Winter                                                                     Seed Catalog Moon

On occasion now my eye drifts out to our raised beds mounded with snow, our fruit trees asleep and bare, the bee hive.  It has begun, that quickening, the part that knows even these low, low temperatures will not hold off the approaching spring.

The bees need checking, to see if they’ve survived the winter, but it’s just been too cold.  At some point Javier will come out and prune the orchard.  Seeds and plants must get ordered.  Mostly now though there is that still young feeling, the quickening.

Perhaps it has always been so in the temperate climates.  Perhaps this sense of delight, not really eagerness, but palpable change, is part of what caused the Celts to celebrate Imbolc, the next Great Wheel holiday.  It celebrates the freshening of the ewes and the triple goddess, Brigit, of hearth, forge and poetry.  Perhaps this is all part of the waking up.

Pagans, I’m increasingly unhappy with this word, but can’t think of a better one, have our great waking up morning every spring.  We don’t have to wait for the apocalypse, the fallow time of fall and winter is enough for us.  The greening comes with the joy of life triumphant, life resurrected, life everlasting.

No, this isn’t cabin fever, not yet.  It’s an awareness, a tickle, perhaps a single blade of grass brushing against my foot.  But, it’s a start.