Not long ago, I wrote about the family of starlings that had pretty much taken over. A squawping mass of tiny kicks, punches, flung food, and babies that would walk up and demand to be fed by anything that moved (and a few things that didn’t).
While they were fun to watch, they also seemed to drive away a lot of the other birds that visited me — especially the crows. Given how much energy I’d put into building a relationship with my local crows, this bummed me out. Still, I knew that starlings aren’t forever, and it wouldn’t be long before they’d join a migratory murmuration and the yard would be peaceful once again.
At that point, I figured, I could try attracting crows again. They might not bethesamefamily that I’d growntolove, but I knew this area was hospitable to breeding populations of crows and would easily become so again.
Anyhow, the starlings have gone on their yearly vacation. I discovered this when I woke up the other morning to big, black shadows passing over the skylight. I went to investigate, and what to my wondering eyes should appear but…
The view from my Handsome Assistant’s office. Not shown: The other six crows at the feeder on the other side of the deck.
All of the crows. At the same time.
I knew it was the same group because they have a handful of pretty visually and behaviorally distinct individuals. They scrapped over cat kibble, raisins, nuts, and fancy organic peanut butter cereal (which is apparently a very hot commodity among corvids). I went outside to refill the feeders once they’d nearly wiped them out, and they flew off to the roof, waited for me to finish, and immediately swooped back to resume feeding.
It feels nice. As far-fetched as it seemed, there was always a nagging fear that I’d done something wrong somehow. Something to drive them away. Crows are intelligent, perceptive creatures, and I’ve heard stories of them spurning people for things like imitating the wrong crow calls. It’s good to have some confirmation that it wasn’t me — if anything, it seems like they’d been champing at the bit to get back and hang out.
It was also great to see how much they remembered. In the beginning, they’d fly off when I went outside. Things got to the point where they’d hop to the roof, at most, and wait for me to fill the feeders. Sometimes, if I was sitting down on the deck, they’d land near me to eat anyhow. Despite their hiatus, they still aren’t afraid. A couple flaps to perch on the roof, or the fence, or the shed, and they’re content to wait patiently and watch me put more food down.
I hope everyone had a good autumnal equinox, as rainy and chilly as it may have been!
Friday saw my Handsome Assistant and I hurriedly packing — he’d had to work and wasn’t able to get time off, and I’d spent most of Thursday processing fruits and vegetables and baking things. So, we pretty much grabbed whatever seemed like it’d come in handy for camping, shoved it in the car, and zoomed off.
A few hours later, we were driving down winding roads through the forest during golden hour, looking at the Shenandoah Mountains bathed in that soft orange light and listening to the wind through the trees. I couldn’t help myself — I turned on The Hu, and I turned it up.
We pulled into the campground moments later, windows down and music blaring, and hopped out to use the bathroom before going to find our group. There was a handful of people standing by one of the cabins in the distance, so we cheerfully strode up to them to discover that they were actually complete strangers. Baffled strangers. Slightly disturbed strangers.
“Um. Is this the MeetUp group…?” I asked.
“… No. This is a Lutheran Youth Group.”
“… Oh. Sorry. Mybadgottagobye!”
A few more moments and a short drive later, we found our actual campground.
After this minor slipup, the rest of the weekend passed with feasting (so much feasting), singing, chanting, poems, stories, a bonfire, divination, and rain (so much rain).
We stayed in a cabin affectionately called the Murder Cabin. Oddly enough, this was called the Murder Cabin before I discovered that one of the bunks had what appeared to be a bloodstain (it was not. We discovered this after a friend realized it looked too shiny to be blood and tentatively touched it. It was still wet and slightly oily, and we both jumped back shouting, “Oh God! Oh no! Oh God! Oh God!” One of our other friends woke up in the middle of the night to discover that he was sharing his bunk with a family of fieldmice, and I feel like fieldmice are too cute to just hang out in a Murder Cabin.)
I’d stayed in a cabin just like this as a kid, when I went to summer camp one year. I knew that they fit a twelve-year-old reasonably well but wasn’t entirely sure how well they’d fit one jacked, full grown human man and a smaller, more gremlin-style human at the same time. We’d brought our tent but forgot a second sleeping bag and the air mattress. As a result, we both crammed into a single sleeping bag, in a single bunk, and he ended up with his butt out the window and the beginnings of hypothermia. (I, however, felt fine and toasty where I was, nestled in the sleeping bag with him as a draft blocker.)
I always feel energized by being in the woods with friends. At events like this, I honestly rarely sleep. The first WickerMan I went to, I stayed up for three days then went home and absolutely crashed for a day and a half. This was no different — Handsome Assistant and I stayed up until about threeish every evening, only going back to the cabin once everyone else was ready to go back to theirs, too. (The first night, we accidentally dropped his heavy leather coat from the top bunk and startled one of our bunkmates awake, but they were very good-natured about it.)
I didn’t drink, which was probably good. I’m the kind of drunk who immediately starts complimenting strangers, telling people I love them, and becoming Eternal Best Friends with people whose names I may or may not actually remember in the morning. Also, I get terrible hangovers. I did, however, enjoy some herbal medicine and enough sugar to send a hummingbird into a diabetic coma. (These things are probably connected.)
The Mabon ritual was beautiful. It was originally planned for outdoors, but there was a ton of rain and a big drop in temperature, so we moved it into a pavilion instead. We sang and chanted, taking turns going to a meditation tent for some solitary reflection and relaxation. When we each returned, we took a small wooden lantern as a reminder of the light that we’d each carry within us through the dark months.
Afterward, there was a feast. I’d brought pumpkin bread, strawberry scones, a vegan quiche, and vegan queso and chips, but the only things that had survived the previous day were the scones, so I put them out alongside the other dishes. Handsome Assistant grilled venison and bison burgers and brought homemade blackberry mead, someone had made a gorgeous salad with pecans, apples, greens, and pomegranate, there were black and white cookies (perfect for the equinox), breads, cheeses, fruits, salads, and just so much beautiful food.
One of the completely unironically fun things about this gathering was that it was two separate groups. On one hand, there were the Druids. On the other, there were the pan-Pagans, with more of a Witchy vibe. It was just neat seeing the similarities and differences in cultures and practices. Kind of a “fancy” versus “feral” groove, in the best way. As someone who has identified with both Druids and Witches at various points, I can see why I ended up on the path of Druidry.
After the ritual, the rain stopped for a bit. A friend built a fire, and those of us who didn’t go to bed early went out to stand around it, tell jokes and stories, and get warm and dry again. (An awning had dumped what felt like a cup of water down the back of my neck, so I was turning like a person-shaped pile of döner kebab to make sure I got evenly dry and toasty.)
This same friend remarked that he was sad that the weekend was almost over. I agreed. Even though it’d been cold and rainy, the laughing, the camaraderie, and the connection was just so awesome. I pointed out that, while it was almost over, it was also a day closer to next year’s.
And that’s what it’s about, right? Recognize the turning of the year. We’re heading into the cold days, but that just means that there’s an entire spring and summer ahead in the future. Just like I came home and crashed for seventeen (!) hours straight, I’ll have a restful winter and be ready to run amok again.
See, I thought I’d learn stuff about soil composition and companion planting. I kind of did the former, if by “learning about soil composition” you mean “discovering that this soil is almost entirely hard clay, good luck.” I have developed strong opinions about mulch, however.
If I had to sum up the two biggest lessons that I’ve learned in my first full year of being responsible for an entire yard, they’d go something like this:
1. If I plant native (or near-native) plants, everything pretty much takes care of itself.
As part of my current course of Druid studies, I’m required to plant and tend a tree (or, lacking a tree, another, smaller plant). I began this study pretty much right after my Handsome Assistant and I planted an Eastern redbud in the front (formerly grass) plot. I was given the okay to use that tree, so that’s what I’ve been working with.
The lesson is supposed to involve building a relationship from planting, watering, and helping a young tree become established, to watching it grow. To be honest, I think I’ve watered this tree maybe three times over several months. It’s native to the area. It’s fine with this soil. It’s putting out new branches and beautiful, heart-shaped leaves on a nearly daily basis.
This seemed a bit like cheating, so I thought I’d start a smaller, auxiliary tree. I wasn’t sure what to plant at first, but the birds made that decision for me: There are an abundance of mulberry sprouts, courtesy of the crows and other birds. They didn’t enjoy being moved, but are doing just fine with minimal intervention. My takeaway here if that if I have to carefully nurture a plant, it probably isn’t the right one. Nature, even transplanted nature, doesn’t really need as much intervention as one might assume.
2. It’s not so much a garden as it is a kind of potluck.
As for the potluck… I’ve mentioned all of the pumpkins in previous entries. (They’ve made for some amazing pumpkin bread.) There’re also sprigs of various kales popping up random places where they were certainly not planted, a thriving bush of bright orange cherry tomatoes, the aforementioned mulberry bushes, and what appears to be a chia plant.
Really, it seems like I don’t actually have to worry about planting fruits and vegetables myself. If I help make this place welcoming enough, tiny guests will show up and bring food. That food may not always show up where I anticipate it, but it flourishes, and I end up with more than enough to share.
The plants here have mostly gone to seed, so the pollinator garden is as full of birds as it is bees and butterflies. I have no idea what horticultural surprises next spring and summer may hold, but I’m excited to find out!
In case you missed the first part of our adventure, you can find it here!
We showed up promptly at 11:10 AM, still unsure of what we were getting into. Once we stepped out of the car, we were almost spoiled for choice — there was a small sculpture garden immediately in front of us, with some very lovely statuary.
Including a very modest David.
Signs directed us to the Dinosaur Park, which we eagerly followed. They led us past more statuary, into an area populated by large, brightly colored dinosaur statues. They were kept in their own pens made up of neatly trimmed hedges and garden fences, interspersed with large, bright mushrooms, a vintage carousel horse, and a spiraling labyrinth that ended in a gazebo at the center of it all.
Along the edges, the border between “Dinosaur Park” and “Sculpture Garden” got a bit blurry.
Outside of the Dinosaur Park, the grounds were immaculately kept and full of flowers. There were ponds covered in bright pink and white water lilies, and bushes spangled with flowers and butterflies.
Also snail royalty.A closer look at a similar sphinx throne in a different material. I’ll be honest, I kind of want one to put under the maple tree in the back.
Everywhere we walked seem to have something new to look at, to an almost disorienting degree. I know the outdoor area wasn’t that big, but we did manage to get turned around here and there.
There was even a large stand of bamboo guarded by a pair of stone Imperial lions.
What was most interesting, however, was the mix of materials. Some of the more whimsical statuary was made of cast concrete or gaily-painted fiberglass, but many of the larger pieces were carved stone. Take a close look at the pair of busts in the image below — all of the armor, clothing, et cetera is made of carefully fitted-together stone. None of it is painted. There were pieces in alabaster, marble, quartz, and granite, all of them uniquely beautiful.
Once we were done getting lost in labyrinths and jumpscared by the occasional clown statue, we headed inside. The bulk of the antique shop was in a large barn, about half of which was taken up by a workshop.
The first floor was a dinner party set for invisible guests. The walls were hung with heavy curtains in silk and velvet, punctuated with carved stone statues. These, like the busts above, wore outfits of carefully selected and fitted-together stone, cut and carved so their graceful limbs could show through.
Of to the side, there was a selection of brass candelabras, smaller sculptures, and stained glass.
In the center, there was a large, broad staircase. The top was dark — dark enough that I wondered if it was actually off-limits. There didn’t really seem to be anyone there other than us and a handful of employees… did anyone even know we were there?
Eventually, our curiosity got the better of us. We quietly crept up the stairs, though there were no lights and the temperature seemed to grow more oppressive with every step.
I was very glad we had.
The top floor of the barn was absolutely full of treasures. Carved four-poster beds hung with silk brocade. Velvet chaises. Oil paintings the size of my bedroom, framed in gold leafed baroque style. Panels upon panels of stained glass.
Everything in this picture is about two hundred years old and worth more money than I will ever see.
The only light came from a large window at the front. The sunlight streamed down through it onto a grand piano, illuminating dust motes that sparkled like glitter. There was also a pair of life-sized sculptures holding massive, branching lamps of brass and crystal.
This is probably my favorite picture I’ve ever taken of anything.
At one point, I think I saw the owner. He passed through the room swiftly, so I didn’t get a good look — just a glimpse of his back and a faint whiff of oakmoss and vetiver.
My Handsome Assistant attempted to track someone down, and did manage to talk to one of the employees for a bit. According to her, the Vampire and Paranormal Museum is in the process of reopening in one of the houses on the premises. The owner was very secretive about it, however — he was remodeling the whole interior, and hadn’t allowed even his closest friends to see it. It wouldn’t be open until later this year, most likely in October or November.
Even though we didn’t get to speak to the man himself, or see the actual museum, we were satisfied. To be honest, just browsing the antiques felt like looking at a clandestine immortal’s collection of stuff, so I left feeling like I’d been to a vampire museum anyhow.
When we went to leave, a peacock prevented me from getting in the car. It was both completely unexpected, yet entirely appropriate. I guess if you’re going to have a Dinosaur Park, you need one or two alive ones.
All told, 10/10 experience. Would sidequest again.
I’m not really big on the whole Manifestation thing, I’ll be honest. That aside, I have noticed that, when I’m starting to feel like life is a little same-y, the universe is extremely willing to help. And by “help,” I mean send me on some very strange field trips.
I wasn’t the only one who’d been feeling like life was getting routine. My Handsome Assistant works very hard, and very long hours. It’s not a physically laborious job, but it’s the kind of work that’s both mentally demanding and continues to be a whole Thing around the clock. He even has trouble taking time off, so he finally said that enough was enough, blocked off some PTO, and we scheduled a small vacation.
I suggested New Hope, PA, because it’s the kind of thing that we both find fun and relaxing: No itinerary, lots of art and history, lovely architecture, ghosts, nature, and tasty food. It’s immediately adjacent to Lambertville, NJ, too, which is ludicrously packed with antique shops and art galleries. We could wake up whenever, go wherever, and no matter where we decided to walk, there was pretty much guaranteed to be something neat to do, see, or eat.
The vacation part is a lovely and relaxing story for another time.
While Handsome Assistant was in the shower, I was sitting on the floor of the hotel, charging my phone and idly tapping through a map of the area to see what looked like a fun destination for the following day.
That’s when I saw it.
“VAMPA Vampire and Paranormal Museum.”
“Permanently Closed.”
I took a screenshot and sent it to him for shits and giggles. There’s always something darkly funny in simultaneously discovering something cool, and that it has ceased to exist.
He texted back. We laughed it off. I pointed out a neat antique shop we could look at, and my tiny disappointment was forgotten.
Little did I know that VAMPA had continued to live in his mind.
Unbeknownst to me, the antique shop that I’d wanted to go see was located in a very large building — large and filled enough to make Google Maps get a little complicated. Locations were hazy estimates, at best. I didn’t mind, though. Everything was in walking distance, and what was an extra block or two?
Inside was a veritable treasure house of weird. The air was filled with the vaguely vanilla scent of old books, naphthalene, leather, and straw. I looked through strings of antique snake vertebrae, preserved hornets’ nests, bottles of peacock bones, old containers of patent medicine (some still half-full of highly questionable powders and jellies), and hand-colored German anatomical prints. Handsome Assistant and I got separated at some point, but I wasn’t too worried.
The “shop” was less of a shop than it was a marketplace. Each floor had its own set of vendors, including one guy who’d collected a very varied and impressive selection of crystal specimens. There were lovely slices of amethyst geodes, palm stones of every description, fossil specimens, spheres of every color, and even a large piece of alabaster marked, “Great for sculptors!”
I came away with a polished freeform moss agate and a sunstone palm stone, while Handsome Assistant chose a small sphere of tiger’s and hawk’s eye. (The gold of the tiger’s eye and blue of the hawk’s eye swirl together like the atmosphere of some strange and distant planet, shifting in the light in a way that’s honestly kind of mesmerizing.)
As we left, he turned to me in excitement.
“So,” he began, both handsomely and assistantly, “The vampire museum used to be on the top floor of this place.”
“Really? Huh,” I replied, neither attractively nor helpfully.
“Apparently the guy who owned it closed the museum, sold some of his collection, and moved up the road. He has an antique shop with dinosaurs in the front. You know what that means.”
I did not know what that meant.
“It means,” he continued as we walked, “That there’s more of his collection that he didn’t sell yet.“
After that, there was lunch and ice cream sandwiches. We got patio seating immediately next to a graveyard. I had a long and interesting conversation about veganism with our server. We were attacked by wasps. The whole afternoon got kind of hazy after a certain point.
Anyway, this is how we found ourselves in the car in the late afternoon, on the hunt for a large estate full of Dinosauria. There was only one problem: We had literally nothing else to go on. No names, no street address, nothing.
“Just drive up the road. You’ll see the dinosaurs.” That was basically it.
I think we drove on for about forty-five minutes with no luck. There was a museum, but it was neither vampiric, paranormal, nor paleontological, and thus of little interest to us at that moment. (There was also a really neat mossy green house with black trim. That was mostly interesting because we have to replace our siding soon and house exteriors are the kind of thing we’ve found ourselves starting to care about, largely against our collective will.)
I don’t know what compelled us to take a different route. It was probably just a desire to find a more scenic road back to the hotel. But that was when we saw it.
A very weathered wood sign near the road, simply marked “ANTIQUES.”
And an allosaurus.
We pulled into the gravel driveway cautiously. (I’m not sure why, it just seemed correct.) The door was locked, its hours prominently posted.
“Wednesday, 11 AM.”
Handsome Assistant and I looked at each other. We knew now what we had to do.
My house is not very large. Really, it’s the perfect size — with just my Handsome Assistant and I, there’s no need for tons of rooms. We were also fortunate that the previous owners really maximized the crap out of the space here. Everywhere that could be finished and turned into living space, has been.
Our attic is a loft with a skylight. Since the ceiling was low, it made sense to make it the room we’d spend the least amount of awake, moving around time in: the bedroom. Since there’s no paint trick or wallpaper in the world that will turn a loft with knee walls into a spacious, cathedral-ceilinged abode, I leaned into the tiny, cozy vibes hard.
Small lanterns with warm lights cast shadows like candle flames. I took the janky, stuck doors off of the built-in storage and replaced them with a curtain rod and soft, light-colored curtains. The bed area itself is separated from the rest of the room by several deliberately mismatched, vintage lace curtains in shades of cream and off-white. The floor is covered in layers of rugs in a variety of textures, to give it more depth and interest. The bed is dressed in satiny black and ivory sheets and a silk-stuffed comforter. It feels almost like glamping, or like a very luxurious treehouse. Like a small, exceedingly comfy nest tucked away at the top of the house.
(We’re having a replacement window put in. Soon as that’s done, I’m definitely posting some pictures!)
Lately, I’ve been treating it more like a sanctuary than purely a sleeping space. I like to go there around sunset, because the small window beside the bed has a very nice view of the west. I light incense, I take out my tarot cards, Lenormand deck, runes, or ogham staves. I put on some Faun or The Moon & The Nightspirit. I soak up the atmosphere, do some divination. It’s really nice.
There’s a limit to how much divination I can usefully do for myself, friends, and family, though. So, to take advantage of the very late summer and early autumn vibes and give me a bit more to do, I’ve put all of the divination in my Etsy shop on sale at twenty percent off. If you see something that calls to you, I’d be happy to make space for your questions.
I don’t usually write much about current events. It isn’t that I ignore them, or feel like they’ll bring down my vibe, or think I’m somehow above them — it’s mostly because I don’t think that anyone really needs or wants to hear about them from yet another random blogger. If I lack the experience and language to engage with something on more than a surface level, if I’m going through the same learning process as most everyone else, then there’s no real reason for me to give my two cents, you know?
Every once in a while, though, the news hits different.
By now, you’ve probably heard about the destruction of Lahaina, Hawaii. Depending on your personal social media ecosystem, you may have heard this blamed on Reptilians, energy weapons, and astrological occurrences. The thing that really got me, though, was an image of a “demonic face” in the flames.
It got me, because I remember seeing pretty much the same picture long ago. Only it wasn’t Hawaii, and it wasn’t an entire town — just two buildings. A devil’s face in the smoke billowing from the World Trade Center. A Rorshach’s test for the afraid. “Look at that! A demon face!” How easy is it for someone to dehumanize an enemy when they have a sign — however pareidolic, however blurry — that their enemies are in league with the forces of ultimate evil?
History may not repeat itself, but it certainly rhymes.
I remember another photo. Then-President Bush as he was delivered a folder of important documents, quietly setting them aside. That folder probably didn’t contain any information that could’ve stopped 9/11, but it was no less damning. The CIA had warned his administration months before, and nothing was done.
Sometimes, evil lives in mundane things.
Mundane things, like golf courses and farm land. When Hawaii was taken and sown with sugar cane and pineapples, its water was diverted from wetlands to farmland. When resorts and golf courses came, so was more water diverted. Monoculture brought with it invasive grasses, ill-adapted to Hawaii’s water cycle. Without wetlands, packed now with tinder, Hawaii gave all of the warning signs of a devastating fire. And nothing was done.
Evil lives in a jar of dirt, waiting for analysis. “Handle it with extra care,” they told me, “it’s evidence in litigation.” Evil lives in a board room where it’s debated whether or not it’s cheaper to remediate the soil, or just paying off the people who get sick from it.
It’s easy to point the finger at some kind of Evil Other. Dogmatic religions have been doing it for millennia in the form of devils and heathens. Cults do it by isolating members from non-members. The New Age movement does it by calling its devotees enlightened and high-vibrational and pointing the finger at the “unenlightened” and “low-vibrational.” Some just straight-up blame aliens.
It’s easy to do this, because we will never consider ourselves part of this Evil Other. If we aren’t part of the Evil Other, then we can’t have caused bad things, because it’s common knowledge that the Evil Other is responsible. It’s a tautology that saves us from examining our own mundane habits, and the way that they shape the world.
It’s also easy to blame an Evil Other, because cults, enlightenment, or orthorexia (or whatever your dogma of choice may be) always have a baked-in means of spiritual bypassing. Have the right beliefs, eat the right foods, be born the right way, wear the right things, buy the right stuff, and it will outweigh whatever mundane evil you might contribute to.
But it doesn’t really, does it?
Capitalism came to Hawaii, stripped it of its water, stripped its people of the ability to steward the land, and let it burn for the sake of the money it could get for sugar, pineapples, and vacations.
How many of the same people selling spiritual advice, Starseed activations, and life-coaching courses are willing to blame the Evil Other instead? How many more people are willing to try to extract money from the land even while it burns?
Reptilians, space lasers, and demons didn’t do this. (The photo of an “energy weapon” is a long exposure shot of a launch from years ago. It’s not the only one.) Greed did. The thirst for gold at any cost did. The Evil Other isn’t an alien or supernatural force, it’s us. Every time we engage in spiritual bypassing, every time we point the finger and blame the Other, it’s us. It always was.
There’s not a lot of money to be made in saying that capitalism is the problem. At least, not as much as posting about energy weapons and conspiracies (interspersed with the requisite amounts of platitudes, bare skin, and beach photos, as the algorithm demands).
There’s an old saying, “Before Enlightenment chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment chop wood, carry water,” and I think it fits here. Enlightenment — whatever form that may take for each of us — is within. It doesn’t change how we have to move through and engage with the world. It absolves us of nothing.
But say I’m wrong. Say that it’s all true — the Reptilians, the demons, the space lasers. History has rhymed often enough to show us the tools they use. We should know what unchecked greed looks like, what it does, and how it operates. Why are we willing to use these same tools as long as they’re making us money?
What makes us think that saying the right words, buying the right things, eating the right foods, and thinking the right things make us immune from wrongdoing?
Evil is what evil does. Not what it says, wears, eats, or believes. Would we even recognize it when it stares us in the face?
I bought three root cuttings last year, but they turned crispy and died shortly afterward.
Disappointed, I decided to try again with two more. Those died back to the ground late that autumn, and that seemed to be it. There was no sign of them this past spring, so I figured that particular experiment was also a failure.
Undaunted, I decided to try again. I purchased two more baby vines and planted them in roughly the same spot.
And then one (and only one) of the previous vines shot up out of the ground like it had something to prove. Like I’d committed some terrible affrontery by daring to try to replace it. Vining with a vengeance.
Not only did it reappear, it’s also about twice as big as the other two, and all three of them seem to be trying to outdo each other by putting out more and more buds.
My very first passionflower.
The only thing is that, while Passiflora species are generally considered self-fertile (the flowers contain both male and female parts, and they are positioned in a way that makes it very easy for pollen to just kind of end up where it needs to go), I’ve read a lot of sources that claim that P. incarnata is self-incompatible. In other words, the flowers are built in a way that should facilitate self-fertilization, but it’s just not into that.
Since the flowers also only last for a day, that means that there needs to be some very timely coordination between pollinators and the plant itself. Pumpkins are the same way, really — they have separate male and female flowers, but the flowers don’t last long. If a bug or hummingbird doesn’t show up at the right time, the flowers close up and that’s that.
Anyway, all of this is to say that, after my disastrous experiences trying to grow passionflower, I wasn’t expecting much. That’s why I was really surprised to go out on the porch and see these guys:
Maypops! (Aka, passionfruit!)
These aren’t anywhere near ripe yet. You have to wait for them to get really soft and wrinkly, or even to just drop off of the vine. (I probably won’t let them get that far, because I doubt I’d find them again once they fell.) In this way, they’re kind of like pawpaws and American persimmons — once they seem like they’re way overripe and on the way to the compost bin, they’re perfect.
I’d like to try harvesting the rest of the plant for medicinal purposes, too. (I talked about some of these in my post about the folklore and magical uses of passionflower.) My handsome assistant and I go through a ton of chamomile, to the point where I’m starting to wonder if it’s possible to build up a tolerance. I’d like to try augmenting some of that with other relaxants. If I can grow them myself, so much the better.
Passionflower fruit are apparently much like pomegranates, in that the edible portion is little bags of juice around seeds. I’m not much for making jams or jellies, so that’s out. I don’t think they’d be conducive to drying, though I may try combining their juice with a more solid, neutral-tasting fruit (like pears) to make fruit leather. We’ve also been using our excess strawberries and pumpkins to flavor mead, so I could see using a batch to experiment with maypop juice.
Note: Nobody paid me or otherwise compensated me for this. I just really like Alex Dav’s music.Notice me, senpai.
I need background music.
Music, lighting, and scents are the most effective ways to set a vibe, to me. I can be in a parking garage, but if there’s some chill music playing, the faint scent of incense wafting on the air, and patches of a nice, peachy-colored sunset kind of sliding in between the concrete pillars, it’s nice. Cozy. Meditative.
All of the songs feature a hang (also called hang drum), guitar, kalimba, piano, variety of drums, and more. Most, if not all, are tuned to a frequency of 432 Hz.
432 Hz is regarded as a “healing frequency.” Meditating to it is said to produce deeper states of relaxation. Doing so before bed may even improve sleep quality. Some also credit it with helping to release energetic blockages within the body.
While this all sounds very unscientific, there is a little bit of research to back it up. A double-blind cross-over study comparing listening sessions involving music at 440 Hz and 432 Hz had some very interesting results: The study participants experienced a slight decrease in blood pressure values (although not significant), a marked decrease in heart rate, and a slight decrease of respiratory rate values when listening to 432 Hz versus 440 Hz. These values do point to a greater state of relaxation. Subjectively, researchers also noted that “[t]he subjects were more focused about listening to music and more generally satisfied after the sessions in which they listened to 432 Hz tuned music.”
I use it for meditation, divination, maintaining a relaxed atmosphere at home, and just as background sound. It’s at once organic and ethereal, earthy and dreamlike. Personally, even as just background music, I feel like it helps me be more relaxed and creative. It’s even what inspired me to pick up a (smaller, less fancy) tongue drum.
If you’d like something that you can just turn on and go about your day, Alex Dav’s YouTube channel also has multiple live streams that are just music, all day long. If you want sleep music, there are some tracks that subtly loop for 12 hours. I highly recommend them!
I try to coexist with stuff. I really do. I don’t like confrontation, and I’ve found that even the most noxious weeds or aggressive creatures are usually helpful for something. The yard is full of edible weeds, bees, and predatory bugs, and life is pretty good. I don’t mind spiders in my house. I very carefully evict the occasional confused grass-carrying wasp or pipe organ mud dauber that wanders in.
And then there are the yellowjackets that built a nest right above the front door. There’re these two little gaps in the porch roof that didn’t really seem deep enough to say “hey, homestead in me,” but I guess I was very wrong about that. The end result? A ceiling crevice jam-packed with wasps.
During their initial building stage, they were preoccupied enough that I barely noticed them. Really, I spotted one or two flying to that spot and didn’t think much of it. When I noticed a dead yellowjacket laying on one of the leaves of the passionflower vine growing on the porch railing, I had… concerns.
When they began to get a bit more territorial, I had more concerns. If they’d built almost literally anywhere else, it would’ve been fine. The shed? No problem, just move the important stuff to the other shed, keep the door closed, and wait to clean up during winter. In the yard somewhere? Also not an issue, they can be territorial against other wasps and are pretty easily avoided by humans.
This wasn’t our first brush with yellowjackets, either. A ground-dwelling species built a massive nest in a hollow under a tree stump in the front yard. This, again, wouldn’t have been an issue were it not for the fact that people had to walk there, and the yellowjackets appeared to have very mixed feelings about the whole thing. The deal appeared to be very much the same with the ones in the porch.
My partner and I could avoid them because we knew they were there, but what about visitors? Delivery people? Mail carriers? I wasn’t trying to be the reason why an Uber Eats driver trying to make ends meet had to pay for an emergency room visit, you know?
I put in special delivery instructions a couple of times — “Wasps have taken over the porch. Please go to the side door. I cannot overstate how many wasps there are, and they are all so angry” — and keep my fingers crossed that the delivery people actually followed them. I would’ve gone out there and put up a physical sign, but that would’ve required them to get close enough to read it, and also actually going outside to tape something to an area actively swarmed by yellowjackets.
Like this, but with more rage.
And so, we called our Wasp Guy.
His name is Mohammed, and he is, unironically, the straight-up rawest dude I know. His company claims to provide environmentally friendly pest control, and I’m like 90% certain it’s because he just suits up and sort of… confiscates unwanted hives and nests and such. He has a huge (vacant) hornet’s nest he keeps in his van. For fun.
The man is also an absolute surgeon. If he’s there to handle a wasp nest, those wasps will be handled (probably literally) and the neighboring pollinators will never find out. None of my carpenter bees were harmed in the removing of these wasps, and still happily follow me around like dumb little hoverpuppies. The anise hyssop and coreopsis are absolutely packed with miner bees, sweat bees, honeybees, you name it. Even the ants that hang out on the passionflower on the porch (they treat the nectaries like some kind of tiny insect TGI Friday’s) seem just sort of fine with everything.
I just thought this looked cool, to be honest.
While I’m not happy we had to remove the yellowjacket nest (they’re an important predatory species for pest bugs, and, since they tolerate the cold a bit better than bees do, they pollinate early spring flowers!), I know there’s a point where insect territoriality and human territoriality collide. I’m just glad that this time was handled quickly, easily, and with minimal disruption to everyone else.
Just maybe try to build in the old maple tree or the shed on the hill next time, okay guys?
Marble Crow 