March love list

wildflowers, tiny things, + a blessing

Hi, friends. Here we are at the end of another month. Here I am with another post that doesn’t have a catchy, click-bait title, on a Friday instead of Thursday.

I’m writing notes and collecting little treasures to send my paid subscribers–you should receive them in the next week or so.

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March brought spring. Spring! Warmer temps, longer sunlight hours, lots of wildflowers…it’s been glorious.

This month lacked February’s psychic clarity. No profound dreams that I recall. I’m taking in the beauty of spring as the month flies by, reveling in her sights, sounds, and smells. A lot of things returning to the surface for me to continue processing in solitude, or with one close friend.

Can I share with you some things I saw, thought, gathered, and read in March?

my eldritch little faceless Polly…a seeress if ever I saw one

First things first: tiny wildflowers in my yard. Very important.

Bird’s-eye speedwell. What a name.

It’s getting purple in the vale.

Grape hyacinths growing wild in a neighbor’s yard

violets might be my favorite wildflower ever.

and these little purple-veined beauties.

Not sure exactly what these are: some kind of cherry cousin. Sure are pretty though.

What else?

-had an author signing at The Crazy Book Lady in North Georgia

-not much writing; I put the sequel to Double Alchemy on hold to dive into Twice Told and am enjoying it so much (more about this at the end, if you’re interested)

-one of my kiddos had a birthday! She chose to visit a cat cafe with some friends:

I drew a card for each month of 2025, and the 8 of pentacles is March’s card. This card represents diligence, hard work, high standards, passion. I also think about how sometimes I can be so focused on what I’m working on that I a) don’t remember how far I’ve come (look up!), and b) must remember to take breaks when I feel the need for them.

The card fits this month well. When I look at my mental fogginess regarding March, I realize part of it is due to struggling with migraines for most of my kids’ spring break. I think about the shoulders of the person on the card as they are working. My shoulders, one site of chronic pain, have really flared up this month. Part of my work right now is to seek medical care for symptoms that I’ve ignored, but which have been there, out of my line of sight, for a very long time.

How interesting and fitting, that the 8 of pentacles would remind me of seeming opposites: hard work and rest. But then I am a ‘both/and’ kind of person.

This month I reread The Tea Dragon Society. I haven’t read the other two books, though I bought them a few months ago, and spring seems like the perfect time to read the whole trilogy. (Do you also save certain books for specific seasons?) It’s a gentle story about a young half-goblin girl who meets the sole survivors of a society dedicated to caring for creatures known as tea dragons.

I don’t have any profound observations from my reading this month, but I am enjoying the themes of friendship and community in this series.

A blessing

This one is brief.

May you find clarity where there is confusion, rest wherever you need it, and may beauty find you when you least expect it.

Twice Told

The link wasn’t working in the last email, but it’s fixed now. Twice Told is a five day email course full of practical application for writing your own fairy tale.

We will be discussing setting, symbolism, and other elements. We won’t be writing a story in a week–although you could, if you want to–but we’ll be building a framework so that, at the end of the course, you can write your fairy tale.

Email courses are great for those who aren’t comfortable with video calls. The daily downloads are yours to reuse again and again. If you appreciate guidance and some structure in writing courses but also like to take things at your own pace, Twice Told is for you.

For more information, check out the form or sign up for the course:

You can also email me with questions! There are two more weeks before sign-ups close, and I’ll share a different angle on the course in each post.

Meet you over the orchard wall, friends.*

*One of my wonderful early readers for The Secret Heart of Maeve MacGowan started signing her emails like this. I like it.

Thanks for being here. My AuDHD brain is a bit scattered and prone to change things last minute, but here in The Purple Vale you can count on reflections on folklore, fairy tales, and the seasons from my little corner of East Tennessee–which is unceded Cherokee and Muscogee land.