While March 17, the holy day of St. Gertrude, marks the official start of the garden year, the favorable time for planting and sowing begins tomorrow, March 7 and lasts until March 22. The month started out warm and sunny, but is predicted to be overall wet. Temperatures will drop again and it’s not yet the time for planting anything aside of tree cuttings, such as hazel and willow.
Faded flower stems and fallen leaves should be left for at least another month, as they provide a home to myriads of insects and smaller animals. Also they are the humus of tomorrow, even for the lawn. So just let them be.
Sowing: preculture indoors daturas, chillis, tomatoes, tobacco etc. for a timely harvest. Cold germinators can still be sown now and left outdoors.
Symbols: flower = moon is in an air sign, fruit = moon is in a fire sign, leaf = moon is in a water sign, root = moon is in an earth sign, lunar nodes = avoid any garden or magical activity
Eclipses: March will see a lunar and partial solar eclipse in some parts of the world. Eclipses are generally considered ominous and unfavorable for any garden work or other magical activity.
A glimpse of spring. In focus: birch, bumblebee queens, cornel cherry
1st of March marks the meteorological beginning of spring. Nature is slowly but verily waking up. Like this bumblebee queen warming up in the midmorning sun. She found a place in the crevices of an old birch tree. If you look closely you may spot the birch lady’s facial profile outlined in the scales of her bark. Bumblebees are herolds of spring. They are among the first insects waking up and flying at temperatures as low as 6°C. She could start her new colony right beside this birch, in the former nest of a mouse or rabbit.
Bumblebees have ever since been considered emmissaries of witches, devils and the dead. Their drone sound signals the presence of underworld spirits. Caring for themselves and their own hive they produce only as much as honey as needed by them selves, so they always had a somewhat bad reputation compared to the altruistic (and domesticated) honey bee. However, bumblebees are important pollinators, adopted exclusively to the flowers of many traditional witch herbs, as well as food plants.
We have had bumblebee nests in our garden, right beside the lavender bushes, and I have photographed them on nearly all my witch flowers that I’ve grown over the years. I feel lucky and blessed whenever a bumblebee crosses my path and I am able to spend time observing it in nature.
On the green moss under the tree lay a birch polypore. This parasitic fungus may chime in the last quarter of the tree. Yet it carries a plentitude of medicinal properties, being anti-bacterial, anti-viral and anti-infallmatory. It was dropped right before my feet, and indeed I could need all of it after this winter. But I left it there. The simple sight of gleaming moss has its own salutary effects on the body, mind and soul.
Old Cornus masCranes returning end of February
Birch stands for new beginnings. Blossoming now is the cornel cherry. It is one of the slowest growing woods and therefore most resilient woods in Europe, and quite similar to Ironwood. Its sulphur yellow blossoms are evoking the spring sun. Its flowers are among the first to open in spring or late winter and open the buffet to bees and other pollinators. Its bloodred fruits provide food to jays, grosbeaks, nuthatches and bullfinches as well as dormice. Its heart-shaped root system reaches in all directions and stabilizes the ground.
Its hard wood was made into weapons. In Greek myth it is even metonymical for the speer. When Romulus thrust his speer into the ground upon which Rome was founded, it blossomed into a cornel tree. The Ziegenhainer cane is traditionally carved from cornel wood.
->lasered with the image of the Spring Goddess riding on a bear and embracing the sun, carrying distaff / besom, torch and seed, accompanied by rich illustrations of flowers and folkloristic motives referencing not only Imbolc traditions, but also other festivals of February, such as Lupercalia, Perchtenläufe and Fastnacht
-> perfect for storing smaller sacred objects such as paper sigils, stones, crystals, amulets, spells, candles etc.
-> made of birch wood (sacred to Brigid), measures ca. 14 cm x 12,5 cm x 2,5 cm and comes including:
Imbolc incense
blessed white cloth
3 beeswax candles
pressed lenten rose flowers
paper birch bark, for drawing spells upon
tumbled stones: purple-yellow ametrine, rutilated quartz (venus hair quartz), moss and tree agate
February ’25 is projected to be overall cold and dry. The 1st of February was cold, bright and sunny. The February full moon was overcast and temperatures remain around 0°C. Some places here in Germany were blessed with snow, while we are stuck in a gray cold and misty mud weather. The end of the month will get warmer and sunnier but may also see some rain.
A LONG WINTER IS OVERALL GOOD FOR NATURE IN THE GARDEN!
Garden activities in February: planning the garden year, starting a garden diary and calendar, noting down favorable days, pre-culturing warmth loving plants indoors, sowing cold-germinators in a cold frame outdoors, pruning vine, fruit trees and hedges, taking willow cuttings for fences and hedges
If you are tending a natural garden, then less is always more. In February the garden is best left alone for at least another month. February is still a good time for researching the overwintering places of various insects, ie in leaf axils or molehills, and observing the activities of overwintering birds. Owls may start breeding now. Note, once an animals is disturbed during hibernation it may not be able to return to hibernation state and dies of cold and starvation. This applies especially to dormice that overwinter in bird nest boxes. Should I clean nest boxes in winter? The answer is hence: NO!
Helping bumblebee queens: since bumblebee queens overwinter, their hiding places between old leaves or inside prior mice holes, should be left undisturbed, even if they start flying earlier than other insects. If temperatures rise above 6°C they get active and may search for food and a nesting place for their new colony. Early blooms, like snowdrops, crocuses, cornel cherry, lenten roses etc. provide important nectar and pollen resources.
February garden flowers: this year my lenten roses flower in mid February, later than during previous years, since temperatures have been constantly low. Snowdrops peaked out right on February 1st but remain closed for the most time. The sweet scent of witch hazel blossoms is intense in the cold February air. Daisies keep flowering. Cornel cherry started blossoming at the end of the month, so do winterling and crocuses. Sweet violets did not show up yet.
*This calendar and some of the projections given here are created with the help of constellation research by Maria Thun and her son Matthias K. Thun.
These boxes are made during the dark stormy winter days and nights that bridge the old and the new year. They are lasered with the sigil of Winter (Sacred Deer) and the sigil of Frau Holle. Each box is filled with sympathetic materials evocative of the wild hunt of winter and its goddess Frau Holle.
These boxes are perfect for storing smaller sacred objects such as paper sigils, stones, crystals, amulets, spells, candles etc. and can for example be placed beside or under the bed for inspired dreaming. The boxes measure ca. 14 cm x 12,5 cm x 3 cm and come including:
Holle Box
Holle Incense
phytograph with Holle sigil, hand-drawn on the backside
Birch bark, for drawing spells upon
Snowflake obisidian, Turmaline quartz, rare Charoit pendant stone
Wild Hunt of Winter Box
Winter Incense
phytograph with Sacred Deer sigil, hand-drawn on the backside, imbued with bone white, antler dust and ashes
Birch bark, for drawing spells upon
Clear rock crystal, tree agate, dark blue hawk’s-eye
In addition, the boxes are accompanied by my respective essays on the Wild Hunt of Winter/ the Haunted Hunter and Frau Holle/Mother Winter.
This blend for the winter solstice smells like a walk through the winter forest – resinous, coniferous and aerial. It contains a number of precious resins such as high grade Hojari frankincense, sandarak resin, spruce resin and baltic amber. White birch bark and chaga mushroom evoke the self-restoring powers of nature, ash leaf, metasequoia and yew needles bring forth the circling life energies of above and below, holly, juniper, mistletoe and wormwood call forth the protective spirits, mugwort and labrador tea open the third eye. Oakmoss, resinous white fir cone scales, pine, fire and spruce needles all add up to an evergreen winter blend, perfect for lighting up and guiding through the twelve longest nights of the year.
Engraved with my Mabon sigil, this box celebrates the beginning of autumn and the harvest of the season. It is perfect for storing smaller sacred objects such as paper sigils, stones, crystals, amulets, beeswax candles etc. E.g. I fill seasonal boxes with sympathetic objects and place them beside the bed for inspired dreaming. This box measures ca. 14 cm x 16 cm x 3 cm and comes including:
1x Lughnasadh Incense
1x Mabon Incense
1x Samhain Incense
In addition are included seeds, fresh from the end of Summer ’24 gathered by Bussardflug and by myself:
Atropa belladonna
Aconitum napellus
Bryonia dioica
Conium maculatum
Datura stramonium
Digitalis purpurea
Hyoscyamus niger
Solanum dulcamara
Angelica archangelica
Artemisia absinthium
Foeniculum vulgare
Opoponax chironium (rare!)
Ruta graveolens
Salvia apiana
Salvia mellifera
Symphytum officinale
Comfrey seeds with little bones found in the soil beneath…
Along with the box can be ordered a custom pendant / herbal amulet filled with rare witch herbs and paraphernalia. Please e-mail me along with your purchase to discuss the details.
Last year I wrote about the feast days and folkloristic traditions of August, such as the Kräuterbuschen und Mariä Kräuterweihe, which may be rooted in older herb blessings traditions performed in the name of the goddess Freya. Emblematic of the season and its goddesses are also horns filled with the harvest – cornucopias, already pointing towards autumn and the harvest festivals.
On August 15 I gathered a bunch of aromatic herbs from our wild garden and stuffed them into an old cow horn, since I was still inspired by our recent trip to the Swiss Alps. This year my herb bundle contains rosemary, fennel, thyme, sage, ysop, rue, vervain, marshmallow, comfrey, wood betony and mint. Our mullein – which would commonly be placed at the center – has already flowered ready. So I added some goldenrod instead. Preceding the harvest was a long day spengt working in the garden and preparing some spots in the beds for new plants gifted to me. Once finished, my mom took the photo of me in the last rays of the evening sun.
Cobwebs and spiders in the giant rue plants and bronce fennel, green fading slowly but verily into golden colors, most herbs now bearing ripe seeds, while goldenrod and hollyhocks are still providing food to pollinators – it already feels like Altweibersommer.
The gathered herbs are drying now and will later become part of incense blends. Their ashes are a good medium for blessing the garden. There are also rites in which horns are filled with such ashes and other organic and unorganic materials and then burried in the garden soil for a blessed garden season.
Holle Incense
