Hi, folks!
The shop is closed on Tuesday/Wednesday. Winter hours are Thurs-Mon. 1-6pm. Featured photo by Linda Donaldson.
Mostly cloudy, but when the clouds part the stars are gorgeous! 41F, wind at 0-4mph and gusting, AQI 15-40, UV2. Chance of rain 8% today and 10% tonight. We’re under a SMALL CRAFT ADVISORY until this evening. Today and tomorrow we’ll have sun and the afternoons will be warm, comparatively. By lunchtime on Thursday, the wind and rain are supposed to start up and Friday could be quite wet. The rest of the forecast is for showers with the temps dropping a little at the week goes on.
Crab Salad – photo by Ken Gagne on 3/24/19
Yesterday I wrote most of the day. I spent a little while just before closing setting up a cockaleekie soup, which was supper. I was pretty happy with the way it turned out. Just as I went to the front door to start flipping the signs a car pulled up and a plaintive wail came out of its window. “Oh, you aren’t closing yet, are you?” Well, of course I wasn’t going to turn someone away!
Happy Easter 2020
She and her partner and I had a good set of chats. She was fascinated by the incense info that I have and I demonstrated how you light the miyakozumi charcoal. She ended up buying a box and some resin, plus a couple of other things and her partner picked up a couple of rings. I’m not sure, but I think they were the only folks in all day…. …and they had just made it official that they were a couple! Congratulations!
Keep your fingers crossed. We might have a spot for our tiny home!
Today I’m going to sleep late…. This was a tiring week, if a good one. Once I’m up I have to finish getting my class handout together and then I’m teaching a class on home-made balls in the middle ages in the evening. First try for an online… Tempus has a bulk route tonight, and is planning a small amount of shopping.
Today’s plant is the Leek, Allium ampeloprasum, one of the longed-for foods of spring, cultivated for at least 4 millenia. Since leeks over-winter in many/most places and begin to come up before snowmelt in even the most frozen climes, they were one of the “rescue foods” of late winter and pack a lot of nutrition in a tasty package. Leeks are the national symbol of Wales. – Masculine, Mars, Fire – Symbolized in the Runic alphabet as “Laguz”, it brings prosperity and health in the spring. Potato Leek Health soup is a magickal blend often prepared by witches in the very early spring (and I put the recipe in this blog earlier in the year, pre-Imbolc). Eating leeks together brings love. Carry a leek as a protective amulet and bite it if you’re feeling surrounded by evil. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leek
Today’s feast is a general one that I’m putting under the name of Baba Marta, one of many “grumpy old women of March” or mother festivals that happen right around the beginning of this month. In Central Europe, the Balkan states and down along the east side of the Caucasus, there are many similar traditions about March being an old lady of changable mood. It is also Mothers’ Day in many these countries.
One of the interesting customs of this time are the Martenitsi, which are cords of red and white, sometimes turned into yarn dolls, that are worn until the spring arrives, at which point they are tied to blossoming trees. This is a remnant of an old pagan custom. No one knows the original significance of these figures, but they were explained to me by my Czech grandparents as a reminder to Jarilo and Jarila (personifications of spring) that they were supposed to arrive soon!
Once the Spring is here, the cords become a blessing, so are passed on to the fruit trees to bless all the fields, flocks, orchards and people. More some some of the customs here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baba_Marta_Day
It’s also Tempus and my granddaughter’s 2nd Birthday!
The shop is closed on Tuesday/Wednesday. Winter hours are Thurs-Mon. 1-6pm. For appointments contact us at 541-563-7154, anjasnihova@yahoo.com, on Facebook or here on the blog, or just leave a note on the door!
Love & Light,
Anja
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Today’s Astro & Calendar
Waning Moon Magick – From the Full Moon to the New is a time for study, meditation, and magic designed to banish harmful energies and habits, for ridding oneself of addictions, illness or negativity. Remember: what goes up must come down. Phase ends at the Tide Change on 3/13 at 2:21am. Waning Gibbous Moon – Best time for draining the energy behind illness, habits or addictions. Magicks of this sort, started now, should be ended before the phase change to the New Moon. – Associated God/dess: Hera/Hero, Cybele, Zeus the Conqueror, Mars/Martius, Anansi, Prometheus. Phase ends at the Quarter on 3/5 at 5:30pm.
Sirius blazes high in the south on the meridian by about 8 p.m. now. Using binoculars, examine the spot 4° south of Sirius (directly below it when it’s near the meridian). Four degrees is somewhat less than the width of a typical binocular’s field of view. Can you see a little patch of gray haze here? That’s the open star cluster M41, about 2,200 light-years away. Its total magnitude adds up to 5.0. Sirius, by comparison, is only 8.6 light-years away — and shines 400 times brighter.
The Moon reaches perigee — the closest point to Earth in its slightly elliptical orbit — at 12:18 A.M. EST. At that time, it will sit 227,063 miles (365,422 kilometers) away.
Draco, Ursa Minor
Draco the Dragon sits with his head low to the northern horizon after sunset tonight, but by two hours after the Sun disappears, the magnitude 3.6 star Thuban is nearly 30° high and rising. This seemingly nondescript star has a famous past — it was once the North Star, sitting where the current pole star, Polaris in Ursa Minor, is now located. That past role is likely the reason Thuban is Draco’s alpha star, despite the fact that it’s fainter than many of the Dragon’s other luminaries. Its name also, curiously, means “the serpent’s head” in Arabic, despite its location in Draco’s tail. These days, Draco is a circumpolar constellation, meaning it circles the North Celestial Pole. If you stay out late enough, you’ll see the stars of Draco ascend in the sky and then begin arcing back over again as Earth rotates.
Mercury, Jupiter, and Saturn lurk very low in bright dawn. But Jupiter and Saturn are getting a little higher and less difficult to see each morning, while Mercury maintains its altitude and fades slightly this week. Look very low in the east-southeast about 30 minutes before sunrise, as shown below. With the sky that bright, bring binoculars. Mercury fades from magnitude +0.2 to +0.6 this week. Saturn is magnitude +0.7, while Jupiter, though lower, is much brighter at mag –2.0. Watch Jupiter close in on Mercury day by day. They reach conjunction, about 0.6° apart for North America, on the morning of March 5th.
Old Farmer’s Almanac NIGHT SKY MAP FOR FEBRUARY 2021: Orion – https://www.almanac.com/sky-map-february
Runic half-month of Teiwaz/Tyr, 2/27-3/13 This is a time of positive regulation, sacrifice and hard work in order to progress.
Sun in Pisces
Moon in Libra enters Scorpio at 12:38pm
Goddess Month of Moura, runs from 2/20-3/19
Celtic Tree Month of Nuin/Nion/Ash, Feb 18 – Mar 17
Color – Scarlet
©2021 M. Bartlett, Some parts separately copyright
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Celtic Tree Month of Nuin/Nion/Ash, Feb 18 – Mar 17, Nion (NEE-uhn), ash – the common ash (Fraxinus excelsior L.) is a major tree of lowland forests in much of Europe, along with oaks and beeches. It grows to 40 m (130 feet) in open sites, with a broad crown reminiscent of American elm trees. Ash was and still is an important timber tree, and is a traditional material for the handle of a besom. The common ash is occasionally cultivated in North America, and similar native ash species are widely grown as street trees. Ashes are members of the Olive family (Oleaceae).
Nuin – Ash Ogam letter correspondences
Month: March
Color: Glass Green
Class: Cheiftain
Letter: N
Meaning: Locked into a chain of events; Feeling bound.
Ogam letter correspondences to study this month Oir – Spindle Ogam letter correspondences
Month: None
Color: White
Class: Peasant
Letter: TH, OI
Meaning: Finish obligations and tasks or your life cannot move forward.
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Tides for Alsea Bay
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Day High Tide Height Sunrise Moon Time % Moon
~ /Low Time Feet Sunset Visible
Tu 2 High 2:25 AM 8.3 6:51 AM Set 8:53 AM 92
~ 2 Low 8:43 AM 0.6 6:06 PM Rise 10:33 PM
~ 2 High 2:41 PM 7.5
~ 2 Low 8:49 PM 0.8
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Affirmation/Thought for the Day – Some people have learned to earn well, but they haven’t learned to live well.
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Journal Prompt – What if? – If you could break the Guiness Book of Records it would be for?
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Quotes
~ I try to avoid looking forward or backward, and try to keep looking upward. – Charlotte Bronte
~ We’ve been having some trouble with the school bus. It keeps bringing the kids back. – from Bruce L.
~ You have not lived until you have done something for someone who can never repay you. – John Bunyan
~ Don’t ever take a fence down until you know the reason why it was put up. – Gilbert Keith Chesterton
Black boughs against a pale, clear sky,
Slight mists of cloud-wreaths floating by;
Soft sunlight, gray-blue smoky air,
Wet thawing snows on hillsides bare. – Emma Lazarus (1849–87)
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Ostara Magick – Crafts
Seedling Planter Eggs – After cleaning out your eggs, remove the top half of each egg and fill it with soil. Purchase tiny flowers or seedlings from a local nursery, and plant them in your creative shelled containers.
Laminated Window Hangings for Ostara
you will need:
– lined paper
– laminating paper
– crayons
– Ostara cookie cutters(the big ones)
– scissors & a single hole punch
– a pencil
what to do:
- Lightly trace the shapes of eggs, bunnies, flowers or other Ostara figures with your pencil.
- Cut out those shapes with scissors.
- Colour in the shapes with your crayons lightly.
- Laminate the shapes with laminate paper, and cut off the excess edges, leave about 3mm extra laminate paper.
- Punch a hole through the top of the shape and hang it up in your window.
Salt Dough Bunnies
I use this dough to make a passel of bunnies to put around the house for Oestre. Of course, you can use this dough for just about anything, eggs, chicks, even make your own Willendorf Goddess statue <G>
Items needed:
- · 3/4 cup salt
- · 3/4 cup non-self-rising flour
- · 2 tsp powdered alum (look in the drugstore or grocery)
- · 3/4 cup water
- · 2 tblsp vegetable oil
- · food coloring
Directions:
1. Mix salt, 1/2 cup flour, and alum in a saucepan.
2. Add water slowly, stirring to break up lumps.
3. place over low heat and cook, stirring constantly, until mixture is rubbery and difficult to stir. It should not be sticky when touched.
4. Add vegetable oil. Stir until blended.
5. Turn out onto a plate or aluminum foil. Set aside until cool enough to handle.
6. If more than one color is desired, divide mixture into portions and to each portion add a different color. Knead until color is blended.
7. Add up to 1/4 cup flour if clay is sticky.
8. Makes 1 1/2 cups
How to Use: Model as with any clay. Press clay into molds or use it to make beads (pierce holes in beads before clay dries) This clay hardens in 1 or 2 days; do not bake. Store in an airtight container.
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Silliness – Purrfect – Q: What does a cat call a bowl of mice? A: A purrfect meal!
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