Tending The Bees

For the last few weeks we've been spending happy hours cleaning and flaming old bee boxes and assembling extra frames of foundation for our Hives.  There are two of them, 'Wild Hive' and 'The Hive of Transition'.

The last year has seen me working harder than ever before whilst distracted by illness (not mine but one beloved and close) and also made timid around the bees by discovering that I am in fact allergic to bee sting. I now have to carry two epi-pens with me everywhere.  I have not been a good bee-keeper and I have been full of grief, berating myself instead of acting and dithering uncertainly on the edge of multiples of possibilities about what it might all 'mean'. I am initiate of The Path of Pollen, an ancient form of Shamanism that has at it's heart the Honey Bee and The Hive.  How can I be allergic to bee sting?

It was late in the year for these activities - they would have been better done in early spring.  In every moment is the opportunity for being totally here, totally alive to the moment - this is the only place where anything is truly happening. So I let go of all the beratings and inner torment and instead stepped forward into "what is needed now?"  I met the milk of kindness to humans within the hive; there is nothing to fear, there is only love, get on with the work.

To some extent I have been spectator more than participant - Fergus being the one who opens the hives - but placing my attention exactly where it should be (at a moment before the moment that is 'too late') has been balm to my grief.  The Hive of Transition has a new queen (it was briefly queenless and full of drones - not good), she is mated and happily laying comb after comb of healthy brood.  Wild Hive has all the space it needs to make more precious, nourishing, honey. The workers pour in and out of both in golden lines of busyness bringing pollen and nectar for their common good.

Apis Mellifera is a generous Mistress and both hives are now thriving.

If you love Bees, or indeed if you just love exceptional writing, I encourage you to read 'The Bees' by Laline Paull.  It's an extraordinary book and reading it is quite possibly one of the most accessible ways I can think of to understanding some of the practicalities of what goes on inside a hive.  I've made it sound dry - and it is anything but that.

If you are curious about The Path of Pollen read 'The Shamanic Way Of The Bee' by Simon Buxton. It has much to teach you, carefully hidden in eloquent prose and a beautiful story.

Past, Present and Future

May grabbed me by the tail and swung me up high into the branches, then pulled me through the great green-ness and fragrant wildness of the flowers, jiggled me about a bit and tossed me into June where I landed in a field of bluebells. I have bobbed up - not gasping for air exactly - but a little goggle-eyed and breathless.

Here are a few pictures from Beltane - I know that's over a month ago but this year there was even more celebration than usual so I thought I'd share before the whirlwind that is this year takes me so far away from them they have no relevance at all.  First there was the rooted beauty that is the crowning of the May Queen and maypole dancing in Lustleigh.

The usual blissful walk home up the  hill, sniffing the air as we go and occasionally stopping simply to wallow in how delicious it all is at this time of year.

Then some friends and I concocted the first ever Jack In The Green procession to be held in Chagford. It was mostly the magical child of Andy Letcher and Nomi McCloud and it was fun and potent. Those that were there agreed that there was an authenticity to this, a raw wildness that overtook the participants and created something much more than spectacle; something ancient came along with us.

Jack in the Green is the moving shrub above, his companion is the Obby Oss.  They danced the length and breadth of the village, gathering in the magic of the moment and a merry band of followers as they processed to the sound of pipes and drum.  We stopped in all four of the local pubs to charge our glasses and then the dance danced on, ending with  Jack being stripped of his leaves in the central square to release the spirit of summer. Hopefully we'll do it again next year and it will take on a life of it's own and be done ever more.

The Jack needed much more work than we were able to put into him, he was a triumph of hope and last minute exertion.  Time will improve him.  

May rushed on; I saw beautiful butterflies mating in the garden, I saw a fresh born fawn in the woods (this is her mother - seeing me see her) and our bees swarmed.

Woven in among all this life, the upthrust of spring and the great inexorable turning of the wheel of the year, there has been a part of my life that has come shudderingly to a halt.  I am a woman of 'a certain age', I've been expecting the flames of the fires that sometimes burn inside me to die down, I thought I knew what was headed my way, but was unprepared for the sudden onslaught of aches and pains and emotional ups and downs that seem to be associated with menopause and they piled in on me this spring.  I love change, but I prefer it to be for the better.  So I did that thing that wise women do - I complained to a friend.  I am very fortunate in my friends, this one is the Homeopath - Sandra Joyce.  I encourage you to make homeopathy your friend too if you are 'suffering' from menopause. I would like to talk more about this in a future blog but for now I will recommend you a book.  If you are heading towards that time (that wonderful un-tamed time), or even in the midst of it, then I heartily recommend 'Passage to Power' by Lesley Kenton.  It's 20 years old but has aged very gracefully and is still totally relevant.

Spring is Sprung

Spring has come bounding up the hill side raggle taggle and in a hurry.  She still has twigs and dried leaves in her hair from where she's been sleeping under the oaks, but she's here for sure and everything is bursting into bloom, spiralling open, courting, chasing, chirping and generally being all green and blossomy.  The trees have turned from brown to green in barely more than a week and with every varied shade and tone of vibrant, subtle, healthful, heartful green comes another burst of wild song, both in the branches and in every corner of my spring delighting heart.

Some people are still busy building and feathering their nests, while some have chicks already and spend their days tirelessly to-ing and fro-ing in the ever more necessary tag-game of feeding them.

We have found a Wagtail nest near here.  I haven't photographed it because having found it by accident I don't want to disturb it.  There are five beautiful little white eggs in it.  It's hard not to count the Wagtails before they hatch, but my fingers are crossed.  This is her collecting Daisy dog-hair for some last minute additions to her nest.

I've been busy collecting myself - harvesting the huge array of wild yummyness that grows hereabouts into feral feasts and trying not to repeat myself too often.  Nettle and Wild Garlic soup is really incredible the first time you have it and still pretty wonderful the second, but the palates of all those who come to the table need to be taken into consideration and "oh no, not green soup again" isn't most convivial way to start a meal.

Nettles! Urtica dioica.  Delicious and incredibly nutritious.  There are so many good things to say about this wonderful plant that I'm not going to repeat them here, I'll just leave you this link and this one.  

 Oxalis or Wood Sorrel - Delicious in salads, 

Ground Elder - otherwise known as Gout Weed, Bishops Weed, Herb Gerard, English Masterwort, Wild Masterwort or indeed Aegopodium podagraria. Used as a hot wrap for the treatment of gout and as a mild sedative when eaten, it's delicious when the leaves are young both in salads and as a boiled vegetable.

 Galium aparine or Cleavers, Sticky Willy, Goosegrass, Catchweed, Robin-run-the-hedge.  As well as being an excellent tonic and diuretic this useful plant is a handy poultice for wounds and burns. This year I have also discovered that the roots of this plant make a red dye - wildly exciting.  I'll let you know how I get on. 

Pennywort, Navelwort or Kidneywort - guess what that's good for.. and Yarrow, Achillea Millefolium, this is another one that there's so much to say about I will simply leave you the link here. 

So we've been having fish pie with nettles, ground elder and wild garlic woven seemlessly and seeminly invisibly into the sauce.  Likewise they have made an appearance, un-noticed in pasta and noodle dishes and in pot roasts, curries and stews.  Lots of Hedgerow salads with dandelion leaves, primrose flowers, cleavers, jack-by-the-hedge, yarrow, sorrel and pennywort.  Fergus and I are pretty much on our own with these hedgerow salads but I'm sure the taste buds of 'youth' will come round soon enough.

Such Singing in the Wild Branches

Such Singing in the Wild Branches

It was spring

and I finally heard him

among the first leaves––

then I saw him clutching the limb

in an island of shade

with his red-brown feathers

all trim and neat for the new year.

First, I stood still

and thought of nothing.

Then I began to listen.

Then I was filled with gladness––

and that’s when it happened,

when I seemed to float,

to be, myself, a wing or a tree––

and I began to understand

what the bird was saying,

and the sands in the glass

stopped

for a pure white moment

while gravity sprinkled upward

like rain, rising,

and in fact

it became difficult to tell just what it was that was singing––

it was the thrush for sure, but it seemed

not a single thrush, but himself, and all his brothers,

and also the trees around them,

as well as the gliding, long-tailed clouds

in the perfect blue sky–––all of them

were singing.

And, of course, so it seemed,

so was I.

Such soft and solemn and perfect music doesn’t last

For more than a few moments.

It’s one of those magical places wise people

like to talk about.

One of the things they say about it, that is true,

is that, once you’ve been there,

you’re there forever.

Listen, everyone has a chance.

Is it spring, is it morning?

Are there trees near you,

and does your own soul need comforting?

Quick, then––open the door and fly on your heavy feet; the song

may already be drifting away.

-Mary Oliver

A Slightly Belated Giveaway

I first posted on this blog at the end of March 2014.  A whole year has flown by since then; many things have changed, been birthed, grown, died - in the way things do.  This blog, which I was very unsure about at first, has been a joy to me.  I've loved the challenge of writing it and I've learned lots from researching what I'm trying to express to make sure I'm not leading you up the garden path.  I've loved people's happy responses to it; I've found them nourishing and affirming and I hope that in return I've contributed to the gross human happiness quotient and to that of the more-than-human world.  I hope you can feel my reverence for all that is - I hope you can  join me in that reverence.

I have tried to write on behalf of a sentient and heartful Earth whom many of us have forgotten is everything to us.  Our mother, our father, our home,  our life, our breath.  To speak on behalf of all those of us who share "the commonwealth of breath" (another of David Abram's potent expressions), whether we are wild or tame,  furred or feathered,  animate or seemingly inanimate.

I've taken you along some of the paths I know as we have watched the year turn inexorably through her cycles.  It is my dearest wish that you now know, if you did not know already, that everything is connected on the web of life and that if you can re-claim and re-wild your own inner landscape then you can re-claim and re-wild the outer one, and vice versa.  I am undertaking the ever lengthening task of getting to know my landscape, interior and exterior - the one where my feet fall, where my eyes rest on this horizon in this place on this day.  Much as I hope you will read on - really the best thing you could do for yourself is go outside, right now, and learn the songs and stories in the contours of your own land, the names, the spell-ings of the place that is your home and the beings with whom you share it.

I hope I have shown you that there are more denizens in this weird, beautiful, strange and magical world than may first meet the glassy human eye.  Let your eye become the inner eye, they fey eye, the queer eye shared by the three sisters Graeae.  See that there are spirits everywhere, that we live in a whole and complete system within which everything is made up of the same stuff.  I have spirit and am human; so then if the ferral cat or the two kronking ravens are made up of the same stuff, or mushrooms, or a mountain, must they not have spirit too? Clearly they do.

So - a year has come and gone and I thought I'd celebrate with a 'give-away'.

In many Shamanic Cultures that's the way to celebrate anything - by giving away.  The Potlach - a sort of feast and give-away that is common to many of the Native North American, Canadian and Subarctic tribes - was rather unaccountably made illegal in Canada in 1884 and in the United States in the late 19th Century.  It was seen as "a worse than useless custom" by the missionaries and and white settlers as it was contrary to the 'civilised values' of competition and accumulation.  A telling comment was made by William Duncan (a missionary) who wrote in 1885 that the potlatch was "by far the most formidable of all obstacles in the way of Indians becoming Christians, or even civilised"!!

Well, I never wanted to be civilised anyway.

So here it is.  I'm giving away a rattle (perhaps much like this one, or maybe a different one if you would like to chose something else from the pictures on the rattle page of this blog).  If you would like to have it please 'follow' this blog and like and share the post on Facebook.  I'll chose a lucky winner from a hat at the end of April.

A Strong Day

Today is the Spring Equinox and there was (as I'm sure you're well aware) a solar eclipse.  It's also the new moon in Aries and a 'supermoon' (meaning a full or new moon that's particularly close to the earth on it's orbit).

This is the sun through clouds as it rose this morning.  It was a warmish just-about-to-be-really-truly-spring day. For the first half of the eclipse the clouds here were too thick and there was nothing to see, but as the moon withdrew from between us and the sun you could see this.

Slowly, slowly the sun had mostly disappeared behind the moon until our life-giving orb of golden light became a silvery sliver.  The temperature plummeted (how I love you mighty Sun, how grateful I am for your warmth) and although the birds did not all stop singing as they did in 1999 they did start finding their way to their beds.  It became eerily, magically quiet.

Two stags stood still as trees, watched me watching.

Now, my astrologically minded friends tell me, the sun and the moon are both in Aries - and that is the time for letting go. As the moon cleared the sun it felt as if the slate was being wiped clean, the face of brother sun transformed by sister moon.  As if there has been a letting go on a planetary level - of what I'm not entirely sure but it feels as though on this day; when the day and night are of equal length, and just for a moment the moon out-faced the sun - that the energies of masculine and feminine might be coming into alignment.

From a lunar point of view this year is an extraordinary one.  There is usually only one supermoon approximately every fourteen moons, so not even one each year - this year however we are going to have four! There was one on February 18th, there was one today (the new supermoon), there will be a full supermoon on August the 29th and on September the 28th there will be the closest supermoon of the year and a lunar eclipse and a blood moon! There is also another full lunar eclipse on the 4th of April.

Hold on to your hats!  The times - they are a-changing.  I don't know much about astrology, I don't know what all these queer lunar extravagances mean.  I do know some people born under the sign of Aries - and they are without exception grounded and earth-loving people.  I feel a strange new hope, wriggling it's way up through the soil with spring.