Boreal Witch

For the last few weeks, I've been telling Arthur that we need to get bird food at the store so that we can feed the hungry, hungry birds. Whenever I go to the store, I always seem to forget. Today, Arthur and I went to Wal-Mart to pick up a birthday present for a friend of his, and as we entered the store, Arthur reminded me to get some bird food. We grabbed a bag, finished the rest of our shopping, and made our purchases.

The clerk was pretty chatty and asked us what kind of birds we fed. I told him, "Chickadees." He said that his dad has a bird feeder that's shaped like a house. I laughed and told him that Arthur had reminded me when I walked in.

The clerk asked, "Oh, is he shy? He's not saying much right now."

"I'm teaching him sign language. He's not fluent or anything."

"He's learning sign? That's cool! So he told you to get bird seed?"

"Yeah," then I asked Arthur, "what did we buy today?"

And Arthur surprised even me by making the signs for "bird" and then "food." The clerk was absolutely floored and couldn't stop making various exclamations. It was pretty cool.

Blessed be.

Winter is finally here, with the first snow officially falling Wednesday and even more snow since then. The temperatures haven't been that cold during the day - warm enough to meet with our friends and take outdoor walks on some of the wooded trails around town - but it's getting darker and chillier at night.

Arthur is almost completely ready for winter. The only thing he's missing are some winter boots, which I hesitate to get until it really starts getting cold...but also because his shoe size is a 5 right now and will probably be a 6 by next week, at the rate this kid is growing. So, until it's the dead on winter, he probably won't have any boots to speak of. I did buy some snowpants a few weeks ago and I finally put them on him. He walked around the house (shick, shick, shick), and I think he and his dad are pretty excited to test them out once we get more snow.

Arthur has a love-hate relationship with his winter gear. All summer, it was so lovely that he was able to run around sans diaper most days, so I'm sure he finds these new turn of events not only restricting but down right confusing. I still leave him in only a diaper if we're not going anywhere - I don't really see the point in dirtying up a set of clothes while playing around the house. (Practicality is a mother's best friend.)

I find that I really love the beginning of winter. The fresh snow reminds me of all the childhood adventures my sisters and I had growing up and the smell of winter - Goddess, I can't even begin to adequately describe it. It remains powerfully embedded in my mind, though. I have fond memories of the empty lot across the street. I hope Arthur has just as many fun memories of being outside and playing as I do.

Blessed be.

Although Tuesday is the official date of the Equinox, our little family celebrated a little early this year. It was the first Fall Equinox that Robinson and I have celebrated in a long while (maybe ever?), and Arthur's first "official" Fall Equinox. Although it was a bit stressful trying to keep Baby Boy from slipping and accidentally falling in the fire (as well as managing the general chaos of cooking outdoors with a baby), it was pretty fun.



Arthur loved everything about the fire (which is no surprise - this kid loved watching the grill light up when we cooked outdoors this summer). I think his favorite part was fetching wood and then throwing it on the fire. He wouldn't even stick around to watch the piece of wood catch fire - he'd rush back to the wood pile to grab another log!



Dinner consisted of camp fare: hot dogs, chips, and S'mores. Arthur really got into cooking his hot dog, but only because he'd stick the skewer into the fire and laugh whenever the hot dog caught fire. Due to their high flammability, marshmallows were an instant favorite. He didn't want to let the skewer go, so the hot dog he was cooking was pretty darn disgusting by the time he had to go in for bed. It was eaten by Johnny's dogs a while later (and I do believe they were pretty grateful to Arthur for that little treat).

I was asked why the Equinox was important to me. The only answer I was really able to give was that it was the movement of the seasons, balance between summer and winter, and a reminder of the duality of Nature. It's the welcoming of change and the necessity to accept it.

Blessed be.

Winter is right around the corner and we're pretty much done with all of our autumn activities. The wood for the firepit is almost cut and stacked, the garden has been harvested and then picked over by the moose (luckily for us they only escaped with one cabbage this year), and the pipe running through the culvert should be covered in plastic by this weekend. We spent yesterday evening canning some beet relish for my father's Christmas present using the beets and the remaining red cabbage that we grew this summer. If he likes it, I might make it a summer tradition to grow cabbage, beets, and onions.

I've spent the last month slowly, but surely, cleaning out our mudroom. We had stuff piled on top of stuff and so much stuff that I had no idea what (exactly) was in there. It became a hassle going in there because I was terrified that someone was going to trip, knock over a huge pile of something, and get crushed. It was a pretty useless room, not much better than storage.

I decided to turn it into a playroom for Arthur and his friends so that they would have a fun place to play this winter. Below is the Smilebox that I sent family with pictures of the new mudroom. I wish I had some "before" pictures to show you (but do I really want people to see what the room used to look like?), but I like the "after" pictures. The room really does look so much better.




There's still the problem of what to do with my old sewing cabinet. It's just too big to fit anywhere in the house and when it was in the mudroom, I just piled stuff on top of it. What a waste of space. Now, almost all of my sewing projects are stacked neatly on a shelf and hidden behind a curtain, or taking up space upstairs in my bedroom (which, after I finish some miscellaneous projects, should be gone fairly quickly).

It wasn't as hard as I thought it would be letting go of my stuff. As I sorted what I wanted to keep and what I wanted to give away, I figured if I hadn't thought about a project for at least a year, it was probably time to get rid of it. I had a half-finished blazer and a skirt piled on my sewing table. I got rid of the jacket and finished putting the elastic in the skirt and then gave it to one of my sisters as a birthday present. The fabric was so lovely, I couldn't bear the thought of the skirt sitting there at the transfer station, getting trampled by people digging through other peoples' junk.

What was the impetus for such a drastic cleaning? I'm actually chuckling to myself as I write this. Humans are built on denial. I thought I'd be able to get my projects done...someday. You know, when I didn't have a kid always pestering me or when my house was (magickally) cleaner. I didn't want to face all the stuff I had piled in the mudroom because I didn't want to remind myself of all the projects I had failed to finish.

It wasn't until my family visited in May and my sister's boyfriend made a comment about how everyone in our family had crap everywhere when it hit me: "Oh, my Goddess, he's talking about me!" I looked at my sewing table. I looked on the floor. The shelf next to the washer. Everywhere I looked was a disaster. (Now, of course, it's funny - then it wasn't.) That day, I became determined to get rid of all the junk in the mudroom and turn it into a useful room.

I suppose sometimes it takes another person to point something out to make you realize that you need to change.

Blessed be.

The moose have returned. They rummaged through the garden again this year; unlike last year, they did not eat everything in sight. They ran off with only one cabbage, significantly less than all of the rhubarb and 8 kohlrabi from last year's harvest. It's no wonder that we decided to harvest our garden, despite the lovely weather we've been having.

Baby Boy loved picking the carrots almost as much as crunching on them. He's got good taste - they were really yummy! We also picked the rest of the beets and kohlrabi. I think this year was the best gardening season we've had yet and I hope next year will be just as good.

Enjoy the fall holidays!

Blessed be.

Yesterday was a really great day. It was the first day in a long time that Arthur wasn't crabby and that I didn't feel tired of dealing with him. The weather was also beautiful, which probably had something to do with it.

We went to the park and met up with our friends. It was nice just being able to hang out with the girls and the kids and just catch up and chat. We also did a toy swap, and Arthur received Alek's toys. He's pretty pleased with the pretend lawn mower that he's been pushing around the house. (In fact, he's so fond of it tried to take it into the turtle ball pit last night.)

After meeting our friends, we went to Once Upon a Child and I found him some hard-soled shoes and some snowpants for less than $20. Since winter clothes and kid's shoes are so expensive, I consider that a deal!

Robinson had to work late, so Arthur and I went home and spent a really quiet night playing in his new playroom. It was pretty nice. When it was time to go to bed, he didn't make a big fuss and just pretty much went right to sleep. I did the dishes, cleaned up a little, and then worked on another quilt while watching The Prestige (which was not worth the hype, by the way).

It was just nice, just to be. I thanked the Goddess profusely that night for giving me a chance to collect my thoughts and relax.

Blessed be.