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On sunny afternoons a mild breeze whispers a faint reminder of summer, but the leaves are changing color and nighttime is coming earlier. As the darkness grows and the season changes, it’s almost time to tuck your garden in for the winter—a mundane and sacred act. 
      When frost starts nipping at your plants, cut back perennials that require it in the autumn, remove annuals, and turn over the soil where they grew. Set aside one small branch for ritual. Also, plant any flower bulbs or garlic for the spring. As you do this, honor Mother Earth. Think of how your garden looked in the summer and thank her for the bounty and beauty she provided. Use a stick to draw runes, ogham, or other symbols in the soil or simply write a message such as “thank you” or “blessed be.” Also thank all the creatures that may have called your garden home such as toads, salamanders, snakes, and spiders, as well as birds. Also thank the pollinators that visited, and don’t forget faeries, elves, and other magical beings.
      Autumn leaves are timed perfectly for use as a protective winter mulch around the base of biennials and perennials. Mulching will also prevent erosion from rain and snow melt. Include a few crystals, seashells, or rocks that you collected over the summer amongst the plants as you tuck them in. 
      When all is finished, walk through the garden and speak the name of each plant. Take a bowl of fresh spring water and using the branch you set aside, dip it into the water and then sprinkle it around the garden as you say:

“With rain and sun this garden was blessed,
And now it’s time for slumber and rest.
I bid you fond farewell until the spring,
And dream of the beauty you will once more bring.
As above, so below,
May this garden forever grow.”

Two armies were to meet in battle, one Danish and one English.

Now it so happened that the king of the English was a Christom man, and brought with him to the battle a troop of tame priests and monks to pray for victory.

Before the armies engaged, the Danes first swept in and slew every monk and every priest.

O the perfidious pagans! cried the English king. To massacre the unarmed men of God!

A troop of warlocks, paid to cast baneful spells? How were these non-combatants? replied the war-chief of the Danes, grinning.

To judge from the evidence on the supermarket conveyor belt, the three of us eat three very different diets.

The Carnivore Diet. Mainly meat.

The Junk Food Diet. Mainly snacks.

The Plant Diet. Mainly greenstuffs.

With grim humor, though, I note that each of us has a bunch of bananas in his/her pile.

Bananas: the great leveler.

I won't go into how, historically, bananas became such an American icon. It's an ugly story.

I will say that it has long twisted my nuts that bananas—a monoculture grown somewhere far away and shipped North courtesy of the carbon economy—are cheaper here in Minnesota than apples, grown locally.

I'm sorry, that's just plain wrong.

When you eat bananas—even those organic, free-range, fair trade bananas that you feel so virtuous about buying at Trader Joe's—you're basically eating petroleum.

Yum, yum.

If the current dock workers' strike goes on for very long, banana prices will skyrocket.

Good.

To prepare for new relationships and to deepen the expression of feeling and intensity of your lovemaking, you have to create a center from which to renew your erotic spirit: your altar. Here, you can concentrate your energy, clarify your intentions, and make wishes come true! If you already have an altar, incorporate some special elements to enhance your sex life. As always, the more you use your altar, the more powerful your spells will be.

Your altar can sit on a low table, a big box, or any flat surface you decorate and dedicate to magic. One friend of mine has her sexy shrine at the head of her bed. Another girlfriend has hers in a cozy closet complete with a nest-like bed for magical trysts.

A dead body, hanging from a tree.

When I boarded the school bus that frosty October morning, who could have guessed that what I was about to see would sear itself into my memory forever?

You have heard it said that Samhain marks the End of Harvest.

You have heard it said that Samhain marks the Homecoming of Flocks and Herds from the Summer Pastures.

Hear now as I tell of Samhain's First Beginning.

My school-mate's older brothers hunted.

That's how, when the bus stopped at her house to pick her up that Monday morning, there came to be the gutted carcass of a buck hanging by a rope from the big old maple in the front yard: strung up to bleed out, kept fresh by the autumn cold.

Never before had I felt so viscerally just how similar in weight and size a deer is to a human being.

It was like a crucifixion.

You can mend broken hearts and enchant any would-be love interest with lemon balm. This recipe takes the cake, either one of your own making or store-bought sponge cake. Try a lemon balm version of the above Sweetheart Shortbread and glaze it with the icing; it will be certain to turn anyone who tastes this into your devotee.

6 lemon balm leaves

What does it mean to be a man?

Here's what I learned from my father:

Your job as a man is to see that your people are taken care of.

Not to self-actualize, not to seek illumination, but to see that your people are taken care of: that's what it means to be a man.

If that means that you have to work two jobs, then you work two jobs; if that means that you have to pick up a gun and shoot somebody, then you pick up a gun and shoot somebody: not because you want to shoot anyone, not because you want to work two jobs, but because you're a man, and that's what you're here to do.

What does this buy you? Privilege, status, praise? No, none of the above.

But here's the corollary: in taking care of your people you will, in fact, achieve both self-actualization and even, in the end, illumination.

Call it the Way of the Tribe.