Beltane

wildwood herbal stall
Originally uploaded by mygothlaundry

Beltane is my favorite holiday: it's right near my birthday and it's all about sex. Yeah, well, so this year, as usual, that's not going to be something I need to think about ever again but it's nice to know, I guess, that it's out there at least for the plants and the robins and, I suppose, other people, happy people, people in love - okay, wait, stop. ANYWAY - it's when I feel it's safe to plant the vegetable garden, the danger of frost having gone by and me even starting to feel secure enough to remove the snow measuring sheet from the front door where it is reminding us all of what a swell winter it really was. People say you should wait until Mother's Day but the hell with that; even though it's good old pagan fertility we're celebrating either way, May 1 is a good round number day to get the garden going. Also, it's the day of the herb festival, to which I duly went after spending the morning digging up the vegetable beds and adding composted cow manure and all that lovely kind of thing.

The vegetable beds were full of horrifying white grubs - anywhere from half an inch to almost two inches long, white, shiny, with terrible small legs and, oh god, I think they're eyes. I don't have a clue what these things are but they look alarming and creepy, so I throw them onto the road, where they turn black and die. I killed hundreds of them. I am heartless, sometimes and these grub things skeeve me the hell out. They do kind of look like something a Bushman would eat with glee - they strongly bring to mind one of those films from Anthropology 101 in which the Bushman get all excited about big white horror grubs and start popping them like candy while the American camera guy makes slight urghing noises in the background. I thought of that film and I briefly considered battering and deep frying these suckers on the possibility that I was missing out on a taste sensation, here, but I decided I can live without that taste sensation. Urgh.

At any rate, the vegetable garden is now thoroughly planted and I am excited. I even planted the mystery Asian seeds I bought in Chinatown in San Francisco on the strength of the beauty of their packets and we will see what Little Shop of Horrors stuff they produce. I like not quite knowing exactly what I've planted or where everything is in the garden. This is one of the reasons I always plant random sunflowers all through everything - well, that and the fact that I love sunflowers. The flower garden is done too and as usual, I'm resolutely not telling the flowers that they don't actually get enough sun. They get some. They need to try harder is all, I say, and with a little luck, they will. Eventually there will be dahlias and cosmos and hollyhocks and more sunflowers and daisies of many kinds and echinacea and some odd herb thing that I bought at the festival because the little description on the popsicle stick said that it brings you magic and love and right now, honestly, I could use some of those two things rather badly. Beltane may be a favorite of mind but late April, over the last few years, has not been all that kind to me.

Oh well! In other news at Michael's the other day I bought these completely bizarre little puppet head shaped popsicle stick things. They cost like $2 for about 20 of them and I have already drawn a face on one and started carrying it around so I can hold it up in front of my face and say "Tiny puppet says hello!" to people in a suitably demented voice. I'm going to paint faces on all of them this weekend and then I will have a tiny puppet for all occasions, which should quickly cause my friends and relatives to shun me forever. I can hardly wait.