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The normal association with mistletoe at this time of the year is the cut stuff we bring indoors to decorate with. However, there’s more mistletoe celebrating to be done than this!

Once the leaves are down from the trees, you have your best chance at finding mistletoe in the wild. It doesn’t grow everywhere – I used to struggle to see any at all when I lived in the Midlands, but Gloucestershire (south west UK) has loads. As you can see from the photo, mistletoe in trees isn't always that self announcing and you have to pay attention to spot it - which makes finding it all the more rewarding.

Last year I wrote about the first frosts as something to enjoy in November. http://witchesandpagans.com/sagewoman-blogs/nimue-s-wheel/celebrating-the-first-frosts.html

This is without a doubt the month I find hardest to be positive about. Samhain with all its spooky joys is now behind us. The winter stretches ahead. The cold has its teeth in and will likely keep chewing for months to come. The ground becomes slippery and treacherous, the days short and dark. Everything is harder. And I’m one of the lucky ones; I have a home, I can afford to heat it and I can afford to eat.

I’ve known years when the trees were bare of leaves by the end of September. In recent years I’ve seen leaves still on trees during my habitual Christmas day walk to my mother’s house. No two autumns ever have quite the same shape, and what turns when has a lot to do with the shape of the land, and where exactly your land is, as well.

This year, some trees started showing autumnal colours fairly early in September. I write this blog at the beginning of October, with an array of yellow, copper and happily photosynthesising greens outside my window. The story of leaves is not one that fits tidily into the wheel of the year, not least because during the part of the winter when the trees are supposedly sleeping, they make their buds, all ready for next year’s growth. the falling of leaves is a process that can start before the autumn equinox and go through to midwinter.

One of the things I love about this time of year, is that the evenings are often warm enough to be out and about at twilight, but it gets dark early enough that I can be out at night without overtiring myself. I’m not good at late nights, and around midsummer I often end up in bed before its properly dark. As someone who loves night creatures, this can be a less than perfectly happy state of affairs.

But now, early autumn is upon us, the dark comes earlier and I can be out in it. I go out to listen to the owls – we get little owls, barn owls and tawny owls around my home. They often start calling before the sun has set. Pipistrelle and noctule bats both come out a little bit before the sun sets, too. Most bat species need it to be properly dark, so the odds of seeing them are slim.

Lammas, Lugnasadh, the celebration of the grain harvest is a few days behind us. However, not all plant life corresponds with the grain, there are many things out there in the UK at different points in their life cycles right now so I thought I’d talk about those to offer some alternative takes on the wheel of the year for this month.

Lammas rituals often encourage us to focus on personal harvests and bounty, but there’s nothing in nature that says it is natural to be at the harvest stage at specifically this point in the year. If your life is not aligning you to the grain harvest, look around to see what you do connect with.

I’ve repeatedly run into wheel of the year narratives that encourage us to align our lives with the sun’s cycle. This, we are told, is more natural. We should dream and hibernate in the depths of winter, plant the seeds for our projects in the spring, watch them grow through the summer and take our harvest in the autumn. Never mind that many projects are not shaped like growing grain in the first place.

What do you do if the winter is a depressing time? What do you do if you need the warmth and comfort of sunny days to do your dreaming and planning? What do you do if you work best in the winter, locked away from the world? If your nature doesn’t align you to the solar wheel, how can forcing yourself to fit with it be natural?

When we talk about flying the nest in human terms, what we mean is a sudden, dramatic exit from a place of comfort and safety to having to fend for ourselves. I find it interesting that this is not what birds do. As it is very much fledgling season right now, I thought it a good time to explore this.

Aquatic birds leave the nest not long after hatching. Fuzzy, excited and with no idea about anything much, they are led to water. Floating comes naturally to them, and momma duck, or in the case of swans, both parents, will get to work teaching them how to survive. Young swans will still be with their parents into the winter.