Category Archives: My Enchanted Life

Spring Cleaning

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My phone is too full of photos so I’ve done a complete Marie Kondo: delete, delete, delete. These are some great ones I thought I’d share before they’re gone forever…

You can’t see them, but I DID. Eight, yes EIGHT orca whales! Leaping and breaching, one right after the other; this experience was beyond magnificent. They were close to the boats that you CAN see, and yes, I was totally freaking out. It was my first sighting. Magical doesn’t even begin to describe the feeling because for me, it was as meaningful as the day I saw wolves in Yellowstone’s Lamar Valley. Joy filled all the spaces of my heart, but the moment was also tinged with sadness because I know there are still some killer whales in captivity and that is so, so very wrong.

Sand or gravel barge with push tug? I’m not sure.

Another big boat…

Snow on the Olympic Mountains!

Now the photos are gone, but in my heart and mind, they will live forever. Time to replace them with new memories.

A Simple Reminder

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May the shells on the beach remind you that treasures arrive every day in the form of simple things.

Graphic by Enchanted Seashells

Powerful Flowerful Full May Moon

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“The moon, like a flower in heaven’s high bower, with silent delight sits and smiles on the night.”
William Blake

It’s been raining in SoCal, and if you have clear skies tonight in your area, take a look at the stars next to the moon. One of them is Alpha Librae, also known as Zubenelgenubi. This star is quite special: if you have eagle eyes or use binoculars, you’ll see it as two stars. That’s no optical illusion as Alpha Librae is, in fact, a double star. To learn more, visit the Sky Tonight app.

As a special bonus, a penumbral lunar eclipse is taking place, too!

Don’t forget to charge your crystals and a jar of moon water!

Not a super great photo of the moon; but I discovered some spectacular tulips and lilacs on my walk.

Bloom Where You’re Planted

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Just like this happy purple pansy I found glowing and growing in a sidewalk crack.

Against all odds, alive and thriving…

 (Did you know that pansy came from the French word “pensee …remembrance or thought?)

Dance of the May Queen

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Elaine Bayley Illustrations

This is the last day of April. Tomorrow we celebrate Beltane and May Day, and while we can weave flowers in our hair and dance around the maypole, it’s also also called Workers’ Day or International Workers’ Day, to commemorate the struggles and gains made by workers and the labor movement. 

May Day is a far cry away from the international call of distress, mayday. I always wondered where that term emanated from. For some reason, SOS didn’t work, so it seems as if mayday was attributed to Frederick Stanley Mockford, a senior radio officer in the RAF. In 1927, the United States formally adopted it as an official radiotelegraph distress signal, explaining that mayday corresponds “to the French pronunciation of the expression m’aider.” It’s simple meaning in English is “help me.”

Beltane is a Celtic annual festival to signify the return of the light.

Whether you light bonfires, decorate your homes with May flowers, or make May bushes, have a Happy Beltane and May Day!

In May
Yes, I will spend the livelong day
With Nature in this month of May;
And sit beneath the trees, and share
My bread with birds whose homes are there;
While cows lie down to eat, and sheep
Stand to their necks in grass so deep;
While birds do sing with all their might,
As though they felt the earth in flight.
This is the hour I dreamed of, when
I sat surrounded by poor men;
And thought of how the Arab sat
Alone at evening, gazing at
The stars that bubbled in clear skies;

And of young dreamers, when their eyes
Enjoyed methought a precious boon
In the adventures of the Moon
Whose light, behind the Clouds’ dark bars,
Searched for her stolen flocks of stars.
When I, hemmed in by wrecks of men,
Thought of some lonely cottage then
Full of sweet books; and miles of sea,
With passing ships, in front of me;
And having, on the other hand,
A flowery, green, bird-singing land.
William Henry Davies 1871–1940

PoeTree

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Poetry. A gentle play on words makes me laugh.

April is almost over and I nearly forgot it was National Poetry Month!

I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.
Joyce Kilmer

I looked up at this gnarled but lovely twisty eucalyptus tree trunk and ran my fingers down her bark/skin. It was roughly textured but felt solid and safe. Notice all the nooks and crannies to shelter birds and other living creatures.

I am also protected.

For me, this embodies poe-tree.

Happy Earth Day 2023

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I attended the very first Earth Day celebration in 1970 at Balboa Park in San Diego with a crowd of about 70,000 people. It was Wednesday, the weather was beautiful, about 68 degrees, and I must have skipped school that Wednesday.

I can’t remember who I went with or how I got there but I do recall walking from booth to booth looking for free stuff and having an unpleasant encounter with a San Diego cop, probably about being truant.

There is a vague recollection that I swore at him and he got all puffed up and intimidating, threatening to call my dad until I told him to go ahead, my dad was a lawyer…and then he walked away. Miss you, Daddy, and thank you!

Gaia, known as the mother goddess, was the personification of Earth. She’s described as a caring and nurturing mother figure to all of her children, plants, and other living creatures on this planet.

We’re all children of Gaia, Earth Mother, no matter where we live.

Here’s a photo of boats from my little slice of earth at Agua Hedionda Lagoon, along with a lone paddleboarder.

I walked along a little trail high above the water and this view seemed like it could be anywhere in the world, but it’s right here in SoCal.

Take care of Mother Earth and she’ll take care of you!

How I Go To The Woods

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This intense cosmic energy is not only messing with my sleep, but I was having strange battery issues with my laptop computer so I went back to the Apple store where I had once met Al Gore (yes, VICE PRESIDENT Al Gore) and asked the Genius Bar tech to perform a diagnostic check. The tech didn’t do much but it’s all better, so who really knew what caused the problem, whether it was a hardware glitch or a solar flare, or other planetary influences. The good thing is that it’s back to working perfectly.

There were lots of traffic accidents and horrible drivers everywhere yesterday. The freeway was completely shut down for hours because of an insane situation with a woman who allegedly vandalized a vehicle and carjacked a Lyft. She led the police on a short chase but finally, peacefully, surrendered to police after a prolonged standoff on Interstate 5. It looked like WW3 with all of the military-like Special Weapons and Tactics Team surrounding the vehicle. The woman was taken into custody on suspicion of felony vandalism, brandishing a weapon in a threatening manner, assault with a deadly weapon, carjacking, resisting arrest, and felony evasion of police.

That’s way too much negative energy for ME to deal with and I’m so glad I wasn’t stuck for hours on the freeway. I felt lucky that I had made a spontaneous last minute decision to take an alternate route home. I heard all the sirens though, but had assumed it was simply another accident.

Time to take a deep breath, stay home, work in the garden, listen to the birds, and read a poem or two while cultivating some zen as well as my veggies.

How I Go To The Woods by Mary Oliver

Ordinarily, I go to the woods alone, with not a single
friend, for they are all smilers and talkers and therefore
unsuitable.

I don’t really want to be witnessed talking to the catbirds
or hugging the old black oak tree. I have my way of
praying, as you no doubt have yours.

Besides, when I am alone I can become invisible. I can sit
on the top of a dune as motionless as an uprise of weeds,
until the foxes run by unconcerned. I can hear the almost
unhearable sound of the roses singing.

If you have ever gone to the woods with me, I must love
you very much.

Rare Hybrid Solar Eclipse | Journey Between Two Worlds

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Get ready for sky drama!

Photo by Drew Rae on Pexels.com

The upcoming solar eclipse on April 19-20 holds a significant amount of energy that can bring about profound changes in our lives.

The Ningaloo Eclipse April 20 is an extraordinary and rare hybrid solar eclipse that takes its name from an Aboriginal word. The path of totality passes over North West Cape, a remote peninsula of Western Australia.

On April 20, the shadow of the moon will graze the tip of the state in a twenty-five mile wide track as it travels over one of the most beautiful parts of the world – the Ningaloo region near Exmouth.

Exmouth is the only town within the line of totality making it one of the only places on earth to experience a total solar eclipse, one of nature’s most phenomenal occurrences.

The Aries new moon solar eclipse is a hybrid between an annular eclipse, where you can see a ring of fire around the sun, and a total eclipse, where the sun is completely blocked.

Hybrid eclipses are incredibly rare and can suggest a transition or perhaps a shift between two worlds.

Just as the eclipse moves from total to annular, perhaps something in our lives is preparing to shift too.

Claim the messages sent during this timeframe, as they are usually crucial to our spiritual and physical evolution.

It’s a good time to meditate on the Taoist concept of the flow state (Wu Wei), and examine what is in or out of alignment in our journey.

In addition to this blast of cosmic energy, Mercury retrograde occurs between April 21 and May 14 in my sign of Taurus.

“That which offers no resistance overcomes the hardest substances.
That which offers no resistance can enter where there is no space.
Few in the world can comprehend the teachings without words, or understand the value of non-action.”
Lao Tzu, Tao Te Chin

Nothing But Nasturtiums

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When I was in college, we lived across the street from a wild place, an abandoned and untended avocado grove blanketed with nasturtiums. Their long tendrils would wind up and around the gnarled trunks.

After school, my friends and I would sit under the trees and pick tiny avocados from the low hanging branches and gorge on them until we were full, and then we’d lie back in the pillowy nasturtium leaves and pretend we were forest fairies.

We’d sometimes weave orange and yellow tiaras through our hair, and always pick a bouquet to bring home.

I love their tangy but sweet fragrance and often add the flowers to salads, but only the ones from my garden that I’m sure are pesticide-free.

All the rain birthed my own enchanted nasturtium forest this year.