Spring Newsletter
Here I am catching up- it's been a minute.
Well, we are inside of Beltane, and Ostara has passed.
Ostara marked the Spring Equinox and Beltane has us right in the midst of spring, if you are in the Northern Hemisphere, as I am.
Even though I haven’t written about these sabbats, I’ve been doing my witchy things- starting seeds, planting them in my little raised garden, learning more about my tarot card deck, clearing out and refreshing my altar, talking to trees, lol.
As far as the garden goes (and grows), I’ve got a little artichoke developing, which I was worried about because when it was just a teeny bud tucked within the leaves, it was covered with this kind of aphid that ants actually care for because they produce some sweet stuff they like (bonkers!). I found online that I could use a soap dilution to make them leave or die, so I did that and with one application, it began growing like a champ, aphid-free!
As expected, my fava beans are taking off like crazy. I really should just focus on them and become a fava bean farmer, as my soil or the air or who knows what seems to support them- but I cannot resist the idea of a variety of edible things being just a few steps away from my kitchen door.
I still have some things growing inside, on a window planter- things like lettuces and peas, and some kind of squash, which I also have growing outside. These often become food for rodents and I am unsure if my new screen protection around my planter will be totally effective, so I’m playing it safe, and experimenting, to see how much it grows inside before I shift them outside.
I learned (from scrolling) about using empty toilet paper tubes as protectors for these green, growing babes and it seems to be working for about half of the squash and for nearly all of the green bean seedlings I transferred from indoors to out. You never know with internet tips on anything, so we’ll see if it continues to help.
On another note, my potted oregano and thyme are going great! My beloved tarragon seems to be coming back. Critters never seem to touch these.
Rosemary always has a hard time in my hands- and I don’t even know why I try to grow it since it grows so well along the roadside in my community. They are basically wild and on walks I sometimes snip sprigs for my cooking or witchy cleansing things.
Speaking of gardening, I have been loving This is a Gardening Show by Zack Galifianakis on Netflix! You learn things and have a laugh. I recommend!
To me, Ostara and Beltane is that it’s connected to the growth of spring and I enjoy that.
I don’t just focus on edible growth though- my front flower garden is in super bloom right now- pink and magenta geraniums (two varietals) and the ever present nasturtiums (bright orange and dark orange/red grown in front and bright orange and yellow grow in the back yard- weird!), along with a few flowers that bloom from this giant “spikey” leafed thing that I decided was my garden’s “fairy” home. It gives off the occasional flower or two that are white and remind me of orchids.
By accident, I began to make this small front area of my rental house into a kind of “fairy” garden.
It started with a small tree stump- the management landscapers cut down a small tree before we moved in, and I was left with a little stumpy platform that I wanted to do something with.
Eventually I decided on using it to hold a discounted little gnome (I recently painted his hat banana slug yellow) that holds what looks like an inverted mushroom to hold bird seed- and I love to have a place outside for birdseed, but I’ve found the pooping birds can be a problem on decks and railings. That said, this little gnome sits on a stump in the midst of a pool of blooming geraniums, and it’s the kind of garden you just walk by, so poop is not ever in view, nor is it a problem!
What pushed it all further into fairy land is that I decided to keep one section of my solar-powered holiday twinkle lights on after the holidays ended, as they appeared to be more “fairy” than Christmas.
Kenny, my partner, then surprised me with a tiny climbing gnome when he was out running errands at the dollar store, and while I cringed at first that it would make the garden start to look cluttery, I realized that I could run with this whimsical theme that seemed to be developing organically.
It hangs perfectly on this thin, longer than usual, pallet that came with an electric bike Kenny got for free from a Canadian E-bike company, as he has enough social media followers to influence people, and I guess he just asked for one and they said yes. (He loves riding it!)
What I mean is that we turned it into a planter that leans against the house wall, stapled some garden material behind it so it holds dirt and planted succulents within the sections holding soil. The geraniums and nasturtiums climb onto it a bit. With the flowering vines and twinkle lights, it’s very pretty.
That teeny gnome tchotchke Kenny got for me is climbing a tiny ladder and carrying a watering can to the succulents. The ladder mirrors the “ladder” of the pallet and it expands this idea of the gnomes (Something I have tried to stay away from, as I knew an obsessed gnome kid in elementary school whose passion utterly confused me.) tending to the garden and the natural life within it.
After several months, at the school I teach at, I saw a series of tiny “fairy doors” and mushroomy/snail/gnome trinkets up for grabs in the staff room.
The prom theme was “whimsical fairyland” and they had some leftover decorations.
My proverbial antennae were up and I had been considering a fairy house (←This sentence kind of makes me barf.) and I recognized the tacky-dollar store aesthetic and “gnomeish” elements sitting on our communal lunch table as something fitting into my growing garden installation.
But I was wary, as things can get out of control with pursuits like this.
Take for instance Mrs. Carter.
Mrs. Carter was an old German woman who “escaped the war” (a term I heard a lot when growing up) by marrying an American soldier who eventually was stationed in Fort Ord, the military base I grew up next to.
They had a house by my elementary school that I loved to walk or drive past, as it was FILLED with random trinkets, many of which were presented as little themed “installations.”
She was a bit of a running joke around town, but her husband, who was now retired from the army, was very patient with this. He understood that her hoarding of trinkets was a problem, but from my perspective, he didn’t seem too bothered by it. He was a quiet and small African-American man to her larger and much more talkative, white, German, female form. I imagine they both had been through quite a lot of hardships with surviving amidst wars and racism. Having the community rant against their choice of garden decor had to be nothing compared to their respective struggles endured in the past.
As it was, Mrs. Carter outlived her husband, and by the time she was a widow, I was a teenager working at the little five-and-dime store where she would often purchase her beloved decorative items.
My only real encounter with her extreme compulsion was after the holidays in the late eighties, when she had packed her smaller-than-a-grocery store cart with Christmas ornaments that were discounted for like seventy percent off.
This was before we had scanners to ring people up, so, as the cashier, I entered the prices into an electric register, individually and by hand.
At that time my city was still small enough that the people in the store were giving her, and I, a look, all knowing that Mrs. Carter should not be buying more decorative items. It was well known that the city had been serving her with “clean up your lawn or you will have to pay the consequences” notices on her door. It seems that without her husband, she had gone rogue.
I remember she didn’t smell clean, had a pretty substantial black mustache, which contrasted her white hair, and didn’t wear her top false teeth.
She would purse her lips as a sort of tick, over and over again and mumble things in her thick German accent.
Years before this happened, when Mr. Carter was still alive, I was sitting at the counter of our local diner (this is how I got most of my community news and gossip) with my father one evening and the couple entered and sat on the other side of us on the squared “U” shaped counter area.
Mrs. Carter had a rag in her hand that she was sniffing.
The waitress asked about it and she stated that she had been cleaning, and the stained rag had bleach on it. She thought it smelled so good, so she brought it with her to smell while having dinner out with her husband.
My city and that diner was a welcomed spot for so many retired veterans who drank coffee and ate there, every day. They were mostly American soldiers and their wives who were from areas where they served in wars- at that time, mostly World War Two and the Korean War. Vietnam veterans, like my dad (he served during that time but was not in the middle of combat), were not yet of retirement age.
Diner culture in the U.S. was far more of a “thing” to people of these generations.
My generation would go there with our families on Sundays or with friends to drink too much coffee, too late at night. (Do kids still do this?)
Anyway, let’s get back to the whole “fairy situation” I’ve got going on, shall we?
I decided to take a fairy door from the staff room and and another trinket featuring the teeniest gnome holding a welcome sign and a snail as his sidekick, to place near my chosen fairy door as the colors matched my own “gnomey” things that were already on display.
I shared my concerns with a coworker (science teacher) who also took a fairy door: “This door doesn’t have a hinge or anything, so how are the fairies going to know they can come in?” He assured me that this is an implied door that basically gives the fairies the “go ahead” to enter. Ah! Cool, cool.” I replied.
After work I went home and knew exactly where the fairy door should go- at the base of the large “spikey” plant that flowers a few orchid-like flowers every now and again. This would be their castle. This thick shrub is where snails would come and go from when we first moved it, so it seemed right.
It was glorious, how many snails we once had! There was a literal snail highway in front of our door for a while and then suddenly they were gone. No note, no explanation.
ANYWAY, WHAT ARE FAIRIES?
I kind of see bugs, insects and even birds as fairies or at the very least, fairy allies, so when I saw the little welcome sign featuring a gnome (who by now I’ve determined are guardians of the fey), I knew it should sit near the non-opening but welcoming door to my determined fairy home. And what a palace it is!
Cut to last weekend and I was at a festival where I saw the funniest and cutest little garden stake creature with springy limbs that wiggle in the breeze for sale at the cost of only three dollars, next to a cacophony of vibrant pinwheels, spinning, spinning in the wind.
I walked past the display several times, when I finally caved in.
The creature I chose doesn’t seem to fit the stereotypical idea of fairyland I have going on in my garden, but it felt right.
It turns out, it’s perfect- It’s the grand fairy that the gnomes are in service to. That’s my story. This magical and other-worldly sprite protects its creatures in this unassuming rental property patch of dirt that sits before the sidewalk and door.
I placed the stick that holds the creature aloft into the dirt, smack-dab in middle of the fairy castle made of plant, and said out loud, “yes.” I then made a clear note to myself that I’ve gone far enough on this mystical journey. I went to art school for fuck’s sake- I know when to say when, lest the message become convoluted and lost. (Not that this is the most sophisticated message-)
While Mrs. Carter’s cluttered yard was certainly an inspiration for “child me,” who saw it as a something like viewing Disneyland (which I didn’t visit until I was a teen), I also viewed it as a signifier of trauma, since my mom would always tell me “She’s crazy because she lived through a war, and so she wants to keep things, because she’s lost a lot.”
Now we call that hoarding. She was a hoarder, and I’ve been around this behavior in many different forms, since then, in my life. I even started down that road, myself, until a friend nipped it in the bud at thankfully just the right moment. I can completely see how easy it is for one to take a slight step into it and fall in.
My friend, the poet and performance artist, Kate Durbin, wrote a book where she watched hours of the show called Hoarders and transcribed what she saw and created a book of poetry out of it.
Her work investigates this human tendency that is so connected to capitalistic dreams, the “American Dream” and the lure of objects for the sake of comfort and distraction, among many other things. She lives within it, in a way- not as a hoarder, as I’ve seen her home, but as someone who admits she’s somehow inside of what she’s investigating; giving her a kind of ownership of it, or “right” to investigate. I’m unsure if my “read” of her work is correct, but she’s worth checking out. I miss her and being able to head to this or that event in Los Angeles to hear her read and see her perform, or having her ask me to be a part of some wildly interesting project.
So yeah, remembering aesthetic discipline is good, even if you are a witch.
ART THINGS
I’ve decided to take a break from selling upcycled monster tees, dresses, handbags, and Blib-Blobs this summer as last year was a bit of a slog and I didn’t have as much “merchandise” to share as I did the first year I took on the festival on my own, but I did well and I did even better at the quilt fair I took part in a few months ago (or was it many months ago?).
I don’t know if I’ve mentioned that I have been spending a lot of time- since the start of autumn 2025, setting up my new studio space.
I’ve been doing it slowly, as my schedule has allowed. And now I’m able to finally look at it all, and feel out what comes next.
On the witchy side of my art practice, I decided to bring my amethyst pendulum into the studio, as I haven’t had much luck with it in “life” spaces or with “life” questions.
Turns out it works perfectly.
I asked her to show me what movement means yes and no and we were off and running.
I began working on some garment upcycling and it didn’t seem to flow, so I asked the pendulum if I should be sewing and she said very clearly- no. So I moved onto painting.
It’s all feeling a bit clunky at the moment, and that’s okay. It’s natural and it will pass and then of course it will return again, lol.
Anyway, I hope you are having moments of peace and inspiration and that life gives you time to be still and to also move and make.
Until next time,
Linda
