Samhain Blessings

Wishing you all a Happy Halloween and a Blessed Samhain.
May the coming year bring you good health, lots of love and joy, peace and prosperity, and maybe your days be full of magick.

Kitty's Strange Behavior

Last week there was a fire in the woods behind the house. The fire dept seemed to think it may have been started intentionally, but too hard to tell. But we had to deal with it flaring up for about 3 days. I think it's finally burned itself out. Friday was the first day that they didn't have to come out.

Well on Friday evening, I went out on the hill to check on any additional damage that may have occurred on my hill and to see if there was any hot spots on the other side of the fence line. I was only up there a few minutes when our cat came bounding up the hill through the pines and sat at my feet meowing at me. I got the feeling he was telling me to go back so I said we would. Normally he would run off in front of me, but not this time. He sat at my feet until I started to head back the way I came. Then he started to follow behind me, meowing up at me occasionally. I stopped for a second and told him to go ahead and he still wouldn't pass me. He stayed behind me the entire time to make sure I did in fact go back down the hill.

Now this is something I've never seen him do before. He wouldn't even come out of the yard when I brought his food out. I think he thought I was trying to trick him. That if I fed him, I'd go back up while he was eating. I had to assure him several times I wouldn't go back before he came to eat finally.

Then on Saturday, we heard some fire trucks and he came running over to me and sat on the stairs meowing at me the entire time. I had to keep telling him I wasn't going to go up there. He wouldn't settle down until I went back in the house.

I don't know what to make of this behavior. I've never seen him like that before.

Wild Fires

Scary days the last 2 they are/were. Behind the house is a stretch of woods, preserve land they say. It's just past the property line and goes up to the Middle/High school near us. There's a nature trail on it that the school uses mostly in the spring.

Well Tuesday afternoon there was smoke only a few yards off from our property line and the next thing I knew, fire trucks pulled up and the men dashed off into the woods with fire extinguishers. There were at least 2 spots far as we could tell that were burning. The spent about 2 hours up there putting them out.

This afternoon (Wednesday) my older girl comes running down to me "Momma we have a fire on the hill!" I thought she meant up top near the original area, but NO!...I opened my back door and there's flames on my hill!! Our hill is held up by a 4 foot high railroad tie retaining wall....the flames were about 2 maybe 3 feet from the edge. The line of flames ran about a good 6 feet across the hill. I heard the fire trucks pulling up before I could even get the words out of my mouth. I literally didn't know what to do next. I didn't know what the flames would do next.

I dashed upstairs and out the front door and ran up to the fire chief's truck and told him we had a fire in the yard. He thought I meant up top, but by the panic in my voice and on my face after telling him NO it's right at the bottom behind the house! He sent men back there immediately.

They spent about 2 hours spraying our hill from one end to the other and back again. I have less than 1/3 acre so it's not very big back there, but they soaked and soaked that hill best they could. The original spots up in the woods also flared up, so they did what they could with it and then had the forestry people come in a dig a break between our property line and the fire.

They told me it was most likely deliberately set by some teens, maybe they were smoking up there. That it would smoke for a couple more days. Imagine my surprise when my neighbor knocked on my door to say she saw flames in the woods again!! We went outside and sure enough the darn thing is flaring up. So out came the firemen again. They assured us it wouldn't jump the break. It has to burn itself out they said, since the fire is now inside a fallen hallowed out/rotten tree. So its burning from the inside out and they can't stop it. They also told us that most of the state is under a Red Flag Warning.

I think the thing that struck me most was when one of them told me "Fire is a living thing. And it's feeding on whatever it can to stay alive and spread." I never thought of fire as living. But it needs oxygen just like we do, and it needs fuel (food) to survive. So I suppose he's right. But it struck a cord with me, and I feel like it his words have a deeper meaning that I just can't put my finger on.

But tomorrow is going to be a windy day, and we're still under the warning for at least the next 2 days with no rain in site.

The one fireman told me a good bit at the top of the hill was burned but from the ground I can't see up there too many pines in the way. I'll have to walk up the hill in the morning and check on my apple tree and pear tree, as well as to see just how much has been damaged up there. Seeing the flames has me scared to bits. This city girl doesn't do wild fires very well.

Odd dreams

Before waking this morning I was having the oddest dream. It seemed like every time I woke up and fell back to sleep, I'd end up back in the same dream just picking up where it left off.

What I remember of it was that we (the not soon enough to be Ex) and I were driving near a cemetery that seemed like it was being torn up. Headstones were toppled and broken, the ground was turned up with piles of dirt and tree branches everywhere. As I looked around, my heart was breaking to see such destruction of a hallowed place, but I was getting the sense they were the graves of children for some reason. I kept seeing tiny heads in the piles of dirt thinking they were children's skulls only to realize they were the heads off the small angelic statues. I was pleading with him to drive and tread as carefully as possible to not disturb the dead and to try and not crush anything. For whatever reason, we had to drive over this to get back to the road.

Once back on the road, we pulled over. I got out and went over to a knocked down willow tree. I kept thinking about wanting/needing a wand made of willow. Again my heart was aching for this tree that was clearly deliberately destroyed, fingering it's branches as it lay there in a heap of brokenness in a mound of dirt and other dead branches. But the leaves were still so vibrantly green, it felt like it still had life in it. I could not bring myself to take a branch off the tree itself and kept looking around for one that may have already been shed, but couldn't find any. It felt like the tree was telling me to take the branch I was holding in my hand but I had no way to remove it and didn't want to just break it off.

I woke up again at some point and as I was falling back into this dream, I heard the number 6 repeated verbally several times, if I think hard it was about 5 times that the number was said. What the hell do 6s and willow trees and cemeteries have to do with anything?

The dream did remind me how when I was little and we'd go to the cemetery my maternal grandfather is buried at, I'd would wander around the near by graves and marvel at how young some of the dead were. Many were infants or children no older than I was at the time. I couldn't understand how they could have died so young, and there were so so many. Including my uncle who died at about 6 months old or so.

The dream just leaves me wondering what does it mean if anything. I've had trouble remembering any of my dreams as of late again. I keep a notebook by my bed, but as soon as my eyes open there's nothing to remember. So when I do remember something, I wonder if there's any meaning to it all.

Keeping Busy

In trying to keep my mind off the negative stuff in my life, I'm going to try keeping myself busy. I've gone and signed up for 2 free workshop/classes online. One is a creative writing one, the other is an art one. Along with wanting to focus on my herbal lessons, get the Etsy store off the ground, and hopefully prep for NaNoWriMo...with some continued Goddess research for good measure.

Hopefully I'll be able to track down some inexpensive used copies of the books on Druidry I'm after. I did manage to find 2 books on Britain by A. L. Rowse and 1 book called "The Celts". They were at the Goodwill for just a couple dollars a piece. Too good of a deal to pass up.

So the goal this week is to finish setting up a work area in my little room. Get my laptop set up for NaNoWriMo along with my notebooks that I use. Continue to go through things that I don't need anymore, by the time I'm done I should have about 2 bags of clothing for the Goodwill tomorrow. Hopefully I'll be feeling up to going out to drop them off and pick up some supplies for the art course.