Litha 1998 Newsletter Litha - A Personal Perspective

It's the height of summer, and some days I feel like I'm going to melt. I don't feel like moving, and breathing can be a chore. It must be the time when the sun stands still, or the time of the Summer Solstice. This season is marked in my household by the construction of a 'pod tree'. This is a clump of sticks placed, decoratively, in a pot filled with dry soil. The dry soil is reflective of the need and desire for rain in the heat of summer. Long, straight sticks are then placed at angles in the pot to represent the trees and bushes of our country. I use the same sticks each year, and they hold a special significance for me, as I have used them for so many years. At the base of the pot, I place pods collected from my local area. I also thread some of the larger, more unusual and beautiful pods onto ribbon (green or red), and hang them from the sticks. The pods are symbolic of the summer situation, and of waiting for the heat to crack them open and give them new life. While the sticks are the same each year, the pods are often different, to reflect the same trees, but different cycles of life within that system.