Samhain dinner, dorm edition
Planning a tiny Samhain dinner with my roommates next weekend. Nobody else is a witch, but everybody misses somebody, so it works.
The plan: one empty chair at the table, a photo of each of our grandparents on the windowsill, LED tealights (approved by the RA, in writing, I have the email), and my grandma's pumpkin bread, which I have failed to make correctly three times so far.
We'll go around and each share one story about the person in our photo. That's the whole ritual. I think it's enough.
Grey seal followed me the whole length of the cove this morning, ten yards out, never once looking away. Didn't feel like being watched. Felt like being walked home.
The house smells like October
Simmer pot is on, which in this house means autumn has been officially declared. Peel from two oranges, three cinnamon sticks, a palmful of whole cloves, a sprig of rosemary, a few coins of ginger and a handful of cranberries the grandkids didn't eat. Cover with water, lowest flame, top it up every half hour.
It isn't for drinking, it's for the house. I stir it clockwise and think about who's coming for Thanksgiving and what I'd like the kitchen to feel like when they walk in. Warm. Forgiving. A little chaotic.
Only one rule: when you leave the kitchen, the pot gets turned off. I've scorched enough pans in forty years to know the house spirits don't care for burnt cinnamon.
Hunter's Moon on Monday, so the spring tides are building. Water came right over the bottom of the slipway this morning and the gulls looked personally offended. Moon's in charge, as ever.
Orgo midterm tomorrow, so I did a tiny study spell at my desk. LED tealight (my RA would end me otherwise), a sprig of Rosmarinus officinalis from the campus herb garden tucked into my notes, and three deep breaths while I said "what I studied, I will remember."
Then I studied for four more hours, because that's the actual spell. Will report back.
Walt in the calendula
Six years this November since my husband Walt passed. He was not a witch, not even slightly. He called my herbs 'your weeds' and built me every raised bed I ever asked for anyway.
Two nights ago he was in my dream, standing in the garden in his green barn coat, pointing at the calendula. Not saying anything. Just pointing, the way he used to point at a fence post he'd decided I needed to look at.
So the next morning I went out in my robe and muck boots and looked. The calendula is usually finished by now up here, we've had two frosts, but there were seed heads all along the back of the bed that I'd completely missed. Those little curled crescent seeds, dozens of them, dry and ready.
I sat on the edge of the bed he built and cried for a good while, and then I collected every last one.
I don't know exactly how these things work. Forty years at this and I know less than I did at thirty. But I know that man always did want me to save seed instead of buying it. Come spring, every calendula in this garden will be from Walt's bed, and all five grandbabies are getting a packet.
The garden got tucked in today. Cut back the mint before it plots another invasion, pulled the spent beans, and packed straw around the rosemary with firm instructions to survive one more Vermont winter. It has heard this speech eleven times.
What I don't cut anymore: the coneflower and black-eyed Susan heads. The goldfinches need them more than I need tidy. Forty years ago I'd have had every stem down and bagged. Forty years ago I was in a hurry.
The johnny-jump-ups have seeded themselves into the cracks of the path again, right along the beds Walt built. I've stopped fighting them. Some blessings arrive where they please, and the best thing you can do is not step on them.
Dreaming in Latin binomials
Plant systematics midterm tomorrow, and last night a yarrow plant the size of a person sat on the end of my dorm bed and said, very slowly, 'Achillea. Millefolium.' Then it said it again in case I wasn't listening.
I've been making flashcards for two weeks and apparently my brain has converted them all into houseguests. Pretty sure this is either studying working or a visitation from the entire Asteraceae family. Either way, I am not getting that one wrong.
Taught my granddaughter Lily to read tea leaves Sunday afternoon. Loose black tea with a pinch of dried chamomile from the garden, wide white cups, no strainer. Drink it down to a spoonful, swirl three times toward you with your left hand, turn it over onto the saucer, count to seven.
Her cup had a very clear bird near the rim, which in my mother's book means news on its way, and soon. Mine had what I generously called a lantern and Lily called 'a trash can.'
An hour later her best friend phoned to say she's moving back from Ohio. Lily now considers me a professional. I am not correcting her.
My amethyst was not amethyst
Bought a gorgeous 'amethyst' cluster at a market last spring and brought it to mineralogy lab today because I was proud of it. My lab partner (geology major, very gentle about it) did a quick hardness check and a look under the loupe.
Dyed agate. Very purple. Not even slightly amethyst.
I was embarrassed for about an hour and then kind of delighted, because now I actually know how to tell. Real quartz scratches glass, amethyst color usually sits in zones rather than pooling in the cracks, and if it looks like grape soda, it probably is. The agate is staying on my windowsill anyway. It didn't lie to me. The seller did.
A jar of calm for the driving test
Eli, my grandson, takes his driving test Thursday and he's been a wreck. So yesterday we made a little calm jar together at the kitchen table: dried chamomile from the garden, a pinch of rosemary for clear thinking, a few grains of rice so nothing gets "stuck," and a folded note in his own handwriting. He chose the words himself: "Steady hands, eyes up, no curbs."
He laughed at me the entire time, then quietly put the jar in his backpack. I'll take it.
The real magic was twenty minutes with a sixteen-year-old who put his phone down. Practical note: the parallel parking still needs work. Spells meet you halfway.
The flower that waited for me
I have the late watering shift at the university greenhouse, and there's a night-blooming cereus in the succulent room that flowers maybe one night a year. Nobody knew which night.
Wednesday, 11:40pm, I walked in and the whole room smelled like vanilla and something like oranges. The flower was open, bigger than my hand, glowing white under the one security light, with the moon right behind it through the glass roof.
I know the science: night bloom, pale petals, strong scent, it's all for the moths. I wrote it up properly in my lab notebook, Latin name and everything. But I also stood there and said thank you out loud, because it felt like it had waited for me. By 7am it had closed for good.
For the boats still out
Gale warning for sea area Plymouth tonight, and three of the harbour boats still out past the Lizard. The whole village does the same thing on nights like this: checks the forecast forty times and pretends not to.
I put Gran's old storm lantern in the window (battery-powered now, I'm not daft), set a dish of salt on the sill, and said what she always said:
Mother of the deep water,
hold them light as gulls,
put the wind at their backs
and the harbour lights before them,
and bring them home before the tide turns twice.
Two came in by ten. The third rang in from Newlyn at midnight, safe and sheltering. I slept like a stone.
Three knots for the wind
There's an old story along this coast that sea witches used to sell sailors a cord with three knots in it. Untie the first for a gentle breeze, the second for a stiff wind, and the third... well. You never untie the third. That one's a gale.
My nephew Kit has been learning to sail all summer at the club in Penzance, and on Saturday he's doing his first proper trip across the bay. So I made him a cord. Three strands of natural hemp, plaited on the harbour wall at low tide with the gulls supervising. I tied a knot at each of three breaths of the wind: one when it was barely lifting the flags, one when it gusted, and the last when a squall came through and soaked me right to the bone. Into each knot I spoke what I wanted for him: patience, good judgement, and the sense to turn back.
He's sixteen. He rolled his eyes. He also asked if he was allowed to keep it on the boat, which in my experience is how teenagers say thank you.
The part I didn't tell him: the third knot isn't really a gale. It's the one you leave tied so you always remember you've more in you than you're using. Mine has hung on the hook by my door for twenty years. Never once undone.
Tide's at 3:40 on Saturday. I'll be up on the headland with a flask, watching for a small white sail.
Electric kettle apothecary
Dorm potion setup: one electric kettle, one mason jar, one botany textbook. Tonight's blend is Mentha × piperita (peppermint), Melissa officinalis (lemon balm) and a few dried Rosa petals, steeped five minutes with the lid on so the volatile oils stay in the cup.
I know exactly what every plant in my mug is, down to the genus, and that's the whole point. My first year I bought a "witch tea" online with mystery ingredients and I am still mad about it. Learn your plants, friends. Latin names are a love language.
Down on the Lizard there's a green-and-red stone called serpentine, mottled like an adder's back, and you'll hardly find it anywhere else in Britain. When it's wet on the beach at Kynance, it glows.
I don't take pebbles off the beaches anymore. They're needed where they are, holding back the sea. Instead I bought a little offcut from one of the old turners' workshops, polished on his lathe.
It sits on the windowsill by the tide table. When a storm's rolling in, I hold it and watch. Something about a stone that was once the floor of an ancient ocean makes the waves feel less personal.