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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.

In Irish mythology, there is a story of the salmon who swam in the Well of Knowledge, around which grew sacred hazel trees. The salmon ate nine hazel nuts that fell into the Well, and suddenly become possessed of the all the knowledge in the world. Anyone who caught and consumed the salmon would also take in the blessing of wisdom, and so the salmon was pursued by heroes for years.

When the Sun transits into Leo, the Summer is at its fullest, the Sun returns to its sovereign sign, the lush abundance of the Summer's growth is at its peak. But the Summer is past its tipping point: the Oak bows to the Holly, the Stallion bows to the Boar. The transition is subtle but distinct: the Oak King and his powers of expansion, of movement forward, of exploration, have given way to the Holly King, older, wiser, more cagey,with his powers of protection, of preservation, and of steadfastness.

Under the Full Moon of August—a hot rosy-colored moon, a hot wind riffles through the tall grass and there's thunder in the distance—the Leo Sun dances with the Moon in Aquarius, tempering the intensity of Leo’s expressiveness and passion, with a wider perspective. Sun in Leo is eminently powerful, and imbues us all with the leonine qualities of confidence, creativity and playfulness. We feel ourselves to be sovereign in our lives, our work and our art flourishes because our connection to source is open and we are empowered to receive. This power within ourselves is available as long as we allow ourselves access, we need to believe we are worthy, we need to believe in our contribution and our talent. But Aquarius further empowers to see that our passions and our actions do more than entertain and enrich us. The appropriate role of any conscious soul at this time is to bring our talents and our contributions out of our studios, out of our homes, and offer them up for the benefit of others. The Aquarius moon reminds us that our talents and dreams might be incredibly personal and vulnerable, but they also transcend our small personal lives to touch others, to have an impact on the world we share.

Let the beauty we love, be what we do.

There are a thousand ways to kneel and touch the ground.

In this uncontainable night,

be the mystery in the crossroads of your being,

For the first time in 4 years, my rose bush is blooming.

After years of not blooming, I was pretty shocked, one morning in late May, to go into the back yard and notice that the rose bush was covered in hundreds of tight green buds. A few weeks later, the roses—small red ones—began to open, just a few at first, then more every day, until the whole thing is livid with scarlet petals and crawling with bees. Every few days, I cut off some of open blooms, and put them in water, but there are always more every morning. Every morning the cool air in the garden smells of roses, the apple trees and cottonwoods are damp with dew, birds are trilling and flitting between the branches. It's sweet and luscious, this moment as the day is beginning, in those sweet weeks as Spring ebbs into Summer. The world is beautiful, the weather is beautiful, the world is throbbing with life. Every cell is full of pleasure and joy, the world vibrates with it.

For many of us who were not raised in Pagan traditions, but who came into our Pagan identity later, there is often a catalyzing moment that births us onto our path. Perhaps it's a ritual we attended, or something we read, or maybe it grows out of environmental activism. For me it began in an ice storm.

I moved to North Carolina, to that central part known as the Piedmont, to attend graduate school. I rented an old Sears prefab house (“It was a shotgun shack and you know it, “ my mother's ghost chides me), tucked into the pine woods bordering dairy pastures. The house itself was so far below code the landlord couldn't advertise it. One side of the foundation was shored up with flooring tiles and a mallet; half the electric outlets did not work; there was not a right angle to be found in any corner. Wolf spiders the size of puppies would creep out of the shadows at night and even get in the bed. The well would freeze in the Winter and pump out weak ice tea colored water that reeked of iron in Summer. And I loved it.