Wait, hang on, I have to look at my amazing (if chonky) pony for just a sec………
Okay, now that I’ve got MY attention as well, here’s what’s happening.
This pretty Arabian princess is my little mare, Fiona. It’s hard to take a bad picture of her, but I’ve managed it brilliantly for years. This is the first time she’s ever had a pro photo session and OMG, I’ve never seen so clearly why having a pro makes a difference.
She even snuck me and our newly adopted senior doggie, Bonzai, into the session.
Somewhere in the second half of 2025, two women walked into the little shop where I work in Boonsboro. They were both tall, blonde, smart, and funny. I admired a gorgeous handbag, and that’s how this all began. Carla Vergot, the skyrocketing romance writer who was doing a book signing next door at the Turn the Page Bookstore, brought her best friend Kim along, and Kim has Foxfire Fashion, gorgeous wearable art using her own photography.
This had to be something that intrigued more folks than just me.
I asked Kim if she had a handbag with a white horse on it, like my own girl’s pretty face, and that’s when she told me that she would actually do a photo shoot of an hour or so, and make me a purse with an image of my own horse. Not one of my dorky pictures, but a truly gorgeous one.
I was all in.
As we chatted, setting up the shoot and then having both Kim and Carla come capture the images of Fiona, I got to know a bit more about how Kim operates her business. What she DIDN’T want was just to slap a stock photo onto a cheap product. She found a company that makes its bags in America, at a higher price but much improved quality, and only uses her own photos or digital images. She knows the quality and resolution of her own work, and that photoshopping ruins the integrity of the photograph.
Kim uses very judicious featherlight touches of brushstroke to give her images that arresting look of a painting. The jaunty fedora on a tiger is Kim-created, the tiger is her own fantastic photograph. She can create any image from photo-realism to pure fantasy, the work 100% hers, and available on a number of products such as a handbag, floaty silk scarf, or irresistibly soft pillow.
The best part is that the photo album created from your session is yours forever.
Typical pricing for the photo shoot plus the product runs from $300-$500, and requires about a month of lead time. Kim is willing to drive up to 50 miles from her home near Leesburg.
If you are looking for super stunner of a gift, or have an animal you love and want to commemorate always, or just to give someone the surprise of a lifetime, contact us and we’ll get your very own custom photography session with Kim and Foxfire Fashions rolling!
I found a little fox, dead, in the culvert at the end of my driveway, the propylaios. I was surprised that my dog paid no attention to him, the little fox ear deceptively intact and alert over a pinkish skull. There was no smell. His fur, a beautiful red with black points, looked fine, as far as I could see.
Fox energy has been so very prevalent, for the last year or more. At least one has laid terrible, traumatic waste to the chicken coop across the lane that supplies me with fresh eggs for three seasons. War has been declared, and I get it.
But I’m always so delighted and privileged to catch sight of them. I don’t see them enough to tell them apart, but there’s one with the bald-tail thing, another magnificent big buff healthy fellow, and at least a couple of teenagers. They bring a whiff of Odysseus, Hermes, that type of craftiness, of adaptability, of creating opportunities and taking control. The energy I’m least comfortable with. But it keeps getting drummed into my head, that this is what is going to be needed. I need to at least try to develop some degree of it.
This poor baby weighed on me so. I know I can’t save 1% of 1% of the death and tragedy that plays out here, every day, almost altogether unobserved by me. And it’s doubtful I could have done anything in this case. But when stuff like this ends up under my usually-narcisstic nose, it’s my obligation to do my best.
In this case it wasn’t much. I took a shovel, a clean towel, and plastic gloves, and pulled the sad little body out of the culvert. There was much more of him in there than I expected. His tail felt like pulling a wet ponytail through a scrunchie as I tugged it carefully out. He was more than two feet from nose to tail tip, so not a baby, but not full-grown. I wonder how he came to be there. The smell of death came on as I eased out the body. I wrapped him carefully in the towel, his once-glorious tail dangling, and carried him to the woods behind the Locust Grove, talking to him and praying to Artemis and Others. Tossed him gently, wrapped in the towel, into the woods. He landed more or less in the middle of a gnarly patch of multiflora rose. His mortal remains and as much of his spirit as he chooses shall be part of Moonshadow forever.
What a really lovely Lenaia it ended up being, even not ‘really’ celebrating it!
I didn’t do anything on Thursday except wear all wine shades to work, and picked up the custom pomegranate earrings our lovely local silver sorceress made for me.
But Friday was a weirdly warm 70 degree sunny day, horrible from a climate change perspective but so seductive. I stripped Fiona’s stall and then worked on getting all the grapevines (and probably some poison ivy) off a fallen tree that David will need to cut up. All the while I listened to Wendy’s Persephone. I just love Wendy Rule, not only for her weird, powerful, haunting voice, but because she’s my kind of polytheist.
I recently ran into a group, this one dedicated to Ariadne which thrilled me because not many of us worship Her. This lovely group has Mysteries, Ariadne’s but inspired by Eleusis, right up my alley, right?But the description includes something along the lines of ‘But what if the story you’ve heard isn’t how it really went’ and goes on to outline it as a coming-into-your-power romance, with no abduction, rape, abandonment or mourning.
I mean, I get it. That stuff is SO hard. But for me, if you can’t accept that pain, grief, loss and terror are part of what comes with Them, it’s hard to see how deep you can go with Them.
So few people, and no other Demetrians that I know except Wendy and my young priestess friend, accept that the ancient tale even has any validity. It’s been spun as an invention by modern feminists (really!), a patriarchal revision that should be denied by all True Feminists, and historically incorrect as ‘women would never have stood for a story that treated them so terribly.’ (My paraphrase from a popular book about Demeter.)
I love that people see the Two as strong, indomitable, no bullshit and brimming with power. But They are also the Goddesses of the bleakest and most terribly used.
Can you go deep with Ariadne if She was never abandoned? If She waltzed happily from Theseus’s arms into Dio’s? Well, perhaps some can. What do I know?
Anyway. Off my soapbox. I spent the morning with Wendy, the afternoon in the writing studio, and then some glorious time sitting in the sun on the bench of the Demeter shrine.
The house next door is brilliantly lit all round most nights, but last night the back, at least, was dark, so I made my way, with Marley, in the wonderful misty almost-full moonlight, to the Louhi shrine by the back woods, carrying ice cubes and hard egg nog. I pay seasonal cultus to Louhi, from the winter solstice to the spring equinox. I love Her hard. I had hoped sacred Winter would return at the end of the Lenaia, but Louhi has withdrawn Her mantle, and there was no need to ‘Wake the Green’ this year even if I could have. But despite not doing any of the official recon stuff, and staying away from priestess Work, I so enjoyed the Lenaia this year.
Went for a walk wth the husband and Delilah today and we saw a SWAN on the Antietam Creek! I’ve never seen a swan there before. Io Apollon!
Pretty shitty pic, but I couldn’t get very close.
Well, this was a rambly incoherent blog post, but then, it’s winter and even if it’s unseasonably warm, I’m fuzzy and sleepy most of the time from now until spring.
May the Bullroarer bless you, dears. Despite the awfulness of so much of the modern world, it’s good to have the intrawebs to stay in light touch with other folks who walk the Paths of Weird.
Actual photo of me after latest dive into Poseidon Work.
I didn’t realize until I got home late last night that the Lenaia begin today. The whole start of this year is a blur. So, I’m going into another festival unprepared.
That being said, I’m not really doing the Lenaia this year because, once again, I’m deep in miasma. Shrines are covered for at least the rest of this moon phase due to recent aching losses, so my celebrations are muted. I’m not doing any specific priestess functions, but I’m allowed to do a few things.
Purifications, libations, offerings and prayers are always on the table, at least in my odd little cultus, so I started off with a lovely look back through my notebooks at previous celebrations, blessing my Younger Self for keeping good notes for lo these many years.
Then a purification shower, and dressing in clothing and jewelry for Dionysos and also for Persephone. She doesn’t always come through strongly on the Lenaia but sometimes She does, and today She’s been all over.
Took my dog for a walk up on the battlefield. The terrible cold of the weekend has evaporated and it was a balmy mid-40s, but deliciously dark and overcast and ominous, perfect for the misty Lenaia. A little snow lingered on the path and between the trees. Don’t you just love winter trees?
It was really pretty soggy, and I couldn’t help but feel the wavering, barely perceptible limnades, rising from puddles and soaked earth, watching us squelch along.
Hi!
I love how bright the sky is beyond the woods, because as soon as you’re over the rise and can see farther, the sky was Ragnarok dark. I kept hustling poor Delilah along as I was worried about us getting caught in a cold squall.
The snow highlights a little deer path.
Having just read Mycogenous (twice) earlier this winter, on this Lenaia I’m profoundly aware of the life right underneath the layer of winter grass, the fungus on the tree bark, the hum of not-heard communications along pathways we’re only just starting to dream of.
In the muted browns and greys and whites of winter, there was no color at all on this walk, so this little twig of berries leapt up from the ground at me. Just like pomegranate seeds, ruby, blood, fire.
I love the woods in winter.
The fields seem to stretch so much farther than in any other season. You can see how the path bends off to the right. The snow got almost 6 inches deep through there, and you could see the footprints where people turned back. But one set of boot prints and one set of pawprints went through, so Delilah and I forged on, me stepping in the footprints of the other guy, Delilah burying her nose in every bit of discolored snow.
It was a good walk but I was glad to get home.
At sunset all the girls came with me to make offerings of chambord and pomegranate candy. I sharply felt the loss of Ivy, who always came to rituals and offerings and was usually disrespectful. Marley will crone up to Ivy’s level eventually, but for now it felt like a huge gap in our erratic little circle.
The bright moonlight was completely obscured behind thick, heaving clouds. By the time I went to bed the whole farm was wreathed in mist. Otherworldly. Beautiful.
About two decades ago, a litter of kittens was born on Red Hill, Sharpsburg’s only ‘mountain’, at a log cabin overlooking the valley. The cabin belonged to the Bell family, where Lynda Bell taught a wild bunch of homeschoolers science and music. Lynda Bell, a NASA scientist, had created the Log Cabin Science School and it was a noisy, creative, glorious place to be.
So thought the mommacat, Maz, a semi-feral who found the cabin a soft place to land and have her babies. The litter, known as the Mazlets, quickly found homes among the kids whom Lynda taught. Two of them, Ivy and Luna, stayed with the Bells.
Don’t have a picture of the babies. Believe it or not, that was before cellphone cameras were widespread.
Here’s one of the oldest pics I can find of her, buried in the ivy and grapevine on our deck.
All the Mazlets were eligible for the title, but when anyone referred to THE Mazlet, it was Ivy.
When the Bells split up, Lynda had to find somewhere to house herself, her three boys, their two dogs and the cats. We agreed to take Ivy, since we knew and loved her. She was a year or two then, I think, no one can quite remember when the Mazlets were born.
Foo was our only cat at that time and he liked it that way. I thought he’d be pissed at having another cat move in, and that Ivy, after her busy, noisy, populated start in life, would be lonely living with a curmudgeon like Foo. I kicked him out while Ivy explored the breezeway, to give her an hour to acclimate before dealing with him. (Today I’d have extended that to a few days, but this was decades ago.)
How surprised I was when Foo, catching sight of the calico beauty from the other side of the patio door, began pawing frantically to get inside and take a closer gander. Ivy took one look at him, swelled up to twice her already considerable size, and hissed like a furious dragon.
She did that pretty much every time she saw Foo for the rest of their years together. He was a tough little guy, snotty and cocky, and he didn’t back down from her.
Didn’t challenge her either. Not many challenged Ivy in her long, glorious prime.
Lounging in the yard with Jasmine and Bo, not long before we lost Bo. She had zero fear of horses.
She and Foo got into something, about 8 or 9 years ago. Foo had already come in a year before with a swollen head, having encountered something as mean as he was. We were shocked when they BOTH came in with head and face injuries. The vet said they looked like defensive injuries, the cats facing something they didn’t dare turn their backs on. We’ll never know just what happened, and it’s possible they fought each other. The antagonism was certainly there for it. But it’s odd that in all their years together, it never went beyond hissing and swatting, not where we could see. I like to think that they briefly banded together to face down a mutual threat.
She tolerated a lot from us. I think she kinda grooved on it. Sometimes when she complained the loudest she was also purring madly.
Helping Daddy read the paper was one of her principal jobs. And she shredded it helpfully when she was done sitting on it. She really seemed to hate the NYT crossword, to my frustration.
She loved few things more than shoes. The smellier the better. The only way to improve on smelly shoes for Ivy was to sprinkle catnip in them.
When Ben Bell came to live with us, he brought Ivy’s sister Luna. We were so excited. We all anticipated the happy reunion of the Log Cabin Mountain Mazlets. It was gonna be so great.
It went like this.
The two most people-oriented cats I’ve ever known hated each other’s guts. More even than Ivy hated Foo. After one screaming fight in the basement there were blood spatters. Zero tolerance.
When Ben left, Luna stayed with us until my son Dylan moved out and took her with him. My husband suggested she stay with us. For being known as ‘the sensible one’, when it comes to cats he’s a warm marshmallow.
The day Ben left we all cried, but no one was sadder than poor Luna.
Seeing her grieving on his bed still makes me tear up. I wasn’t sure she’d recover, but Dylan loved her through it.
Luna loved being an indoor/outdoor cat, but was so oriented to humans that she adjusted to being an inside cat in a house full of college students, a hedgehog, and a neurotic beagle to bully. She left us a couple of years ago, after being pampered and adored by Dylan and his cat-crazy wife, Kailee, for the rest of her life.
Ivy loved all humans too, and assumed mostly correctly that they all loved her back. But she had a very special soft spot for my older son, Brian.
He used to get her to yodel. It was awesome. Wish I could find the video.
She also loved it when Ben came back to visit.
Then we really farked up her world. We brought home a kitten. OMG, Ivy felt SOO betrayed. I put tiny Marley Maia in Ben’s old room so Ivy wouldn’t kill her, but Ivy smelled her and followed me around screaming irately for what felt like two days. SCREAMING. Livid. Furious. I slept with the kitten for two nights, not only to keep her company but to soothe her when the terrible growls and yowls started up outside the door.
Ivy never hurt her, but she never liked her either. Poor little Marley came from a big litter, in a big cat household of cats and cat-crazy people, to Moonshadow where neither of the other cats did anything but hiss and swat at her. Fortunately she too is people-oriented and adjusted quickly.
This was about as close as Marley could get to Ivy. Please note the vast expanse of pure white, cloud-soft belly. That is some primo belly. Ivy’s belly was heaven, and she was so generous with it. I’ll miss that belly every day of the rest of my life.
Eventually there was armed neutrality.
I thought when this happened that we’d made progress. It wasn’t so, but look at my Ivy. Look at the magnificent bulk of her. The sheer gargantuan voluptuous mass.
What a cat.
She LOVED to sleep in this chimnea. I had to evict a black widow as neither of them would quit the place.
She lost her mind when there was digging going on. She loved new trees, but I think it was really the turned earth that got her. She was a gardening cat. For all of her bristling vitality, she had a cthonic side.
Always so helpful.
Twilight brings all the girls to the yard.
She nursed Daddy through back spasms.
And helped him lift weights.
And supervised doggy belly rubs.
She was convinced that she had total camouflage.
She did have a lot to manage.
But she dealt with all of her many duties with style and poise.
And I cannot tell you how many times I had to scour the whole farm to find her for a vet visit, only to discover her up in the hayloft. Ever try to climb down a ladder with one arm full of squirming howling 13lbs of indignant calico? I don’t recommend it.
Surveying her realm through those oddly cold gold eyes. For all that she was pure love and snuggle, her eyes almost never warmed.
A good roll in the catnip should never be passed up.
This is probably my favorite picture ever taken of her, just a few months ago, by my brother Keith.
During the last couple of years, Ivy shrunk from her Jabba the Hut 13lbs to barely 6. She quit hunting, to everyone’s relief. She was a champion mouser in her prime, and my barn was mouse-free during the Foo and Ivy years. But she also loved nothing better than a baby rabbit. We knew spring had sprung when Ivy began disemboweling them slowly on the patio, with screaming and trauma all round. I’m dumbfounded at how stupid mama rabbits are. Like, maybe hide them? Just a little?
This summer I’d still find her in the barn sometimes, or wandering in the locust grove or the faery garden or the orchard. But mostly ‘going outside’ for her meant heading to her favorite spot under the table on the deck, or in the sun on the patio. When it started to get chilly, she opted for the sunspot inside the dining room. It’s all the aminerds’ favorite cold weather spot, but we saw to it that she always had first dibs.
She liked just about everybody, but in addition to Brian and my husband, she had a few favorites. She and my MIL were besties, Ivy bullying Ma into getting the right blanket, the right treats and the right positions for long happy afternoons watching The Crown.
Her Herculean appetite had shrunk, and for several weeks we’d been giving her half a teaspoon of canned food whenever she yelled for it (about 20 times a day, no lie), as she couldn’t keep down any more than that. And she liked her water cup to be held for her. Still made it to the litter box like the champion she was. Puked a fair bit, but no accidents. Lots and lots of sleeping in the sun spot, or her heated bed, or a lap if she could get one.
Her last day was so good. It was cool but not cold, with golden sunshine and no wind. She ventured outside and sampled one of the few surviving sprigs of catnip. Then she made her way onto the bench in the sun. I brought her blanket out for her, and she stayed there for hours. She was there when Dr. Lori came to set her free, and she went out of this world sitting on my lap in the sun. She flinched a little at the sedative, then fell immediately to sleep. I swear that as the euthanasia drugs went in I could feel her little body vibrating just a little, a whisper of the monster purr of her youth. She had barely been able to purr for weeks. But she did as she left.
When Foo died, I found a mouse outside the garage. No wounds or signs of any trauma, just a nice fat dead mouse. I put it in his grave with him.
As I was getting out the shovel for Ivy’s, in almost the exact same spot there was one of Artemis the Kitten’s green toy mousies, tattered and torn. Ivy didn’t like toys, but this one went with her into the good earth. Maybe it was a last gift- or a welcome- from Foo.
Foo is an elusive ghost, never coming when I call. He slips through and around the shadows, gray and stripey and glimmering. I doubt he and Ivy will hang much in the next world either, but I hope I can still perceive her, roaming this sacred space with the rest of our beloved departed, keeping an eye on us, knowing that she’s loved for as long as we’re here.
suzsmuses 