a week in autumn

my spiritual journey is coming to me thick and fast.. thoughts of creating a medicine wheel in my backyard, creating some kind of healing centre here in my own home.. a small space where I can help people, somehow... but there is a hesitation, a fear and I need to go gentle with myself... thoughts of 'am I really just playing with all of this?'.. when I really 'should' be doing my housework and living a 'normal' life. I know that is the ego trying to keep me safe and small.. but I do often wonder if my focus on this spiritual journey is over the top.. it consumes me at times.. it is like I am on the path and I cannot  jump off.. My spiritual mentor has told me it can be like that because once you start, nothing else will satisfy... but I am trying to balance it by going out for dinner with friends and just letting the hair down. sometimes, being double Capricorn can be quite intense. add to that a Taurean Moon.. whew!

Lately, I have been having yearnings to return to Glastonbury, which is odd because after my trip at the end of last year, I did vow I would never set foot on English soil again.. So now there is a wish for me to visit Glastonbury.. to revisit the Abbey and to walk the town.. maybe oneday.

The online Wheel of the Year course, is actually helping me alot to notice my garden and area more, .. to be in touch with my feelings as we travel towards Samhain...[and to bring together all that I have been doing for years, really. Sharing with others even if online is wonderful, makes me feel not so alone in all of this]
 I am noticing things in the bush that I had never noticed before and recording them in a kind of Book of Shadows.. or what I like to think of as my Book of Footsteps.. [I read that somewhere and liked it better than the traditional name].. I hesitate at getting myself an athame.. something within makes me really withdraw from purchasing one.. maybe a past life, I don't know.. but for my own athame, I am using a vintage knife that was my grandmas.. I use the knife to cut cords of attachment, whenever the need arises. Being a sensitive, sometimes I attract things that hook into my aura, I still have not  mastered the total protection that I need. Something I must work on.

Alot is also resurfacing from my childhood.. lately, I have been going to sleep and a few minutes after I drop of to sleep, I waken in terror, panic.. I had no idea why until I had a spiritual healing from my mentor and I remembered that as a child, I use to see and hear things. I was highly clairsentient and clairvoyant. Sometimes things that I saw frightened me.. I remember once, being in bed and a hand came out from  under the bed, with a gift on  it.. I never took it.. I quickly turned over and squeezed my eyes shut.. and this is beginning to come back to me.. and that is what the panic is, I think. But, I have all the tools of psychic protection knowledge.. I studied that for 6 weeks a few years ago. I need to get that tool bag out.
ever since going to Cornwall, it is like lights are coming on for me.. opening up so many channels.

April 2
Driving along GWH coming up Bodington Hill towards Wentworth Falls, I notice that the white flowering gums are in blossom. Making some of the bush look like it is covered in a light dusting of snow, the sky is brilliant blue and the waning moon is low in the day sky. They must be autumn flowering. A Samhain flower for here in the mountains
As I travel further up the hill towards Katoomba and into Blackheath, I notice that the gums aren't flowering here. I wonder if it is because it is higher altitude and therefore cooler. Or the flowering gums that I notice only grow in that one area, a pocket of them.
Most plants flower later in the upper mountains because of the cooler climate.
Time will tell I guess
The wattle birds are also around here at the moment, they sound a little like they have a hoarse cough when they sing.

Friday April 6th
I spent a lovely autumn morning in Jacintas garden with the Benedictine group.

the first thing I see is a heart made from two eucalyptus leaves, having been placed there by the element of wind..

lots of mushrooms popping up after a few days of rain. some look like bunches of flowers, tucked into the base of the trees.
 I notice seed pods on the waratahs as well as the swell of new buds just beginning to form. They will take until spring to burst forth in a blaze of crimson red. Autumn leaves scatter lightly over the grass, mixed with the native eucalyptus. A mixture of European and natives co-existing ~ I think of how easy it is for the plant world to live side by side here, without a need for either species to be dominant. ..

and then we went to dinner that night, when Joe told me that they had cut down a tree that I had loved for many years.. and it made me feel sick.. and as I wrote previously in a post, I did a ritual for the tree...

Sunday April 7
daylight saving ended today so I was up early. I spent the morning in the garden, cleaning the chook pen and nesting boxes out, strewing wormwood and lavender prunings into the nesting boxes and lemon verbena on the floor of the pen.. I weeded and tied up berry canes, I pulled spent tomatoes out and tied up the citrus trees.. planted a rose and then went to the nursery to buy some herbs.
I notice that the chrysanthemum that I planted last Samhain, is beginning to flower. I hope that it is still flowering on the actual moment.. but honestly, the garden is all over the place these days, the seasons are changing.. and the plants are confused... While working in my garden, I noticed the giant flowering cherry.. just beginning to lose her leaves. I felt a kind of stillness.. a moment, just before the leaves let go. A pause. A sacred pause between breaths.. of being on the tree and letting go. This is autumn.

How much the making of a garden, no matter how small, adds to the joy of living, only those who practice the arts and the science can know.

~E. H. Wilson