The trouble with having a mostly made-up religion is that you can very easily miss your religious holidays.  In the Celtic-inspired neo-pagan tradition that I draw from, August 2nd is Lammas, the first harvest.  As we bring in the first crops, they symbolize the body of the god which is cut down in the field to sustain us, as well as the fruits of our labors over the course of the past year that we are beginning to reap.  This year, the start of August came and went and I didn't even think about honoring the first harvest.  But the nice thing about having a mostly made-up religion is that it doesn't really matter if you miss the holidays because you can celebrate them whenever the spirit moves you, and in fact, that's really the point.  Today I went over to my dad's and gathered apples off the ground in the orchard to make apple butter for everyone for Christmas, and then we walked up the hill and picked blackberries to make pancakes for breakfast tomorrow in the field under the power lines.  It was evening, and hot sun slanted down on us; I had forgotten my hat, and the sun burned the back of my neck.  I realized as we worked that the summer is coming to an end; the wheel of the year is turning, whether I am aware of it or not.  Mostly, this year, it has felt like the wheel of the year was spinning too fast for me to notice much of anything.  Today, I took my first harvest of the fruits of the earth for this year; when Ramona was born, the blackberries were only just greening up after spending a winter looking like dry brambles, and the apples were in flower as I learned to be Ramona's mother and struggled with my mother's ill health.  I am happy for this harvest; though it seems to have happened in no time at all, it has been a good year.  I feel good about the way I celebrated Lammas, even if I technically missed it.