Honoring the turning of the Seasons

This is Tuesday, and the first in the month, so we are off to town on a major shopping trip. We need groceries, odds and ends for around the place (shepherd crooks on which to hang a couple of wind chimes, maybe strawberries, definitely soil amendments... ) but my biggest focus is after our return.

This is the day that the Gods have decreed I am to bless our fields and complete the changing of the altar. I have the corn husk doll -- which I made last summer from fresh husks, a tradition that I shall keep this year hopefully with corn from our own field -- to bury in the field and some acorns as well, in hopes that they may someday grow into trees. And for the first fire of the season in my outdoor firepit, some greenery and twigs to burn...

My spring altar sits decorated with branches of "kitty" and weeping willows with the intention of rooting them. The weepers, and elsewhere in the house a glass of corkscrew willow, have started to show rooting, The kitties are lagging behind but we continue to wait hopefully.

I also have a large container of forsythia starts -- all with at least some roots -- that my daughter in Utah sent me after their yard cleaning this spring. Their seasons are a bit ahead of ours, so I am waiting with the starts in water, to encourage more root development, until the danger of frost is past.

There are a few asparagus roots remaining to plant, and more should be arriving any day, and I have yet to get the Lily of the Valley into the ground, so they are all on the list, as well as the seedling trees pulled from my friend's farm. They will likely go along the front ditch line, which has yet to be cleaned out... I think I am going to have to clear small areas and plant them, then come back to the rest of the work, just to get them in the ground. However, some hours spent out there already has given me insight into just where they will go. The town sends a tractor along in the fall, apparently (at least this happened last year) to cut "offending" growth too close to the road, so I need to make sure my plants are beyond that line. In one place, on the eastern ditch, they cut a 2" sapling this past fall. That could not have been just one year's growth, so I am going to put some metal fence posts out by some of the trees -- including that one, if it tries to come back again, as I hope it will -- to hopefully repel the cutter. Said tree was obviously ( to me at least) bypassed in previous years, so there is no reason it should not be spared again. I can use my added posts to make sure the trees stay upright and do not lean out towards the roadway.

I also will be putting some of my vine crop seeds into starter pots in the house today. I know they do not like transplanting -- they don't like having their roots disturbed -- but hopefully I can do this and give them a bit of a head start.

I am enjoying learning the seasons.