Garden Witchery (20 page)

In the garden, the Indian corn is ready to be harvested and the tomatoes are putting out lots of fruit. This is the time of year I start to get a little anxious over the pumpkin crop. How are they doing? Will we have a good crop this year?

Blackberries are ripening and if time permits I make the drive with my sister-in-law to her husband's family property to go blackberry picking. The kids are getting ready to go back to school in a few weeks, and mothers everywhere are counting down the days. I usually perform a little abundance/prosperity work at this time of year, in thanks for the harvest from the garden and to help me stretch the budget in our annual “time to buy school clothes” season.

On the day of Lughnasadh/Lammas, August 1, fix a tealight inside of a small cauldron. Place around the outside of the cauldron an arrangement of fruits and vegetables from the garden. Suggested garden items would be decorative Indian corn, gourds, garden tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, a dish of blackberries set to the side or a ring of different-colored apples from the market. These would be nice if your garden isn't producing anything edible at the moment. Use whatever strikes your fancy—be imaginative, you'll come up with something clever. As you light the candle, ask for continued blessings for your family in your own words, or try something like this:

Welcome, the season of the first harvest

Your continued blessings I now request.

We give thanks for the gifts bestowed upon us

May our family prosper and enjoy success.

Let the candle burn out and then cook up the fruit and vegetables however you prefer for Lughnasadh dinner.

There is nothing in the world more peaceful than apple leaves with an early moon.

Alice Meynell

Mabon/Autumnal Equinox

Also known as the Witches' Thanksgiving. Our menu consists of a turkey dinner, all the trimmings, and pumpkin and apple pie for dessert. Seasonal decorations include fall leaves, a cornucopia, pumpkins, and apples. In the garden I am watching the pumpkin crop and starting to harvest them. The pumpkins get lined up on wooden planks in the backyard until the end of the month, when the kids will start to sell them. Fall mums are everywhere and I pump up the color in the autumn garden by picking up a few mums and planting them in spots that could use a dash of color. A garland of fall leaves intertwined with orange lights is draped over the outside front door.

On Mabon we put up our corn stalks in the front yard. Six-Foot Stanley comes out of the attic and is displayed in the front yard gardens. Stanley is a scarecrow that my husband rigged up on a two-by-four frame and dressed in some old jeans and a shirt, many years ago. I added a bandanna and hat. Ken then painted an “Autumn Greetings” sign to be placed by Stanley's side. Stanley stays with us, watching over the yard, until after Samhain/Halloween.

Stanley stands about six feet tall and his head is one of those realistic-looking, light-up, carved jack-o'-lanterns that is bolted onto the frame. We place an old fishing hat on his head and put the jack-o'-lantern light on a timer so when the sun goes down his head lights up. The neighborhood children love Stanley. He seems to have his own fan club. In late September and throughout October, carloads of families go by, waving and shouting hello to Stanley. He seems to have started a decorating trend of his own as well. After Stanley makes his Mabon appearance, other variations of Stanley, sitting on benches and sprawled in yards, start to appear in the neighborhood front yards by the very next day.

One family tradition that I insist on is going apple picking on Mabon. Depending on my son's football games and our work schedules, we try to go on the actual day of the equinox, or as close as we can get. I take my family out to the same farm that my parents took me to. They give you a tractor ride out to the orchard and turn you loose. There is nothing like eating an apple as soon as you pick it off the tree!

Someone always starts an apple fight by throwing fallen apples at somebody else (the culprit is usually my husband). I snap lots of pictures of the kids who, of course, roll their eyes at me and tell me they're too old to have their pictures taken. I start by asking nicely. Then I get tougher and start barking orders—“You stand there . . . You, quit smacking your sister . . . You, take off your sunglasses . . . Come on, guys,
smile
. Act like you like each other!”—and finally, they give in. I wouldn't trade that family outing for anything.

Listen! The wind is rising and
the air is wild with leaves.
We have had our summer evenings,
now for October eves!

Humbert Wolfe

Halloween/Samhain

The serious Halloween decorations go out October 1. I have more Halloween accessories than some folks have Christmas decorations. No kidding. I have a collection of folk-art style, kitchen-witch dolls that stays displayed on shelves in the kitchen year 'round. With the dolls are a couple of framed Victorian-style Halloween postcards. I collect anything clever that has a Halloween theme on it, or an attractive representation of a witch. No green-faced hags! In this small collection of mine there are dolls, tins, mugs, a teapot, and my own witchy needlework.

Every room in the house, except for the bathrooms, gets decorated with a little something. I usually can talk one of my sons into hanging up my orange Halloween lights across the front of the house. A spinoff of those white winter icicle lights, these lights are orange icicle types that some enterprising soul named Witch-cicles. I found them on sale. Who could resist? Certainly not me. Besides, they look terrific as a backdrop for Stanley. It is about this time of year that we can hear carloads of families with kids who have been admiring Stanley shouting, “That house! I wanna go to that house!” as they drive by. Even my “cool” teens smile and get a kick out of that.

About a week before Samhain, I put up spiderwebs and set out a couple of hay bales to display all the pumpkins on. I might, if I can find some on sale, buy a few bright red or orange mums for the front porch and place them in pots, just for decoration. That's my Martha Stewart side coming out again. Can't help it, it's a sickness.

As a family, we argue over which pumpkin carving patterns to buy that year, and then the race is on to claim a pattern and find the perfect pumpkin to fit it. Some patterns we save and reuse from year to year. As you can imagine, we carve up around a dozen pumpkins or so. On Halloween night, the kids arrange them by lining them up on hay bales and along the garden sidewalk. They look pretty impressive from the street.

Owing to all the decorations that are clever, spirited, and attractive—not gross or scary—we get many trick-or-treaters every year. It is always amusing to hear the parents as their kids drag them up the sidewalk on Halloween night. Many parents walk up to the porch and ask where we got all the pumpkins, and how did we carve them up so neatly? Most have told me how their kids have been hounding them for weeks to come to our house. I have come to be known in the neighborhood as the “lady with all the pumpkins on the corner.” Believe it or not, I get asked many gardening questions on that night. While the trick-or-treaters check out the pumpkins, their parents usually check out the front garden.

A interesting way to make a seasonal arrangement for your Samhain table is to hollow out a medium-sized pumpkin. Insert a block of florist's foam called Oasis. Presoak the Oasis in water overnight, then trim to size and slip into the pumpkin shell. Leave about a half an inch of the foam sticking above the opening of your pumpkin. Cover the exposed foam with moss, and secure with a few floral pins.

Clip blooming mums, sedum, roses, cosmos, and whatever other flowers your fall garden is producing, and make a simple round arrangement in the pumpkin. If you don't want to mess with the foam, try hiding an old clean jar inside the pumpkin. Then fill the jar with water and arrange your flowers inside of that.

Another fun idea is to clean out mini pumpkins or small round gourds and carve primitive or folk-art style little stars and crescent moons on their sides. Place a tealight inside of the mini pumpkins and then arrange them down your buffet table and light them up. These tiny pumpkin luminaries are also quite dramatic and different when placed on a candelabra instead of bigger candles.

When my crew of ghouls and goblins were smaller, we started putting out a buffet of finger foods and sandwiches to get them to eat dinner and to keep them from devouring all of their candy. The menu habitually includes rye bread and dill dip, carrots, celery, chicken salad sandwiches on rolls, and assorted cheese and crackers, dips and chips. For dessert, a pumpkin pie. When our nieces and nephews arrive that night they often find their way to the buffet table for a snack.

Now that my kids are older and only one of them is trick-or-treating, they still enjoy the buffet. It amuses me to have them haul out the Halloween tablecloth and argue with me over the menu and which centerpiece to use on the table. Another family tradition is to watch the movie
Young Frankenstein
together on Halloween. Each of us knows all the lines by heart.

After the trick-or-treaters are gone and my kids stagger off to bed, I head outside for a private Samhain celebration. I leave a candle lit for the spirits of the dead to burn all night in the big iron cauldron in the living room. I take a few moments to honor the souls of those who have passed away that year. Then I welcome the season of winter, reflect on that year's growing season, and start to anticipate my time of rest from the hard work of gardening.