Busy day around the house cleaning all the things; after a migraine yesterday and the impending doom of perhaps another tomorrow, I did whatever I could today. (Weather’s been a bit odd.)

The ancestor shrine is up and mostly finished, but I want to acquire certain things and make some proper offerings to open it. (I may have photos of it later.) Instead you’ll have to settle for my Wildwood shrine

I change the colours of the water in the leaf bottles on the Wildwood shrine to mirror the season around us. We’ll have brown and gold leaves all through the winter on some trees, flapping like tattered clothes in the winter wind. Likely they’ll get a couple shades paler as we go on. Moonbunny and Starbunny are happy to peek out from the bramble.

I have a couple shrines that ‘flip’ soon - waiting for Samhain, or snow, whichever comes first. I look forward to it so much that I’m always a bit impatient, but one can’t rush the seasons along. So I’ll wait for the ‘November Witches’, and hope that they come on time this year. :>

On the Equinox I took the walk around the neighborhood I had planned. The day wasn’t grey and wet as predicted, but instead a blustery, cool day where the weather alternated between brilliant sun and pounding sharp rain in rapid cycles. It seemed very appropriate, and I love walking in the wind. So out for a jaunt I went.

Autumn is a brief blaze here, a conflagration of colour that quickly dims to a thin layer of ashen gold smouldering on the ground. The trees here haven’t got a lot of colour yet; drought makes the trees less brilliant and change later. But I know we’ve got two weeks, tops, before the colour season is done and the leaves start coming down, change or no change. The wind was carrying all sort of leaves - ash, maple, oak, apple, birch, and poplar - and they speckled lawns and danced on the pavement as I went.

I lucked into some cinquefoil a few blocks over in an empty lot - I’ve been looking for some all year, so it was nice to have some to take home. Nearby was an crabapple just bursting with tiny fruit, so a few of those came home too.

The giant poplar lives just up the street from me, over by the park. The lamp post that fits neatly under it gives some sense of scale - I can’t begin to describe how enormous it is. It doesn’t drop leaves, but rather whole knobbly branches of leaves. I think the one picture there gives a good sense of how massive it is, and how windy it was on my outing.

I tried a panoramic shot to show the skies; one side nearly black, one side brilliant blue. I’m not sure how successful I was, but I like playing with the panorama setting on my camera. I managed to get home just before the rain let go for a longer soaking.

I’ve spent the day getting ready for the equinox tomorrow. My coven isn’t meeting, and I’ll be home alone with the cats, so I’m getting myself sorted for a bit of quiet ritual. It looks to be a wet grey day coming, which is good headspace for me.

If it isn’t wet, I may take a wander through the neighborhood and see if I can’t find a rowan tree willing to lend me some berries for a necklace. I’m also plotting a hazelnut necklace at some point.

Have a pleasant Autumnal Equinox.

Autumn in the Wildwood Shrine, September 2012.

A very general space for Autumn’s arrival. It started with the small purple dish full of crystal.

I’d like more purple in the space, but that will require some candle shopping, I think.

Scattered around are gold and blue tiger’s eye, various garnets, hypersphene, lapis lazuli, blue sapphire, iolite, green tourmaline, and fluorite.

Leaves at the Wildwood Shrine, June 2012.

The ‘leaves’ are small bottles that used to be filled with maple syrup.