The Final Harvest

Today is All Saints Day and I've spent it visiting the market for the last of the fresh parsley (to give to Saint Pancracio in offering) baking bread, pouring wine, lighting candles, splitting pomegranates, slicing apples, and taking photos. A lovely day it has been and I hope the ancestors and Saints have enjoyed their welcoming, and stay, in my home. A visit to the cemetery is on the docket for tomorrow to collect the year's last graveyard dirts. Soon, we will be covered in a blanket of snow and accessing graveyard dirt becomes rare.

These days of celebration bring sorrow too, of course. Sorrow that goes hand in hand with the memories we conjure up as we honor those past and sorrow for the summer gone. Yet today's photos will serve as tools to get us through the long, hard winter the Farmer's Almanac calls for. It also brings some joy as we revel in the turning of the wheel of the year-the wheel of life-which means letting go of some things...and some of those whom we love. The last harvest is so sweet; those vibrant colors, the sweetness in the air, the scents from the kitchen, and the smell of fresh cut herbs, and newly dug earth on my hands...

The Indian corn which served it's purpose of autumn decor for the past month, will be shucked and added to bacon rendering, then packed in oinion bags, to feed the birds this winter.

My largest arrowroot-she will be plenty healthy next spring and ready to harvest a few rootlets from.

Saint Christopher's garden, covered in leaves and ready for winter. Unlike many gardeners, I do not remove fall leaves but leave them as a blanket of protection for my herbs, and to serve as an organic mulch as they break down.

My home-made Kyphi being burned to invite, welcome and honor the spirits into my home.

The altar for All Saints Day; apple muffins baked by a coven sister, sliced golden apples, pomegranate, red wine, a candle devoted to Baron Samedi, parsley for Saint Pancracio, Indian corn, and kyphi.

These are Osage oranges or Hedgeapples, which grow natively here. The wood is wonderfully protective for balefires and collecting these brings back much nostalgia for me as my mother and I used to go collect them together when I was a child. There is one tree, way down in the swamps, that hangs over the road. As the apples fall, they are easily collected as most land right in the middle of the road.

To Baron Samedi.

This year's foraging of buckeyes led to discovering hundreds of them! Much better than last year, as I found just a few. I was too late and the squirrels had burried them all.

The season's last sunflower head-to be stripped and added to bacon renderings, to make winter food for the birds, as well.

The last three tomatoes. How sad it is! These were put in a brown paper bag and set on the window sill-an old trick my grandma showed me to get me through a bit of the winter:) Next year, I hope to have enough green ones still on the vines to get me through the whole winter! She said she used to be able to do that with her great plunder of green tomatoes, due to her vast garden.

The cinnamon ferns have gone to spore-I imagine I'll harvest these either for guerilla gardening 
or for some magic.

The cones from the echinacea-these will also be collected for guerilla gardening next year.

One of my arums. Fat, green and healthy-ready to make it past Old Man Winter.

The Day of the Dead is tomorrow. Graves will be swept, flowers left and candles lit...