planting up a few tomato seedlings… earth day, blessing from the empress, abundance to all walk on the sacred earth beneath the broad expanse of sky…. our birthright being outside, in nature, with people we love… connection to body, land and each other ………. toms grown from last years seed slobber, love the closing of these circles nettle tapenade for lunch, yum… i’m calling it tapenade as, happily, i have no idea what the word means!
Esther: I have these Angel cards too! Don’t have much spare time to draw them these days but you’ve reminded me to do a reading for myself 👼 xx
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Aw I’m sure your so hugely busy all the blooming time! Hope you find some peace amongst the bedlam… plus occasional appreciation of how joyful it is… my nippers are 25 and 21 now… proper bonkers xx
I actually really like these cards… I read tarot for years, but kind of came to a pause with it, as tho, obvs, powerful wasn’t always in the right space to integrate some of the darkness These are proper fluffy, love the illustrations and lots of buoyancy Most of the cards make me think of someone I know… this lady/empress does too… tho can’t quite work out which of my friends she is?! Ha! Hug xx
in the realm of cernunnos, the horned god a drab day, an inconsequential copse, away on the cusp of the downs. yet even then, is there anywhere you’d rather be than a british woods in the idyllic throes of spring? a white carpet of wood anemones bob their heads beneath the breeze… birds flit, a warble of rapture hawthorn and elder flush fresh with leaf everywhere the froth of life, thin skein. green i love this place, partly for the fact so few people bother to come here all the paths are stopped. toppled trees from the great winters storm upheaval. upended… vertical becomes horizontal the roots claw scrabble down in the chalk. amongst the flint … not deep enough to withstand the barge and shove of air i hunker down, these roots, a fungal earthen smell, gone to ground… a selfie, trying to conjure the trunks as cernunnos horns? not quite next… bum shuffled along the trunk, over the crisp crackle lichen, till perched 10 ft above the path… legs a dangle. that’s plenty high enough for me! with the breeze, occasionally the trunk thrums, a wave of vibrations move upwards, and then through my body dragons of earth, dragons of air i sit, still, thoughts settle then subside ………
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emerging from the trees there’s a view of the abrupt white cliffs of seaford head, the spire of St Michael Newhaven peeks above the ridge away, far down the valley, the silhouette of the Castle and the spire of St Michael Lewes the archangel Dragon slayer! doubled. The worm would have plummeted to earth somewhere along this ridge? I look for a long barrow? but none I know of nearer than on the hill above Alfriston curious to think that, back in the neolithic, before the coming of sheep, all the downs would have been lightly wooded… a liminal space of dread the path follows the sight line, directly downhill to the church in piddinghoe and there in a stained glass window, clasped in a golden chalice, i find the baby dragon!
written quickly, coz thats fun too!
oh and i’ve got in the habit of writing respectful, but mildly eccentric words, in church visitors books… give it a go!
i love this site… you can zoom in anywhere and find all the barrows and ancient listed buildings wherever you care… lewes is an utter glut!
snow and blossom! a day at the permaculture plot in stanmer, i’m only ever a sporadic visitor, but whenever life is a little bit at a lull, a day working outside in nature, well mostly supping tea and nattering, is always a good idea! tho the pic doesn’t really do it justice there was about an hour of fluffy stuff… a jumbled up, out of kilter british spring… a bit of snow won’t cause much harm, but freezing overnights more problematic for autumns harvest aw i have a fleeting moment of wishing to be a zen monk… but they’re much better at rocking a bobble hat, writing poems… or mbe should be a viking? who knows! snow upon plum blossoms ephemera mingles with euphoria wind swirl gyre downwards from the heavens this eternal moment, poised, topples into poignancy that sort of stuff!
lunchtime nettle pesto.. continuing on from last weeks post generous handfulls of nettle tips, wild garlic from stanmer park (it’s out already!) 1 lemon, a pinch of pepper, bountiful mixed seeds, olive oil… these foraged from lidl whisk and pulverise to perfection… slobber over gnocchi… guzzle. yum have you ever seen a more delicious dick n’dom BOGIES green!? it just has to be good for you!! takes 5 minutes to prepare and then you can waffle on about it for at least a week food on social media always a performative act didn’t follow a recipe, all ‘intuitive’ quantities, guided by the spirit of the nettle… well, too lazy to be bothered to google it you might blanch the nettles to eradicate any danger of stung tongue?… but mine was fine with mere whisking the nettle flavour is sort of slightly soggy woolen socks… tastier than that sounds! don’t, DON’T whatever you do make nettle soup… made that once, just yuk, fed it to the kids (possibly greta too), they’re usually hugely tolerant of my experimenting, but even they didn’t much like that aw wild garlic pesto reminds me of the epic LEJOG cycle gang! meandering again… ha, tumbleweed on here anyway yawn… can’t seem to wake up post lunch, fun weekend, up to see mum yesterday, whilst saturday after a sunset beach loiter went along to mobius loop… such a brilliant fun festie band! a cauldron of cacao, lots of faces, old and new, wild boogie oh and they played a couple of much more folkie tunes too… really enjoyed teh one below!
Nicki: Richard Basgallop great night … love this song thanks for posting the link .. Particulary Loved this one that the other group She sang too ..its so beautiful
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Ooh that’s lovely, thanks for posting, beautiful harmonies!
In keeping with the synchronous, warm and soulful, nature of the eve, also enjoyed dancing with them (down the front always the place to be!), then chatting to them after. Groovy good to see ya too! Xx
So looking forward to summer festies! X
Sheila: smart funny guy!
Alex: Ooo DELISH! Whereabouts in stanmer did you find it? X
Wild garlic was up the top and way way way (one more way for luck!) back.. they’ll be plenty more of it about in a few weeks!
Was a treat to bump into you and bf… sunset just after was lush… we should totes hang kat more often xx
Alex: Richard Basgallop yes lovely to introduce you guys and see you 🌅
Hang kat? Autokorrect has stopped even trying to make sense. Sigh xx
Cheers! Nettle Juice with a dash of Cleavers and a soupcon of Dandelion belated equinox blessings to one and all… the nettle sacred to Aries, and this the fiery start to the astrological year… may it be a good un first harvest, all from the back garden… before a bit of a spring tidy up… natch spring tonic, the early arriving nettle would have been greatly appreciated in times of yore Lent is always a time of fasting… one of the obvious reasons being that theres nowt much left to eat by now! … tho not quite the ‘hungry gap’ … my annual appreciation of the humble nettle post… this year i’m plucking them, just the tip, the top few leaves, with my bare fingers the peril adds to the fun! plus the stimulant effect of being mildly stung, fizz fingers is supposed to be beneficial… hope so!
Esther: I plan on making homous with my foraged nettles, will take my marigolds for picking though I’m not so brave as you!
Ooh that sounds yum… You’ve inspired me to give it a go x
Ha! Marigolds may well be wise, my phone’s fingerprint recognition now doesn’t work with my still tingling digit! X
charlotte: Thats a “very green” drink ! xx
hulk juice! xx … oh did ya hear me and mum bumped into vicky in tescos leatherhead. small world xx
julie: Recipe? Or is that just juiced nettles?
Recipie?! whats that! it’s a handful of nettles, some cleavers (goose grass, or, you’ll be glad to hear it’s colloquial name is, ‘sticky willy’) and some dandelion leavesall are different shades of green and flavours… nettles are, to my wayward palate, quite ‘nutty’, the cleavers taste like grass abnd dandelions bitter and astringent…if how it tastes is important? just nettles are grand x
leaf kerfuffle! brown, dowdy but exultant… myriad hued… the autumnal tumble, a last leaf hurrah scampering about the beech wood, like an exuberant puppy… i caught so so many leaves!… each a wish… one for you hmmm.. catching leaves should be a ceremonial process… a druidic serenade? station yourself, slightly downwind, of the oldest most majestic beech spirit within the woods begin the invocation with a bout of strenous whistling… i favour ‘i am the lord of the dance said he’… place one finger, folk singer style in ear, a la Euan McColl… other hand should nestle, nonchalant, in pocket ‘O mighty Beech, begin the gyre, release your leaves of burnished copper!’… the more operatic the better (always!?) a wind, weary sweeps through the canopy… the leaves begin their fall some proceed with orderly haste, others pirrhouette, loop da loop, a melodramatic swan song focus on one, far aloft, leaf summoner, leaf stalker… feel the quiver as it acknowledges the beckon of gravity down, down it plummets… pounce! a lunge forward, a frenzy of grasp and clutch, the leaf tickles the fingers, then pancake follops over and … ‘BUNDLE’ chucks itself onto the dingy pile of leaf husks on the ground below Dratt! but then, unheralded, another leaf, slaps against my forehead… bill stickering into place… i gently peel it off, cheerfully whooping ‘caught one’ aw people, them PEOPLE, make such a fuss about intention! but half the knack is just to acknowledge, have gratitude for, good fortune when we accidentally blunder stumble over it? oops i’ve gone all Mills and Boon meets the Beano! anyway, not the easiest of seasons, stodge despondency and despair… thought i’d written something wise in my morning pages… but it remains an indecipherable scrawl! ………. these eclipse hours… schumann resonance? hathor frequency? stand beneath the trees… respond with stillness… feel the frequency… strident but calm… the one ringing clarion note that underpins being. bliss
lambent evening light… seaford head, the distant cliff, but a lazy peach smudge, daub thumbed across the horizon the sea, a softness, ease in and out of being through the stillness, from the dizzy far below, sound rises like wood smoke trudge crunch as a man makes his way home across the pebble shingle splatter scamper of the mackerel, tails fork tongue flicker across the water…. these sea speakings Blackberries and Hawthorn Hips, knotted Red and Black… fluffed, the firework fiesta of Old Mans beard hollow sonorous knell of a wood pigeon look! my head! lumpen huge as some easter island moai Hoa Hakananai’a… stolen away to languish, across the sea, snug smuggled within the British Museum home now… lacking much (anything!) to say… greatly liking words, enjoying the fruitful unimportance of it all…i consult the motto on my Rose Geranium Yogi tea bag: ‘let us be kind and compassionate to remove the sadness of the world’
Wolf Spider with Rose Bay Willow Herb, Thistledown and ermm i want to say Tansy, but its probably just some type of cheerfully deluded Ragwort bleaggh i mean Wasp Spider… have Wolves on the brain at the mo! i thought wow, that must be a wasp spider, without even knowing such a thing existed, google agrees… such marvelous gold hoops, even along its legs beautiful the subtle interactions of nature… the web all soft eiderdown with the wind blown thistle fluff… lost its sticky!… no self respecting fly is going to fall for that!… they’ve got myriad amazement fractal eyes… tho possibly a slightly squiffy one might think of it as a suitable place for a lie down? kind of feel for the spider, all that miraculous effort, ruined! it’s a bit like when you hang the washing out… and immediately boot a muddy football splodge against it… futile fussball chore! beautiful this morning up Castle Hill… i managed to cycle and then hop up the last bit, foot on the mend, but not not skippable about on yet x
Al: I thought at first this was a poem by you.. Great pictures
ha, sorry to disappoint!tho all words yearn to poetry, just a matter of jumbling them up in a beautiful ordersomething like ‘myriad amazement fractal eyes’ is clearly a thespian type, fallen on hard times, embarrassed to voice over a dog food commercial purely for the dosh x
annual august tomato snap ‘blessings on this harvest, this food… thanks to the earth goddess, Rose Gold which wells up from below… the sky god, White Gold which surges down from above… to the cooling Wind, the sweet sorrow of Rain’ these fruits are corporate saba* branded! thats possibly the oddest thing about this photo, not that i have a gorgeous magenta burgundy daisy tucked behind my ear, de rigeur, but that i’ve taken to parading around in this swish, fashionable grey trackie… well fashionable in 1976 anyway its lingered in the warddrobe for a few years, but now seems to be its season?!… *saba a company i sporadically work for, except they’ve changed their name at least twice, possibly three times since then …………… Tomato blight… bleagghh… one theme of the summer, some of my plants are infected… but most look like they might just creep over the finishing line into full fruit… probably half a crop? a preposterously soggy summer… everything else…. courgettes, beans are but fodder for the army of slugs, the nation of snails… oh tho the lettuces in the loft have done well …………… it’s been a fun, fascinating summer! lots of dashing about, enjoying things! like most folk, just haven’t felt to share anything much of it on here hope yours has been equally brilliant! just been down to sniff the sea, high tide, in the rain… it smells of ooh plumpness, sunday afternoons… and not suprisingly damp bedraggled dawg… rather beautiful really
viper’s bugloss! preposterous and ostentatious, a flower after my own heart… and a total bee magnet you can imagine the conversation: ‘hmmm.. i want purple flowers, with a blush hint of pink’ ‘where?’ ‘oh EVERYWHERE, as tho all stuck over, be-sequined!… a hippy hairy trunk… and, i want to be irresistible!… and AND give me a name that makes me sound well tough, Rattlesnake Trumpet or something!?’ there’s loads of this plant around here, tho i didn’t know its name till today, better not mutter borage daughter gave me a wild flower book last year, and sporadically i remember to look them up! super useful wild flowers have gone Rain Forest crazy at the mo, fecund, their loving the warmth, perpetual rain and sultry mist. Juuune
I’m not so brave as you!
