Backing Up, Slowing Down, And Trusting The Seeds

A quiet warning and a gentle nudge land at the same time: Mercury is set to retrograde in Pisces, and the message on our weekly card reads “closer than you think.” We lean into both truths. I share the simple steps that keep chaos at bay—backups, double checks, slow messages—and then zoom out to the larger rhythm of the season as we move from February’s dreamwork into March’s call to emerge.

Together we map the places where timing slips—deadlines, appointments, and assumptions about how much runway remains—and trade panic for presence. The telescope on the card points to the moon, but it might as well point to your calendar. From there we ground into practices that actually help: self care as protest for those pushed to the margins, small rituals that restore attention, and seasonal choices that bring ease. Gardening becomes both metaphor and plan. I talk about winter sowing, trusting seeds, what thrives in my yard, and how a fallen evergreen turned into an opportunity for manzanita or hawthorn to feed cedar waxwings. We consider a dwarf pear tree, saving an ailing apple, and finding joy in apple butter, peaches, and cut flowers that mark the turning year.

Community Supported Agriculture gets a big spotlight. If you’ve ever wondered whether a CSA is worth it, I walk through the benefits: fresher food, direct support for local farmers, better alignment with your region, and the small-town magic of knowing who grows your dinner. We even peek at seafood and herbal CSAs and why local foods can help your body adapt to place. To close, I offer journal prompts to clarify what’s arriving sooner than you think, what winter energy you still hold, and which shadows want attention before spring. If this resonates, hit play, subscribe for more cozy coven chats, and share your answer: what’s closer than you think today?

Transcript

Slow Down And Double Check

Weekly Card: Closer Than You Think

Deadlines, Calendars, And Timing

Coven Community And March Theme

From Dreams To Emerge

Self Care As Quiet Protest

Seeds, Gardens, And Trusting Growth

Yard Changes And Bird-Friendly Plants

Fruit Trees, Pests, And Orchard Plans

CSA Joy And Local Food

SPEAKER_00 0:12

Hi, and welcome to another cozy coven chat. I am your host, Jenny C. Bell, and this is for the week of February 22nd. Mercury goes into retrograde in Pisces on February 25th. So we are currently in what astrologers refer to as the shadow period, which can feel just like we're in Mercury retrograde. I have heard different astrologers talk about this one's gonna be pretty intense. Um so if you haven't already done so, make sure you are backing up tech, you are updating tech, you are double triple checking vacation and travel plans, you are double triple checking your bank statements, like just make sure. And then whenever Mercury goes into retrograde, I just try not to send emails or texts without rereading them. I notoriously don't reread, and I often send gibberish, you know. Um so it's really important to slow down and do that. Okay, our card for the week is this is our last uh last week of February for the podcast. And we are on Arcana Folia, and this card is in the distance, and it's um like an old, an old timey. I don't know if you like some people don't like that word, but whatever. An old timey telescope, and it's pointed to the moon, like a full moon, and there's these white flowers, and then it says closer than you think. So in the distance, closer than you think. So, what does that mean for you? Like it could be Mercury going into retrograde, it could be the full moon is closer than we think because it is uh March 3rd, which is not that far away. It could be that something that you've been putting off is closer than you think, or something you've been looking forward to is closer than you think. Um I feel like sometimes with Mercury going into retrograde, like our plans and our like intentions can get thrown off. So, like maybe you think you have more time than you do on a project, is what I mean. So that can happen, you know, like, oh, I have this deadline, and oh my god, the deadline is tomorrow, kind of a vibe. So really double check that. When I saw that card, that's exactly what I thought. I was like, oh, maybe we all need to double check our calendars or our appointments, you know, like doctor's appointments or whatever. They might be closer than you realize. It's like, oh my gosh, I need to reschedule that or something. So think about that. Um currently, just to remind you, you can still join our coven uh at any time. And it's gonna be a it's been a great February focusing on dreams. It's been kind of quiet and reflective, and we've talked about self-love and self-care in there and nourishing. It's a safe place to land, a safe place to be you, and just a place where there's a sense of community without judgment, which is hard to find on social media. And we will be going into March. Our theme for March is emerge. And these community themes, by the way, are not mine. I asked last year, I want to say it's November, and I said, you know, we always try to do something in our coven. So, like our first full year together, we focused on a goddess a month, and that's all in the library. So every month I tried to pick goddesses that felt timely like for that month. You know, like there's there's reasons behind why I picked who I picked, and there would be information, and we a lot of us celebrated Hecate or Hecate's night for the first time because we focused on her in um October and then we realized about it and learned about it. Anyway, so this time I was like, let's do a theme, let's pick a key theme that'll drive all the things I do. So it drives like the lives that we do, we do a live and content, it'll drive questions and challenges and you know, whatever we're talking about, maybe help focus the learning. You know, there's a lot to learn. That's the thing with witchcraft that's been great, but hard for a lot of people is like the overwhelming amount of choice that you can make. So I asked them, I'm like, what are some themes? And there was some repeating ones. So if there anybody was repeated the same ones, I made sure to pick those. And I tried to pick themes from everybody that contributed to the conversation, and then I lined them up intuitively, basically, and then have the whole plan. So we're going from dreams to emerge because to me that made sense. It's like do we dream in the winter, only to emerge in the spring, you know, because our next holiday is spring equinox or ostara, it's all about the energetic new year, set, you know, I have arrived kind of feeling. And so yeah, that'll be what we're moving into. But back to this week, um closer than you think. What do you think is closer than you think? Interesting, right? Very interesting. Um continuing with, you know, uh attuning into the season, uh definitely continue to practice nourishment and self-care. I cannot emphasize that enough. I've been talking about it on my social medias and my substack, and it's just really, really, really necessary. It's really radical, it's a form of protest. Like if you take care of yourself when society doesn't want you to. Or there's a narrative that wants to keep you down, you know. I think uh a lot of witches are minorities, right? We are women, we're queer, we're of color, we're neurodivergent, and so the sometimes the larger narrative, the main narrative, doesn't actually want us to survive, let alone thrive. So practicing practicing self-care is a form of protest, I think. So if you haven't, you know, got your seeds yet or thought about your garden, you should be doing that. I don't start seeds indoors because I have just not good luck with it. I don't have a place uh with lighting, like good lighting in the house. I don't have a basement where I could put like a good sunlamp. And I have cats. Like they really like to sabotage things like that. It's like brings them great joy. So I just don't. I've tried it before. I don't have any luck with it. So a lot of times I do a lot of like wildflowers and things like that. I will just throw the seeds out there when there's snow on the ground. Um, I'm very much a chaotic gardener, as I've talked about on here. And so my son and I will just like go out there and just bury a bunch of seeds and just whatever. It's like very willy-nilly, there's no rhyme or reason. And then things thrive or things don't. Sometimes it takes a couple years. Like I um takes a couple years to see something. I'm like, oh, I planted that like three years ago. But those seeds finally took off when they were ready. And I just trust, I just trust in the seeds. So that's my personal thing. I do buy starts from our local nursery, and those are always great for me. But I the only things I usually start from seed that I have success with are radishes and carrots. Uh, one year had a really good pumpkin crop, but ever since then I haven't been able to grow like decent pumpkins. So yeah. So if you are gonna do seed starting or seedlings, you're probably doing that now. Um, definitely start looking into what you want to plant. And it's kind of funny, like, think of sometime in January I asked in our coven, you know, what plants are you planting? Because and then someone, one person replied something like, Wow, isn't it a little early? I was like, Oh no. People that garden, like we think about it all year. It's like all year thought process, but you know, is we're excited. Um, I'm excited. We not excited about this part, but we have in the front of our yard, our yard, our yard in the way it's set up, is like a triangle. And the front of the triangle is where the mailbox is and it's by the street. And that had two evergreens, and for some reason, one died. And we don't know what happened. My husband's like, it was really hollow in the middle when he took it down. We had this really intense snow, it seemed to have split it. We don't really know, but it's an opportunity. So he took it all out, and I want to plant, I think I have it down. I want to do a madrone, not a madrone, uh, manzanita. And if you're not familiar with them, look them up. Uh, it means little apple. They are really pretty bushes. They can sometimes be shaped into trees. They have red bark, they have really shiny light green leaves, and they make little fruit that birds like. So I was trying to find totally an ulterior motive. I love birds, and cedar wax wings and robins come in in our winter, and they're fruit eaters, especially cedar wax wings. So I was like, what kind of berry plant? So it's I'm down to that, or a hawthorn berry for the same reason because I want I want these cedar wax wings in my yard. Look them up, they have like these crazy eyebrows. I and they're just and they have beautiful little songs, they're so cute. And I don't really have any kind of berry in the yard. So I was like, I need I need this for them. And then the other thing I want to do is plant some kind of dwarf fruit tree, probably a pear. Where I live, um, Harry and David's headquarters are here, and there's pear orchards everywhere. So pears grow really well here. We don't have a pear tree in the yard. We have an apple tree that's fighting for its life, it keeps getting um nasty worms. So, like last year we didn't eat any apples. And so this year I told my husband, like, I need you to cut all this. There's like all these like ivy and other greenery. I was like, I need you to cut it all away so I can get to the soil. And we're going to I think I'm gonna put diatomaceous earth, but I have to do some more research. But like this year I'm gonna eat those apples. They're not great on their own, they're just kind of okay, but they make a great apples, like um apple butter. Delicious. And I just love picking fruit. Goes back to going and picking apples every year with my husband and then my kids, and we pick peaches now that we live here. There's a nice like peach art orchard, and they just invite people in for a couple weekends and super cheap. We usually get peppers also, they always have black bell peppers, and then um they have cut your own flowers, and it's just like a great experience. It's almost always around Lunasa. So I'm looking forward to that. I will also should be hearing from my CSA soon about signing up for that. Can't wait. That was one of the best decisions I made last year. So if you've never signed up for a it's community-supported agriculture, if you've never been a part of something like that, oh look it up. Look at this is a perfect time to look it up and see if there's one for you to join. They a lot of times will have different size boxes depending on your needs. And so, like, we get the large box because there's four of us, and I like to freeze things, and it's just such a fun experience. Farmer Patrick is the best. Love, love him and his partner Leigh or Lee. She's amazing. She I bought some of her pottery last year. I bought my husband a um, well, I don't know what you call them because I'm not a co I don't drink coffee, I'm a tea girl, but he's a coffee guy, and it's a for drip coffee with the little filters. I don't know if there's a term for that, but I bought him the most beautiful, this green glazed pottery version of that. And she made it. So they're just like a really cool creative couple. I love supporting them. There's also a a CSA for fish here for seafood, and so I'm looking into that as well. Um, there are like local fisher, fisher people. What's I wonder what's the gender neutral term, fisher people? Fishers, I think. Tell me if you know. Um, so anyway, I am looking into that. So if you have never been a part of CSA, just Google it and like CSA near me and see, you know, if anything comes up. We did one in California. That one was kind of fun because um you brought, they gave us like laundry baskets, and so you would just like go in and bring your laundry basket and then just keep swapping them out. And then they would always sell like cheeses and milks. There's like a bunch of stuff to add on if you wanted to. So that's really cool. Um, but it's such a great way to get to know your community, to put money back in your community. It's a good way to know what you can grow. So if you're like new to gardening, like what grows in your area, it's a good way to look eat locally. Um, I've heard different herbalists and foragers talk about this, but there's like phytonutrients that when you eat locally grown things, it helps you thrive where you live. It helps with allergens, you know, especially local honey, but just helps you in different ways. Like we have a severe smoke season here. So the plants that grow here have somehow like resisted or thrived against that, and so eating those plants in some way helps you. Um, you know, I don't know how much science there's to that, but it feels right, and it feels good to know like I can go visit this farm and to see the farmer. Like my husband my son loves the farmer. He came and talked to their his class in fourth grade, and he just like loves Farmer Patrick. Like we go and he just smiles, like he's just so cute. It's like it reminds me of being in like Busy Town from Richard Scary, like, and there's Farmer Patrick, and this is author Jenny buying produce from Farmer Patrick. I don't know, it's just storybook, and it's really, really sweet. Um, so yeah, look into that if you haven't already done so. And there, oh, even in my town, there's an herbal CSA, like a woman that has a little herbal farm, and you can be part of that. I don't do that because I do grow and forage most of my own herbs, but I like love that idea and I support it with my my spirit. Um, yeah, so definitely looking into that, starting to look towards spring. You know, it's time, no matter what it looks like outside, weather-wise, starting to look towards spring and spring plans and things like that. Okay, let's do our journal questions. So I think first of all, what do you think is closer than you think? What are you holding on to this winter? Like what are you still holding on to? What winter energy? And because we're still in winter and we're not quite in spring, I want you to ask yourself what shadows are rising that still need to be faced. Because we really want to hit that hard in the winter, and then we will have a much better spring in summer. Anyway, take care. Bless to be.