Last night I walked home at dusk. The moon was a bowshot crescent in the dome of the sky, moving slowly westward.
The weather these last few days has been, for the most part, cold. Not terrible, by any stretch of the imagination, but definitely on the chilly end of things.
I don’t actually know what’s “seasonally normal” for these part, temperature-wise (although Monday’s snow is not all that unusual).
I think it’s neat how the leaves know. They don’t turn grey-brown and drop off in early spring the way they do in autumn, even with similar temperature fluxutations. I gather – though I can’t remember where I learned this – that a lot of plant growth has to do with daylight hours more than it has to do with temperature. (So the buds didn’t burst into leaf back in late March because, even though it was hot like July, we were hovering around the Equinox and it just wasn’t time yet).
Over at Adventures in Animism, Heather is talking about how Beltane is sometimes calculated according to when the Hawthorn trees bloom. Aparently they went blossom-wild around the 22nd of April in her part of the world.
Around here, they are sidling up to flowering and giving it the side-eye like “Yeah… I could do that…”. The serviceberries and black plums are already blooming. The (crab) apples and sour cherries are about where the hawthorns are at, and the lilacs aren’t far behind them. The magnolias, on the other hand, are all, like, “Girl, I am so far beyond blooming, you don’t even know. This showy stuff is just hanging around after the party”.
Hawthorn Corespondences:
Protection
Insight
Creativity
Self Confidence
Patience
Purification
Also good for:
Concealment spells, weather work, chastity, virility (if you’re a dude who wants kids), banishing the malicious, fishing(??), happiness, and fairy-related magic.
Since I went and snagged a hawthorn thorn (about 2″ long and wickedly, gorgeously sharp) off a local tree the other day – for the art project – my Plan is to work the thorn into the red yarn, along with a wodge of other ingredients, and then tie it somewhere suitable. Possibly near somewhere symbolic of women’s rights and protections.
Cheers,
Meliad the Birch Maiden
Urban Meliad 