Little Druid on the Prairie

I’m pretty plugged in to being the Druid of this Place. I think it’s important to connect to the Earth – both as a global construct and something we should care for, and as a specific thing that we are entrusted with. My yard is my sacred space, and I can make an impact there even when my impact on the global world is so much smaller. I’m intimately connected with the land around me, and I work to make sure my connection to local spirits is strong and respectful.

For example, my yard is pesticide and herbicide free, and chemical free as often as we can manage it (with the exception of fire ants, which my husband and I are both terribly allergic to. I usually try the grits trick first*, but if that doesn’t work, they get poisoned).  As often as possible, we plant native or semi-native plants, to feed and attract native bugs and birds.

Because of the lack of stuff-that-kills-things, my yard is FULL of spiders, toads, lizards (especially lizards), and the occasional earth snake, brown snake, and even sometimes a snapping turtle, as well as having lots of squirrels and birds in the winter. I love opening the door and seeing the baby lizards sunning on the sidewalk.

I also love to garden. I grow vegetables and herbs, and I have a garden specifically designed for bees, butterflies, and hummingbirds. While it’s much harder with my new job to plant a profound and interesting and finicky garden, I can almost always get tomatoes and green beans to grow without much prodding. I love the act and art of growing things (though like any gardener, I occasionally kill plants), because it connects me so strongly with the forces of Earth and Life and Death. This year for Lammas I was able to cut down the corn stalks (long dead, but left for that purpose) and it was a really powerful reminder of the cycle of sacrifice and rebirth.

This is one of the points where my Wicca training and Druidry conflict a bit, because in BTW, the God is a God of Nature and the sacrifice of Life and Death and Rebirth. While some variants of Wicca (specifically the non-initiatory traditions) often spend a lot of time with the Earth Mother, I’ve learned to identify the energy of growing things, and their life cycle, as an aspect of male divinity.

Still, the Earth itself is easily something I can identify with as female, even if that particular piece of the agricultural cycle is something I associate with a specific God.

Of course, the Nature Spirits and Land Spirits are of mixed genders, so there’s no problem there. I like leaving offerings for them in my yard. I have an old stump piece from one of the trees we lost after Ike, and it sits up like a table in the back near the fence, so that’s where I leave my offerings. Usually I leave bits of food and drink, as often as possible things that I’ve made myself. If I’m going to live here, I think it’s important to have a good relationship with the other spirits who live here, and make offerings to them in return for their blessings on my house and gardens.

I am, after all, the Druid in this Place, as opposed to That place, or Some Other place. This is where I make my home, so this is the piece of Earth I need to truly connect with. Of course it’s important to take care of the whole earth, to be aware of my footprint on it and make sure I’m doing all I can to honor the life I have here. It’s just also important to me that I specifically plug in to my little corner here in the swamp.

*The Grits Trick: Take grits and sprinkle them liberally around an ant mound. This frequently causes some of the ants to get sick and die (as they eat the grits and then die of bowel impaction), which will cause the mound to move elsewhere. This really only works on relatively small, unestablished ant mounds.