Well the magic worked : Midsummer’s Eve in Titania’s Bower was a day of sunshine and clouds but no rain.

In the week before we dug and lined a fire pit in the glade :

The bricks were just rescue bricks from the garden at home :

Saturday morning saw us light up in the pit at 08:30 and by mid morning it was a deeply satisfying pit-long fire :

… and it was smiled upon :

We kept it going with dead wood from the surrounding trees until mid afternoon, by which time there was a good bed of ashes. In went a bed of green sticks followed by two legs of venison and two of lamb. After that we put more sticks across the pit, some chicken wire and then a bed of wet newspaper before a final cover of earth.

The magic really began a bit later when a faerie flute was heard out in the woods :

[thank you Helen!] and accompanied the partying for the next few hours.

More magic followed when the meat was dug out of the pit and served to one and all :

[thank you Alex!]. The fire was resurrected to keep us warm and then finally, as it got dark, the magic continued with a nightingale singing us home as we retreated from the Bower to let Titania and Oberon resume their reigns ….