The Hearth
Where the fire is kept, the kettle sings, and stories are returned to the dark.
The Sanctuary
A house held by hills, hearth, and the unseen.
Montestal is an old stone house and a walled garden in the hills. A few times a year we open the doors to a small circle of guests — for plant walks, ceremony, hearth-cooked meals, and time enough for the green ones to be heard.
The grounds
Four quiet rooms, and a garden that does most of the talking.
The Stillroom
Plants are dried, distilled, and tinctured in devotion to their spirits.
The Garden
A walled medicinal garden, two centuries tended — sun-side, moon-side, and the wilds beyond.
The Altar Room
A small chapel of glass, candle, and bone — for sitting with the unseen.
April · this month at Montestal
What is happening under this moon.
Retreat
April 18 – 20
Details →Wild Harvest Walk
Three slow days following the spring greens — nettle, cleavers, violet, hawthorn.
Open day
April 22
Inquire →Earth Day at the Garden
Walled-garden tours, a small plant market, and tea by the hearth from 11–17.
Lunar rite
April 27
Inquire →Dark Moon Sit
An evening of mugwort tea, candle, and shared silence in the altar room.
Workshop
April 30
Inquire →Beltane Flower Waters
An afternoon distilling rose & hawthorn hydrosols at the copper still.
A day, roughly
Slow mornings. Plant work. Long tables.
Dawn
Salutation in the garden
Bare feet on stone, kettle, birds. A small offering at the threshold.
Morning
Plant walk or stillroom
We meet the day's plant — its name, its ruler, its archetype — before we work with it.
Midday
The long table
A meal cooked over hearth, blessed at its head, eaten without rush.
Afternoon
Quiet hours
Read, walk, sleep, swim, write — or sit with a plant and listen.
Dusk
Supper & fire
Smaller plates, candle and lamp, and stories returned to the dark.
Night
Stargazing & dreaming
Mugwort tea, the sky overhead, the dreams the plants carry in.
Rites & Ceremonies
We move with the wheel — sun, moon, planet, soil.
☉
Solar offerings
Dawn salutations to the green ones, sun-warmed oil pressings, candle-lit harvests.
☽
Lunar rites
New-moon dreaming with mugwort, full-moon flower waters, dark-moon stillness.
♀
Heart ceremonies
Rose-water blessings, beloved-naming, the soft work of opening.
♄
Earth tending
Burials, compostings, root-feedings, prayers spoken into the soil.
Openings