N is for Nest – Pagan Blog Project 2013

This post could have just as easily gone under “H is for Hearth/Home”, “K is for Kitchen Witch”, or even “D is for Domesticity”. Which should give you a good idea of what I’m going to be talking about today.
 
I’m a home-body. I’m enough of a home-body that, when my land-line phone died, I waited a couple of weeks before replacing it. (I now have a new, cordless, landline which, for some reason, still isn’t working. I’m wondering if maybe my old phone worked fine, and that it’s the jack and the Bell Guys mucking about in the room next door that are the problem). I’m an introverted enough that People are fequently overwhelming. But I’m also social enough that I love entertaining in my home. Being a broke chick who loves to cook anyway, it’s a good way to see people without (a) having to spend (much) money, or (b) having to sort out how to get home after the party. The end result here is that I’m very “hearth focused”, as Miss Sugar would put it.
 

My practice, such as it is, has always moved between the garden, the kitchen, and the table. While I’m not entirely sure that I can claim a direct link between my making my own yoghurt (bread is different) and soup stock and my relationship with my gods, I know that my interest in, and increasing dedication to, eating locally-and-in-season is directly related to my wanting to cultivate (ha!) a relationship with the land I live on. I know that, when I grow my own food, eat (and make) dairy products, and fish (however ineffectually), I am following (in a small way) in the footsteps of many of my ancestors, including most of the ones I met in life (my Mom’s side of the family is mostly farmers, although that’s changing with my generation; my Dad’s side stopped farming about five genrations ago, but my dad was an angler and a trapper from early on).
 
I have the feeling that part of why my Mattaer wanted boiling water as an offering is because it involves using the most basic elements of “kitchen”, of “haerth”: a pot on the stove; a cauldron over the fire.
 
Right now, since I don’t have a garden (and my efforts to container-garden food plants indoors are… failing miserably. I can’t tell if I’m over-watering or underwatering or what… It sucks), I’m currently focusing a little more on the edible plants in my neighbourhood, on gathering them, on making sure they don’t go to waste (I’ve said that I’m fair serviceberry’d out, but… I keep picking them. Heaven and Earth know nobody else is…), and on saying Thank You for the bounty and the sustainence and, frankly, the delicous free food that my gods (in their capacity as trees, earth, sun, rain, and growth/change, respectively) are bringing us. 🙂
I’m also trying (to some degree) to keep our home – our nest – in better working order (tidying more frequently being the main way that this is coming about) even as we look for a new place to call home[1].
 
And so there you have it. My post on my Nest.
 
 
TTFN,
Meliad the Birch Maiden. 🙂
 
 
[1] Yes, we’re starting to look for a detatched/semi-detatched/town house to rent. It’ll mean a rise in monthly expenses (most rental houses around here, as far as I can tell, don’t come with utilities included), but it’ll also mean outdoor garden space(s) for me, fewer (I hope) Insect Problems, the potential for outdoor dining in Summer, slightly more privacy, and laundry machines that aren’t pay-per-use. All of which I think would be good. 🙂