Full Moon – Melt-Water Moon Crests

Wrote this last Monday, when the moon was full in Libra. As of this posting, Venus has juuuuust stationed direct again. Onwards we go!
 
~*~
 
It’s going to be 22C today! 😀 😀 😀
I wore my monster-fur coat to my temp job (I’m working close to home all week, and have a tonne of social things planned for the evenings!) and didn’t even have to do it up. I probably would have been fine with no coat at all!
 
My weekend is – weather permitting – going to involve a lot of raking and shoveling, turning the compost and getting the garden beds ready for planting! (And, possibly, doing some actual planting of things like kale and radishes and rainbow chard, since they can handle the cold weather and chilly-damp soil just fine). I’ve got a heap of sunchokes that I need to dig up so that the rhubarb has some breathing room, and I’ve also got a bunch of different peppers to seed-start indoors, courtesy of my wife’s dad. Jalapeno, Jimmy Nardella, and one other red bell that sounds like it would be good for salads.
 
Planting list for this weekend:
Tuscan Kale
Red Russian Kale(?)
Rainbow Chard
Snow Peas
French Breakfast Radishes
Daikon Radishes? (I’m thinking of doing these more as a “perimeter fence” around my in-ground bed in the interests of having fewer weeds get through and into my squash and eggplants bed.
 
I’ll plant peppers, eggplants, cherry tomatoes (if I don’t get a bunch of “volunteers”… unlikely), zucchini, fairy tale pumpkin, butternut winter squash, hopefully some “Baby Boo” (or other tiny “pumpkin”), and maybe some collards later on, but it’s cold-weather crops that are going in right now.
 
My other task this week, is putting together a care-package for someone who needs life to be just a little bit easier right now, and will probably make a point of doing a few freezer-meals for us, at the same time. As such, tonight is going to involve a certain amount of re-organizing the fridge and freezers (yes, both of them) so that I have adequate space to host a few lunch-sized and meals-for-two containers of various vegetarian delights. Menu List is: Pumpkin curry, macaroni and cheese, and some kind of harvest stew involving lots of root veggies. Even though I’m not “really” doing the Eat From the Larder Challenge this year – I will be buying coconut milk for this extravaganza, and have already bought two dozen eggs and a bag of coffee since the beginning of April – I’m pleased to say that I have enough salsa, crushed tomatoes, frozen pumpkin, frozen other veggies, fresh (well, in the fridge…) root veggies, and even CHEESE, that I only need to get in coconut milk to make my ingredients list for a few large-batch meals for someone else complete. And I’ll still have lots of frozen summer & winter squash, broccoli, and other goodies (beets, leafy greens, carrots, sunchokes (as’kebwan’), onions, cabbage…) to cook with for the rest of the month. Hurrah!
 
I feel like I’ve had a break-through. All that blogging about relationship juggling acts, and life coaching around boundaries, and magical-working around healing and nurturing my own (whale) heart[1], a year and a half of pushing and digging and swimming in all the Feeeeelings and… now I’m trying something very, very new. I feel like I’m having a Two of Cups experience, in the Kalil Jibran sense of “do not grow in each other’s shadows”, but also in the sense of “new connections” and sparks of recognition. Putting that boundary work into practice.
 
I’ve spent years asking myself “What do I want”, and frequently what I’ve wanted has been – to some, or all, extent – a thing beyond my control. I want this person or that person or those people to respond to me in XYZ ways. I still want those things. But I’m aware that hinging my potential happiness (or lack-there-of) on them… isn’t very effective, and will mostly just make me crazy[2]. So something I’ve started asking (myself) (the gods) for is that I be able to be happy with interpersonal circumstances as they are right now.
 
I admit I feel kind of sanctimonious saying that out loud. Like: If, a year ago, I’d read someone else writing what I just wrote? I would have thought “Well, that must be really nice for you, then, hm? Some of us aren’t totally dissociated from our emotions, fyi!”
 
But that’s part of the whole Whale Heart situation. My Whale Heart knows what it wants. But she doesn’t fling herself off the cliff of desire (I’m mixing metaphors, just… go with it) and blindly hope that someone else will catch her before she smashes on the rocks. There’s a whole lot of careful negation of “what is so-and-so able to give at this time?” + “What do I need to do and NOT do in order to enjoy receiving what they’re making available, rather than feeling used or taken advantage of when they aren’t able/willing to meet me at the more intense level at-which I’m generally operating?”
 
And… look, it’s not like this is a fool-proof method to “be brave without getting hurt” or something. People lie – or variations on the theme of “lie”, if you want to go with something a little less harsh – when they’re afraid they won’t get what they want/need if they don’t tell people what they think those people want to hear. People have crap self-knowledge and think they’re ready to offer way more than they actually are, and then get overwhelmed when someone takes them at their word. People make active decisions to cross their own boundaries (because they’re lonely or because they think X Experience is going to be sweet enough that they’ll just deal with the repercussions afterwards) and underestimate the damage they’ll do to themselves in the process[3]. People are bad at communicating and cross wires with each other all the time. So it’s not like this can’t go completely pear-shaped. But it helps. I can ask myself what I need to do, and not do, in order to:
 
– Enjoy the kind of sex-life that’s available with a grey-A spouse
 
– Avoid over-investing in a friendship-with-benefits that may or may not grow into something else over time
 
– Maintain a friendship with someone who is consistently terrible at making, and following-through on, plans
 
– Have a hook-up with a long-time friend and still be “just friends” (rather than love-sick) the next day
 
…Because the answer isn’t, and can’t be “want less”. But it might be “offer less” or “offer differently”. If my (technically still on-going) Queen of Cups Project has taught me anything, it’s that wanting less – having fewer or lighter appetites, teaching myself to believe that crumbs are a feast – is a sure-fire way to mess with my head and starve my heart to pieces.
 
So. I pace myself. I go slowly. I tidy my garden and start my seeds and cook good, “real” food in my kitchen that I try to keep functional. I say Thank You to my gods and ancestors. I scribble. I reflect. I take careful risks which, small miracle, are so far having surprisingly lovely results.
 
Spring has sprung.
What do I want to plant for myself?
How do I want to grow?
 
 
~*~
 
 
Movement: Ha! I hurt my hip pretty badly about a week ago. The bruise is spectacular. But it means I’ve been going reeeeally easy on the “movement” part of my life. Even with a fair bit of walking, I’ve been calculating just how much walking it’s wise for me to do on a given day. I spent a lot of the last few days sitting down (in cars, in a curling “lounge” during a friend’s game, at my desk in between half-hour spurts of Getting Things Done on my feet). I’m lucky, my injury is all in the muscle and healing up nicely.
 
Attention: Watching for scilla, crocuses, and other early flowers opening up in sunny, south-facing spots. Makes me want to plant a heap of super-early bulbs along the north fence in my back yard… but that will have to wait until October. For now? I watch and I thrill every time I see buds opening and flowers blooming! 😀
 
Gratitude: Grateful for my lovely wife who gives me lots of snuggles and kisses, the exciting new person in my life, flowers(!), hang-outs & conversations with friends, being able to wear sandals today(!), my casis-coloured faux-fur coat that I only get to wear for about two weeks a year, and this is one of those weeks, lazy mornings that let me catch up on sleep, enough food that I can share with other people, rainy days that soak the thawed-out soil and help it get ready for news seeds, sunny days that bring me tonnes of hope and joy, the rhubarb making it through another winter (all of it, by the looks of things!), pepper seeds from my FiL, other people interested in tarot, free time to spend on knitting, the small blue bird who plays games with me on the living room floor, music, a pay-cheque for this week’s work, the chance to watch the moon set through the guestroom window.
 
Inspiration: Tarot’s suite of earth. Venus in retrograde (yes, really). Compost. My writer-friends who are always doing so much. ❤
 
Creation: Two knitting projects on the go – still working on the (cobalt blue) extensions for a pair of (beige, fishnet) stockings, sorting out how to do the toe. Heel up next… or maybe I’ll start the second stocking and go from there. Also working on a “sample” of a sock pattern. Next steps there are (a) finish the sock (taper off the heel gusset + knit in the round, then decrease to make the toe), then (b) knit an actual PAIR of socks for the lovely wife. 🙂 Have promised myself an hour of creative writing on Wednesday evening, plus further scribbling over the course of this week. I want to re-prioritize my writing, so that I can actually get a manuscript (maybe even two?) finished. Rawr!
 
~*~
 
 
TTFN,
Meliad the Birch Maiden.
 
 
[1] I am absolutely getting those earrings – or a smaller version there-of – btw. Can’t wait! 😀
 
[2] Like actual crazy. Panic attacks and exacerbated mental health crap. That kind of crazy.
 
[3] Not that I’ve been considering anything like that at all… >.>