After 2 weeks of vacation, tonnes of work, and injuring my hand I am back.
First course of action Mabon which is today Sept 21 Saturday! 2012...well actually the calendar I have says that it's tomorrow but I'm doing my stuff for 3 -4 days anyways because I have Fri-Mon this week off . I work a 10/4 schedule where I get every second weekend off after working 10 hours a day for 10 days.
Mabon is kinda supposed to be the end of the harvest that was started Lammas, the day and night are now equal and now starts the decent into winter and shorter days. The God prepares to descend into waiting for he will die during Samhain and wait to be reborn during the spring, The Goddess knowing that she is pregnant with the Gods new incarnation will also start to feel the shortening days as she prepares to say farewell to her God and give birth to him once again.
Nature, like the God is preparing for death by slowing down or stopping growth of its bounty and the earth waits for it's rest period when she can prepare to blossom once again in the spring.
Well here's the deal because of frost starting to become very real in the mornings where I live my tomatoes were done a week or so ago. The tomato vine is ~90% dead now with very little green left to it. I got quite a few fruit from that vine and my future in-laws are being buried alive with tomatoes so they sent us some. I know it's best not to store them in the fridge but they're ripening too fast for me to preserve them otherwise while working 10+hours a day. These are a mixture of beefsteak (the heirloom) and big beef (the hi-bred) Yes I do save my seeds for my largest and most delicious tomatoes using 2 methods as I am experimenting to see which will give me the highest fertility rate. I don't really care if I get hi-breds as long as they are healthy and delicious, and as we know through in-breeding and the banana population too much of the same genetics can increase susceptibility to bug and disease. I will make another post on which methods of seed saving I use and maybe later when I do replant I will show my results...if I don't forget.Like the inside of my fridge? I think I can see pickled wieners, eggs, tomatoes, home extracted coffee extract for ice coffee, a random empty bread bag and I'm pretty sure that's marmalade.
Top left is basil which this particular is 2 years strong, top left is garlic which is great because every part from root to leaf is edible.
mid left is white sage also 2 years strong with rosemary on the right that just exploded this year after almost dying during year one.
bottom left is parsley 2 years also and hanging on, with oregano on the right which was doing fine a few weeks ago but looks like is starting to dies off a bit. The oregano is two years old and seems to follow a odd cycle of 3 months good, a month die off then very slow growth the rest of the year until it feels ready to expand again. Is that normal?
In the background you can see my strawberry plant going strong but soon I will have to start cutting it back so that it can survive the snow and come back next year.
Now for next weeks harvest moon on the 29th. Also called the corn moon and sometimes the barley moon because it is now a great time to harvest those two, I personally prefer to call it the harvest moon because I harvest many of my plants around this moon.
Now the harvest moon in the northern hemisphere acts strange, no not all the creeps come out. The moon usually rises later each night but during the few days around the harvest moon the moon rises very close to the same time night after night. The almanac explains it better than I can -> here .
Well I'm off to do some laundry, bake bread and just general cleaning around the apartment.
Blessed Be
~Flaming
