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Walt in the calendula

Six years this November since my husband Walt passed. He was not a witch, not even slightly. He called my herbs 'your weeds' and built me every raised bed I ever asked for anyway. Two nights ago he was in my dream, standing in the garden in his green barn coat, pointing at the calendula. Not saying anything. Just pointing, the way he used to point at a fence post he'd decided I needed to look at. So the next morning I went out in my robe and muck boots and looked. The calendula is usually finished by now up here, we've had two frosts, but there were seed heads all along the back of the bed that I'd completely missed. Those little curled crescent seeds, dozens of them, dry and ready. I sat on the edge of the bed he built and cried for a good while, and then I collected every last one. I don't know exactly how these things work. Forty years at this and I know less than I did at thirty. But I know that man always did want me to save seed instead of buying it. Come spring, every calendula in this garden will be from Walt's bed, and all five grandbabies are getting a packet.

A thousand names after a failed build

Release night. The regression suite failed at 6:47pm with 312 errors, and I am the one who has to explain why. So at 10 I lit the lamp (brass, on a steel plate, nowhere near the curtains; my mother trained me well), sat in front of my little Devi picture, and began the Lalitha Sahasranama. A thousand names takes me about forty minutes. Somewhere around name 400 my shoulders came down from my ears. She is called Shri Mata, the auspicious mother. Tonight she was also the one who reminded me the build is not my whole life. The errors are still there. I'm just not drowning in them anymore. Tomorrow: debug. Tonight: kumkum on my forehead and sleep.

Ten minutes, and I lasted about four

Tried meditating for the first time. Set a timer for ten minutes, sat on the floor, and by minute four I had mentally reorganized my entire kitchen and drafted an email to my landlord. Is that... normal? I don't have a religion, so I wasn't praying to anyone or repeating anything sacred, just trying to notice my breathing. Is there a version of this that doesn't belong to a particular tradition, or am I borrowing something that isn't mine? Genuinely asking. Everyone here has been so kind about the beginner questions.

A visitor during Senut

Halfway through the offering formula this morning, I heard the cat flap. My own cat was asleep on my pillow at the time.¹ The neighbor's grey tabby, who has never once come inside in two years, walked past me, sat directly in front of Bast's statue on the bookshelf shrine, blinked at her slowly, then turned around and blinked at me. I finished the rite with a guest. Water, bread, incense (cone, ceramic dish, window cracked). When I reverted the offerings afterwards she accepted a small corner of the bread and left the way she came. ¹ I checked twice. Mine slept through the entire visit, which I am choosing to read as professional courtesy between cats. Dua Bast.

Same oak, same root, same muddy patch on the seat of my waterproof trousers. Forty weeks now of sitting here every Sunday for twenty minutes, counting birdsong. Today: robin, wren, two jackdaws arguing, a buzzard mewing far off, and a thin high song I didn't know until the app named it a goldcrest, which made me unreasonably happy. At the end I intone the awen three times, quietly, because there's a dog walker who already thinks I'm odd. I don't sit to get anything. I sit so the wood gets used to me. I think it's starting to.

Khernips before coffee

Morning routine on the balcony, now that Melbourne spring is finally behaving. I light a dry bay leaf from the stove, carry it to the sink, and drop it hissing into a bowl of water, then wash my hands and face in it. That's khernips, the purifying water the old Greeks used before approaching the gods. The hiss is my favourite sound of the day. Then the first flame for Hestia, a small oil lamp on the kitchen shelf, and a splash of watered wine into the potted olive for the household gods. The neighbour's lorikeets judge me loudly. I read ten lines of the Odyssey aloud, badly, and the day can begin. Small rites done every day beat grand rites done once a year. My yiayia said the same about phone calls.

Pappa's day, by our calendar

Our calendar has no leap years, so Pappa's anniversary creeps a little earlier through the English calendar every few years. This year it fell yesterday. The proper ceremonies were done for him by a priest at the Zoroastrian Centre in London, and I watched on my phone propped against the bread bin, scarf over my hair. At home I did what I know. Fresh oil in the divo (steel thali, nowhere near the curtains, as ever), a jar of white tuberoses, a cup of tea made the way he took it, far too sweet, and the Ashem Vohu and Yatha Ahu Vairyo for him, slowly, the way he taught me when I was six and fidgeting. He used to say prayers aren't for asking. They're for keeping the line open. So I kept the line open for an hour. Then I drank his tea, because he would have been offended if I'd poured it away.

The garden got tucked in today. Cut back the mint before it plots another invasion, pulled the spent beans, and packed straw around the rosemary with firm instructions to survive one more Vermont winter. It has heard this speech eleven times. What I don't cut anymore: the coneflower and black-eyed Susan heads. The goldfinches need them more than I need tidy. Forty years ago I'd have had every stem down and bagged. Forty years ago I was in a hurry. The johnny-jump-ups have seeded themselves into the cracks of the path again, right along the beds Walt built. I've stopped fighting them. Some blessings arrive where they please, and the best thing you can do is not step on them.

The choir tune that won't leave

Centering prayer is meant to be simple. Twenty minutes, one sacred word, and when you notice you've drifted into thoughts, you return ever so gently to the word. Thoughts are boats going down a river; you don't have to climb aboard. This week every single boat has been the alto line of the Advent anthem we're rehearsing. Twenty minutes, roughly forty returns, and I could sing you bars 12 to 30 in my sleep. Julian of Norwich would tell me this is fine. All shall be well, and all manner of descant shall be well. I return to the word. The altos return to bar 12. We carry on.

My 'just tell me what happens' spread

Half my clients sit down and say 'just tell me what's going to happen.' I don't do that, but I do have a spread for it. Three cards: 1. What you're holding onto. 2. What you're afraid to pick up. 3. What happens if you put the first one down. That third card does all the work. It turns a prediction into a decision. Yesterday a client pulled the Eight of Cups in position three, went very quiet, then said, 'Oh. I already know, don't I.' She did. They almost always do. Steal it, tweak it, tell me how it goes.

Quick care note, since it came up three times at the counter this week: not every stone likes water. Selenite will dull and pit, pyrite can rust, and please never soak malachite or put any stone in water you plan to drink. A night of moonlight on the windowsill suits all of them beautifully.

Dreaming in Latin binomials

Plant systematics midterm tomorrow, and last night a yarrow plant the size of a person sat on the end of my dorm bed and said, very slowly, 'Achillea. Millefolium.' Then it said it again in case I wasn't listening. I've been making flashcards for two weeks and apparently my brain has converted them all into houseguests. Pretty sure this is either studying working or a visitation from the entire Asteraceae family. Either way, I am not getting that one wrong.

Morning rune pull: Hagalaz. Hail, disruption. By noon the forge roof was leaking. Fixing it Saturday. The runes are not subtle in this house.

With the moon swelling toward full, I've been making moon milk after evening sessions: warm oat milk, a little cinnamon, one crushed cardamom pod, a pinch of turmeric for the color, and honey stirred in once it's off the heat. Whisk until frothy. I drink it on the back step with the porch light off so I can actually see the moon. Ten minutes, no phone, letting the day catch up with me. It doesn't do anything magical. It just reminds me I'm allowed to stop.

Quartz, from the engineer's side of the table

Something I find genuinely moving, as a skeptic: there's a tiny sliver of quartz in nearly every cheap watch on earth. Squeeze quartz and it produces a small voltage; apply a voltage and it vibrates at a remarkably steady frequency. That's the piezoelectric effect, and it's why your watch keeps time. I don't believe a quartz point is doing anything energetic when I hold it. But I've started keeping one on my desk anyway. When I'm stuck on a problem, I pick it up, and the weight and the cold and the clean geometry slow me down enough to think. Maybe that's all some people mean. Maybe it isn't. Either way, I'm less dismissive than I was a year ago, and that feels like progress.

Sleeping in the god's house, Melbourne edition

In the ancient world, people travelled to the sanctuaries of Asklepios, at Epidaurus, at Kos, purified themselves, made an offering, and slept in a special hall hoping the god would come to them in a dream. It's called enkoimesis, incubation. I am not at Epidaurus. I am in a one-bedroom flat in Brunswick with a sheepskin rug from IKEA. But I wanted to try a small, honest version. I wasn't asking about my body. That's what my GP is for, and Asklepios, son of Apollo the healer, would agree. I was asking about my brother. We haven't properly spoken in almost two years, over something stupid that grew into something big. So: a bath, clean clothes, a honey cake on the shrine and a short hymn read aloud (badly). The lamp was only lit for the prayer and blown out before bed. Then I slept on the rug beside the shrine, which my back has opinions about. I dreamt of a dog. A big, scruffy, yellow dog, very calm, who walked me down to a harbour that looked like Piraeus and sat beside me on the steps. That was all. We just sat. Dogs were kept at Epidaurus and were part of the god's sanctuary life. I knew that, but I didn't think of it until I was writing the dream down this morning. What I felt wasn't advice. It was the feeling of not needing to fix everything before sitting down beside someone. I texted my brother at lunch. Just an old holiday photo of that harbour and 'remember this?' He replied with three laughing faces and a photo of his own dog. It's a start.

Taught my granddaughter Lily to read tea leaves Sunday afternoon. Loose black tea with a pinch of dried chamomile from the garden, wide white cups, no strainer. Drink it down to a spoonful, swirl three times toward you with your left hand, turn it over onto the saucer, count to seven. Her cup had a very clear bird near the rim, which in my mother's book means news on its way, and soon. Mine had what I generously called a lantern and Lily called 'a trash can.' An hour later her best friend phoned to say she's moving back from Ohio. Lily now considers me a professional. I am not correcting her.

One stone every sabbat, twenty-two years

When I was initiated, my High Priestess gave me one piece of advice I've actually kept: at every sabbat, wherever you are, pick up a stone. Not a special one. Whatever's at your feet. Twenty-two years later it's a big glass jar on my altar, mostly hidden by cat hair. Gravel from a festival car park. A slate chip from Wales. A crumb of concrete from the hospital car park, the Samhain I spent in a waiting room. A perfect white pebble from the beach, the year my mother died. Samhain is a week away. I'll add one more, and before that I'll tip the whole jar out on the kitchen table and remember every single one. It's my book of shadows, in stone.

Bowing to the old maple

There's an old bigleaf maple on my walk to the bus, trunk thick with moss and licorice ferns, easily two hundred years old. I've bowed to it every morning since we moved to Seattle. My neighbors think I'm very polite to trees. I am. This morning there was low fog, and as I bowed, every leaf on the lowest branch let go at once. Not a gust. No wind at all. They just came down around me like someone emptying a basket. Back home, a tree like that would have a shimenawa rope tied around it. Here it has a parking sign. I don't think the kami minds. I stood there in the leaves feeling very much greeted.

The twins had a fight this morning over which of them 'owns' the blue cup. We have two blue cups. In the car I did what I've started doing on hard mornings: the loving-kindness phrases. May you be safe. May you be at peace. First for me (hardest). Then for each twin (easier, they were finally quiet). Then for the dad in the silver SUV who honked at me in the drop-off loop (hardest again, round three). By the end I was laughing a little. He was probably late too. His kids probably also own the same cup. Nam mô A Di Đà Phật, and may we all make it through this week.