Blessing for a Warm and Wonderful Lughnasadh

 

The turning of the calendar page to a new month also brings the turning of the Wheel of the Year to the 1st Harvest, Lughnasadh or Lammas. In brief, Summer has passed its zenith and although temperatures are still quite warm (in the Northern Hemisphere), the sun sets a bit earlier each day.  Some crops are ready to harvest and preserve for the coming months.  Lughnasadh, named for the Irish Sun God Lugh, is celebrated on the first or second day of August.  It is the first of three harvest festivals.  This festival celebrates the grain harvest as well as fruits and vegetables that ripen in late Summer. 

I love this Lugnasadh art work by Bonny Hut, it is full of seasonal images and has me longing for autumn.

Besides giving thanks for the abundance of the first harvest, this is a good time to reflect on the goals and projects you began earlier in the year.  Have they come to fruition as you planned?  Or do they still need more work to develop into what you envisioned?  There is still time to edit and revise before the next harvest!

I am currently taking part in a SAL (stitch along) we are using the pattern Moon Crystals by Lolli and Grace. The SAL began on July 27th and will continue into August. My progress so far is right on schedule though I snapped the photo earlier before the last lazy daisies were completed. The next portion of the SAL is announced on Wednesday, August 3rd I am curious which part of the pattern will be next and what stitch will be used which makes it quite interesting. The first two stitches are the split back stitch and the lazy daisy. At first I didn’t like the split back stitch but after a while I got the hang of it and I actually like the look. My lazy daisy stitches are a bit wonky as you can see, it’s one of the stitches I have yet to master. I really should go back to the basics and make a few stitch samplers to get the feel for the stitches again. Most of my work is done in the back stitch so I am once again dipping my feet into uncharted waters. So far I like the results.

 

Demeter, Lady of Fruit and Grains,

of ripening suns and harvest rains.

I call to you, Mother, hear my plea,

Bestow your Blessing here on me.

Last Tuesday morning the Tree Service arrived and began working without so much as a knock on the door. I heard all this noise looked out and pieces of a tree were being fed into a wood chipper.  Well midway through the job a piece of machinery broke down so they went onto another job while waiting for the mechanic to fix the truck.  They returned about 90 minutes later to resume the job.  They had to move one of the limestone boulders to get the heavy equipment in and assured me they would move it back after the job was done.

A few hours later it was real quiet so I looked out the door and there wasn't a soul in sight. They left, forgetting to move the boulder back (which would be okay), they left a 5 gallon bucket of hydraulic fluid and the payment.  My son and I looked around the yard to see how well the work was done and what may need to be done next.  The company called and asked if the men were still there and I told him they were gone, but needed to come back to get the hydraulic fluid and if possible to put the boulder back and get paid.  
Everything looked good, of course there is a few clean up jobs needing to be done, where the heavy equipment was.  I did notice all of the branches of my pear tree were cut off which I'm sure was do to the heavy branches coming down. 

The removal of the dead cedar tree was crucial because it was so tall and I worried it would either fall  on my house or my neighbors.  The tree service cut down the stump that was next to it and all I have left are two little pieces which I will make into spirit dolls one of these days.

A New Month, A Year Older and Some Stitching Stuff

 On July 1st I celebrated my 67th birthday, time does fly when you get to a certain age for me it was around 45 since then the days just seem to pass in a flash. For my birthday my son and I went to my favorite beach, his wife stayed home since she is currently using a face cream for treatment of skin cancers and doesn’t want to spend too much time in the sun and she isn’t a beach person and since she knows I love the beach (my happy place) she suggested we go without her. Recently she found out her cat is ill with cancer and at 18 years old she wants to be near her as much as possible. She surprised me with some lovely flowers, a few hours later the first lily began to open.

When the lily opened fully it was wider than both my hands spread wide, there is a second lily in the back that opened 2 days later and is wider than the first one, there is a 3rd lily in bud seen at the top but I don't think it will open.  The aroma from the lilies is quite strong.

On July 1st I joined the 31 Days of Creative Prompts for Stitchers on Instagram for the month of July each day there is a new prompt. Here is my July 1st post

Today is day 1 of @lolliandgrace #stitchandshare for the month of July.The first prompt is what got you into stitching? For me it was a part of the times going back to 1968, yes not a typo. I was taught to hand sew by my grandmother when I was 7 hand embroidery became a natural extension of that. In 1968 being one of those flower child hippie girls I would embroider flowers and peace symbols on my jeans using a satin stitch, back stitch or running stitch, though back them I didn’t even know stitches had names. The photo is a very early work that I did from an Erica Wilson pattern. I made it for a late friend, it hung in her home from the day I gave it to her until she passed it was returned to me by one of her children who I taught to sew years ago and thought I would like it back. I look at it and can see so many mistakes but I will say my satin stitch snake if beautiful. I stopped hand embroidery some time in the mid 1970’s right after I hand embroidered 2000 daisy on a friends wedding dress which 3 of her friends made for her. She dream when she was about 12 that her weeding dress would have 2000 daisies and she got them. I picked it back up in 1980 while pregnant with my only child, to make a few samplers for his room. I moved onto quilting which I do entirely by hand. Then in 2014 I had the urge to do hand embroidery again while shopping in a quilt shop for fabric and came across a class offered which included hand embroidery from the book Patchwork Loves Embroidery by Gail Pan. I haven’t put my needle down since. In 2021 I did a personal challenge to hand embroider a Goddess a Month and I am currently working on a Greenman image and finishing kit from Cozy Blue called Lunar Flow. 

I am also planning to take part in the SAL starting on July 27th for more information you can check out the link  https://lolliandgrace.com/blogs/blog/moon-crystals-a-new-stitch-along-for-the-snarky-modern-facebook-group

I spent a few hours at the beach on my birthday the weather was lovely though a bit too windy, I had brought along my Greenman to embroider but could only get in about 3 stitches before the winds tangle my floss.

I brought along one of my little goddess figurines from Brigid's Grove, she reminds me of sea glass.

Speaking of sea glass I found a few pieces while walking along the shoreline quite a rare find for me in the 28 years that I have lived in Florida I very rarely find beach glass.

There was a brown piece too but was still too new for my taste so I tossed it in the trash can for safety.

I also found a few Hag stones, another rare to me find on the Florida beaches.

I found 5 of them what a great birthday gift from the sea I feel so fortunate to have found them.

I have a crochet project underway as well that I just started today. I am using Lion Brand's Mandala Yarn in the Troll colorway.

It's going to be an ever growing Granny Square afghan.  I love the mandala yarn and how the colors change randomly. I have made several of the ever growing Granny Square afghans using Mandala yarns and I'm never disappointed.  For this one I am going to combine the Troll yarn with Gnome colorway to make it more colorful.

I wish you all a safe and happy 4th of July

Happy Summer Solstice and Blessing for a Warm and Wonderful Litha

 

The Merry Month of May and Falling Branches, A Walk in the Woods, and a Little Stitching

 Wow this month flew by in a blink of an eye. I used to ask where does the time go and never really came up with an answer other than, living life.  So that's what I have been doing during this month of May living my life. I'd say it's about time too after being ill for nearly 2 years, having surgeries and recovering and still trying to keep a positive attitude when you look at the overall picture and know you have more years behind you than ahead of you.

For Mother's Day I joined my son and daughter in law for a short hike on the Marion County Land Bridge

It was a beautiful day for the walk the sun was shining, the air was dry with a lovely breeze blowing. There were wildflowers along the path, wild berries and the birds were calling to one another as we made our way to the land bridge.

As we got closer to the landbridge you could hear the traffic along Interstate 75 where the bridge crosses.

We didn't see any bears during our walk which is good I don't think I can outrun a bear at this stage of my life.  We did see several gopher turtles on the walk back.

After our hike we stopped at Miss Steve's for ice cream, I had a root beer float to rehydrate, even with a 32 ounce water bottle I was parched.

The Flowers for Mother's day came with a lovely pop up card, I just love Snoopy and my son has given me a Snoopy card for either Mother's day or my Birthday.

A few days later the first of 3 lilies opened, the flower was huge and the most stunning color of peach.

I'm a big tea drinker, more so since I became ill in 2020 and daily nausea greets me each and every morning, so recently I bought a few boxes of tea from one of my favorite tea companies, Twinings.

They tosses in a few sample teas along with the post card which says it all so simply and this month it has been my mantra.  My order consist of English Breakfast decaf tea, English Breakfast with probiotics, Afternoon tea and English Breakfast with lemon (to add to iced tea) and Lemon Delight.  Last winter my sister gifted me with a Twinings tea sampler with 50 assorted teas, I gave my daughter in law all of the green teas in the sampler, since I got sick I no longer like the taste of green tea, I rarely drink fruit flavored tea but I have tried many of them and I am coming around to liking some of them especially the mixed berry. Who knew at 66 my taste in tea would change and fruit flavored teas would be in my pantry.  I may even attempt that green tea above.

If you didn't know this about me I love dragonflies, they always fly around me when I am in my garden and often when I walk along water trails.  So when artist Cheryl Baker designed these lovely tin signs I had to have them.

I bought the Believe in Magic first and loved it so much I ordered the Be a Seeker of Everyday Magic a few days later.

I put them on my Spring to Summer altar along with a few new goddesses from Brigid's Grove, this is the spring of pink for me

Then of course comes my love of the Ocean and when I saw these blues I just saw beach glass so bought them for Summer

It would be a Spring altar with a Greenman to add to my altar along with the Gaia statue shown above.

Speaking of the Greenman, I am slowly making progress on my newest Greenman hand embroidery

I'm also making progress on the Moon Flow piece by Cozy Blue, this month I haven't had much interest in stitching I just could get in the groove and when I stitch if I'm not in the mood I usually wind up 

Removing all the stitches because they wind up wonky, I thought I just had the moon phases to complete then yesterday while I was stitching the light part of the moons I noticed I hadn't finished the small flowers in the center, I stitched the stems and leaves but totally forget the flower part. As long as I keep my momentum going it should be done soon.  The greenman however will be several weeks of stitching. It took me over an hour just to stitch the ivy leaves, my eyes don't see as well as they used to it is called slow stitching after all.

I have been keeping up with the 30 Days of Goddess journal, here are a few of my recent pages from this month's journal.

My pages for today May 30th, the prompt word is: Bloom

A tree branch fell off the large oak tree in my yard last week I didn't even know it until the lawn service company I was interviewing pointed it out.

We are lucky it didn't hit the house but it came too close for comfort for my liking so now we need a tree service to either trim the large branches that hang over the house or to remove the entire tree.  These trees are known to drop branches all the time as well as just fall over.  I would hate to lose the entire tree so I will leave it to the experts.

On a happy note since the neighbors cut down almost all the trees in their yard the sunlight has been getting to the pear tree and after lovely pear blossoms in March in May I have fruit.

I am hoping if trimming the oak tree brings more light to the pear tree next year I will have a an abundance of fruit.  I did fertilize in the fall just to see if it would help and the spring blossoms gave me hope and seeing the branches with those fruits makes me giddy with hope.

Well that ends my update for the month of May, I will try to be more active in my post in June while I am living my life.

Have a Safe and Happy Memorial Day and remember why we have this holiday.