Recycling Mailers and Digging Red Clay Mud

Hi, all!  We're having some good soaking rain here in the southern highlands and it means the garden has to wait a bit.  I got broccoli planted on Friday but still have cabbage and romaine to set once the ground is not a mud hole.

When you get to read this little book, you'll find that I do my best to stick with traditional Appalachian materials but occasionally I make a little "borry" from another hoodoo tradition.

Brick dust (or redding) is one example.  Redding has a lot of practical uses for protection magic and for healing.  But here in the mountains we didn't and don't use a lot of bricks, except for important buildings in the community--courthouses, churches and the like.

But what we do have in abundance is dense red clay soil--the bane of laundry-doing mothers everywhere.  So instead of grinding up bricks to make redding, I'm digging wet red clay--red clay mud--drying it naturally and then putting it through the mortar and pestle to grind it fine.

With all this rain, it's a perfect time to harvest red clay--and there's a nice patch of it just across the road on the empty lot.

A rainy day is also a good day to peel old labels off these nice recycled mailers.  Those of you who have pre-ordered the little book--and thank you!--will see it arrive in a pre-used, padded manilla mailing envelope--courtesy of Accent on Books.

It's something you'll read more about in the little book--using what's at hand, what's readily available and what's inexpensive.

There's my mason jar of redding, with its funnel cap, courtesy of my friend Ebiaz.