Off Away!

Heading West again this weekend to visit with TSW and Shepherdess… superb. This will a pretty interesting visit, as it’s social but also heavily business-focused. Not to titillate your tastebuds too much!

We could certainly do with some time off. I spent all my working week reeling from pillar to post, this week; neither comfortable nor stress-free. And the neighbours at our new little house seem to do everything except sleep at night-time. I counted three separate entries and exits (slammed doors, revving cars, shouting into mobiles) between 2.30am and 4.30am. I’m a really light sleeper - most of the time I’m not technically ‘asleep’ as I still have the ears-on-elastic thing from having a baby. Added to which, new houses are built of matchwood and pencil shavings, so if you cough it sounds like a bomb dropping.

I will be online, try and keep me away.

So we leave the tatty suburban street of the hometown and head out into the golden misty West… cue music! And someone promised us Beef Wellington and Tiramisu, too. Talk about Avalon…

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Well, there’s no real words to describe the excellence and sumptuous wonderfulness of this weekend. We arrived stressed, after hitting the back of the 50-mile tailback from Cribbs Causeway to Cornwall. After a protracted tussle with the map and a cross-country meander, we crossed the line into Somerset. There’s an indescribable peace and contentment that I feel when I enter this county - I’ve never lived here, and have no family connection. It’s green, bucolic, rich and fertile, with deep hollows between the hills that hide the most beautiful villages in England. The pink and gold Hamstone that they use to build with here contrasts with the wisteria, parthenocissus, clematis and greenness of the gardens and glows in the shallow evening light that pours across the fields. It’s a promised land, a dream. I love it to distraction.

We dropped straight into easy banter and gathering around the kitchen table we got on with doing the dinner, lubricating the proceedings with blackcurrant vodka, and cooking up a storm. Afternoon shaded into evening as we ate the fruits of our labours and then kicked back with vats of wine for a gossip and a giggle, and then a dance!

TSW’s brow lightened after a few jars; her back has been giving her untold grief and agony. It was lovely to see the wine doing its work and enabling her to put me royally through my paces as a belly dancer - she looked great, but I looked like a cat on hot bricks although I really got the feel for the music - I’d love to have another shot at this.

We settled to bed fairly late and I was hammered, but pleasantly - no hangover whatsoever in the morning and I slept like a log, as did Mr GW. Awakened slowly by the contented sotto voce cluckings and meanderings of the local chickens. Freshly made and delightful coffee, local fresh-squeezed bramley apple juice, and a heritage breakfast of award winning sausages and bacon, local bread and free-range scrambled eggs followed. This is food the way it’s supposed to be produced. From the area, personally chosen, carefully produced, lovingly cooked and greedily devoured!

TSW took us on a tour of the local villages - cue much drooling from me - and a visit to a cider mill. Wonderful stoneware flagons of local cider and some beeswax candles that smell of honey, somnolent sluggishness and the peace of bees. 

We left, comforted and cheered on our way, like we were stepping out of a magic circle but somehow retaining the virtue of it on our drive north. Such a lot has been decided this weekend, such a lot of issues resolved. I have to thank my friends; they are responsible for all the good things that have been achieved - and they cook a mean Welly to boot!

Highgrove’s Goddess of the Woods

I was lucky enough, this week, to receive an invitation to join a party who had tickets to Highgrove, the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall’s private garden. This garden has only been in construction since 1980, but it looks as though it has been there over 100 years.

What I hadn’t fully appreciated, and what was brought home to me by our guide and by the garden itself, is that this intensely spiritual man speaks not about his beliefs; he builds them into his garden.

There are Green Men, leprechauns, sympathies to Nature everywhere. There are sympathies to all religions, if you look hard enough, but the Prince is a supporter of Temenos, an academy and bank of thinkers whose essential ideal is that, at the base of the pyramid, our feelings about God are widely differing; but as we near the apex, we can come to realise that we are all worshipping the same essential God; ‘…consonant with Plato’s view that all branches of knowledge lead to the same eternal truth’.

One garden spoke to me especially; well, it would. You approach it through a shady, cool and waterlogged garden area full of hostas, water, ferns, sculpture, shade and tranquility. Under an oak is an astonishing, photorealist statue of The Goddess of the Wood - who I take to be Hecate. Carved in banded marble, She sits, every hair of Her pubis and head visible, Her scalp worn smooth by the hands of supplicants deliberate or undeliberate; staring at the temple to Her left. Her hands are square and capable; a gardener’s hands.

I loved Her as soon as I saw Her, and I understood that there’s a gradation between the moderate, old-fashioned Christianity practised by people countrywide and the religion that I follow. It doesn’t necessarily have much to do with evangelicalism; but that’s ok. It has a great deal to do with old-fashioned respect, leaving well alone and a caring for the countryside around.

The garden combined nature and culture; earth, air, fire, water and spirit; wilderness and artifice. All together, such a superb, harmonious and whole whole. I remarked to the guide that the man worships through his garden and she didn’t disagree. 

If you can stand beside a tree planted by the hand of the Dalai Lama himself, and see it flourish, if you can stand in a meadow which the experts confidently predict will take 100 years to come to fruition, if you can look at a statue and feel your Goddess calling you, you have stood in a garden that works.

This is real magic.

 

 

Fresh

The new header is, as always, from my garden. I was stalking about after a rain shower and caught the jewels of the new raindrops on the acer leaves and couldn’t resist them. This burgeoning time of the year is truly the most special, and it refreshes and uplifts me every year. Thank you, Goddess; I remember You every time I set foot upon the earth.

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And look what FoxChild grew!

Get Growin!

Like everyone, we were out in the garden and in the fields this weekend- just too gloriously perfect and hot to be inside, blogging!

I was reading the Llewellyn’s 2008 Magical Almanac in a quiet moment, and there was an excellent article about connecting with the earth. You can’t do this at the keyboard, but I think that many try to. You’ve got to get grubby and feel the soil upon which you stand between your toes. So that piece of reading made me think.

Then, as so often happens, I was given an amazing book about living off the land - ‘Animal, Vegetable, Miracle’ by Barbara Kingsolver (thanks again, M!!). She makes the point early on in the work that there are many children today who have no idea of the life-cycle of a plant, from sprout to flower to seeds, or indeed where vegetables come from. Less so in Britain, perhaps; but in America, there is a whole generation who find the idea that vegetables grow in dirt awful and unhygienic. See also this great post from Starhawk which expands on this point. And that’s all before you start explaining where meat comes from. Animals? Prepare for litigation - you’re traumatising my child!

All the work we did in the garden this weekend got me thinking about food production. We eat quantities of salads and tomatoes all summer long. Why not grow them ourselves? We live in the heart of a busy city - what better way of taking something back than using the free sunlight, water and dirt and producing something worthwhile? I have a blind spot where vegetable growing is concerned. If it’s a plant to please and smell nice, I can manage it. If it actually has to serve a useful purpose, well, something breaks down and I can’t see the point. If you analyse this as an attitude, it’s simply bizarre. So enough shilly-shallying! The thought of being able to gorge ourselves on flavoursome, juicy, tomatoey tomatoes (and face it, when can we buy those is Britain??) as well as putting up gallons of tomato sauce for the winter seems to be enough of an incentive. Plus basil, peppers and chillis and you have all the raw materials for hundreds of tasty meals.

At a stroke we could: reduce the food miles of the salad and tomatoes to nil. Produce properly organic salad vegetables, with probably enough spare to give away or barter for other things. Learn about heritage and rare varieties and grow for flavour, something commercial tomato growers fail to do.

Above all, we’re putting in place a system of seasonal growth for benefit and food, which will teach us more about our land and the uses it can be put to; and it will teach our young sprout that food doesn’t come from the supermarket - it comes from the earth.

 

Salute from the Skies

7pm last night, just staring out of the dining room window, to be greeted by two swallows, slicing their way through the blue. It’s wonderful to be reminded that time moves on, and things get brighter - in fact, it’s a metaphor for life if ever I saw one!

These birds really cheer me - their spare shape and effortless swooping makes them look as though they’re glad to be alive and flying. I love hearing them call to each other.

Things are looking up, as they always do. It’s so difficult when you’re in the middle of things to know this. But I should always remember that it happens, and more quickly if you are prepared to take the bull by the horns and ask for help. So many people have rallied round, so much real assistance has been offered. It’s wonderful.

I’m glad the Goddess sent those two heralds of summer sun and cheer to remind me of what’s really important. I’m constantly grateful for timely reminders from the Universe that we are all watched over and loved. I’m grateful also that my mind is open enough to receive the messages, at least some of the time. Foxchild wrote a lovely essay regarding this point; the comments add weight to her message.

Earthy Devotions

We spent much of the day in the sun and the wind in the garden. It’s really coming on - I’ve moved a whole load of plants around and sewn seed between them. What a luxury to be able to lean on the fork and meditate. My son made mud pies and watered random plants with his little orange can; my husband built a path with raw stone and I dug and raked the area for the new lawn. Glorious. Thank you, Goddess.

Garden Calm

My parcel from the online garden store turned up this afternoon, while I was having a coffee with an old colleague who turned up to fit a new Sky dish (this town is so small… the last time I saw him we were working at the same car dealership!).

The parcel was a great excuse to get out into the garden and dig. My son covered himself in mud and water, happy as a sandboy, and I planted a Viburnum opulis, which comes out in large white pompom flowers, and has red berries in winter; 6 Kniphofia, or Red Hot Pokers, 3 Dahlia sensation, a Blueberry bush and 6 assorted lucky dip tall perennials. The garden can only benefit - and that goes double for me.

The lawn goes down in the next month. I can’t wait until I have a lawn, so I can lie under my Rowan tree and look up at the sky through the leaves. Looking up at the sun, the clouds, the moon and stars…

 I’m looking forward, also, to being able to use the garden far more as a room. None of the rooms in the house has ever felt quite right as a ritual space - I feel that the garden might do very well in this regard. Plenty of lanterns, plenty of night-scented plants, plenty of shelter, plenty of privacy. Perfect. And I can chalk a pentagram on the terrace.

My present

Today…. was the first day of Spring.

Blue skies, calm clouds, light breeze, warmth. I saw a butterfly. I saw nesting birds. I saw buds and flowers where none had been yesterday.

Thank you, thank you my Goddess.

But then, something!

Forgot, in my general air of pervasive sturm und drang, that I spent a little of yesterday moving irises to their new home in the garden, from a patch of earth we’re turning back into a lawn. The wind was bending the rowan tree above me; the sun was warming my back and drying the earth as I dug. That was my Eostre. Right there - surrounded by the garden that I love which is made to the glory of the Goddess. Silly me!

Ostara

Here we formally welcome Spring in all her glory - and all her natural power. The winds round here have been something quite frightening. It’s comforting in a way to lie in bed or sit tucked up in a comfy chair, reading, and hearing the wind wuthering around the eaves. The torrential rain and blustering of Spring works better than anything to clean the land and the air, I find. I went outside yesterday evening to put some vegetable scraps into the compost bin and the air smelled abundantly fresh, and clean, and new. In fact, I was instantly transported back to my childhood, and Easters spent in my grandmother’s home in Cornwall.

Scents and memory must be one of the most primordial associations possible for human beings; the memory for scents, in my fanciful imagination, brings to mind the knowledge of a home place found again by scent; the smell of belonging to that place. Perhaps, perhaps not.  But the smell of the fresh air, the damp earth, the trees and the first cut of the grass say Spring! to me in a way that the word can’t possibly do justice to. Happy Ostara!