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For those of us who live in landscapes with deciduous trees, winter creates opportunities to appreciate them in different ways from summer. The loss of leaves means that tree shapes become truly visible. This is especially true of field trees, whose solitary positions make them easier to appreciate. Field trees have much rounder forms than their woodland counterparts, but in the woods, winter reveals the patterns of branches and the sky above.

Trunks and bark become more visible in the winter – and there’s such an array of textures, subtle colours and surfaces. Fungi on trees are more present at this time of year, and resident moss and lichen is easier to spot. I’ve blogged over at Druid Life about my favourite winter tree exposure.

This is the time of year when many of the young things born in the UK’s spring will become independent. Inevitably it means this is also a time when a lot of them will die, through accident and inexperience.

The transition from dependant to independent varies from species to species, and part of why it varies is the complexity involved in being an adult. You can spot newly fledged birds, because they’re often waiting around making a racket, with parents coming back to feed them regularly even though they’re now out of the nest. They look like teenagers.

It’s June. It’s cold and raining, and everything outside my window says ‘climate change’ to me in ways that make me deeply uneasy. High winds, torrential downpours, and at the same time, an explosion of hawthorn flowers like nothing I’ve ever seen before. The wild garlic and the horse chestnuts have been exuberant as well.

What does it means for Pagans? The ancestral dates of festivals no longer relate reliably to what’s happening. We don’t know what’s coming, or how it will impact on us. Our world is changing. The seasons are changing, the climate is changing.

Arise!
Let us greet this morning with smiling faces
Hair unbound
Hearts full of glee
Birdsong in one hand
Roses in the other
Let us dance to River’s music
And Earth’s heartbeat
Under quickening leaves
We are full with the promise of spring.

Well, the hedge has gotten rather tangled over the winter! I've been tending to sick pets, and to my own fledglings who are in a period of rapid growth, and swirling in the whirlwind of the winter holidays, the publishing of “A Beautiful Resistance”, and a disorienting, odd ebb tide of my creativity. I've been absorbing life and experience, lately, rather than generating ideas. It seems like a natural part of the inner seasons. I think it attends busy times with a lot of external work to do. Have you noticed such a season-change in your own inner-life? Are you usually overflowing with creativity, but sometimes find yourself just... being present, with nothing to say? Do you sometimes find yourself in a mode of being a reading needle, rather than a writing needle, on your track of the akashic records? ;)

Blessing from the Harvest Queen

May the sunset cloak of shorter days enfold you
May you dance with the patterns of crimson and gold leaves
May you sing with owl and coyote in crisp moonlight
May you savor the orangeness of pumpkin and yam
and feel the sweetness of honey on your tongue.
May you listen to the dreams of seed corn
May elderberry strengthen you with stored sunshine
May persimmon grant you a fleeting hello
May the poignant flare of an October rose
kiss you with hope.
May your rooms be wreathed with smiles.
And, may you remember the grace and wisdom
found in both gathering and releasing.

Harvesting also means preserving. The traditional men’s work for the season – bringing it in – may be done, but the traditional women’s work of getting it to keep, is just starting. Drying, pickling, fermenting, jamming, canning, and storing are older methods, freezing and refrigerating more modern, but if you want your harvest to feed you until spring, you have to look after it.

I’m wine making this year, the ongoing work in the midst of which I have paused to blog. My mother’s grape harvest, of tiny, tart green grapes, must be plucked from stems, and the dodgy ones removed. It’s slow, fiddly, and throwing the right bits out is an important part of the proceedings.