A weekend of witchy maintenance...

What a weekend....after raining, and raining and raining Friday night, Saturday burst forth with excessive sunshine and happy feelings which of course made me perky as all hell despite a bit of over-indulgence Friday night.  Sometimes when  you're having fun with friends and getting in a good quality visit, you just have to stay up until there is no beer left LOL

Saturday morning was spent doing the most random of projects. I froze the rose water i made last weekend in 1/2 cup servings so it will stay fresh for my next batch of lotion making, the daily calendulas were picked and i gave the rose scented geranium a much needed hair cut.  Now i have the extra leaves drying on the screen so they can be used in sachets eventually. They smell so good! I emptied and washed jars, rearranged the product closet and got things ready for the next round of garden fertilizing. I also put all my crystals (except the fluorite) outside to charge up in the sun.

Then...oh then....the child had a birthday party and the husband was out building a bridge at my mothers...and I had TIME ALONE! in my house for the first time, I think, since I had the flu back in 2009.  It was wonderful! I was in pagan nerd heaven, sitting at the table on the deck surrounded by research books, papers, notebooks, rocks and paints. I was finally able to take the time to go through all my Hecate material and put together my ideas for a garden altar dedicated to her. I even took a picture....

I am completely amused with using our beagle statue to stand guard over it. His name is Francois. One of Hecate's animals is the hound, so I thought it was be appropriate. I feel like he's standing there waiting to bay at the moon and the night sky.  Shortly after I put this together, the real hound, Scooter, walked himself right through the center of the altar and presented himself for petting while standing over it.  Whether this could be construed as a blessing or just a typical beagle being nosy and wanting his ears scratched, I'll never know.  I'd like to think of it as a little of both.  I like having a place to sit and commune with my garden now, and also a place to leave an offering. I picked flowers to leave on my other two small altars in the house as well.

All this has also inspired me to finally get to a few tasks out there that i have been putting off. In an effort to "kill a little time" Sunday morning, i ended up going through the herb garden roughing up all the soil, pulling the weeds and generally just making it look better and happy and then i finally added the composted manure around all the herbs to give them a little boost. And then i reseeded half of the backyard with grass  seed all over and the last of the clover seed in the larger bare spots. Grass doesn't grow all that well in my yard...too many acidic trees. But with all the rain this year, a grass growing miracle seems to have happened. So i figured I'd throw down more and see how it goes. Toes and fingers crossed that something will come out of it!
Sunday night found me digging out an old journal, from back when i was 19 or 20 and first started getting into paganism. It was amusing to see what my frame of mind was back then, and also to see how my views have changed now that I'm approaching 34. I ended up keeping what i thought was the pertinent information in there, various lists i had wrote, rune meanings, colors etc and have turned it into a garden journal. I've started writing out all the plants that i am currently growing and their properties and correspondences, both magical and mundane. My intent is to keep better track of what is going on in my yard, in the hopes of finding better ways to grow things, what works, what doesn't, etc.
All in all, it was a weekend to be thankful for...and I'm hoping to continue the good vibes through the whole week, especially since this week leads into vacation week!