Scots, Shrubs and Foxes - Oh My!

We had quite the busy holiday weekend over here. I'm back at work today, sitting at my desk, wishing I could have a weekend to recover from my weekend. My muscles are sore, my feet are achy but it's the sort of sore and achy that makes you smile despite the discomfort, because you know the aches were well worth it.

Except the itchy sunburn. The itchy sunburn totally sucks and was not worth the 2 minutes it would have taken me to slather on some damn sunscreen. But, I digress.

The weekend kicked off with sighting the Super Full Moon on the horizon on our evening stroll with Luna. Under her bright light, I collected fresh roses from the garden and offered up rum and wine, smoke and flowers at my altar. Feeling moved to hum a melody in deep, vibrational tones, I relaxed by candle and moon light and let my mind empty itself of burden, obligation and thought for several minutes while I hummed. When I felt ready, I opened my eyes and lit my candles for the evening's work: a white one to honor the moon and a brown one for grounding and burying. As they burned down, I sipped my wine and pulled the oracle cards that will guide me this moon cycle.

Saturday morning saw us waking up early to head to the annual Highland games at a local university. This is the second time we've gone and the first time we've been able to make it in time for the opening ceremonies and they were spectacular! As if hundreds of pipers and drummers weren't enough to get me excited about a bunch of people chucking heavy objects all day long, members of the military parachuted in with flags from Scotland and the US to begin the second half of the ceremony. After the presentation of the flags, the singing of the national anthems, a 21 gun salute from the Marines and the playing of Taps by a lone bugleman, a single piper began Amazing Grace.

Bagpipes make me cry. I don't know why, there's just something about them that makes my eyes well up whenever I hear them. Amazing Grace on the pipes makes me bawl. I was holding it together pretty well, biting the inside of my cheek while the single piper played... and then the rest of them joined. Hundreds of pipers playing at once. There was no stopping the waterworks. I just stood there on the edge of the field and sobbed until they were done and the chucking of heavy objects began, the falconry exhibition began and the Scottish inspired rock music came flowing forth from the beer tent.

We spent nearly 6 hours there, strolling through the tents, watching events and exhibits and listening to music but it only felt like 2. Until we got in the car to come home and realized how much being in the sun had drained us and conked out on the couch when we got home. There's little I love more than a nice afternoon nap!

The rest of the weekend was spent doing work around the house, tie dying with my lady friends, seeing the new Star Trek, laying under the stars in the hammock (I saw a shooting star!) and grilling out. We're getting ready to paint the house for the first time since we moved in two years ago, but before we can do that we needed to clean up the shrubs (and weeds) that have sort of, kind of, taken over one entire side of the place. I'm not sure what the previous owners were thinking when they did some of their planting (I think this pretty frequently when I work in any of the gardens save the veggie patch) but some of the things they planted are WAY too big or WAY too invasive for the areas they put them in and it's taken a lot of work to even get just the first half of the stuff cleaned out.

Yesterday we were able to say goodbye to some of the shabby shrubs, prune off a lot of branches on the crabapple and bradford pear trees and begin the arduous task of tearing out ivy, kudzu and Gods only know what else that's been growing under the shade of those awful bushes. It required the truck and we sacrificed a few straps in the process but we removed all but one incredibly tenacious azalea bush, which is crazy because it's half dead from lack of sun. That bastard is getting chainsawed and pick axed out.

Eventually, the plan is to plant a small cottage inspired garden in the front corner of the house with foxgloves, hollyhocks and lilies. Then I'm hoping to tuck some of those variously colored hostas along the shady side of the house for interest and to keep some of the weeds down. Slowly but surely we're making our little house our own.

The perfect end to the weekend? Sitting on a friend's patio, sipping cold beverages when a fox wandered out of the bushes. Honest to Gods, I've never seen a wild fox before. It's the little things, really.