Tag: land spirits
HSA Webinar: Fairy Gardens Throughout the Ages (and How to Make Your Own)
By Julie Bawden-Davis
Long before humans roamed the forests, fairies are said to have taken up residence in the cavities of trees, forming fairy houses where they took refuge. Dating back to the Middle Ages, fairy folklore says that these little beings possess supernatural powers.
Many believe that fairies come from the elements—in fact, from Mother Nature herself. For that reason, it makes sense to add fairies to your garden. Even better, adding fairy gardens to your landscape elevates the magic and mystery of your landscape.
How to Make Your Own Fairy Garden
Whether you believe in fairies or not, anyone can make their very own fairy garden. A wide variety of herbs work well in these mini wonderlands. In fact, the diminutive nature of some herbs, like thyme and oregano, makes them fairy garden favorites.
To create your own container fairy garden using herbs and fairy garden accessories, keep…
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Lost in the Sods
When I was pre-teen, I’d go with my grandparents to Dolly Sods to harvest huckleberries.
By Chrissy Moore
I have a bumper sticker on my car that reads: “I’d rather be lost in the Sods than found in the city.” A friend introduced me to the Dolly Sods Wilderness Area in West Virginia back when I was in college (and back when few people ever ventured that far outside of Washington, DC), and I have been hiking in the West Virginia mountains ever since. They are truly special in so many respects.
One of the main reasons I consider the WV mountains so special is because of the abundant, and often unique, native plants found on the mountain tops and down in the hollers. I am one of those plant nerds that can’t stop hunting for plants, even while on vacation. (What can I say? It becomes an obsession after a while.) Identifying plants in the wild is entertaining enough, but as an herb gardener…
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Druid Tree Workings: Witnessing the Death of an Old Tree
Oak friend – one of my first interactions with this incredible friend and mentor
Many of us on the path of nature spirituality grow close to trees–so very close. What happens when a tree that you love dearly, who is a good friend and mentor–tells you that it is time to go? In this post, I share the story and passing of one of my dear tree friends, a White Oak with a giant burl. After I share the story, I offer some general thoughts about how we, as humans, can support and honor the natural lifespan of our tree friends. This post is meant to be a compliment to my earlier post: Holding Space and Helping Tree Spirits Pass. My earlier post talked about trees who were cut before their time–while this post honors those who have the privilege of living a full life and dying naturally.
The…
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Putting the Garden to Sleep: End of Season Activities and Rituals
The day before the first hard frost. Our garden is still bountiful as the Butzemann watches over all….As the darkness continues to grow deeper on the landscape, it is high time to consider how to put the garden to rest for the winter and honor the garden that has offered you so much bounty and joy for the season. I actually find this one of my favorite gardening activities of the year, both on a metaphysical and physical level. There’s something special about “tucking” your garden in after a productive growing season and knowing that the land will go fallow and rest as the cold and ice come. Here are both the physical activities and sacred activities that you can do to help put your garden to rest.
Do note that my timings are based on the temperate climate in Western Pennsylvania, USDA Zone 6A. You can adapt appropriately based…
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Sacred Actions: Doing our Bit in the World
Sacred action is all about us learning how to align our outer lives with our inner core of nature spirituality and connectedness, and ultimately, help us live more regeneratively and with care. Sacred action is about doing small, slow things in our own lives to better align with our sacred nature-based spiritual practices and the living earth. It is through these seemingly mundane changes that we create a better today, a better tomorrow, and a better world.
Sacred Actions – A new graphic for the Sacred Actions wheel of the year
Sacred refers to things that are connected, meaningful, reverent, or somehow tied to our sense of the spiritual or the divine. Most of the time, this word is used in relation to things that are not part of mundane life: these are the special moments, ceremonies, or spiritual insights that impact us deeply. When we experience a sense of…
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Sacred Gardening: A Druid’s Spiritual Approach to Weeding and Clearing Plants
A shrine for the spirits of nature in a new outdoor kitchen area
Druids revere all nature as sacred–but what happens when you need to weed your garden? What happens when you need to clear a new area for a project where lots of things are growing? Is there a way to clear plants or trees honorably and with reverence? In fact, there certainly is! In today’s post, I’ll walk through some simple suggestions for how to weed and clear plants respectfully and with reverence. This is all part of my philosophy of Sacred Action, or bringing earth-honoring, care-oriented activities into our every day life (if you are interested in this concept, check out my Sacred Actions book!). This is part of what sacred gardening, creating a true Druid’s garden, is all about!
Our big project this year was starting to build an wood-fired, naturally built outdoor kitchen with…
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Cultivating Resilience as a Physical and Spiritual Practice
Staghorn Sumac: A tree that teaches us about resilience
Resilience is a term I first learned as a permaculture practitioner–resilient ecosystems are those that are able to withstand hardship, recover quickly when faced with difficulty, and had a capacity to endure. In other words, a resilient ecosystem can withstand drought, flooding, or other difficulties by being adaptable, flexible, and having redundancies. Which of course, is so critical in today’s ever-changing world fraught with climate change and instability. Resilient plants are the often-maligned weeds: those weeds who take every opportunity to grow: who find a crack in the sidewalk and take root, who immediately start to grow after disruption, or who outcompete less resilient plants. They are able to be like weeds or opportunistic species, taking advantage of new opportunities, finding niches, and gracefully adapting to change. Think of the dandelion here, growing up through cracks in the sidewalk. This same…
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Sacred Actions: Living the Wheel of the Year Through Earth-Centered Sustainable Practices
Sacred Actions book!
I’m really excited to announce that my new book through REDFeather / Shiffer Publishing is now availableo! The Book is titled Sacred Actions: Living the Wheel of the Year Through Earth-Centered Sustainable Practices. I wanted to give you an introduction to the book and the concepts behind the book. If you’ve been reading the blog for any length of time, you’ll see a great deal of familiarity: my explorations and writing on this blog shaped this book, although the book goes well beyond the blog. In a nutshell, Sacred Actions presents a hybridization of nature spirituality, sustainable living, and permaculture practices and ethics. I can’t wait to introduce it to you in today’s post!
Order in the US or UK from the Publisher (available now). Pre-order from Amazon (US) or Amazon (UK). Pre-Order in Australia from Booktopia.
As I’ve written on this blog before…
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Sacred Trees in the Americas: American Hazel (Corylus americana) Magic, Ecology, and Sacred Uses
American Hazelnuts in a cluster getting ready to ripen
For three years, I have had my eye on our American hazel bushes here at the homestead. When we first moved to the property, much of the understory was damaged with the logging the previous owners did and it took time for the hazels to recover. Thus, for the last few years, I’ve watched the hazels grow taller and larger each year and kept looking excitedly for any signs of nuts setting. This past fall, I was delighted to find handfuls of delicious wild American hazelnuts and connect with the incredible wisdom that they offer.
While Hazel is a critically important tree in the mythology and magical tradition of Druidry and in Europe more broadly, The Hazel is one of the sacred trees identified by the druids as a tree tied to wisdom and the flow of Awen, and it is…
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