It is true that I live in northern, rural NY. However I still live in an apartment. I feel like I live in a tiny suburb. It's former military housing and looks like a development. All the buildings are practically carbon copies. There is a forest here and I have access to it, but it's a bit of a walk from my doorstep. So where do I put my often biodegradable offerings? I don't want to flush them because there are concerns of water pollution, even if the offerings are biodegradable. I don't want to throw them out because that seems less than pious.
My solution has been to create a small sacred place outside of my apartment, on my patio, for offerings to go. This has been a learning experience with various pros and cons. It started as a small clay pot filled with dirt, stones, and a fairy statue. At some point, a liquid offering froze in a crack and shattered a chunk of the pot. It wasn't looking good for a month. I wasn't sure what to do... Today I converted a red metal pail into my offering pot / mini fairy rock garden. There are also some shiny gems and bits of silver in there. I included shards of the old pot to create some continuity. I'm hoping the metal will be better able to withstand the occasional liquid offering in the cold. Although, since the shattering incident, I've been giving more incense offerings. Even so, I nailed some drainage holes into the bottom.
It still doesn't look all that amazing. In the spring and summer I want to surround it with flower pots and maybe even paint the pot a different color.
That's a good idea. I too live in an apartment, and it's tough to try and dig a hole for offerings in winter... so since one of my houseplants didn't make it, I have designated its container the "rot pot", where small offerings can degrade. The good thing is the lack of smell, although I find my new population of fruit flies an interesting side effect.
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