woodland dance with lovely folk and headphones on sunday… bluebells a bit reluctant, on account of this chill sog spring… wood anemones tho… and the yellow ones i always call celandines (just googled, they are!!) fab to feel squelch mud twixt toes… and hug a few majestic oaks the woods are flourishing… hope to get there again tout suite!
… and loft jungle begun
megan: I have a big bedroom jungle at the moment!
Ooh good stuff… im a little late, its been a cold damp spring, and a little unimaginative… but anything and everything is glorious! Xx
Wild Garlic Pesto! this mornings culinary experiment in potions… one batch with nettles, one without. oooomph in a jar! no vampires will be snogging me… well at least not this morning i love the virulent, almost Radioactive, fairy washing up liquid absinthe GREEN of Ransoms these gathered whilst up at mums yesterday… of course i had no bag, so fistful bushels of green coddled in my arms, a cloud of pong, as i meander stride along the willow and alder clogged banks of the River Mole… manic, deranged grin for all the surrey families… menace with foliage. Wild Garlic Pesto and Porridge! always conjures pleasant memories of our mighty cycle ride Lands End to John O’ Groats… how can that be 8 years ago now! mutters, must go on more adventures!… conveniently neglecting to remember i’m not long back from the Himalaya
audio of text
a pleasantly erratic week, a few days off, so up to London to visit friends… out on a bike, pedaling along canals, past monuments, down residential back streets, out to the marsh lands of the north east (crested grebes!) every park the brimful hurrah of blossoms… so many cycle routes, nowadays, London on a bike is a joy back in sussex… first sea swim since my return, fff-ing freezing…. pottering with seedlings in the garden… trips to the tip… singing… ginormous portions of veggie lasagna with daughter the usual cheerful sprawl of spring life
audio of text
god is risen. scoff chocolate eggs… sheltering from the rain under the tree in the garden… birdsong is all trill, hoot and chirrup out in the woods the goddess runs amok, profound and fecund…. ah april! our splurge extravaganza in green
Stinging Nettle Baba Ganoush! well, in truth a hummus hybrid, roast aubergine, plumped out with chick peas… olive oil, lemon, garlic and seasoning ‘Baboushka ya yay ya yay ye’… the essential ingredient, early 80’s Kate Bush, then dance, with exaggerated panache, wielding hand blender, around the kitchen… a slightly less skimpy outfit as a drab, cold rainy day here… such a revolting country. tho it makes me happy to live in a world where Baba Ganoush is a word!, such a delight to utter
audio of text
surprisingly tasty dish, tho beware of the sedative nettle effect, i promptly fell asleep on the bed in the loft, sleeping beauty slumbers first nettle harvest of the year… my ankle recovered enough for a slow jaunt up the cliffs tingle throb, fingers fizz from a nettle sting… a fuzzy sensation that convention labels as painful… but is it? bird song the soggy lament for this somber spring… the hillside still clad in its winter garb, branches of purple burgundy mingled with lichen green… the occasional canary custard yellow daub of gorse look closely, the buckthorn sprays, tight clenched buds, about to kick off! next week a seethe froth of white, not yet… not quite yet mud, mud galore, ooze slurp that keeps the score, patterned from each passing footfall channeling a soupcon of Jack Nicholson in the Shining for the snap too! anyway, back to tonights movie… The Yin Yang Master… a cheerful romp, loving the kung fu racoons!
when in doubt, life at a crossroads, always helpful to ask myself ‘what would kate bush do?’… cheerfully eccentric results x
milarepa, great buddhist yogi and saint, whilst meditating in his himalayan cave ate only nettle soup and promptly turned green
photo from last winter, wish i’d taken some today!audio of text
the vicissitudes of water
down by the river Mole contemplating the reflection of trees, on the opposite bank, in the waters of the river below a mirrored green prolifferation of foilage apart from the occasional pock mark and wind ripple, the reflection is serene, calm and still… and yet, peering beneath the surface, the water races downstream hurtle and intent something astonishing, how can motion summon such stillness? like the chime, the clear gracious note from a singing bowl, this grasps me emotionally, buoyed up, then pulled slightly apart, gently rent much in the way a tree, its roots rummaging down into the earth mother below, yet branches and leaves reach to the light above, tension and stretch river of flow and stillness, realm of insight and reverie in truth but a variant on the notion ‘we can never bathe in the same river twice’, whats in the noggin, but stepped down from the lofty impregnable, turret of thought emotions, held in the body, modulated, softened through the blessings of water
audio of text
later, at the mill race, after the water has come over the drop, rebound, it surges back upwards from the depths a marbled ooze like the clouds of some gas giant planet, all mottled greens and blues 4 separate pools, between them a linked chase of bubbles, a pattern that breaks then reforms again in an identical manner a holding pattern, a frequency resonance? sense of seethe something about water welling up from below, primordial, the goddesses of springs like Sulis Minerva at Bath, each is unique we have always come to speak with, praise and parley, make offerings to, the goddess of a particular place this intimate knowledge of the divine
audio of text
i always think of dad on this stretch of the Mole, as when up visiting, just before he died, I walked here all the time, it would have been his birthday today the blue flash of the insignia of a kingfisher, this miracle irridescence… a gasp, a fleeting dazzle, yes, and he is gone ‘Sweet Thames, run softly till I end my song’ the river meanders through the Eliots Wasteland dad was cremated a mile downstream, the hospice where he died 5 miles further, so much of my childhood pottering along the mole canoeing with Rich P on boxing day, in wet suits, capsizing somewhere near the weir floating down the river, cold, laughing
when shamanic journeying, in my imagination I often come to this archetypal british river, familiar, comforting alder and willow, streams of slime green water weed, dragon flies, swans and kingfishers a golden rainbow light of vision
Lammas/Harvest blessings… right on cue the first tom to ruddy ripeness… tho this one seemingly so huge that it has, after einstein, warped the fabric of both time and space must be such a bulge full world seeing thru the eyes of a fish? apols for another veg snap… guess august is always fruit and festies yield of a different type… daughter has been moving out of her student house, a glut of clobber! where does it all come from? the trusty estate car fit to burst guess that is what being a parent to kids in their twenties is often about… i can see my dad patiently and good humouredly helping me move for the umpteenth time… lugging another lucky dip box: wizard cape, curios, futile gee gaws and a hoard of books. thanks dad! life in all its rhythms and cycles
Sarah: Oooh that’s goodMine completely failed this year no tomatoes
oh thats a shame… for me, most years, the only thing that gives a decent harvest… slugs and snails don’t seem even remotely keen on them! xx
Sarah: only thing I’ve managed so far this year is radish’s!Think it was v wet , then v hot, now v wet !
Snozzcumber! that GREW in the garden!! probs shouldn’t be quite so suprised as i planted it… but miracle of a slug dodger i’ve named this one wilson… wilson pick-itt Update alas poor wilson is no more…. sunday morning yoga followed by courgette and sunshine… a great start to the day
couldn’t wait till the midnight hour tho… too peckish
Sigh … Since festie I have clearly eschewed the use of clothes… So unspiritual and a symbol of capitalist oppression… Sky clad in.B&Q
aww a baby snail curled up and asleep in a courgette flower! cute …. that or she’s punch drunk sozzled into unconsciousness having gorged herself on the nectar… the blighters have utterly decimated almost everything i’ve planted…. runner beans are has-beens of all the courgette plants this is the ‘last man standing’… a pyrrhic victory… snails have been so bent on devouring the others this plant has mostly survived… one fruit looks like it will make it to harvest. yay courgette flowers are super on salads… tho might give this one a miss… plenty of vitamins in snail slime? toms are looking good tho the devastation is the same every year. you’d think i’d learn. try something different? apparently not! i don’t mind. spiral shells… mystic beauty evicted to the patch of great willow herb down the far end of the yard anyway stuff to do! x
Megan: If you plant lots of garlic, onions, leeks, etc. around the plants they like it keeps them away (to some degree).
bask in this, the bliss of your perpetual, preposterous blossoming ‘YOU, you are beautiful’ this the whispered rhapsody of the May of course the mind will quibble, it’s usual, mostly useless, toothless worrying consider this, from the first split of an amoeba, an unbroken line flowing to, and then, through you onwards! a billenia of success and flourishing the human line, the babe so helpless, so vulnerable, survival is through being cosseted, cocooned… nurtured true for our mothers, fathers, endless ancestors, this domino topple down the generations we are the CRESCENDO, the culmination of love Incantation… how many angels are dancing on the head of a pin? who cares… but I know for certain that you are one of them. yo! pirhouette in your beauty says a man, with a medallion, in a grey polyester 70’s trackie top, branded with the logo of a company i once worked for, on a hill, above Kingston near Lewes
audio of text
ah, the body blossoming, one of my more palatable ‘visions’ from an attempted vipassana (i left in a euphoric froth of madness on day 7 or possibly 8 ) a teaching on ephemera, every iota, all material phenomena are perpetually arising and then falling from being transfixed, a winters twilight afternoon, lost on a bench in the woods and saw, then felt, that it was so the body, endless, ecstatic Rose pink flowers bask in this, the bliss of your perpetual, preposterous blossoming
…………………………………………
Abi: I was just pondering the rhapsody of May and of course you have worded it so beautifully
thanks love, ever entranced by the miracle of being outside at this time of year, impossible, for me at least, not to try and summon some sense of it in words tho not saying i always get it right… hope you enjoyed your own poem, and that all goes swimmingly! hug xx
stitchwort… louche on the verge, sprawled and bedraggled amidst the hedgerow spotted these a few days back, near an ancient thatched house, down a narrow lane in east devon… away in the distance the Rust Red sandstone sea stacks of Ladram bay, more the aboriginal desert dust of Uluru than the green, sog-fest of the west country in days gone by, this plant, i would lazily ascribe as daisy! but, take a snap, then later look it up in a wild flowers spotters guide… a gift from daughter yonks ago… slowly, slowly, expanding circles of knowledge, when we yoke creativity, and nature, with wisdom… we become unstoppable! a thought which, ha, occurs to me walking home from this mornings jog, a long long queue outside the drive-in mcdonalds, smell of fried flesh and petrol fumes in the air… its not really going that well?
audio of text
….. stitchwort, such a beautifully prosaic anglo saxon name, no flummery, all stomping about in hob nail boots, a culture so deeply embedded in nature, so intricately connected, that there would be no point in wonder yet, with my love for pomp and the absurd curlicues of words, guess i would have been inside, blessing of clericism? indeed the latinate… ‘Stellaria’… a star flower… 5 petals, deeply bifurcated, so, the double pentacle, a ten pointed star! ooh a nine pointed star would be the enneagram, but am unaware of the symbology for ten anyway, two posts, broadly for earth day, glut, clearly of wafflesome disposition!
no tomatoes 
