In my alchemical wheel of the year, the summer solstice is distillation. A series of events and activities that began earlier in the year are all now coming to a time of finer planning and attention to detail. Given that we're still in Mercury retrograde, it means going a bit slower and understanding that things will come together more at the last minute, and that's okay. Expressing the energies of distillation means more mindfulness in decisions. My word back at MayFire was "choice." I have to make more discriminating choices now.
We've actually had summer-warm weather in the Emerald City lately.
The
garden is full of color, but we got enough water to top off all the
barrels with the last storms so we've been able to ignore the hose for a
bit longer. It's time to hit the walking-path-edge of the lawn again,
to differentiate it from the formal meadow. Walking to the solstice
parade, I took a photo of a fantastic patch of wild sidewalk garden
which I felt was a perfect example of what we're trying to grow. I
think I want to give Dad back his weed whacker and get a tiny push mower
for our needs instead. It will wind up being a LOT quieter, and
without having to deal with a cord, it might be a lot easier too.
For as the soul lives and moves in all the members of the body, so that spirit lives and moves in all elementary creatures, and is the indissoluble bond of body and soul, the purest and most noble essence in which lie hid all mysteries in their inexhaustible fullness of marvelous virtue and efficacy.
A minor confusion about scheduling and just what got communicated in email has been cleared up, so my house=sit starts Wednesday, not Sunday. That's good actually. It might rain over the 4th of July. I'm sure people will still be firing off more than enough things no matter what the weather.
After the house-sit comes the family gathering. It would seem that there are plans in the works for some skeeball in a location on the Oregon coast known especially for this. I think skeeball was the only thing I can every say I loved about the Jersey shore. After some debate about who really wants to go where on the way down the coast and who wants to visit other people on the way home, I've been swapped back and forth between the two family cars and have landed back where I started: with my parents dropping me off at Illumination.
On the fire family front, I'm in part of the opening ritual the first fire at Illumination, and things have moved forward a notch in regards to some stuff under-development in the Vortex. I have sacred items to start assembling for August, some incense, some mugwort from the yard. Time to start keeping an eye out for any sudden fall travel deals.