Earth Day Everyday

I have to laugh when people ask me if I'm planning to do something special for Earth Day. Don't get me wrong--I think Earth Day is a great thing. It never hurts to remind people that the earth is our home and we should celebrate it instead of trashing it.

But Paganism is a nature-based spiritual path and Witchcraft, for most of us, is a nature-based religion. As far as I'm concerned, every day is Earth Day. I try to live my life in a way that is as kind to the earth as I can, although like everyone else, I don't always succeed. (All those packages from Amazon can't be good...even if I do recycle the cardboard boxes.)

My mantra is recycle/reuse or just plain keep the old one (of whatever it is) until it falls apart. I drive a car that gets good gas mileage, compost my kitchen waste, recycle everything that can be recycled, and never, ever litter. (Seriously. Do not let me catch you doing that shit. You will think the wrath of goddess had descended on you.) Plus I have a large garden and periodically plant new trees or shrubs.

So how am I going to celebrate today? For one thing, it is actually warm and sunny, so I'm going to go OUTSIDE. I'll probably take my first walk of the year down my road, and bring a plastic bag with me (and a glove) so I can pick up trash from along the side of the road as I go. Once the snow melts, you can suddenly see what crap people have been tossing out of their cars all winter long. I'll refill the bird feeders, stroll around the garden and start planning where I'll put what this year. But mostly I'll just be grateful for the gift of living in such a beautiful place.

What are you going to do to celebrate Earth Day?

Nature is stubborn.

Nature is abundance. And survival!

Mother Nature: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

As a Pagan, I love Mother Nature. I love oceans and sunsets and the sounds of birds in the morning (except when they wake me up). Of course, living out in the country, nature sometimes can be challenging, like when my garden in invaded by woodchucks. Or deer. Or rabbits. You get the picture.

And I live in Upstate NY, where nature can just be perverse. For instance, this year, the ragweed, which normally kicks my butt from early August until mid-September, STILL isn't dead. We've had a few hard frosts, and even a smidge of snow, but it hasn't been enough to kill of that darned ragweed. *shakes fist at ragweed...and leaf mold, for good measure*

There's the good, which is most of it, really, like how beautiful it is here in the fall

There's the bad, like what the salt they throw on the roads does to an otherwise perfectly good car

(Yes, that is the rust monster, eating away at my lovely Mazda Protege. Sigh. A big chunk of the underneath of the door just fell off the other day.)





And then there is the UGLY, like the sight that greeted me when I went through the mudroom on my way out to work first thing this morning

 Those ugly things are all that remained of about 2/3rds of the beautiful spaghetti squashes I grew (slaved over!) this summer in my garden. I was planning to eat them most of the winter, but clearly, something beat me to it. I've been known to get mice in the mudroom (since the cats aren't allowed in there), but this was no mouse.Unless it was on steroids, and brought 25 of its best friends. I'm guessing a squirrel got in there somehow, although I haven't been able to figure out where the hole in the wall is. I sure as heck found the holes in the squash, though! Sadly, this is just the tip of the iceberg...there were probably 20+ squashes and I have 6 left.

The critter, whatever it was, also gnawed a hole in my bags of pellets for the pellet stove, even though they aren't edible.

Nature. Yay.