Oestara 2023

Last Monday (20th March) it was Oestara (more commonly called Ostara) aka the Spring Equinox. As I said in my Celebrating Oestara! post, I usually bake for this sabbat (or "no-bake" sometimes!). This year I made spicy carrot cake cupcakes using this recipe from Natalie Mason: https://natalie-mason.com/2011/03/spicy-carrot-cake-cupcakes.html

They have a cream cheese icing. You can make a big cake or cupcakes, and I decided to go with the cupcakes. They were quite nice. I've made carrot, zucchini and apple muffins before (Don't Waste the Crumbs recipe) and they didn't come out that well, but the carrot blended in nicely with these cakes. I've also made chocolate zucchini (courgette) cupcakes several times and really like those.

I'd planned to put Cadbury Mini Eggs on the top to fit the spring theme, but they were sold out in the supermarket, so I got Smarties Mini Eggs instead. Here's a pic:

 

 

Some of the icing sugar I used was royal icing (which I'd previously bought by mistake) rather than normal icing sugar, so they have a slight sheen" on top! Still tasted fine though. :) 

I'd planned to go to the park for sunset but the weather was dull on Oestara itself, so I went the next day instead. There still wasn't really a proper sunset though. The weather was rainy or not very bright for most of last week and the weekend. But it was sunny today, so I went to the park again and it was a nice sunset. Here are a couple of photos:

 

Sunset in Buckingham Park, Shoreham-by-sea.

So now we're "officially" in spring! The weather had been a bit warmer but it's been colder again the past couple of days. It was about 10C (49F) today and is 7F (43C) in my area tonight, which I think is about average for this time of year. The weather is supposed to be getting warmer over Easter (East Sunday is 9th April this year). I see last year I wrote that it was 18 (64F) in March at one point.

The days are continuing to get longer and clocks went forward yesterday, so now sunset is an hour later (about 7.25pm). I do prefer having more daylight and I'm looking forward to sunnier, hotter weather this spring. The next sabbat will be Beltane on 30th April/1st May. As I previously mentioned, I probably won't do a new post with celebration ideas beforehand, as I've written quite a few posts on celebrating the sabbats. But I'll write about my own celebrations. And I'm also planning to do my winter-spring update next month.

It's weird to think that this time 3 years ago we'd just gone into lockdown, due to the coronavirus. Now every March it's the "anniversary" of the first lockdown. It's been a difficult few years and things are still hard in some ways, and in some countries. I hope that everyone is doing ok, or as well as they can. :)

Hope you had a good Oestara/Spring Equinox and Happy Spring! (Or hope you had a good Madron/Mabon/Autumn Equinox and Happy Autumn!) :)