From the ashes

Last October I attended a requiem for the high priestess who taught me most of what I know about witchcraft. She was an amazing woman, a larger-than-life character and a fantastic teacher.

At the end of the ceremony, the lovely lady who organised the it gave everyone there a small packet containing sea holly seeds in a handful of the funeral ashes. The high priestess had loved the sea and it seemed a suitable symbol of the cycle of life that each of us should take these away to plant them in the spring.

March is the time for festivals of rebirth and of life returning to the land. It is also the right time to plant sea holly seeds. They germinate best when there is still the chance of a cool spell soon after they are sown.

They should grow into seedlings that can be planted out in August and bloom in September, producing silvery-blue perennial flowers.

I am not the best gardener, so I will be watching carefully to see if they grow. If they do, I will photograph them for A Bad Witch's Blog.