I'm a few days late with this post. It figures that on the holy day of Chelanya, the Golden Harvest Festival, I was busy with household work. It was too hot to bake bread. I really wanted to but when it was over 80 deg. F. in my kitchen before I turned on the oven, there's no way you can convince me to bake bread. I'd probably faint from the heat and humidity that day if I had decided to do something so silly. Instead, I made my boys vanilla french toast for dinner as a treat and read them their favorite story at bed time (which is a switch from the usual routine because Beloved was out of the house attending his monthly gaming session).
I've always felt that Lammas was a 'working' holiday. A day made holy by work. They've taken in the first harvest of wheat. Some of that harvest got pelted pretty bad when some harsh weather had come through a few weeks back and I wasn't sure how well it'd go. But, the folks around seem to have bounced back pretty well from what's been a rough growing season this year with strange weather. The hay making has been going well. Corn is due to be brought in soon. It's tasseled out and just about right. I don't think the next town over will be holding their annual corn festival. All of the festivals have been cancelled due to Covid-19.
Chelanya is a good time to count your blessings and recognize that Déa gives bountifully the gifts of the spirit to the world. I was working to keep that mindset but it was hard. Little things kept going wrong over the weekend. Then a big thing went wrong the day after. I tripped over some toys and fell hard. It was but only by the grace of the High Ones that I didn't land on my spinning wheel and net myself a trip to the hospital by way of injury. But I hurt my back pretty good. I think I landed on a matchbox car, the bruise is about the right shape for it.
Then after spending an afternoon checking up on / visiting Beloved's parents, we got home and thought it was going to be a typical quiet evening. That strange bit of minor misfortune however continued to swirl about. Beloved wound up going out to help our niece with some car trouble. I had the misfortune of having my plant stand on the back deck get blown over. There's broken pottery over about half of the deck. Strange luck had the pot that I inherited from my late paternal-grandmother land in a pot overgrown with weeds and the pot that I first bought to grow plants in land just right so that it wasn't even chipped and nary a petal on either geranium plant were disturbed. The pot with my fuchsia just had part of the lip broken off, landing right beside my outdoor shrine to Déa (which was thankfully undisturbed).
It has been an odd and exasperating last few days. I look around and wonder what I am harvesting. I no longer remember what seeds I have sown and feel as though Covid-19 cast me to the wind. Everything is in tumult in ways that haven't been before. Emotionally, it is difficult to weather the isolation that has been forced upon my family by the situation. As we look forward to the potential of school opening in September, I am filled with dread instead of anticipation. I can only lay my burdens of grief, fear, and uncertainty into the hands of the High Ones. So, I pray and hope for better days ahead.
No comments:
Post a Comment