maybe my personal calendar, as in, an interior calendar, has only two "pages"… maybe August.
August has always been, since a child, a very intensly felt month. No matter where i've been. and this morning, the URGE finally came to get the dye pots going
Mexican Elderberrys in copper
my first bundle ever. in Walnut juice, cast iron pan
Mexican Elderberry leaves with iron ring for good measure in copper pot
and the Indigo vat. the vat that sat.
personal calendars are always about urge, aren’t they?
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yes. and i am looking at this. to accept that i have two Points
on that personal calendar. August, always, and i can leave it’s
accepted name, August, there…. and then the other one which is
when things Begin. which differs each year, but would be called
Spring. which i think i might just call Warm.
so…August and Warm
two pages that contain all the days of that Circle of Sun coming
and going then coming again.
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lots of dyepots, so wonderful. now you have to wait, poor thing ;o)
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look at that!
i struggle with august- as an end, as the announcement of change. the school year having defined my life for so long, for a little while longer.x
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i was just in the shower where i get some of my best inSights and now reading this…you give the word: defined.
yes. so many outer things Define. artificially?
in the shower, how it started was…”well, what about
my calendar ritual on New Year’s Eve??????!!!!
and then it was that, uhhhh, maybe the pages and days don’t matter anymore. it’s just the flow between these
two points and circling again. like breathing, maybe.
August to me is maybe like the ripening, the Fullness
being made known. it’s more. but i need to think about it.
oxo
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maybe not long. SUN here is still VERY hot….and
i don’t need a lot of intensity in the cloth. or do I?
i already took out the cloth wrapped on a strip of
copper from the indigo vat, which, tho sitting, has kept
it’s integrity. i need to feed her.
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oh I envy your pots and your heat to get them going; but you have reminded me, we have elderberries here so I’ll be starting a pot or two wednesday morning…i’ve been rather lazy dye-wise.
August is a good month for me, our youngest was born on the first (14 years ago), can’t beat that and many of our friends’ birthdays are in August, so we have lots of parties, a real sense of getting together and celebrating…it feels good
by the way: those pots are beautiful!!
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The waiting begins… 🙂
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I think there is a bittersweet quality to August. Like Cindy, I’ve been involved in schools my whole life, so it’s like an ending and a beginning all wrapped up together. I really like your idea of things just ‘flowing’ one to the other as in days gone by when we all lived much closer to the land, to nature.
Rhythms are the key to self-knowledge
and to knowledge of our surroundings.
They put all life into a timely perspective.
-Edward Ayensu & Phillip Whitfield
When you say “Circle of Sun coming” I pictured your new one woman of many…perhaps looking towards the sun! 🙂
All the sun long I was running…
-Dylan Thomas
Welsh Poet and Writer, 20th Century
I have lots of sun/heat here, but have emptied the scraps that were the dye pots as my elderly neighbor was feeling concerned about mosquitoes and west nile. Her immune system is somewhat compromised. Two days after I emptied the big wash tub a 12 inch white owl was found dead, 2 doors down (at the house of the big redwoods I always post)- it tested positive for west nile. It has made me nervous about the dye pots, to fill ’em all up again.
Your posts always lead me to pondering.
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i don’t really know, but my good guess is that mosquitoe larvae
wouldn’t be able to live in a dye environment. you could cover
them? i think that i would just continue where she can’t see them.
but i don’t know….
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Oh! Grace, this looks great…I am inspired.
Going on two week trip to Iceland next week. I have promised myself that I will start a couple of dye pots when I come back. I know where I can get black walnuts 🙂
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i tried the berries once before and they came to naught.
trying again. the LEAVES do things. but i think that
was in an aluminum pot????? where did That go????
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yes. good old Waiting.
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“my whole life”….ok…here’s a thought.
because it’s always been that way, does it mean it needs to stay that way?
it CAN [if you love it]. OR , it can maybe be something
entirely or partly Different?
i guess a question might be, do we want Forever the Same?
or maybe something different.
Something Different does not negate what always was. That
can Remain. it’s just Different. New. Changed.
i guess i have always opted for Changed.
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yes…your trip back to one of your HOMES….
and the dye pots…they can be heated. i am just
stubborn about only using Sun heat.
I am SO happy to have found that source of walnuts. this week i’ll go for more.
if you are not back before…have SUCH a wonder Full trip!!!
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Check the goat pens!
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I like August because it is not July! In July, I have 2 birthdays – son and grandson, who I may never see again to my continuing sorrow – and a few other personal milestones (millstones) around my neck. I absolutely love the idea of just moving between significant points (say, August and Warm) without days and weeks and months etc, so freeing. For me, my birthday was always special – because in a large family there were no parties or gifts but it was MY day and I could call the shots e.g. no arguments (ha!). So April and also New Year is somehow shiny and new and special. Of course there are other celebrations but life is more than that. Having no job for which I get paid, the passage of light and darkness is all, everything fits into that framework and there should be no rush, just a progression from one spot to another.
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August THIS year has me feeling so out of it. Is it the AC and indoor time? Is it the sun rounding through my twelfth house, activating Pluto, who lords it over my Ascendant?! My mother’s birthday, the 11th? I don’t know. I am waiting for September, hoping I will land.
As usual, the activity here inspires. The going, the doing, the not-doing, and mostly, the accepting.
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yes. some months are heavy with other people
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seriously…it COULD be the AC/indoor time. that kind
of thing causes me to feel un grounded.
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I know, it’s kind of awful. Fortunately, I could open up yesterday, and now it rains. Oh the sound…. the air….
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i’m more than a little crazy that way. the swamp cooler runs here
when it’s in the 90s but i still need to have the door open…
can’t bear the disconnect. and doors/windows open all night.
it’s part of what’s hard when the cold days come…closing up,
covering leaky windows etc. i should live under a stone.
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this is a beautiful post, and the comments are so engaged and engaging–I love coming here. to look, to read, to think, to be inspired
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and i love that you come.
and to think that your feet have felt the earth of
Mongolia
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windthread 
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