Blogflog - Happy Summer Solstice Harvest!

[blogfloggery.livejournal.com]

Link: Happy Summer Solstice Harvest!
Disclaimer: This blog entry is verbatim, as originally posted on LKH's blog. Copyright belongs to Ma Petite Enterprises.

Happy Summer Solstice! Blessed Litha for my fellow pagans! Today is the longest day of the year. More sun, more light, more warmth, and tomorrow there will be a touch less, as we head towards autumn. This is a harvest festival for us, because it is traditionally when serious bounty began to come in from the fields, back when we couldn’t just run down to the grocery store and buy strawberries in January.

So, what good is a harvest festival in modern times where some people don’t even know that tomatoes grow on vines?

It’s true that the closest some of us get to a field is an apple picking afternoon at one of the local orchards, or the local organic isle, but harvest isn’t just about the stuff that feeds the body, it’s also about what feeds the heart, mind, and soul.

Harvesting means you’ve chosen what you wanted to grow, so you could get the right seed and plant it. You found out how much sun, how much water, and how many days until it would mature into a yummy vegetable. Pick something you want in your life, a better job, new couch, water garden, a family trip to Yellowstone, a romantic trip to Paris without the kids, hike the Appalachian trail, get pregnant, own your first designer watch, once a week date night, eat a more balanced diet, exercise more, take horse back riding lessons, take some college classes, be happier, love yourself more, knit your first sweater, finish your first novel, finish your 33rd novel, find a girlfriend, find a boyfriend, spend more time alone – whatever you want to bring into your life, that’s your seed.

Now that you know what you want, you need to figure out how much sunlight and water it needs, because some things need more shade, more solitude, others need bright sun and for you to reach out to more people for help, or instructions, or just to get them on board with the plan. The trick is to decide what steps you need to take, or things you need to do, or not do, to bring your harvest in before the end of the year.

For me, I want to finish the latest novel I’m writing by Thanksgiving day of this year. That’s going to require serious dedication to putting my butt in a chair and typing out pages on a regular basis. The light and water needed to finish the book is time, consistency of effort, and faith in myself and the book. On a good day, I’m so sure of myself that I’m unassailable in my certainty. On a bad day, I’m equally convinced I’d be killing trees to no purpose if I print the pages out. Oddly, I took today off from writing, to pursue two other things I wanted to bring to harvest in my life. I wanted koi for our water garden. I accomplished that by putting my name on the waiting list at the local pond store, because the fish go fast, and the big, pretty ones go faster. The fish were so gorgeous I was giddy with their beauty, and spoiled for choices. I began to laugh out loud as the clerk caught the fish I pointed out. I helped some, and was quickly splashed from glasses to sandals with water. We had one fish leap completely out of the tank to avoid being caught. I’d never seen such energy and fight in carp. It was so much fun, that I came home laughing and smelling slightly of clean, well-cared for fish. Watching them flit through the water in our pond made me smile a lot.

I also talked to the other half of our poly foursome today, and that feeds into another harvest goal, that I want even better communication to make sure that everyone’s needs get met, and most of their wants.

Jon, my husband, and I also got to visit with our friends, Sam and Eric, and since one of my goals is to see more of our friends, more often, that was perfect for today. They got here in time to help with the adventure of acclimating the koi to our pond, thanks for the help guys. What do you want to accomplish? What are you willing to put time and energy into so that you can harvest it by the end of the year? Think on what you need, what you want, and make it happen.

Comments

[lliira (from livejournal.com)]

I'm not a pagan and I don't know very much about modern pagans, but the way LKH is lumping all pagans together is bugging me. Like, everyone who is a pagan must celebrate all the same things she does and call them all the same names and think of them in exactly the same ways.

So, what good is a harvest festival in modern times where some people don’t even know that tomatoes grow on vines?

Yes, other people are dumb for (supposedly) not knowing this thing, but LKH is smart because she knows it! Also, tomatoes, which are from South America, are the perfect plant to invoke when talking about Litha, which originated in Europe centuries before anyone who celebrated "Litha" knew tomatoes existed.

Wait. Harvest festivals are traditionally in the fall.

Pick something you want in your life, a better job, new couch, water garden, a family trip to Yellowstone, a romantic trip to Paris without the kids, hike the Appalachian trail, get pregnant, own your first designer watch, once a week date night, eat a more balanced diet, exercise more, take horse back riding lessons, take some college classes, be happier, love yourself more, knit your first sweater, finish your first novel, finish your 33rd novel, find a girlfriend, find a boyfriend, spend more time alone

This is so overprivileged I can't even snark it.

Why does LKH keep acting like she's an advice columnist? Seriously, what the hell is going on with her that she keeps doing this, both on the internet and in her books?

[jessica collett (from livejournal.com)]

I was going to point out that the Harvest has always been celebrated in September. Like, there are some things that can be harvested right now - this is the month for salad greens - but most of the major crops that are going to sustain you through the winter are far from being ripe.

[plastraa.livejournal.com]

I know my tomato plants have tiny green babies on them right now so not exactly harvest time. Granted my strawberries and various lettuce/kale are yielding some 'fruits'. Still not harvest fest quantities of food coming out of my little urban homestead.

Harvest festival in June, a bit premature maybe?

[apep727.livejournal.com]

Wait. Harvest festivals are traditionally in the fall.

Fun fact - the word "harvest" comes from the Old English word for autumn. The word literally meant "harvest time". Which just makes the fail even bigger.

[guardians-song.livejournal.com]

"Why does LKH keep acting like she's an advice columnist? Seriously, what the hell is going on with her that she keeps doing this, both on the internet and in her books? "
She's adopted therapy as her new religion, and thus is attempting to convert everyone in-and-out-of-her-books to her personal cultish interpretation of the whole thing as the glorious business of meddling in other people's issues, whether or not she has any understanding thereof. Expect a Scientology-like cult of Anitamerrism, which is not at all like a pirated hack-job of therapy with brainwashing techniques pasteded on yey, to emerge whenever she sours on therapy curing all ills ever.

(Disclaimer: I know very well that therapy genuinely helps a lot of people, is considerate of the feelings and personal values of those going through it if it's done halfway correctly at all, and does not at all live down to the stereotypes of it.

LKH, however, treats it like a floofy re-education camp that scrubs away any and all inconvenient feelings and instead replaces everything a person is with a bunch of relativist crap so they can go out and spread the good word of being preachy, empty-headed advice columnists themselves. In other words, she lives down to the worst stereotypes of it and then some, and thinks this is advocating therapy. So, basically she's to therapy as L. Ron Hubbard was to psychology in general. Strikingly, they have rather similar initials...

Sorry to rant, but I'm not happy about the therapy-cultism infecting the Merry books as well. At least, in that case, the mandatory-therapy-reeducation was somewhat lampshaded with the guards only fervently working on therapy because they thought it was yet another arbitrary order from a royal psychopath or, in short, that they were in an Anita book. Once they clued in, several of them stopped. So... perhaps LKH is getting SOME self-awareness about how creepy her therapy-cures-all preaching looks?)

[lliira (from livejournal.com)]

She's embraced the worst stereotype about therapy, too. That it's nothing more than belly-button gazing by rich white people with no real problems who don't want to do anything to help anyone else, all they want is to feel better about themselves without any real effort.

[suzycat.livejournal.com]

THIS, Who harvests in midsummer? NOBODY. Also, I am the daughter of actual tomato growers and yes, we did pick in the summer... all summer... but we were growing under glass and we also picked in winter. Tomatoes aren't a very good choice.

Also also, it isn't midsummer, it's midwinter. World is round LKH. Southern hemisphere pagans are celebrating, uh, whatever the midwinter solstice is called.

[wanderingworlds.livejournal.com]

If we're basing it on Wicca/Neo-Celtic paganism, it'd be Yule.

If it's more Neo-Norse, than Mōdraniht.

[apep727.livejournal.com]

Wait, isn't Yule a Germanic term?

See, this is one of my big issues with Wicca. Culture is not a buffet - you can't just pick and choose the bits you like and leave the rest.

[balivatn.livejournal.com]

Yule is (generally) Germanic and a lot of the Nordic countries still use that term for their winter holiday season (like Iceland's Yule Lads). Mōdraniht was an Anglo-Saxon thing that some Norse heathens considered pan-Germanic and framed as a type of dísablót, but there are plenty of Norse heathens that don't think it applies to them. So like everything else, it's open to interpretation :)

[wanderingworlds.livejournal.com]

Yep. It's Germanic in origin.

To be fair though, it's been celebrated in some form or the other all the way to the Romans. Apparently it's popular. And neopagans aren't exactly known for being super strict about not borrowing from other cultures.

[lliira (from livejournal.com)]

Culture is not a buffet - you can't just pick and choose the bits you like and leave the rest.

Actually, you can, and everyone does to some extent. When it comes to religion, everyone does to a huge extent. There are progressive Christians, regressive Christians, feminist Christians, Duggars, socialist Christians, Ayn Randian Christians, etc. And when it comes to paganism, as with every religion I've ever heard of, picking and choosing is what everyone used to do. It's how so many religions ended up with what look like duplicate deities.

[apep727.livejournal.com]

Fair point. It just annoys me when someone essentially takes bits from Celtic, Germanic, and Greco-Roman mythologies and try to create a coherent whole from it, despite those being very disparate belief systems (and they're all from the same continent!)

It just reeks of cultural appropriation to me.

And yes, I know that just about every Christian holiday used to be some pagan holiday. But then again, these days people tend to be more involved in the pre-Christian aspects of those holidays.

[subtle-shades.livejournal.com]

Considering that all three of those mythologies borrowed from even older mythologies and each other, I don't think you need to worry about defending their integrity. And you don't need to worry, they seemed to integrate just fine for the original worshipers, shameless cultural appropriationists that they all were, so I imagine the modern Wiccans will be just fine.

[lliira (from livejournal.com)]

This.

[jeza-red.livejournal.com]

I think she means the fertility thing? In my country we still celebrate the Summer Solstice with bonfires and drinking even though Christianity tried to wipe out the tradition. In pagan times it was all about jumping over fires, sending wreaths down rivers to figure out who will marry who, getting drunk and fucking - it was the time when 'mother earth' and 'father sky' (I am simplifying as heck, sorryXD) came together and made good harvest possible later in the year. It was a happy, frivolous thing...
But I'm no wicca expert so I can't say what she meant for sure>_>

[lliira (from livejournal.com)]

Well, she said "harvest", then said a bunch of things that would be applicable to harvesting, and harvest festivals really are a big and specific deal. So it's like someone talking about how Easter is all about celebrating Jesus' birth, and how all Christians do this, and they're putting up a pine tree and hanging things on it, and they're going to go caroling later.

[wanderingworlds.livejournal.com]

Best analogy. Ever.

[suzycat.livejournal.com]

I thought Thanksgiving was in November though? Or is this a special pagan Thanksgiving?

[duamuteffe.livejournal.com]

Midsummer is not a bloody harvest festival!

[lady-fellshot.livejournal.com]

Those had better be some very small koi, with a really good filter, and very big pond else there will be some casualties from that starting ammonia spike. Hopefully someone mentioned it ahead of time. :/

They got here in time to help with the adventure of acclimating the koi to our pond, thanks for the help guys.

I was unaware that the process called "floating the bag of fish before releasing them" could be construed as an adventure. For that matter, I didn't know that the more complicated process called "drip siphon new water into a bucket before releasing the fish into new environment" could be considered an adventure, unless it was an adventure in patience. :P

[wanderingworlds.livejournal.com]

I can at least attest that they're small koi. (We have a few really big bastards and they look different as they grow, mostly in the head.)

We can assume that the pond is a large one, because it's LKH and she never does anything by halves.

[lady-fellshot.livejournal.com]

If those are 3 inch koi and I counted 14 of them in that pic, I would hope that the pond is at least 16 feet across with an average depth of 3 1/2 feet. That would give them plenty of space to grow and enough depth to avoid most backyard predators. I've seen far too many people try to overpopulate a small pond "because it looks so empty." :P

This is of course assuming that there is only one bag of fish and that LKH and co aren't trying to populate it all at once. Maybe she hired actual setup and upkeep of the pond to people who know what they are doing.

[txvoodoo.livejournal.com]

As someone who's kept large reef tanks, I agree 100%.

I hope she hired pros, too. To do otherwise is cruel.

[dreamstrifer.livejournal.com]

Laurell, just because Eckert's Farm has strawberry picking going on right now does not mean that it's harvest season.

[suzycat.livejournal.com]

Also. So her last flogged entry was about getting off the interwebs and going and snuggling with your loved one - because obviously everyone has at least one - and we surmised that some teeny drama had occurred. Now she is talking to the other half of the poly foursome about communication.

I suspect a thorn amid the roses.

[wanderingworlds.livejournal.com]

I got to it being harvest in June and couldn't keep reading. What?