I grew up on my Mother's own version of Eggs Benedict, and I loved it. Hers involved English muffins & such, with varied permutations according to what she had on hand to cook with. Since I am a hopeless buttermilk biscuit addict, I too came up with my own tweak with permutations of what is on hand to cook with. This is also a good version for lazy cooks, although doing everything from scratch would be absolutely delicious too. Making a big batch of biscuits and freezing them saves me time during the week and I always have a great meal that will keep me energized or...stuffed like a tick and ready to pop... I just put a couple biscuits in the microwave for a minute and they are almost warm and can be cut and stuffed with more delicious things, then warmed a minute more to melt the butter, or cheese. For this version, slice your biscuits open and put the ham (I happen to be using last night's dinner ham) on them. I am a super lazy egg poacher, so I never use the cute little cups, and my poached eggs never look cute but they taste just fine. I hate washing more pans/utensils than I absolutely have to, and I positively cannot let a dirty pan/utensil age in such a condition. I wash and put away as I go. I hate washing dishes etc after a good meal! Bring half a big deep pan of water, a dollop of vinegar + salt & pepper to a light boil, then ease your eggs in (cracking them into a shallow cup makes this less difficult) and gently simmer until they are done to your satisfaction. (Too much of a boil and you will get a foam over and more foam then eggs at the end, too little of a boil, and your eggs will stick to the bottom of the pan.) Remove your eggs with a slotted spoon, drain off, and place on your ham biscuits, then smother thoroughly with already made Pioneer peppered gravy to which you have added some American cheese, cheddar cheese and about a teaspoon of dried onion. (melt the cheese into the gravy, of course) Stick it all back in the microwave and heat for another minute, remove and enjoy. I usually end up sopping up more gravy with my plain biscuit tops rather than putting them on the fully loaded bottoms. If I have a good tomato, I put a slice on each biscuit too. 

I had a request for usnea recently, and for a purpose I had never experienced. I consider usnea to be a fairly innocent ingredient in topical applications, and excellent for some magical applications, but I cock an eye at the suggested internal uses promoted by numerous herb hawkers online. I am sure I have a stash of locally harvested Usnea strigosa in my storage/work room at this very moment, and I have yet to get around to making a salve with it since I have not needed it for that purpose. Years ago, I was warned against consuming it, and I have always obeyed that warning without ever really contesting it. This led me to do some digging and I did indeed find some references to liver toxicity, so it is good that I listened to granny! Even though certain government publications have been exposed as less than perfectly credible, especially in recent times, it is still good to consider certain ramifications in toxicology and far better to err on the side of caution than not in many instances. Primum Non Nocere!
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5739313/
 www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK548493/

We all love our pets so very dearly, and we want to give them the best of everything of course! Sometimes, determining what is best can be a minefield. Garlic is one of my go to herbs for nipping the onset of morbid sore throats and colds. It must be consumed fresh to get the benefits of the compounds that are effective. Sorry, when you cook it, you also cook away the active compounds. Human livers have no problem metabolizing the active compounds, but our cats and dogs metabolize differently, and garlic is 100% not good for them. You can heed my words or consult your veterinarian or look it up in the pet poisons list. I get angry when I see supplements marketed for our precious cats and dogs that contain garlic extract as an ingredient and I firmly state that you should avidly avoid these. You may have already given your cat or dog a supplement with this ingredient and observed no ill effects, and that is great, your animal dodged a bullet so decease and thank your stars. I cringe at my less educated self of 20 years ago that let my cats and dogs clean up my leftover garlic laden spaghetti. They did not die, but I was not doing them any favors. It was just good fortune that they did not consume enough to damage their bodies. Anything in the allium family should not be given to cats and dogs. The Merk manual describes the effects here: www.merckvetmanual.com/toxicology/food-hazards/allium-spp-toxicosis-in-animals
​
Supplements for animals marketed with all natural ingredients are fine ideas, but please do your research on each and every ingredient! Just because it works for humans does not at all mean it does the same for animals. This includes pharmaceutical drugs as well. If you cannot find enough reliable evidence to support the use of it, then to not use it is the more humane choice. Often, finding reliable evidence means many queries along many different paths and it does take time. This will be time well spent because it will protect your animals from hidden harm. Look for scientific research rather than claims made by the hawkers of the products and then look for conflicts of interest regarding that scientific research. 

I have been selling at the Barnyard flea market for a few years and now I have moved to the Spartanburg flea market due to my lust for an inside space with walls and a roof. I am no spring chicken and I greatly enjoy not having to load and unload a bunch of stuff every weekend. I have the best prices around for real stones and that is a fact. I price according to the value balanced with what I paid wholesale, or the amount of sweat I put into digging and cleaning and making. I have to admit that I am not o.k. with disputes about my pricing. I do my own homework and check multiple sources that sell similar things that I do when I set my prices, and I try to beat those sources when I can. If it is a low value thing I have for sale, the price will be quite low. I sell the yard sale stuff at yard sale prices. I sell vintage and antique objects for a reasonable comparative price. If it is a pair of slightly used shoes, those shoes go for $2 or so. If it is a good amethyst pendant, do not expect to get it for $2.  I will sit on my best stones and 100% not sell them at all if I feel they are being disrespected. I have no problem at all hoarding them until I croak, then passing them on to my children and grandchildren. You will definitely not see any of my large specimens at the flea market shop. I am not hauling $300 crystals out there to listen to somebody offer me $20.  My expensive and gorgeous specimens are staying in my family, no negotiation possible, and I will eat wild weeds and beans if I have to without a qualm. If you are the sort to walk into my shop and try to get a cheap thing for cheaper, or a really good stone for the cost of a fake(and I positively abhor fakes) or cheaper stone, then you may get what you want but be assured, you are walking out of there cursed. Yes, I can do that and I am not at all ashamed nor afraid of facing any cosmic consequences. Only tame witches fear that sort of thing, and I have fought with too many real devils to ever be tame. On the other hand, if I happen to like what I read in you, you might walk out of my shop with something really good as a present. That is how I am. So, if you have been advised it is best to haggle at flea markets, be aware that in my territory this strategy promotes a very active and potent dose of ill will and it would be best for you to not enter my shop at all.

 I have been going along for weeks now under a funk, and I knew the cause of it, but rather than deal with it I hoped it would just fizzle on it's own. It may seem strange but I can feel when someone has put negative intentions toward me. I feel it in my body and soul. I get extra tired, extra aches and pains, anxiety and low moods for no apparent reason. Well, I finally got fed up today and decided to get rid of it! Rather than send a vicious attack back at the ones doing it, I just decided to separate myself from it and burn that sucker, so I did and whew I feel better now. This was no little thing, evidently. Usually little things do just fizzle out. So, here is how I uncrossed myself and put myself in wealth restoration mode:
Step 1: Take a nice bath or shower with your favorite uncrossing soap. In my case, I bathed with a Patchouli and rue Castile.
Step 2: Make yourself a nice cup of hyssop tea and drink this while you get your ingredients together and consecrate your workspace.
Here is what you will need:
Your consecration tools. Mine are simple. I have a small quartz wand I like to use, and in this case dragon's blood powder for burning in my cute little incense cauldron. Now, I fill my burner nearly to the top with sand I collected from the banks of a sacred river in the mountains but you can use sand from anywhere special to you. The sand insulates so I can carry my little rascal around while I consecrate my workspace, which I do in a clockwise fashion for this.
a white candle ( I used a white tea light this time)
1 piece of jute twine
a little piece of white paper & some tape
a pen
uncrossing oil
your money jar
3 gold dollars
a sprig of catnip 
Get your workspace ready, and call your spirit helpers, then:
Write 'myself' on your paper on one side, and beside that, with enough space for cutting them both out separately, write whatever you want to rid yourself of. In my case it was evil rumors and poverty. (I decided to knock out two things at once) Cut them apart.
Tape 'yourself' to one end of your jute and tape 'evil rumors and poverty' to the other end.
Dip your right pointer finger in your uncrossing oil and go 3 times around the top of your candle with it, clockwise, then light that rascal. Next with 'yourself' in your right hand and 'evil rumors and poverty' in your left, put the middle of that twine into that flame. Voila! You just burned that unhealthy connection! Now, go burn those evil rumors and poverty to ashes over your toilet and flush those suckers to the sewer, septic tank, or hell where they belong. I always thank Water for bearing the burden away as I do this. Now, tenderly wrap the 'myself' paper around your catnip sprig and of course, surround it with coins and your 3 gold dollars in your money jar. There. You are done now and should be feeling much better! Of course make sure to send your helping spirits away to sleep kindly and undo your circle with joy in your heart. If the weather is good, at this point I step outside to give a final incense offering as my spirits go to rest, and also to thank the holy burning power of Sol. You certainly don't have to end things like I do, that is just my way.

There is no way to slice it nicely. The poverty has gotten pretty intense lately, and I am sure I am not the only one feeling it! It's amazing how people not living it can look at a low budget entrepreneur and think we have it made. Well, it is not so. A lot of entrepreneurs do not have Daddy's money, or grants or loans. All we have is grit and will and wiles.
All my children are grown, but I have grandbabies now and 7 or so cats to support, despite my daughter having taken on one of the dear special needs cats. Yes, my beloved pits passed on, and then the universe sent starvling kitties of desperation and as long as I have a bean to split, I just do not have it in me to turn a blind eye, say no, run away, hide, etc. So, I am downsizing the internet expense by getting a cheaper thing going here again on Weebly. And finally, I can let my witchery out of the bag with relative impunity! Still, you are not going to find a bunch of spells and such spilled here willy nilly, in bald bareness for the world to see! What then, would be the point of  'occult'? The picture features a fairly wild starvling cat that appeared at the new shop in the Spartanburg Flea Market. Poor lil feller, all I could do was offer him a snack and drink. I have not seen him since that day. My mission with the stuff I make really is to support a slew of 7 or so cats. The or so is tacked on because I have caught 3 more felines outside at the food dishes recently.  I do not require much, myself, but it would be nice to afford more than beans. Are you in the bean bracket too right now? I unabashedly have a cat in my bathroom sink at the moment. He does not feel friendly towards the other indoor cats yet and it is just So cold out there tonight. He seems quite happy in the sink though. 

  We had a super fun time rescuing some tadpoles from the big swimmingpool (which is such a chemical waste) this past spring and many tadpoles made it into the froglet and toadlet stage, then hopped into their futures. After the tadpoles had transformed, I left the kiddie pool out for a while to be certain the traveling frog orgy had not innoculated it with more spawn. When I discovered no eggs or tadpoles, I drained the festering mini swamp, and began plan B. Since I am not a fan of battling the invasions of ever present and truly horrid Bermuda grass into my planting beds in the ground, I decided that the kiddie pool would be the perfect home for my 7 or 8 year old last surviving strawberry plants. My poor plants have been languishing in some ridiculous tiny hanging planters, with no room for expansion. My mother has tried repeatedly to kill them off entirely when I have had them in other spots, and yet, some survived. (I don't know what she has against strawberries? Perhaps she can't identify the plants when they are not bearing fruits?) So, on to the good and some would say terribly tacky stuff-which is just perfect for this cookie cutter suburban beige bland neighborhood we are currently stuck in! After I dumped the gross water out of the pool, I cleaned it a bit. Then, I pulled out the drill and put in the biggest bit we have-which is about a 3/4" I think. It is so old the markings have worn off and the bit case is always a jumble. I drilled holes all around the bottom of the kiddie pool, about an inch or so above ground level. Then, I grabbed the can of cheap black spray paint lurking in the garage and gleefully obliterated the cute little Paw Patrol figures on all the places that would be visible after the pool was filled with dirt and plants. (This was just the sides & rolled out lip of the thing).
I could have gotten uber fancy with the spray paint and given it a faux textured finish or some such to go even further with the disguise, but lately I'm into cheap and easy with whatever is already available sitting around and gathering spiders in the garage. After the paint dried, I plopped the pool down on a likely spot in the yard, threw some rabbit doo doo hay, compost, leftover potting soil & peat into it and mixed it up a bit. Lastly, I plunked in the languishing strawberry plants. I raked some needle chaff from under the dreadful Leyland cypress trees and used it as a finishing mulch. Voila! The catbird will be delighted if the strawberries thrive, and the grandchildren may be as well.