Papa Legba, Guardian of the Crossroads—And Our Threshold

I think our previous owner—or perhaps it was the previous-previous owner—only bought paint if it was on sale. The only colors we have at The Box House are white, battleship gray, a pukey tan, and baby-diarrhea yellow, which is a particularly vile shade of mustard that fills our stairwell. They had to be on sale, there's no way anyone would have picked these colors on purpose.

Unfortunately, we won't be rehabbing the stairwell anytime soon. It falls pretty far down on the list of jobs. There are bulges in the plaster and dings to the wood that we're just going to have to live with for the time being. BUT, I really can't stand this mustard color. For now, I can at least slap a coat of venetian plaster over it to soften the look. The mustard is a high-gloss paint to boot, so I had to prime it first. I'm partway done.

Here it is before:

Honestly, it looks much worse, sort of grim and dark, in person. Trust me. The flash of the camera lightened it up quite a bit. This is a view I took from the front door looking up toward the door of our unit, which is open. That's Maggie and Seamus sneaking out because they think I'm not paying attention. The Madonna and Child? That was done by my grandfather. I LOVE this painting. I'll have to blog his artwork sometime.

Here's part of the wall I plastered:

The view is from our unit door, looking down toward the front door. Don't believe Mom and Ted when they say the plaster looks the same as the old paint. It certainly does not, thank you very much. The new color is warm and soft, like butter.

*Sheesh.* Okay, I'll take better pictures during the day sometime to prove it to you.

But what is that in the corner by the door?

Look closer (well, not too close, I really did just slap that plaster on as a temporary thing):


It's a veve, a mystic diagram, for Papa Legba. I used a copper paint pen and drew it freehand from a sketch I found online. In Haitian folklore and belief, crossroads and thresholds are dangerous places, a favorite haunt of evil spirits. Papa Legba is the protector of both roads/paths and barriers/partitions, so we placed the symbol there to protect our home from any evil that might wish to cross over the threshold. It works sort of the same way that haint blue paint on Southern porches keeps out evil. (Check out houseblogger Jenni's blog for a photo and the folklore behind her blue-ceilinged porch, and then wander on over to the Stucco House to see the amazing job they did with their porch.)

Ted and Mom have voted me down on using haint blue on our porch--instead we may try to strip it down and restain the ceiling--but I might be able to convince them to paint our door blue, like the Old Order Amish do in the community I used to live in. It is a well-known fact that a witch or a demon cannot cross a blue windowsill or threshold.

Anyway, for now, Papa Legba's veve will hopefully protect the house.

Have You Seen This Weed?

We've had a ton of rain this week in Chicagoland, which means that the few flower beds I'm tending this year are quite overgrown with weeds. I'll tackle them shortly, when it stops pouring down on us, but these guys give me pause:

They showed up just these last few days, I think. They're big, lush, hardy looking, and I have about a dozen of them growing beside the garage.

I once let a sticker bush grow to its full six feet, and was rewarded with a cool purple thistle. But I have no idea what this plant is. Is it a weed or a leftover from a previous garden? Does it produce a flower? Is it worth letting a couple of them grow? Or is this as showy as it gets? Any of you gardening types out there recognize it?

Update: Cool—the consensus seems to be milkweed. I just checked online, and there are over 140 different varieties of milkweed. "The name of the milkweed, asclepias, derives from the Greek God Aeskulap, the god of healing. Asklepios, bearer of a serpent-entwined staff and son of Apollo, was such a skilled healer that he was said to be able to raise the dead." (Thanks to the Flower Society for this info.)

The flowers come in a number of colors and are, indeed, the sole food source for monarch butterfly larvae. The sap of the milkweed contains cardiac glycosides, similar to Foxglove, which make the monarch unpalatable if not downright poisonous to predators. Birds will vomit if they ingest monarchs full of milk.

Hummingbirds are also attracted to milkweed, so they're often planted in hummingbird and butterfly gardens. I've weeded most of that flower bed that has them, but have left half a dozen of these plants scattered through so it looks almost as if I planned for them to be there.

The Woodrow Wilson Foundation had this factoid: "In World War II, children in the United States were encouraged to collect milkweed pods and turn them in to the government, where the fluffy silk was used to stuff lifevests and flying suits. The silk was especially good because of its exceptional buoyancy and lightweight. Also in World War II, because of the shortage of natural rubber, scientists in the United States tried to turn common milkweed’s latex into a rubber like substitute."

Alchemy Works has this to say about milkweed magic: "There's plenty of folklore associated with this wonderful moon plant, probably because of the sheer magicalness of its fluff. It is said that adding milkweed fluff to dream pillows will make one dream of the Fae. Folklore also says that for each floating seed one catches and lets go of, a wish is granted. The flowers are associated with Summer Solstice magick and the fluff with fall equinox. Some sources of magickal lore recommend using the juice of this magick herb to anoint a baby's third eye to enhance its imagination and creativity, but milkweed latex can cause itchy dermatitis even on adult skin. Stroking the area with a leaf tip might be a better idea skin-wise. Iroquois Indians used this plant to prepare themselves to fight witches, so it obviously has protective properties as well as being useful in divination. Its easily spun fibers offer unique opportunities for knot magic."

And finally, in the language of flowers, milkweed means "hope in misery."