Graveyard Dirt: Two Worlds and In-between

Daydreaming

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Daydreaming of warmer days (and less clothes).

Mother's Day, 2010

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Mothering Sunday breakfast: homemade drop scones, raspberry jam, fresh strawberries and pineapple guava juice.

Same Old Joke

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Further proof why you can't take me //ANYWHERE// (especially old historic sites of national importance).

Magic Thread

BEHOLD, MY ENCHANTED, MAGIC THREAD! (NOW WHO AMONGST YOU DARES QUESTION MY DIVINE, GOD-LIKE POWER?)

Nature's Fridge

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Nature's undomesticated refrigeration unit = outside Scotland in winter. (Pictured above: leftover creme brulee in a Tupperware box sitting outside on the patio steps because the fifteen foot walk to the detached garage was too fucking long. <- I EXCEL AT BEING LAZY IN WAYS YOU CAN'T EVEN IMAGINE.)

Merry Lactating!

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How do you know when you've become a boring ass grown-up? When you realize you're just too fucking full for dessert. (Poor homemade Frangelico creme brulee, you'll have to wait until tomorrow!)

Living Nightmare

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So I'm grilling marinaded chicken breasts to make chicken fajita nachos when Italics wanders in and goes "OH, HEY, LOOK! THAT PIECE OF CHICKEN LOOKS LIKE A DOLPHIN!" drawing my attention to the grilled fillet that IS suspiciously dolphin shaped and that's seriously all it took to make me feel like it was unethical to chop it up and make nachos out of it.

(That's why, nearly two weeks later, it's still sitting on the same fucking plate on top of the bedroom's dresser, completely out of sight. You want scary? Imagine what it must look like by now and that, eventually, it'll have to be disposed of. <- IT'S A NIGHTMARE FOR YOU, BUT //REALITY// FOR ME. I CAN'T WAKE UP SCREAMING BECAUSE //I'M ALREADY AWAKE//.)

Spirits of the Snow

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...because a witch who doesn't read can never have enough books. (Yeah, you read that right.)

Sviata Vechera's First Star

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Sviata Vechera ("Holy Supper") is a ritualized dinner that Ukrainians observe on Christmas Eve. (More often than not it's the Eve that's the bigger deal in a lot of European cultures.) Traditionally nothing's eaten during the day as you get on with your chores (special attention goes into cleaning the house and taking care of any domesticated animals), but the fast breaks (and work stops) when the first star (symbolizing the star of Bethlehem) appears in the night sky, signaling the start of a twelve dish supper.

Christmas has come and gone for all you on the Gregorian calendar, but it's only just here for us Julian folks. (<- ONE OF THE AWESOME THINGS ABOUT BEING BAPTIZED AS AN EASTERN ORTHODOX CATHOLIC; I GET THE OPTION OF TWELVE EXTRA "CHRISTMAS" DAYS!) So a belated MERRY CHRISTMAS! to you Gregorians, from us Julians, and blessings for a happy and prosperous new year.

(Pssst! We got a white Christmas too!)

Stag Horse Brass

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New Year Resolutions

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January 1st, 2010: Pizza (bacon, mushroom and green pepper), kebabs (grilled chicken, onions, peppers and lettuce shoved in pita bread and smothered with sour cream), chicken nuggets, potato skins and fries (delivered to the door). Nightmare on Elm Street V and Smokey and the Bandit. Homemade chocolate egg nog, sour bubblegum-flavored gummi worms, strawberry beer, selection of cookie'n'chocolate truffles, selection of regional Italian cookies, cappuccino meringues, Turrón de Chocolate and SECRET sour strawberries.

...new year resowhat? (<- Obviously not in our dictionary.)

Last Sunset

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The last sunset of 2009.

Christmas Goose Exorcism

"I CAST YOU OUT, SALMONELLA! THE POWER OF CHRIST COMPELS YOU!" <- Another unapproved exorcism by yours truly (the Vatican's going to send my ass a nasty fucking letter, heh).

And He Brought Her the Stars

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...and He brought Her the stars.

Not My Week

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This is totally not my week. (KEEP BRINGING IT, UNIVERSE, BECAUSE IT'S GOING TO TAKE MORE THAN THIS TO BREAK ME AT MOTHERFUCKING CHRISTMASTIME.)

Stumped

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So, like, if one drawer's dedicated to tarot decks and divination tools, the second drawer's full of oils, unguents and salves and the third and last drawer contains everyday misc. magic articles (ritual scissors, incense, spoons, salts, sugars and Chippy's doggie treats) where the fuck do I put the insertable remote control vibrating bullet and bondage tape?

Temporary Limbo

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Normally Papa's mask hangs just above my nightstand in the bedroom, but when time came to strip down the old wallpaper his ass got relocated to the computer room/office (at least until the redecoration's complete). A few days ago I caught him grinning like a fool, looking way too comfortable with the recent change in scenery.

"AIN'T //NO// WAY, NEGRO," I warned before the twinkle in his eye (socket) got any more glittery and flirty, "BLACK MAN? BEDROOM. WHITE MAN? OFFICE. OTHERWISE I'M NEVER GOING TO GET ANY SHIT DONE." He laughed, but I so totally wasn't joking in the slightest. Men (especially the incorporeal, voodoo-flavored subconscious skeletal link to the divine masculine)...pffffft.

Forest in a Day

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Haunted forest? Done. Gated abandoned cemetery? About to start. (Wish me luck!)

Outside Inside

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There's a haunted forest growing in our bedroom...

(OH MY GOD AND ALL THAT'S FUCKING DIVINE AND HEAVENLY, I'VE FINALLY BEGUN TO WALLPAPER THE FUCKING BEDROOM! <- The top half's a haunted forest scene and the bottom half is going to be a gated cemetery).

"I'M DRESSING UP!" Mess

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Italics said I should dress up more often, but I'm not sure if the house can take it.

Altar Building Gremlins

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Altar building gremlins? Still here. (I've learned if you just close the door to the backroom you can keep them restrained and give the superficial impression that you've exorcised the last room.)

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Catch and Release

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They stealthily creep into the house late at night through open windows around this time of year. We watch them spin their webs in corners of room in the warmth of modern living, and eventually, after days weeks and months, the perfect gossamer threads become heavy with dust and debris and sag like old Halloween decorations turning our office/computer room into a Hammer horror movie.

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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.)

Fall Harvest

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Walled gardens at Drum in mid-September.

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Buff-tailed Bumblebee (Bombus terrestris)

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Red Admiral Butterfly (Vanessa atalanta)

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European Peacock Butterfly (Nymphalis io)

Rewards of Freedom

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Today's two things of note:

1.) Drove to a local castle with my mother-in-law in tow to prove to her that yes, in fact, I can drive. (PLEASE, GOD, LET THIS COUNTRY JAUNT FINALLY LAY TO REST THE NOTION THAT I'M A "LEARNING DRIVER"; I'VE BEEN DRIVING SINCE 15, THANK YOU VERY MUCH. <- JUST BECAUSE I HAVEN'T BEEN BEHIND THE WHEEL OF A CAR FOR FOUR YEARS DOESN'T MEAN I DON'T KNOW HOW TO DRIVE. JESUS.) In fact, her manual riding self seemed relieved when I offered to drive back home.

2.) Meandered down a minefield of game bird roadkill (the Gask/Spring Hill standing stone country lane) and eventually succumbed to temptation when passing a non-flattened female pheasant. Unfortunately, her intestines were ruptured and there were patches of fly eggs so I had to ditch any hope for roast pheasant and settle for a pair of feet and an immaculate head which now reside in the outside freezer. (We didn't have pins to tack the one good wing against a wooden board so it - along with the rest of the headless, footless bird - will get committed to a ritual fire tomorrow evening.)

Skinless, Eyeless

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Blame Bacchus

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Back arched, bodies locked. Computer room love, quiet and carnal, in the silence of early morning. (If two bodies were ever made for one another...)

Sterilizing Bottles, Round 1

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Bottles = 1, Ms. Graveyard Dirt = 0

(If you can believe it (OH, I KNOW YOU CAN; SHARP KNIVES + CAVALIER ARIES = CUTS FATED TO HAPPEN) within two minutes of peeling labels off glass bottles I managed to nick my left* thumb with a knife and drew blood. <- Which means this project is EXTRA magic now, naturally, of course, witchy nudge-nudge wink-wink.)

(* It's "magic" when it's the left hand, it's "a motherfucking inconvenience and a deliberate bane to my existence sent by fucking God himself" when it's the right one (aka, the masturbating hand).)

Wild Blackberries

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Bacchus Cherry Beer

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YES, THAT'S //EXACTLY// WHAT WE NEED IN THIS HOUSE AFTER A SOLID WEEK OF CONTINUOUS SEX AND BLOWJOBS - BEER NAMED AFTER BACCHUS. (<- Stick an entire bag of hard cherry candy into a bottle of beer and you've got BACCHUS CHERRY BEER; it's like being a kid and an adult ALL AT ONCE.)

Cemetery Beeches

I meant to write a proper entry today, but a few circumstances stood in the way. (i.e., the rats eating ANOTHER EFFING MICROFILTER (we've been off-line a few days while waiting for the replacement), Italics throwing up a couple of times first thing this morning, residual "stomach flu" fatigue, homemade hash browns followed by homemade cookies (an Italian cornmeal recipe flavored with marsala) and, finally, an unexpected - BUT DESPERATELY NEEDED - walk for fresh air.)

The video above is of some blustery Scottish wind tearing through the beeches that tower over the local cemetery. You can make out the ancient, sun-bleached headstones and, later in the video, beechnuts dangling from branches. (Beeches here only produce nuts every three or four years, so I'm determined to do something with them before they disappear for another several years.)

Eyes Like a Wild Rabbit

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I've always been disappointed with the color of my eyes. Everyone's got great stories or similes or WHATEVER about their irises and I've only got "OH, YEAH, THEY'RE JUST SORT'VE…HAZEL" and "A LITTLE LIKE RINGS IN THE TRUNK OF A TREE".

But now I've got one better - I've got eyes like a wild rabbit.

Fall Already?

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Fuck, fall already?

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I guess so. (Sigh.)

A Taste of Fall

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Even with the brambles still flowering you can see fall creeping in around the small, ruined church next to the abandoned walled garden (just a hop, skip and jump from the cemetery). Sometimes I pinch myself and think HOLY FUCK, I LIVE //HERE//; on days like these it totally blows my fucking mind.

Lammas Cheesecake

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Homemade Lammas gooseberry cheesecake decorated with fresh gooseberries, hyacinth and borage flowers.

Taxidermist in the Making

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I just spent the afternoon cleaning and processing the carcass of a fox road kill.

(The worst part of butchering a dead fox whose chest and stomach exploded leaving only its heart, windpipe and esophagus intact? Not popping joints, tearing muscle from skin, snapping cartilage, dismembering whole haunches, getting covered with several layers of gore'n'blood or scraping liquefied brains and skull remains off the inside of the pelt - it's smelling of wet fucking dog, everywhere.)

Lammas Gooseberries

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600g of organically grown gooseberries from containers outside. (Just enough for a celebratory Lammas cheesecake and a granola bar recipe.)

Cemetery Lost-N-Found

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Whenever we walk to the local cemetery there's always something waiting to be discovered.

Sometimes it's fresh roadkill, just missing eyes. Sometimes it's a nurse's blue and white top (hanging inexplicably from a wooden post). Sometimes it's a black currant bush exploding between four graves. Sometimes it's a wheel off a toy, a broken piece of statue, a polished rock, shards of antique pottery or a discarded Jurassic Park 3-D coloring book.

(HELLO AND WELCOME TO MY JUNKYARD WITCHCRAFT WHERE EVERY RUSTY, WATERLOGGED PIECE OF TRASH THAT CROSSES MY PATH IS A PROPHETIC OMEN OF A FUTURE WAITING TO HAPPEN.)

On a recent graveyard trip - not the last visit, but the one before (an unintentional visit; we were out photographing the sunrise over the hills and lakes of dissipating mists and decided, all spur of the moment like, to pop round for a visit) - we found a black currant bush nestled between two sets of graves.

While considering the possibilities (while considering the NON-CULINARY possibilities of black currants since I HATE AND LOATHE THE TASTE OF BLACK CURRANTS DOWN TO THE VERY PIT OF MY (IM)MORTAL SOUL) we ambled around the cemetery until we were at the edges of the cremation section where I found a dusty, dirtied black bottle half sunk in Scottish summer mud.

Too far removed from the memorial plaques there was no way to connect it to its proper owner so it was gingerly tucked into my basket (I originally intended to harvest the last of the elderflowers but I got distracted, hence the rural chic basket outing) along with a broken penny we found en route to the graveyard.

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(But what should I do with it? Clean it up and give it as a gift (filled with graveyard dirt or some other witchery)? Clean it up and keep it for myself (peacocks are kind've sort've a significant spiritual animal thing for me)? Christ only knows. For now it's sitting on my nightstand altar behind my Apis Bull statue, holding the dry spray of flowers I wore in my hair on Midsummer.)

What does an American witch in Scotland carry in her Easter basket on an unplanned graveyard walk at five in the morning? The camera's tripod, a bottle of still water, an unearthed cemetery treasure, a mongoloid Pacman created out of a copper coin, her ritual shears wrapped up in their still bloody covering (I keep the kitchen scissors wrapped up in the unwashed towel I used to staunch the bleeding after I stabbed myself with the shears) and a dying buff-tailed bumblebee, quivering and shaking in its dampness as it slowly crawls off its yarrow deathbed and curls into the folds of her blood stained kitchen towel.

(It's magic, baby.)

Cemetery Currants

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Currants harvested from the local cemetery.

(What does a witch do with fruits harvested from a graveyard? I dunno. What does a witch do with fruits harvested from a graveyard knowing that they'll be useful for something even if she really fucking hates the way they taste so they'll in no way EVER be used for anything culinary? She cleans them, dries them and bottles them in a clean spice jar for future witchery.)

Bedside Altar, July 09

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My bedside altar's getting crowded and it ain't from Papa's doings (for once).

(Sort've left to right: Kadesh statue holding my gold Czarina earrings, my birthday peacock (Inanna's consort, Tammuz, is symbolically linked with the peacock) and my Hathor statue. Behind the peacock you can almost see Chippy's Sassanian amber bead (circa 400 BC) sitting in its display box and behind THAT sits our gratuitously graphic ritual bong (SORRY, THE INTERESTING BITS INADVERTENTLY WERE CENSORED). The dry sprig of flowers towering above Hathor are the flowers I wore in my hair this year when we performed Hieros Gamos in a local wheat field on Midsummer.)

Buff-Tailed Bumblebee

    
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A (worker) Buff-Tailed bumblebee visits my courgette flowers.

Nocturnal Teddy Bear

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"OH, JESUS, SHE'S DRAGGING ME INTO THE HOUSE AGAIN." (<- You can tell he's male by his outie "belly button".)

Incense Making In Progress

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I'm dissolving a dehydrated blood clot (<- I PICK BLOOD CLOTS OFF MY MENSTRUAL RAGS WITH A PAIR OF TWEEZERS AND THEN DRY THEM ON GREASEPROOF PAPER FOR LATER USE) in some whiskey to add to a personalized necromancy incense blend I'm working on. (To the left are the first two WITCH'S GARLIC bulbs I've harvested this year.)

Summer Reading

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I don't read. I mean, at ALL. (Which is terrifically LOLERIFIC if you knew what I did for a living.) And the only thing I hate MORE than reading is READING ON-LINE so READING A BOOK PURCHASED FOR A LAUGHABLE AMOUNT ON AMAZON MARKETPLACE WHILE SWINGING NAKED IN THE HAMMOCK is the lesser of two evils.

Thunder Moon Gardenia

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Shango (Bone) Tree Altar

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Constructed within a half an hour using locally sourced materials. (<- "LOCALLY SOURCED MATERIALS" = THE PILE OF FUCKING BRICKS AND ROCK THAT HAVE BEEN SITTING RIGHT NEXT TO THE TREE FOR YEARS. THANK YOU, MR. AWESOME, FOR YOUR FORGOTTEN PILES OF "TRASH" DEPOSITS HIDDEN AWAY IN THE RECESSES OF THE BACK GARDEN.)

Midsummer Fire

(2008 Yule Log burning in 2009's Midsummer fire.)

Be(d)side Papa

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Midsummer, 2009

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Questions Asked

How the fuck did I not hear this break? (Our bedroom overlooks the patio, where both Italics and I were sleeping with the window open. ONCE AGAIN, UNIVERSE, I MUST ASK THE QUESTION: HOW THE FUCK DID I NOT HEAR THIS BREAK?)

    
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Thankfully I haven't had a chance to plant the gooseberry bush in the container (it was just squatting looking pretty), so the only thing that I lost was a pretty ceramic pot. (HOW THE FUCK DIDN'T WE HEAR THAT THING SHATTER?)

Eating Well Tonight

What's more awesome than getting a perfectly wonderful terrific gorgeous reduced to clear duck? When the perfectly wonderful terrific gorgeous reduced to clear duck comes with some of its innards.

  
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We weren't the only ones who ate well tonight. (Go on, baby, you deserve it.)