedom we simply took off into the country, hoping to find ancient monuments, standing stones, decrepit churches and forgotten graveyards along the way.

The yard was undergoing some landscaping so when we arrived there was a small pile of perfectly cut wood from surrounding trees. We eventually left with two pieces - one large, proper log (above) and one smaller, sapling sized log (which was given as a gift to a friend). I'm 98% sure that they were/are yew (since we picked them up at the base of a row of yew trees), which in itself is quite special and fitting for their intended purpose.

We cut the greenery - cedar and ivy - from our own garden (I only managed to slip TWICE in the snow when waving my wildcrafting basket and cutting pliers around like a stoned, sick lunatic), and what wasn't used for the log eventually was placed on my kitchen altar. The green embroidery thread used to bind the branches to the wood was given to me by my mother-in-law (who, in turn, was given the thread by HER mother long ago).

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After initially laying down the foundation of the log (i.e., the evergreen) I panicked, suddenly realizing that we hadn't picked up anything remotely centerpiece-y. (Last year? Last year when we found our log we ALSO found a black metal spiral, and a golden plastic star - INSTANT FOCAL POINT!)

My salvation came in the form of a tongue-and-cheek "witch bottle" I had completely forgotten about that I threw together this past fall. Remember back in October when I was all "I FUCKED THE HORNED GOD OF THE FOREST AND ALL I GOT WERE THESE SEVEN LOUSY RABBITS!"? (No? You probably need to hit up RABBITS OUT OF THIN AIR.)

What prompted me to joke with the hunters was my miserable luck mushroom hunting. We originally went to the woods to hunt down fly agaric, but only managed to find two unremarkable boletes, a pine cone (that something threw at us from above) and part of a broken egg. When it become evident that the woods didn't want to share their red toadstools with me I gave up and funneled exasperation into outside forest sex. And the rest? The rest is history.

(Actually the rest is seven dead rabbits which were then skinned, decapitated and defooted for magical purposes (DUDE, WTF WOULD //YOU// DO WHEN THE HORNED GOD GIVES //YOU// SEVEN DEAD RABBITS AS A GIFT? THROW THEM TO THE CURB?) but you can read all about that in the journal entry mentioned above.)

Using delicate floral wire Italics carefully bound the two boletes and pine cone, and once an erect cock was formed (the two mushroom heads fell perfectly at the base of the cone) we added the ONE fly agaric we managed to find this past autumn and the discarded egg shell. By the time we wiggled in a cluster of dried rowan berries (from our tree out front that sits on the crossroads) we had the centerpiece I originally hyperventilated over.

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?

(I know this picture is hella blurry, but it's the only close up of the focal point I have. If you look at a larger version of the image you can easily make out the flecks of white on the dehydrated toadstool.)

Below are two images of 2008's Yule Log, but I'm not going to bother going into detail about them since there's an entire entry dedicated to their story. If you're interested in learning about potato thievery and seeing frosted Scottish landscape you can check out the entry YULE LOG '08.

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This House is Clean

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The altar building gremlins have been exorcised! ("THIS HOUSE IS CLEAN.") And, on top of THAT dazzling feat, I cut the throat of a few houseplants (<- GIFTS FROM MY SEMI-ESTRANGED FATHER; SORRY, DAD, NOT INTERESTED IN YOU OR THE BORING ASS HOUSEPLANTS YOU SEND ME FOR MY BIRTHDAY) and rearranged what was spared for the oncoming winter.

Up until this summer the wooden table in the backroom was an accidental Wadjet altar. (I had three succulents of varying sizes in terracotta colored ceramic pots grouped together on the carved table top. My small statue of Wadjet lived in the dark cove between the three pots, peeking accusingly at anyone who got too close to Her succulents.)

At some point in the beginning of the year Mr. Awesome, my father-in-law, decided to move around some of his backroom plants and it ended up costing me one of MY plants. (He moved a tree - A FUCKING TREE! - in front of all of my succulents! IN FRONT OF MY CACTUS-LIKE PLANTS WHO LIVE IN THE DESERT AND LOVE AND NEED AND DEMAND SUN. WTF, MR. AWESOME, WTF?)

Once he was gone for an extended period of time I sat down and rearranged his rearrangement but the damage was done - I lost my aloe (which I had for nearly, Jesus, six years?) and almost lost my jade plant. With the jade tottering towards death I immediately placed it in front of the patio doors (along with the other succulent, a kind've sort've aloe looking thing whose name I can't remember) to get full sunlight. (The backroom patio is south facing, so it's the work room and record room and drying room and movie room AND plant room.)

With Wadjet and Her succulents gone (Wadjet eventually replaced Anat on our office/computer room windowsill altar when Anat's war hand caught on my tit, fell to the floor and broke in several pieces - OOPS) I filled the void with a seasonal arrangement - Hezbollah's lemonade / cracker / head shop / Hitman stand (<- WE BOUGHT A WOODEN HOUSE FOR THE TINY CHEAP-CHEAP BIRDS OUTSIDE, BUT FOUND OUT THAT CRAZY RAT FIT //PERFECTLY// IN IT SO WE DECIDED TO GIVE IT TO HER AND KEEP IT INDOORS), my no-longer-dormant Apache chili plant (which grew layers and layers of dangling tentacles), Hezbollah's special friend (a ceramic European robin), and my crocodile'n'brush pollinating set (<- I KEPT A MAKE-UP BRUSH ON TOP OF A CARVED CROCODILE ASHTRAY SO I COULD POLLINATE ALL OF THE INDOOR VEGETABLES MYSELF SINCE THEY WEREN'T EXPOSED TO OUTSIDE POLLINATORS).

Now that there's a legit threat of frost in the air it felt somewhat unseasonal to see the mostly pruned chili plant and Hezbollah's shack stand occupying the table top, so Wadjet's repotted succulents (the jade plant looks AMAZING now, BTW) were moved back, and to make a magic three I nestled the last survivor from the Shango (Bone) Tree's altar against the two thriving plants. (<- SHH! THEY'RE ACTING AS //ROLE-MODELS// FOR THE BABY SPROUT!)

The stubby Apache chili and my GARDENIA THAT WILL NOT QUIT GROWING EVER OR AT ALL (I swear to all that's holy that I PRUNE THAT FUCKING THING MORE THAN I SHAVE, SRSLY) got moved against the radiator, and I'm really hoping they'll situate themselves happily there because once winter hits the space you're looking at in the picture will - FINGERS CROSSED! - be occupied by this year's STONER TREE. (<- It's a Christmas tree BUT WITH A DIFFERENCE! And now that we have A CAR and NO FEAR OF AUTHORITY and a CHAINSAW we're thinking about having a fresh tree this year - OH, NO, ANOTHER CUT'N'RUN CHRISTMAS/YULE TRAGEDY!)

Of course you can't actually SEE any of the work I've painstakingly described in this entry and I've one million percent neglected explaining what actually IS going on in the photo, but knowing me that's to be expected, right?

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Here's the sad reality: regardless of all of the evidence that says otherwise, I'm not always an intuitive cook who gets things amazing-awesome-right the first try.

WAIT, NO, I TAKE THAT BACK! Because in actuality, I did pause, and I even asked Italics if he knew (LOLOLOLOL, LIKE HE'D MAGICALLY KNOW FOR SOME REASON MORE THAN ME, RIGHT?) if lemon reacted to metal. THAT INTUITIVE, GUT FEELING WAS THERE, DAMMIT, I WAS JUST LAZY AND TIRED AND WANTED TO GET THE JOB DONE SO I IGNORED THAT LITTLE QUESTION OF UNCERTAINTY.

If it wasn't the wire whisk I used then I WILL BLAME THE METALLIC TWINGED DISASTER ON MY DECEASED GRANDFATHER AND HIS EFFING BOTTLE OF HEINEKEN THAT SAT FOR A YEAR IN THE GRAVEYARD. (<- HE DIED LAST YEAR IN SEPTEMBER, SO I PUT A BOTTLE OF HIS FAVORITE BEER BEHIND PAPA'S HEADSTONE AND PAPA KEPT IT SAFE FOR ME, BUT MORE ON THAT LATER!)

OKAY, OKAY IT ISN'T //THAT// BAD. The curd didn't set like store bought shit, it has more of a runny honey consistency (one that begs you to dip a spoon in for a second and third and fourth time), and there IS a slightly metallic taste just at the very start, but it eventually fades away and you're left with golden sunshine in your mouth (OR SOMETHING). So it isn't a disaster as much as it's a disappointment, since I like to be supernaturally awesome at things the first time around (in this case, making lemon curd).

This was SUPPOSED to be a lemon mint curd using the last of the Moroccan mint out back, but fuck me if you can actually TASTE the mint (they said use 6 leaves, I used 13). I'm quite keen on trying this again using ONLY WOODEN SPOONS and maybe a few leaves off my lemon-rose scented geranium. (I WILL GET LEMON CURD RIGHT, DAMMIT - DO YOU HEAR THAT UNIVERSE?)

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Because the patio door faces the south it's the perfect place to grow plants AND sun dry anything harvested, so for the next few weeks this spot will be continually occupied with a rotating line-up of leaves, mushrooms, seeds and berries until everything's fully dehydrated and ready to be packed away in jars, bottles and bags. (<- THE WITCH IS STORING SHIT UP FOR WINTER.)

Way, way in the top left corner there's a ramekin filled with concrete looking dirt sitting in a white bowl with a red rim. That? That's crossroads dirt from right outside our property*. One of these days I'll get around to moistening the hardened dirt to pry it out and dry it for a second time in order to reduce it to fine powder; it's been sitting like a lump of coal for almost a year now because sometimes I can be REALLY lazy about things (really, REALLY lazy).

(* Long story short? A water pipe burst near the center of the crossroads last year - the crossroads our house is situated on - and when the street got dug up I stole some dirt and buried a witch bottle there before it got filled and covered with asphalt. BUT MORE ON THAT LATER BECAUSE I HAVE //PICTURES// AND EVERYTHING!)

The mustard colored ceramic bowl in the top center - the one with leaves poking out - house the rowan berries picked on the autumn equinox. Rather than throwing away the leaves that were attached I decided to dry them out as well since they're probably good for SOMETHING. (LOL @ HOW "SOMETHING" ALMOST ALWAYS DEFAULTS TO "OH, HEY, THIS COULD GET BURNED AS PART OF AN INCENSE BLEND...", TRUFAX.)

In front of the rowan bowl sits an orange ceramic bowl with a line of blue waves. That's some of the parsley that was picked on the equinox and then featured in our main Harvest Home altar. It'll be a mixture of parsley grown around our corn (to promote bigger plants with large roots), and parsley grown at the foot of the Shango (Bone) Tree on the phallic worship altar.

To the left of the parsley is my resin skull incense burner (IF I HAVE TO BLUDGEON A WOULD-BE INTRUDER IT WILL BE WITH THIS CRANIUM CRACKING INCENSE BURNER, SRSLY FOR REAL) filled with green acorns collected on this weekend's educational mushroom walk at a local castle. (OH, GOD, I DON'T EVEN WANT TO GO INTO IT. YOU KNOW HOW SOMETIMES YOU CAN GO TO A SOCIAL EVENT (EVEN WHEN YOU AREN'T EVEN SOCIAL TO BEGIN WITH) AND IT TURNS OUT THAT YOU - YOU, WHO ARE A LEGIT FREAK AND YOU KNOW HOW MUCH OF A FREAK YOU ARE - AREN'T EVEN A REAL FREAK COMPARED TO THE OTHER PEOPLE ATTENDING THE EVENT? YEAH. THAT.)

The huge tray of red berries taking up most of the picture are haws (hawthorn berries) that we picked over a week ago at an apple and pear festival. (I had a helluva time finding hawthorn shrubs locally, but after we picked a few pounds worth at the harvest festival I naturally discovered bushes upon bushes growing along a country lane within walking distance - NATURALLY, OF COURSE.)

I really, really wanted to make syrup with these guys, but with the threat of frost looming I still want to be able to harvest the rest of the rowan berries, blackberries (I want to make a bottle of blackberry whiskey for the Old Woman / Cailleach) and elderberries so this batch is getting dried while I focus on other wild berries. (Besides, the recipe calls for one cup of fresh or 1/2 cup of dried; best to dry them off and deal with what's more delicate and requires cooking from a fresh state first.)

Behind the haws are heads of wheat gathered from a local field. I meant to ritually reap wheat from a few locations, but due to a fucked up sleeping schedule we missed out on being able to cut bundles for ourselves. Thanks to the tractors farmers use every few feet there's a thin line of crushed wheat that didn't get cut, so we managed to pick a good handful of heads off the ground for seed/planting purposes.

These wheat heads come from a field famous for a stone (THE DRUM STONE). I was lead to believe that a bloody battle took place there ("OH MY GOD I WANT SEEDS OF WHEAT GROWING ON AN ANCIENT BATTLEGROUND!"), but when researching the monument I found that it was more of an ancient marker and men marching TO battle stopped there to "make arrangements" before going off to war. (Next year? Next year I hope to collect wheat growing next to standing stones and other neolithic monuments.)

Behind the wheat are drying chilies and plum seeds. This year I grew several varieties of chilies indoors - Apache, Cherry Bomb, Prairie Fire and Ring of Fire. The Ring of Fires are the longest, the Cherry Bombs are the short, fat grenade shaped ones and all of the others are Apaches. (The Prairie Fire was a late bloomer, so late, in fact, that it only finished flowering about a week ago.)

The first batch of plums were given as a gift when I made an offering at the local standing stones, another two batches were committed to a vodka grave (<- I'M MAKING A SPICED PLUM LIQUEUR FOR RITUAL USE!), the fourth batch were baked in a seasonal pie and the fifth now sit in the fridge awaiting their inevitable fate. The only pits I got from our plum crop this year are the ones pulled out when making pie (since the liqueur recipe called for the flesh AND pits of the fruit) and the ones still sitting in containment, so I'm saving and drying what I can for God knows what.

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A gift from Italics who knows me TOO well. (TO HELL WITH THE HERO, GIVE ME THE MONSTER! *MONSTER LOVE GRABBY HANDS*) Although I don't entirely understand why an alien is representing monsters and monster love...

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The tall row of plants are the very last of my vegetables. Way in the back - so way in the back you can't see anything other than the stem and the bamboo stick supporting it - is my Ring of Fire chili who reflowered so I have one or two more I'm waiting to harvest. The middle plant with upturned yellowish fruit is my Prairie Fire, and the last plant in line is the one aubergine (eggplant) I spared from the seasonal cold and brought indoors. Eventually all three will get cut down and ritually burned so I can mix magic ash into dirt used next year for all of my gardening (I'd compost if I could, but I can't so I burn and mix instead).

The two spiky plants in front of the line of vegetables? DRAGON'S FUCKING BLOOD, BABY! (Holy shit SRSLY! That's what Dragon's Blood looks like as a teeny tiny little thing!) Much love to my witch friend, Carolina, who sent me some seeds when I bought some of her V. awesome homemade kyphi. (<- THIS IS ANOTHER "BUT MORE ON THAT!" STORY/SCENARIO.)

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Whenever I go out of my way to make something EXTRA SPECIAL NICE I always make a point of sharing it with everyone (and by "everyone" I mean everything ancestral and incorporeal that we live with, not necessarily my in-laws). Because I don't have a kitchen altar I normally set a special place next to us using our best linens and then move the offering of food and drink to the backroom after we're done eating.

Last year we attended a harvest festival at a local castle where they sold produce, fruit and plants grown within the walled garden throughout the year. Our Castle Pie Adventure had it all - apples, plums, springtime bulbs and outdoor sex in a very public place against a tree. To celebrate the event I decided to bake a plum pie, but discovered I was one pound short of plums so I used the apples we bought instead.

(And THAT'S how Castle Pie was created! One pound of plums, one pound of apples, a plethora of spices, shortcut pastry and a topping of spiced streusel. I have pictures of Castle Pie 2008 HERE and HERE. It must've been sort've okay good because I found Italics, who doesn't like fruit, picking at the pie on more than one occasion. <- I crudely joke that he got Castle Pie twice, heh!)

This year the sale wasn't advertised so Castle Pie 2009 didn't actually come from a castle - it came from the backyard (plums) and a heritage garden (apples). I was HELLA disappointed because I really wanted CASTLE PIE ADVENTURE to become an annual harvest tradition for us - especially now since we have a car and don't have to have QUICK public outdoor sex against a tree because one of my in-laws is sitting in the parking lot waiting for us.)

When we went to the mushroom walk this past weekend THERE WAS A SIGN ADVERTISING THE EFFING WALLED GARDEN SALE. For whatever reason the company that manages Scottish heritage sites (i.e., castles and gardens and monuments and large houses) didn't bother UPLOADING THE INFORMATION ON THEIR OFFICIAL SITE so we missed out (not once, not twice but THREE FUCKING WEEKENDS IN A FUCKING ROW). I seriously wanted to make rude Italian gestures at the NTS.

Shango Tree Plums

The Tree of Life ribbons were first wrapped around my human maypole on May Day (<- BELTANE BJ!), and then hung up on the only fruiting branch of the Shango (Bone) Tree on Midsummer. I'm seriously considering boozing these plums up to create a super swanky, super special ritual/ceremonial plum liqueur. (<- To be consumed during my favorite sort of rites - nudge, nudge, wink, wink...ahem.)