As seems to be my way these days, I have been celebrating the Autumn Equinox all week. We have been out enjoying all the changeable autumn weather, playing in the sand pit in the rain and splashing in muddy puddles reflecting vivid blue sky and bright sunlight. Out in the woods with my ritual group last night, the moon was bright, making the trees monochrome and dappling the woods with silver.
On Wednesday, the actual day of the Equinox, we celebrated by making an autumn leaf mandala. We'd been collecting leaves all week, from various parks and our local nature reserve, and I pressed them between some boxes to make them nice and flat. As we gathered them together, I talked to H and A about what the Equinox means, about the balance of light and dark, about how harvest is more than food and material goods. Then we decorated the leaves, writing and drawing the things we have harvested this year. I loved seeing how H, at five years old, interpreted what I had said. She drew tiny detailed butterflies and flowers and wrote on one leaf "I love singing". We made a mandala by sticking them on the wall, and they will stay there as we move deeper into autumn, reminding us of the gifts of the season.