Tags: altar, pagan
Current Mood: pleased

So we developed last minute plans for Fathers' Day to take gryphon_nz's folks, tzaddik_mossad, and starfire_Dad out for lunch today.

We'd taken gryphon_mum out  before to the cafe at the King's Plant Barn in Silverdale, and it had been a lovely experience, and given that it's halfway between Alreoch and Auckland, it seemed like  a good meeting point. 

It was, again, a lovely lunch - it was busy, but not oppressively crowded. Food was yummy, service was great, conversation was pleasant... and then there were the plants...

See Starfire stand with her nose in a spring-blooming magnolia tree, getting high on the scent!  See Starfire gleefully boast to starfire_Dad that she was so proud of herself for not buying anything... then caving in to the pressure of all the gorgeous, growing green things around her, and, as pretty much everyone there knew she woud, making reasonable inroads into taking half the store back  to Auckland with her (ok, some of it went back onto the shelves after careful consideration... and even had it not, gryphon_nz would probably indicate that there might be a *small* degree of exaggeration in that previous assertion).

I did, however, come back with a couple of herbs and the afore-written-about plants for my altar (yay!)  I picked up two basil seedlings, because my last load of basil actually realised it was only meant to be an annual, damnit (the year before, someone forgot to tell the basil, so it decided it felt more like being a biennial, and just kept going through the winter and on into spring again), and a couple of chammomiles (because I managed to let last years' lot die of thirst when life went off into strange and intense melodramas and I forgot to water the poor babies for a good couple of weeks :-(((((((

In addition to that, I wembled around for what must have been half and hour or so, looking for just the right plant to take the place of the candle holder in the centre of my altar. I didn't know exactly what I was looking for, so I figured I'd just wemble till something caught my eye. When burningsol came over last night for roleplaying, she mentioned that she could eaily see some kind of fern there, and I was thinking maybe that or a succulent, but I wasn't attached to anything in particular and just wanted to see what pinged me.

In the end, it was an aloe that got me - not aloe vera, but something similar, with shorter, fatter leaves, and a rosy kind of tint to its skin. I'll be putting up some more altar piccies later on, so you'll be able to see what I mean. It's apparently every bit as useful in treating burns and soothing skin as aloe vera, and I liked the idea of having a plant healer take pride of place on the altar.  I also picked up two baby spider plants. I've always liked them (for a start, they're forgiving and hard to kill!), and I figured it would be good to have something I associate with Spider that wasn't a web on there too (I suspect when they grow a little, they'll end up being sentinels too).

So the afternoon, once we got back home, has been spent potting new plants, weeding some of the older ones (and making sekrit plans for what else might end up in my herb garden on the deck), and setting up the altar.

All in all, a day of much pleasantness :-)

Blessings and happy hugs

Starfire

Tags: altar, celebrations, family, herbs, plants
Current Mood: content

Tags: altar, pagan
Current Mood: accomplished

...  at least for the moment, and without too much hassle, which is all good.

I was kind of hoping to take a picture of it and show off all the pretty, but alas, it was not to be - the digicam has not been charged in something like 18 months, and will take at least two hours before it's going to be ready to take *anything* resembling a photo.  I have it charging now, so perhaps tomorrow morning, it can be done... At some point later, anyway.

I'm conscious that the altar feels... temporary, in its current set-up, and more than a little tied to my past.  Its focus is a gorgeous glass-and-tumbled-jasper candle arrangement Donald bought me for Solstice last year, and that feels right to leave on there... but some of the other stuff on there - a second green, glass candle holder - a statue of the Venus of Willentdorf  - doesn't seem quite right.   There's a shell and piece of tumbled rose-quartz in a glass of water that I *think* is right (although I may end up changing the stone at various times), and a holey-stone picked up from a beach in the UK on an outing with the PP group there with a feather slotted through one of the holes that I'm pretty sure will stay

I also feel as though I need to get some living  ornamentation for it - either cut flowers in a vase, or a couple of small potted plants (when I was in the UK, I had two plants in tall, narrow pots either side of my altar that I called 'my sentinels'). And something different as an altar cloth too (I have a layer of the pale grey-blue silky, gauzy stuff I made my wedding veil out of at the moment - I think I want something more solid, more textured, and deeper coloured... I suspect there's a trip to Spotlight in my future). And something more connected to 'Dite - because although  Venus is part of my past, she's not so much a part of my present.

And finally, I want some kind of boxes that will allow different things on the altar to be at different levels.

My major thing, in looking at some of the other altars folks have posted pics of, is to avoid having it be too busy.  Different strokes for different folks, I know, but I want my altar to be something I find peaceful and focussing... and I find that hard when there's too much on there - especially if each thing in the 'too much' all has energies in that conflicts with everything else in there.

Anyway, for now we'll call it a work in progress, and no doubt have fun building on it  and finding new things for it as time goes by.

For now though? It's time for all good Starfires to head to bed, where they will hopefully have wonderful flying dreams.

Hey, a girl can hope.

Hugs and accomplished blessings

Starfire

Tags: altar, pagan, spirit
Current Mood: accomplished