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“Old trees, wild trees.” That’s something Treebeard the Ent says in Lord of the Rings. And it’s what excited me about trying new tea varieties. Or rather, old kinds—very old. Just ones I had not tried. 

I heard about the tea varietal Purple Joy on social media. A fellow tea lover posted his experience trying a wild tea, that is, a tea from wild trees. I had to try it too. Purple Joy is a black tea, and the purveyor Tea-Side also has wild green, oolong, and white tea, so I ordered one of each. I’ve seen photos of tea farming before and the tea plants looked like the clipped shrubbery in the knot gardens of English castles, laid out in mathematically precise rows, but the photos on Tea-Side’s website were pictures of huge individual trees, growing as they will in a jungle of random other plants. They looked a bit Entish. 

White daturas open gradually as the long summer evening deepens. Their scent blends with the scents of the perfume ritual. Gigantic sphinx moths hover like hummingbirds as they pollinate the humongous flowers. The perfumes take you on a journey, a journey to the Old West, as it exists in the dream plane where iconic figures like the Gunfighter come forth to guide you on a quest that is just as queer as it needs to be. 

A smell-o-story is a really original idea. Science fiction novels and movies have portrayed characters experiencing smell-o-vision movies, but they have not delivered the experience to the reader or viewer. Smoke and Silver by author / perfumer Derin Deschain of Cherry-Ka’s Trunk actually delivers that experience. 

I'm delighted to share with you that the newly revised and expanded second edition of Ariadne's Thread is now available!

The first edition, published 10 years ago (wow, has it really been that long?) was the inspiration for the creation of the Facebook group that evolved into the beautiful community that is Ariadne's Tribe.

Over the years, I've written a lot about the Minoan family of deities. But I realized I haven't written about one of the Mothers - not the Three Mothers whose realms are land, sky, and sea, but a fourth goddess whose realm is the cosmos itself.

In Ariadne's Tribe, we call her Ourania. Some of us also call her Starweaver. She is the Great Cosmic Mother of our family of deities.

All gifts from the gnome are precious, but there is something very special about being given a second chance at a gift that I didn't manage to keep going the first time. (As long time readers of this blog may know, I call the land wight of my land the gnome because that's what he wants to be called. A few years ago I blogged about being given mimosa tree seedlings by the gnome, to my delight.)

I love the mimosa tree which I grew from seed. It shades the south side of the house. It's blooming right now and it smells wonderful. A few years ago it made some seedlings which I tried my best to carefully nurture, hand watering them, and periodically cutting the chives and parsley that kept growing close enough to shade them or block the sprinkler or just generally overwhelm the tiny little trunks.

I shout encouragement at the TV. My partner provides analysis. Their bats are hot and their pitches sharp. But the Blue Jays keep losing. Why?

How do we know what Minoan religion was like? By looking... literally... at the artifacts they left behind.

We can't read what the Minoans wrote in their own language using the Linear A script. And the early form of Greek that the Mycenaeans wrote using the Linear B script amounts to little more than bookkeeping records from the Mycenaean occupation of Crete in the century or two before the Minoan cities were finally destroyed.