Michaelmas Photos

Autumn Equinox

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Michaelmas season is my favorite time of year and I couldn't let it pass without some more photos.

The season started with the yellow flowers of September. The purple asters are called Michaelmas Daisies and I look for them (and find them) everywhere this time of year. Rianna of These Days in French Life finds a color in each month and her September is the deep purple of grape and plum harvests. My September is the golden yellow and light of these flowers. My favorite colors in my favorite month.

The golden-rod is yellow
The corn is turning brown
The trees in the apple orchards
With fruit are bending down

The gentian's bluest fringes
Are curling in the sun
In dusty pods the milkweed
Its hidden silk has spun.

Sedges flaunt their harvest
In every meadow nook
And asters by the brook-side
Make asters in the brook

From dewy lanes at morning
The grapes' sweet odors rise
At noon the roads all flutter
With yellow butterflies

By all these lovely tokens
September days are here,
With summer's best of weather
And autumn's best of cheer.
Helen Hunt Jackson

September is also the month of the Vaux's Swifts roosting at Chapman School in Northwest Portland. It is an amazing natural event made even more amazing by all the awesome Portlanders who show up to watch it every night. The tiny birds nest and rear young all over the are but come together to roost in a chimney at the school before heading out on their fall migration south. There can be over 10,000 birds flying into the chimney on any given night in September and hundreds of people gathered to watch. It is a September ritual for many people in Portland, including myself.



"It looks like pepper flying in the sky!" I overheard a little girl say. "No! It looks like a dragon," her brother insisted. I agree.

Speaking of dragons, I started a new Michaelmas tradition this year by baking a dragon bread. This is a common activity in Waldorf schools and families but it was my first year doing it. A bread dragon is an excellent, hands on way to symbolize both the vanquishing of a dragon and incorporating it's lessons into our selves, and also the harvest aspect of the season.


Fresh baked bread's a yummy treat
Made with love and warmth and wheat
knead the dough, then let it rise
and soon you'll have a big suprise.
From the water, flour and yeast
grows a golden, delicious beast.
Unknown

I did get up for my Equinox sunrise ritual. It was a lovely, crisp morning at my fruit field. The mountain was visible and so was the old crescent moon. I found a pear to add to my dragon bread breakfast and watched the sun come up in a fiery orange blaze.

The autumn winds blow open the gate,
St. Michael for you we wait.
We follow you, show us the way,
With joy we greet this autumn day.
Good morning, good morning, good morning.

The silver rain, the shining sun,
the fields where scarlet poppies run,
the fallen leaves blow up and away,
with joy we greet this autumn day.
Good morning, good morning, good morning
Wynstones Press book Autumn (I believe)

Happy Michealmas!

In Autumn Saint Michael with sword and with shield,
Passes over meadow and orchard and field.
He's on the path to battle 'gainst darkness and strife,
He is the heavenly warrior protector of life.

The harvest let us gather with Michael's aid;
The light he sheddeth fails not nor does it fade
and when the corn is cut and the meadows are bare
We'll don Saint Michael's armour and onward we'll fare.

We are Saint Michael's warriors with strong heart and mind,
We forge our way through darkness Saint Michael to find.
And there he stands in glory, Saint Michael we pray,
Lead us into battle and show us thy way.
-Anonymous

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Autumn Equinox 2009: The Autumnal Equinox and The Earth is Breathing its Soul Back In

Autumn Equinox 2010: Here Be Dragons and A Dragon Tale for Michaelmas

Autumn Equinox 2011: Michaelmas Season

Michaelmas Season

Autumn Equinox

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The season is swirling around and I am feeling very caught up in it. I love the ride, the golden light, the crisp mornings and hot afternoons, the change in birdsong and the ripening fruit, but I am also feeling pushed and pulled all over the place. I haven't found my new grip yet. Must be the turning of the wheel into autumn.

Autumn is my favorite time of year. I love the cooler days, the yellowing plants, and the harvest. I especially love the comforting feel of the constricting energy that fall brings. In the summer, the Earth is in the height of its long outbreath. It's soul is expelled fully out to outer reaches of it's atmosphere, touching the cosmos. This gives those of us on the surface energy and freedom. We want to be outside, live outside, be up early, stay up late, run and play and swim and be in the world. I tend to feel a little frayed by the end of it all, like last season's prayer flags, faded and rough around the edges. As the earth turns towards the Winter, it begins to breathe its soul back in. This constricting energy makes me feel like I'm being given some more boundaries. A bed time seems like a reasonable idea. Sitting down to dinner instead of just grabbing some food on the run makes sense. Rebuilding the rhythms of a life that includes work as well as play, rest as well as activity. It's the back-to-school season in more ways than one.

Fall, Leaves, Fall

Fall, leaves, fall; die, flowers, away;
Lengthen night and shorten day;
Every leaf speaks bliss to me
Fluttering from the autumn tree.

I shall smile when wreaths of snow
Blossom where the rose should grow;
I shall sing when night's decay
Ushers in a drearier day.

-Emily Bronte

In my evolving wheel of the year, I call this time the Michaelmas Season. The story of Michael is one of a hero who harnesses heavenly and earthly powers to subdue and over come a primeval force of chaos and fear. There are many stories told about dragons and heroes this time of year and all of them help align us with this powerful movement of the seasons, both inner and outer.

My Quaker pastor, who's sermons are always a mix of hilarious and thoughtful storytelling, told a story this morning about a world plagued by a terrifying serpent. It lept out of the ground in a village, ripping up cobblestones, showering the area with rubble and dust, knocking people over and devouring the tinker's faithful mule. The villagers filled the hole in with rocks and logs, paved over the square and put up a statue to the mule. After a number of years the tinker was able to purchase a new-to-her mule and travel further afield selling her wares. She came upon a large city with towers and guards all around it. A friendly guard allowed her in and took her up on one of the towers to show her what the fortifications were all about. There were large cannons on each tower but instead of facing outwards, towards an enemy's army, the cannons faced inward, toward the town square. Specifically, facing the gaping hole in the middle of the square. The guard told her about the serpent and how the city had responded to the threat by building all these battlements. Everyone was expected to do their part in helping guard against the serpent threat, including a tax levied on traveling merchants and tinkers. The tinker owed, as it happened, exactly one mule.

In this time of year when we prepare ourselves for the coming darkness of winter we are also asked to prepare ourselves for the coming challenges of earthly life. There will be illness, poverty, pain, loneliness and eventually an end of this life. The story of the tinker and her mules mules reminds us that we can prepare for these inevitable burdens in any number of ways, some of which are actually more detrimental than beneficial. Michael provides us with heavenly iron to arm ourselves this time of year, but the real defense against debilitating fear is internal strength and courage. These things come from the dynamic interplay between God's love and providence, and our own willful building of our lives.

We wait in hope for the LORD;
he is our help and our shield.
In him our hearts rejoice,
for we trust in his holy name.
May your unfailing love be with us, LORD,
even as we put our hope in you.

Psalm 33:20-22, New International Version

I marked the Michaelmas with some of my favorite September activities. I put up my St. Michael and the Dragon mobile, watched the swifts at Chapman School and woke up for the sunrise on Equinox morning. I went again to my favorite fall fruit picking field and walked around as the sun creeped up behind Mt. Hood. I made dragon bread the night before, a new Michaelmas activity for me. Bread dragons are easy to vanquish and nourishing as well. At the field, I found a lovely pear tree in full fruit and happily accepted the gift. In prayer, I have been given the image of a pear tree, laden with full and heavy fruit hanging within easy reach, as an image of God's provisions available to me. Pears seem a perfect image for God's gifts. The fruit is earthy, woman shaped and sweet but bruises easily so must be conscientously picked and preserved. It is not a windfall treat.

As the sun came up, all pink and orange, over the misty autumn field I laid out my feast and said my thank yous. Thank you sun, thank you mountain. Thank you pear tree and grain field. Thank you morning and thank you evening. Most of all, thank you autumn!

How are you marking the turning of the wheel into Autumn? What dragons are you facing these days and how are you preparing to meet with them? Are your preparations costing you more mules than they need to? What's your favorite kind of autumn fruit?

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Autumn Equinox 2009: The Autumnal Equinox and The Earth is Breathing its Soul Back In

Autumn Equinox 2010: Here Be Dragons and A Dragon Tale for Michaelmas

To Everything There Is A Season

To every thing there is a season and a time to every purpose under the heaven:

A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;

A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;
A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away;
A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.

Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 King James Version of the Bible

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To everything there is a season, and thank the goddess this is the season for sprouting and flowering and planting and loving the sun! It is a time of parties and birthdays, new babies and new projects. How exciting!

In her Pagan Lent article, Waverly Fitzgerald talks about the wisdom of using the new growth energies of spring to catapult new changes in your life. People seem to do this unconsciously and we seem almost driven to try new things this time of year. I was at a party last night (my second or third party this week) and everyone was talking about their new projects. New jobs, new school, new careers, new boyfriends, new houses, new gardens. I have three new babies coming into my life in the next week or so, and new projects of my own both public and private.

The earth is getting ready for the great big outbreath of summer and plants are bursting forth with new growth. The difference between winter and spring in Portland is the presence of flowers and boy-howdy do we have flowers! The cherry blossoms have been out for a while and the daffodils and crocuses are at or past their peak, but others are showing up. Camellias, azaleas, magnolias, hyacinths, daffodils, apple blossoms, even some tulips in sheltered yards. I found mint, sheep sorrel, comfrey and a new spring onion growing in my favorite foraging grounds this week.

Just like last year I am spending this early part of the Seed Moon planning and planting my garden. I have expanded my garden to at least double what it was last year and already have a good solid plan for the early spring on paper. I realized last year that I grew too much lettuce and not enough greens for cooking so I'm halving the lettuce and doubling the turnips, mustards and beets. I'm also planning space for carrots, peas, beans and tomatoes. So exciting! Check out my photos from last year here to get a glimpse at what it will be like this year.

I'm already feeling a little stretched thin by this fantastic new energy and know that I need to continue giving myself enough down time to recover. Every year trees pool all their energy to explode forth in blossoms every spring before they even have leaves. What a crazy task! They know to take a break between blossoming and fruiting to recharge, and I need to keep that recharging part of the cycle happening in my life too.

What is starting new this spring for you? What flowers are you seeing? How do you recharge to be ready for all that spring and summer have to offer?

Gifts from the Mother

The new moon in June this year marks the beginning of the Mother's Moon. The neo-pagan and Wiccan traditions the Mother is the unconditionally loving Goddess, the source of all fertility and all growth. She provides for her children, the plants, animals and people of the earth, and cares for us on a daily basis. She has many names and many faces, but she is the Mother who brings life to our planet.

I probably first heard about a mother goddess through the novels of Jean Auel and Marion Zimmer Bradley. Bradley's The Mists of Avalon is a re-telling of the King Arthur story from the point of view of the women in his life. The narrator of the story is Arthur's sister, Morgaine, who is brought up in the Goddess tradition of ancient Britain. Auel's Children of the Earth series is set in prehistoric Europe and her main characters travel the breadth of the continent meeting different groups of people who all share a reverence for the Great Mother. Both are fictional but based on archeology and legend as much as is possible. Both served as inspiration to a young woman who felt drawn towards "god" but had no reasonable images of the divine in her own life.

One thing that struck me about Jean Auel's books in particular is how the people she describes live completely off the gifts of the Mother. These are people who, like all pre-industrial people, collect all of their food, shelter, tools and everything else they use or own from natural materials. There was no option to go to the hardware store or grocery store, you had to make, find or build everything you ever used. Envisioning the divine as an ever providing Mother seems only natural to people who live this way.

In college I read a book for a class called Salmon Without Rivers by Jim Lichatowich that explored the indigenous salmon cultures of the Pacific Northwest. The Chinook people of the lower Columbia River were shrewd traders and had relative material wealth when compared to many other groups in the area. In fact, Lewis and Clark were not fond of the Chinook people because they felt them to be greedy and a bit too clever. Really, their culture was more like that of Europe than any other Native group they had met so far. They were too much like the traders of European influneced America. Lichatowich notes that there was a fundamental difference between the Chinook economic system and that of the European and American capitalists.

The Native people worked in what he calls a gift economy, while we work in an economy of extracting wealth. The Chinook understood that the salmon and beads they traded, along with every other material good they had, were a gift to them from the Earth and that gift requires an equal exchange in the future. They were not free to extract that "resource" from the Earth with no repayment, and they were not free to exploit other people or their goods. They could use them, but that use came with a price, with a debt.

The Pacific Northwest tradition of a potlatch is a tangible example of this philosophy. From our Euro-centric view a potlatch seems to be simply an act of great generosity but in reality each gift given at a potlatch must be repayed, in equal value, in the future. The potlatch is both a display of wealth and a binding of community members through indebtedness. Members of these tribes would keep tally of blindlingly complex webs of indebtedness but the ultimate indebtedness was to the Earth, the ultimate source of all wealth.

I too aspire to live off the gifts of the Mother, however difficult that may be in our capitalist, consumerist, industrial society. The Goddess is still here, still providing for us, but in some very real ways we have forgotten how to recieve those gifts. Another fantastic mentor and inspiration of mine is Riana of These Days in French Life. She has worked hard over the years to create a life without money. She gardens, forages, dumpster dives, barters and creates. At first it seemed so easy for her and so hard for me, after all, she lives in the south of France. She has wild tangerine, almond, loquat and lemon trees in addition to a wide variety of herbs and a fantastic growing season for vegetables. The more I looked around my environment the more edible plants I identified. I started dabbling in foraging last summer and learned to identify a number of plants that I have actually collected and used this season.

Last week I made a meal out of foraged grape leaves stuffed with beef and rice. The beef and rice were not wild harvested (I need to learn me how to hunt next!) but plenty else in the dish is.


Wild Stuffed Grape Leaves

1/3 lb ground beef
1 tbs goose fat or other cooking fat if necessary
A handful of green onions (home grown)
1/2 tbp chopped peppermint (wild foraged)
1/4 tsp dried dill (home grown)
salt and pepper
2/3 cup rice
1/3 cup canned tomatoes (home grown and home canned) diced with their liquid
1 cup chicken stock (homemade) or water
1/4 cup raisins (wild grown and home dried)
1/4 cup chopped almonds
12 young grape leaves the size of your hand (wild harvested)

• Trim the stems from the grape leaves with scissors or a sharp knife. Pile six leaves together and dunk them in boiling water, holding them with your tongs, until they change color to a darker, almost olivey green. Take them out and rinse them under cold water. Repeat with the second batch. You want to hold onto them because you want them to stay whole and not tear. Handle them carefully before and after blanching.
• Cook up the ground beef along with the onion, salt, pepper, and dill. Add more fat to the pan if it's looking dry and add the rice to the pan. Stir and cook until the rice is coated in oil and starting to look a little translucent around the edges. Add the tomatoes, mint, rasins and almonds and liquid and stir to combine. Bring rice mixture to a boil, turn the heat down to a simmer and cover.
• Cook approximately 20 minutes until the rice is cooked, but the contents are still a little wet. Turn out onto a plate or shallow bowl so it can cool a little.
• Lay one grape leaf down on your work surface shiny side down. Add about 2-3 tbs of filling on the "palm" of your grape leaf in a little rectangle or log shape. Fold the bottom of the grape leaf over the filling, then the two sides in. Then roll the filling into the leaf as tightly as you can without ripping the leaf or spilling the filling. Lay the filled leaf, seam side down, in a bamboo steamer basket and continue to fill the rest of the leaves.
• When they are all filled and in the steamer place over boiling water and steam for just a few minutes to heat through. Serve warm or room temperature, as is or with a yogurt sauce.

It feels so freeing to eat a meal of wild harvested greens and fruit and know that the only debt you owe is to the Mother herself. How do you fully take advantage of the gifts of the Mother? How do you honor those gifts and the gifts of other people's skills and time? What have you been growing or collecting this seasons?