Oh, and speaking of ADF requirements, here's one I forgot to write about last week. We celebrated Lughnasadh with the Portland Druid Exchange in the form of a potluck on a farm. It was a great evening - the property has some exquisite potential, the food was good, and the company was great.
One of the other attendees did bring along the booklet on Lughnasadh from OBOD's materials and read from it. It sparked an interesting discussion on why we celebrate planting along with the harvest and ended up wandering into more scientific topics as well. I really enjoy the breadth of knowledge and opinion in this group.
I didn't write about it at the time because we were intending to go out to Trout Lake Abbey on Saturday as well, but the heat was atrocious and I wasn't feeling well, so we ended up with the potluck as our only holiday celebration.
In retrospect, though, I don't think that's a bad thing. Sure, we were sans Core Order of Ritual. However, to celebrate it with our own sort of "harvest feast" among friends, on land that supported animals and a garden... in some ways that felt much more in tune with how our spiritual ancestors would have gone about it, so I consider it a net win even if it doesn't help my count of rituals that follow the COoR.