The sage smoke twists....

So I am here for another innings. My shack by the wilderness of ocean shore, my suburban hermitage and place for touching poltices to wounds and healing salves to scars. I find new gentler troubles, the daily details that having enough, just enough, clarity of mind allows me to engage with, in their common place natures.

When should I do the dishes, how high will I allow their organically growing mount to reach, Ill sweep today, the ants are moving into the kitchen again I note, cleaning away far more diligently than I.

I stroll through the dappled light of overhanging trees in my garden, trees that drop parts of their branches each time a storm passes through, smothering my lawn thats a tended but wild being. Full of sandy gaps and filled with native groundcovers and creeping things, its hardly manicured, more brushed, like matted hair. Children lived here before we came, my feline companion and I, the paths of their racing play were eroded into the grasses growth, that now with time and rest from tiny feet recuperate and send out new shoots.

I dont have a lawn mower, my whippersnipper shreds and teases the tips from the greenery and leaves missed stalks swaying rebelliously. The soil here challenges me to nourish it as I learn to do the same for myself, to be kind.

To offer myself a cup of tea, lemon balm from the compostuous balance which is my herb bed, failing that a whiskey. I think of Cailleach when i have a dram, and place a glass upon my altar, hers for the taking, offered to the base of the datura when shes taken her sips. It flourishes under such care, promising trumpets again when the season is right.

I wonder what they would smell like burned as incense, would it send the soul flying? Some times the odours we expect are reversed or refuse oversimplified categorisations. The lemon peel I dried in the oven was citrusy but not as much so as frankincense, predictable and mood lightening in its consistancy of scent. The dried rose petals not sweet as I imagined but woody.

Journeyings bind me to Wolf and Hawk who watch over and guide me in the Otherworlds, as I reconnect to my medicine. Gathering in and growing it up, memories come back and old ways return. Solidifying practices for dealing with, and being in the world. Things that once gave fright become allys in a metamorphosis that keeps me on my toes. The sage smoke twists....