Welcome to my 3rd blog post about building outdoor sacred spaces. In my first post, I discussed stacking stones or stone cairn building. In my second post, I discussed building larger spaces, like stone circles and spirals. In this post, …
Creative Pursuits
Making Berry Inks (Huckleberry, Raspberry, Blackberry, Pokeberry, etc.)
Ink making is a wonderful way to use up some of the fabulous berries that you can forage for outdoors or grow in your garden. With berry ink, you can do wonderful water washes, use a dip pen and write …
Growing Kale and Kale Chip Recipie
Eating a locally-based, mostly plant diet is a key way of reducing your impact on our earth mother. Finding foods that are easy to grow, highly nutritious, easy to preserve, and harvestable for most of the year make eating sustainably …
Papermaking, Part II: Papermaking from Plant Materials (Cattail Fibers)
In my last post, I detailed the steps for making handmade paper from recycled materials. In that post, I also detailed the basic steps of making paper, from blending to couching to pulling and pressing sheets. Recycled fibers are a …
Hand Papermaking, Part 1: Recycled Papermaking
This is a post on papermaking using recycled fibers. I also have two posts on natural papermaking with cattail heads (which works well) and cattail leaf (which needs some improvement). The commercial process of producing paper is an incredibly environmentally …
Awen and the Spark of Creativity: The Value of Creative People
A key principle in druidry is Awen, which means poetic/divine inspiration–the inspiration to bring forth creative efforts into the world. Many artists seek their inspiration in the natural world, through which Awen flows. It is Awen that gives us poetry, …
Building Sacred Outdoor Spaces, Part 1: Stone Carin Building / Stone Balancing / Stone Stacking
I think its important that, as druids, we work to build sacred spaces within the landscape. Yes, many would say that all land is sacred, and I’ll not disagree. But at the same time, there’s quite a difference between a …
Music, Growing, and Land Healing
I wanted to take this time to blog a bit about plants, healing energies, music–yes–music. I use music a lot in my gardening and spiritual work. I play a number of flutes, including the panflute, wooden bamboo flutes, and various …
Making Phosphate-Free Homemade Laundry Detergent and Dish Detergent
Since its still winter, and I’m making things rather than growing things, I wanted to share a laundry detergent recipe with you! Current laundry detergents are terrible for the environment. They contain a number of chemicals, including phosphates (which can …
Introduction to Incense Making for Druids
The basis of this post is handout I used for the OBOD East Coast Gathering (2011) for my incense making workshop. I added in additional details based on what we discussed in the workshop, and I wanted to expand upon …
Jewelweed Salve: For Bug Bites, Burns, Cuts, and Scrapes
I think sometimes that we forget about the bounty that nature provides us. Jewelweed is a common plant found in most of the USA. It grows about 3′ high and has little spotted touch me not flowers and little pods …