I want to tell a story which I can relate to personally. The story of my life and my mother. the sustainable things that she taught me, the good practices and looking after our familiars, Theakston and Mistletoe.

I think true storytelling is a fantastic way to pass down a practice or lesson. and this Green Witch based narrative is very close to my personal experience growing up, I will be able to push more emotion and meaning into the story if I really believe in what I am drawing.

Here is a brief excerpt of a memory. -written in tragic narrative form 🙂

As I looked in the bin under the sink, my heart stopped. There lay a precious zip lock bag, pitifully abandoned, forsaken, all alone. Who had committed this disgraceful act of waste? We’ve had no visitors recently, so there could be only one explanation: my sinful cat, Theakston.

You see we have been consistently washing and reusing our zip lock bags for years. They’re a single use plastic, and I feel better turning them into reusable ones, for freezing beans and tomatoes. My cat, however, along with along with learning to open the french doors and letting bugs inside in summer, decided to help us put away rubbish that was dropped in the house. Socks must have offended him in a past life as he loved putting them in the bin. I swiftly transfer the forlorn bag into the soft plastic recycling and fling him a ‘here’s where it should go then’ look. He was smart but I loved to tease him.

I inherited my plastic bag washing from my mother who was born in Wellington, New Zealand, in 1963. She moved to England for a time to see our family, before coming home with her steadfastly maintained wiccan traditions from the old country, Yorkshire. She had a flourishing vegetable garden that would yield glorious baskets of tomatoes, capsicums, cucumbers, lettuce, leek, silverbeet and herbs. Collecting the seeds from each crop, my mother would carefully dry them on newspaper in the sun and store them for planting the following season. Her old stockings were used to secure the growing vines to the wooden posts and old CDs were tied in our looming trees, to dissuade hungry birds from spoiling our orchard of plums and apples.

Basic idea of my storyline:

Living in Lewis Road, three generations of women (witches).
Days are spent in the cottage and garden, looking after the animals and tending to the plants and animals.
Neighbour throws a cigarette across the fence into our property, in the background the woman gets hurt.
Over time the garden begins to get sick and die with no known cause. Woman begins to also fall ill, in connection with the garden.
Daughter tries all means to get her better, potions and poultices, crystals and animals.
On a walk around the garden, daughter finds a trail leading to the edge of the native forest. this ends in an old Kauri clearing where the neighbour has dumped a large amount of rubbish. over time it has seeped into the land and stream, and killed the plants in the garden.
Daughter tries to get rid of and pack the rubbish into big bags, like you would leaves in autumn, covered in the pollutive material. her friend from the Fae community helps her with this but they are both to small to make a difference alone.
The lone faery disappears. While the girl sits in despair, holding a sick bird, the Fae return with all their might and move the rubbish back onto the concrete road next the house. With a herbal mix poured into the stream, the sounds start coming back, bees and birds return.
Girl runs back to find mother sitting up on the couch. They hobble out of the house as the girl exclaims what happened.
As the older witch walks into the garden, her footsteps turn green and the flowers perk up, area beginning to get greener again. A Faery comes and sits on the womans hat.
The young girl smiles with pride.

-Narrative (written) ending

I want to end it with a written note:
Sometimes it is very easy to feel small. You feel like your actions don’t matter. “I’m just one person, what can I do?” “This won’t really make a difference.” You feel as if the actions you take will never make a dent in the real problems of the world.
Beth is just one person. She is very small indeed. Annika, her Faery is even smaller. But when many small people band together, a difference is made. Whether you see it or not, you and your actions matter. The environment is sick. But with the love and dedication of many small people, the real problems can be changed.