I is for Irises and Informality: Beltane 2014 – Pagan Blog Project 2014

This is another “two for one” post. Bear with me. Bare with me. 😉
It’s Beltane today. The Siberean Irises are coming up (thense my choice of post-title), the scilla, crocuses, and daffodils are already blooming, and the serviceberries and magnolias are about to burst into bloom, too.
As I wrote, earlier, I celebrated the turning of the year, the shift from Dark to Light, from roots to shoots-and-fruits,v Day by getting groceries for the first time in a month.
I know. Very exciting. 😉
 
I’m on my own tonight. And it’s kind of a relief. My lovely wife is spending the night with one of her other partners. I decided not to go to a friend’s weekly drop-in pot-luck (unsteady stomachs will do that to me). I’m not reading tarot cards – though I should, and it’s the right time of year for it (they’re ALL the right time of year for it).
 
Tomorrow night, my lovely wife and I will be hitting up a concert featuring Heather Dale and SJ Tucker – and that’ll be part of our Beltane. Fabulous Friday Dinner will be postponed until Saturday so that we can bus over to the concert venue once my lovely wife gets off work. Saturday – here’s hoping – we’ll get to see my brother and his girlfriend, and we’ll be spending the afternoon having a quiet and casual get-together doing crafts. That’s when I’ll do the Fabulous Dinner. That’s when I’ll throw the turkey (two turkey thighs, specifically) in the oven and steam the beets and the (frozen, almost a year old at this point) greens, and boil the potatoes. That’s when we’ll share a glass of red wine. That’s when we’ll have the time to connect. Maybe we’ll read each other’s tarot cards then. Or maybe we’ll wait until Monday, when we get together with a friend or three for our regular group ritual.
 
What I’m getting at, here, is that my observance of the Feast Days is somewhat informal when it comes to the dates of observance. Part of that, of course, is living in a culture whose acknowledged feast days (the stat holidays, to use a more secular term) are from a religion not my own. (At least not anymore). Trying to swing a Major Dinner when half the participants have to be at work the next morning and had to be at work today, too, is a little more difficult – even when I have the luxury of working from home and being able to prioritize things however I want (usually). Part of it is the realities of poly. Thursday is (frequently) Ghost’s night with her NPPP, just as one example. Our co-ritualist is out of town, visiting her Main Squeeze for the weekend.
So I’m flexible on the dates where we mark things.
 
Happy Beltane.
TTFN,
Meliad the Birch Mainde.