To Walk a Pagan Path: Practical Spirituality for Every Day (19 page)

grown in balcony pots.

You will have to work harder to maintain a balcony gar-

den, because Mother Earth is not there to help you. Pot-

ted plants are more susceptible to temperature changes and

drought. You will need to check your plants at least every

other day to make sure their soil is not too dry, and perenni-

al herbs (plants that live for more than two years) usually will not survive the winter outside in pots.

There is no point in bidding the land when creating a bal-

cony garden, since you are not working directly with the land

itself. Nevertheless, remember that the soil you have carried

up to your balcony in bags or buckets came from the body of

Mother Earth. After you have filled your pots or other grow-

ing containers with soil, burn some incense and say:

I ask the spirits who dance in this place,

I ask the ancestors who watch over this place,

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I ask of Mother Earth and Father Sky,

Accept now this offering of sweet incense,

And ever there be peace between us.

If you do not have a yard or a balcony, try a windowsill

garden. This will be even more challenging, but there are

some culinary herbs that will grow indoors. Chives and basil

both work well.

Chives, in fact, works best as a potted plant. Even if you

have three acres at your disposal, consider keeping a pot of

chives on your patio or inside near a sunny window. When-

ever you are serving dinner with a dish that can be enhanced

with fresh chives—such as steak or baked potatoes—set your

pot of chives in the center of the table as you would a flow-

er arrangement, and place a clean pair of kitchen shears next

to the pot. Invite your family members or guests to clip their

own fresh chives right off the plant!

Whether your garden is large or tiny, whether you want

to grow mostly vegetables or mostly herbs, only plant what

you will actually use. I once planted a lot of rue in my herb

garden because it sounded magical and intriguing. The rue

grew very well, but I had no idea of what to do with it. This

does not mean that rue has no useful purpose. I have a friend

who is a Roman Pagan, and she uses rue all the time. But it

is not something I use. As a result, my garden rue was very

pretty but it took up garden space where I could have planted

something more practical.

That should have been the end of the story, but I am a

slow learner. Several years later I planted radishes in my veg-

etable garden because I had heard they are easy to grow and

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can be harvested in just a few weeks. And, yes, they grew

abundantly. As promised, within a few weeks I had a bumper

crop of radishes. A bumper crop of something I cannot stand

the taste of. (I even pick out the little radish slivers they inevitably put into salads at restaurants.) Fortunately the radish-

es only took up space in my garden for a few weeks, but they

were weeks when I could have been growing something that

I actually like to eat.

To grow a successful garden, then, your first priority is to

plant things that you will happily consume. The purpose of

the garden, after all, is to help you connect with the earth by producing some small portion of your own food.

*

Thus far our focus has been on plants that produce food, and

for good reason. Most Pagans describe our many paths as

“earth focused” spirituality and agree that Paganism implies

a love for the earth. But how can we claim to love or even

understand the earth’s rhythms if we never
touch
the earth?

How can we claim any connection with the land when every

bite of our food is shipped to us from distant places? Through

gardening we gain an appreciation for what “fertility” meant

to our ancestors. Furthermore, we literally become a part

of the land itself. As we work the soil, our skin cells slough away, falling to the earth and becoming part of it. We nurture the land, and food comes forth, and the land becomes a

part of us as we take that food into our bodies.

If you find that you really enjoy gardening, you can take

it even further and plant herbs and shrubs to benefit the wild

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folk who live around you. Pagan people with holistic tra-

ditions live in the world, not apart from it. Our neighbors

are not only the humans who live to either side of us; they

include the mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, arthropods

and other life forms in our immediate vicinity. Like every

creature, we humans must sometimes protect our territory,

but, as a whole, Pagans usually want to live peacefully with

the furred, feathered and scaled children of Mother Earth.

We can help our non-human neighbors by creating beneficial

habitats for them.

These habitats are for living, incarnate creatures, but I

believe this is also pleasing to the nature spirits. As a Saxon, I call these spirits elves, but other cultures have given them

other names. The elves (or whatever you choose to call

them) nurture the natural world around us, and so it makes

sense that they would be happy with any effort to help create

a healthy and diverse environment.

Honeybees are kept everywhere by both amateur and

professional beekeepers. A hive produces both honey and

beeswax. Honeybees also play an important role in pollinat-

ing fruit trees. The most difficult time of the year for hon-

eybees is early spring, when the hive’s supply of pollen and

honey is depleted. Beekeepers help out their little friends

by feeding them sugar water, but you can do your part, too.

Pussy willows and red bud trees are attractive, and both are

excellent sources of pollen and nectar in the early spring.

Later in the year, white clover provides nectar. White clover

can be seeded directly into your lawn, and benefits the grass-

es already growing there by fixing nitrogen into the soil. Very few plants provide enough nectar for bees to produce excess

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honey for our use. In any given vicinity there will only be

one or two plants that produce that much nectar. Clover is

one of those plants. The honeybees collect nectar from white

and yellow clovers. It is difficult for them to gather nectar

from the blossoms of red clover, but this variety is very bene-

ficial to bumblebees. Even if you live in a region that produc-

es a non-clover honey (buckwheat, mesquite, and so on) your

white clover will benefit local hives.

If you grow a variety of herbs, some of those will pro-

vide nectar for local honeybees and enjoy visits from these

little insects throughout the summer. Honeybees are espe-

cially attracted to sage, but they will also gather nectar from marjoram, winter savory, lemon balm, thyme, mint and

other herbs.

Intentional planting can also provide food sources for

birds. You can hang out a bird feeder—and I do—but ideal-

ly this only supplements foods that the birds can gather from

natural sources. One of the best shrubs for winter feeding is

the pyrocantha, or fire thorn bush. This bush produces scar-

let or orange-red berries, depending on the species, which

apparently do not taste very good to birds. For this reason

pyrocantha berries are available to the birds that remain with

us all winter long after other natural foods have been eaten.

Holly also serves the same purpose. If holly grows well in

your area there is an additional benefit; you can cut and bring in boughs of it inside the house to deck your Yuletide halls!

Other good shrubs that provide food for winter birds

include barberry, privet and coralberry.

When spring arrives many birds will eat the blossoms of

forsythia, lilac and honeysuckle. But at this point the birds

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have a need other than food. They need housing; specifically,

nesting sites. The housing conditions for birds fall into three general categories: ground nests, cavity nests and tree nests.

We cannot intentionally prepare a place for ground-nest-

ing birds, and the cavity-nesting birds are best served with

birdhouses. My grandfather provided housing for a diverse

variety of birds by setting out different houses for purple

martins, wrens, titmice and chickadees.

Tree-nesting birds require trees and shrubs for building

their nests. No single tree or shrub will satisfy the needs of

all tree-nesting species. Some of these birds will only build

nests at the ends of tree branches. Others build their nests in the “V” of two limbs. Still others hide their nests deep within thick shrubs. The best way to provide nesting sites for these

species is to give them as wide a variety of woody growth—

trees and shrubs—as you reasonably can. Some of the best

trees for tree-nesting birds are apples, hawthorns, maples,

oaks, pines and willows. For bushes, good choices include

blackberry, juniper, pyrocantha and raspberry.

All wild creatures, regardless of species or phylum,

share one common need. Whether honeybee or gray squir-

rel, goldfinch or garter snake, every living thing must have

water to survive. The easiest way to offer water to your wild

neighbors is by setting out a bird bath. Despite the name,

the “bath” provides water for drinking as much as or more

than for bathing. Nor is it only usable by birds; in dry weath-

er some insects—including honeybees—will take water from

a bird bath.

If you are more ambitious, a small pond will supply water

to a greater range of wildlife. The pond need not be more

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than a few feet in diameter. It should be deep enough to

leave some water beneath the ice during the coldest days of

winter. At one time building a small pond was a significant

undertaking, but today you can purchase pond liners at your

local garden shop. All you need to do is dig a hole, put in

the liner and fill the thing with water. You can add decorative rocks around the border or put in an ornamental fountain,

but that is just icing on the cake.

Put a few fish in the pond to eliminate any problem with

mosquitos, but let the water set for a few days first. Tap

water is treated with chlorine, which will kill your fish if

you put them in just after filling the pond. You can purchase

expensive koi if you want, but a few “feeder” goldfish will

keep your pond free of mosquito larvae just as effectively.

Ponds such as these are often called “lily ponds”, and it

really is a good idea to put in one or more lily plants. The

leaves will float on the surface, helping to stabilize the tem-

perature of the water while simultaneously discouraging the

growth of excessive algae.

This is why you want the pond deep enough so the water

will not freeze all the way to the bottom. You can leave the

fish and lily bulbs in the pond throughout the year. The water

at the bottom of the pond may get very cold, but the fish and

lily plants will survive. In addition, you may attract a few new wild neighbors that you were not expecting—frogs! My own

pond has become home to some leopard frogs, which I con-

sider a blessing. There is something very magical about frogs,

living in a liminal place between the land and the water. In

folklore, the magic of frogs is the magic of transformation.

This undoubtedly comes from their change from aquatic tad-

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poles to amphibious air breathers, and has inspired folk tales

such as the story of the Frog Prince.

Throughout this book we have an assumption that most

readers are Pagan people living in urban or suburban envi-

ronments with limited space. You may be the exception with

a large expanse of property to call your own. If so, consider,

setting some of your land aside as sacred space for your gods

and the local nature spirits. We humans are so quick to grab

up every bit of available space, cutting across natural terri-

tories with our roads and highways, clearing out habitats to

make way for more strip malls. What greater act of devotion

can there be than to give over some part of your land to the

wild?

But to do this with any real meaning, you have to be sin-

cere. If you give some land to your gods and the nature spir-

its then it is no longer yours to use; it’s theirs. This can be a difficult idea for some people to embrace. We tend to presume eminent domain over all the earth.

A third of “my” property has been set aside for the elves.

When I mentioned this to a group of Pagans, one man

immediately responded enthusiastically, saying, “We should

hold a ritual there someday!” It took some time to explain to

him that the land is not mine—except within the context of

human law—and so we would be trespassing.

Back there, on that sacred land I have set aside, oaks and

ivy grow undisturbed. Small mammals scurry about with-