Peace and bliss

The peace of the season is becoming natural. It’s been four weeks since I started my retreat and I am turning toward the center, walking ever so slowly, and realizing that I am halfway there. At this point, the only thing I will buy until mid-January is food for the table. Such gifts as I am giving for Yule have already been made, wrapped, and already sent. You can have your shopping frenzy if you like but I will not join you. I have been that footsore shop clerk who sympathized with your amazement that all the good things were sold by Christmas Eve. Imagine that!

Work has slowed down on the treehouse, my handyperson’s days off don’t always match up with good weather. He stopped by to deliver roofing materials, because he does hope to get the roof on before winter comes. 

Inside the jolly bungalow, it is starting to get festive. The tree will be artificial this year. Because of the pandemic, I can’t consider going out to buy a tree an essential thing. I will go into my woodlands and trim an arm-load of evergreen and laurel branches, and collect small bits of wintergreen and princess pine. I will mix hinoki cypress and balsam essential oils, maybe adding a touch of cinnamon, clove, and bay laurel to the blend. It will be an old-fashioned Yule.

For Gran, Yule meant lots of baking. Fruitcakes were not a thing of scorn in her household  They were delicate and delicious, made with candied peel from her own pantry, loaded with nuts, and redolent with whisky. 

Mum baked gingerbread and made cookies. She reminisced about the fruitcakes but never made them. She celebrated Yule under a very thin veneer of a very old-fashioned Christmas. 

I bake bannocks, and decorate the jolly bungalow with a lot of pine cones in addition to the arm-load of greens. I make a lot of my decorations and it is a time of quiet joy and dreams of thick flakes falling. Winter is coming and I love it.