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The little clay goddess went out into the garden on Planting Day.

Ohmigods.

Now I practically need a machete to get into the garden.

The tomatoes have been the size of grapefruits.

The collard leaves are as big as skillets.

The squash vine, umbilical, not content with taking over the garden, is in the process of claiming the entire back yard. I'm expecting it to grab me as I go out the door any day now.

The butternuts it bears are each more than a foot long. The last one I cooked weighed two and a half pounds.

This post was inspired by the MyPolytheism project.

Mabon is sometimes called the Pagan Thanksgiving. It is a harvest festival, as well as the time of the year when day and night (light and dark) are equally balanced. For the Vegan Pagan, Mabon gives us a chance to have a Thanksgiving Holiday that avoids modern connotations of colonization and genocide (when it comes to European relations toward Indigenous Americans) and also the association with eating turkeys. As I have mentioned in past posts, about forty-six million turkeys are slaughtered for American Thanksgiving each year. Information about this can be found at the Maine based project, https://46millionturkeys.com/. So perhaps you can already see why I think Mabon is the perfect Vegan Pagan Thanksgiving. We can make the celebration about a bountiful harvest of vegan foods like yams, corn, pumpkins, squash, acorns, chestnuts, blueberries, cranberries, and more. But perhaps the star food of the vegan Mabon feast should be acknowledged as the apple.

 Now the falling of the leaves, now the shortening day:

for Summer is a-going out, and Winter's on the way.

You won't find our Autumn Evenday ritual in any Book of Shadows.

In some ways, it looks more like Thanksgiving at your mother's house.

Well, assuming your mother was Sybil Leek.

After all, this is Witches' Thanksgiving.

Last week I picked the last apple on the tree.

It's been a good year for apples, but my trees are young and small, and the crop was subject to the predations of squirrels and jays. Too many times I would leave an apple to ripe one more day, only to find it the next morning, smashed on the ground, maybe a few bites out of it, swarming with ants. So I grabbed this one, the very last one left, dangling on the very thinnest branch, and was grateful to have it.

A wonderful new CD of Pagan songs honoring the sacredness of Nature has just blessed us. I have enjoyed it immensely and hope many of you will as well. That’s the elevator speech. Here’s why.

The Green Album is a collection by many of our best contemporary Pagan musicians contributing their original music to honor the earth. At a time when the fate of the place we love is being threatened by greed, ignorance, and fear, music can strengthen those of us who feel powerless given magnitude of the forces we oppose and even penetrate minds and hearts closed to argument and evidence.  This collection does so for me.