GWM – Beginnings for Spring

Another fantastic afternoon in the garden. Cleared the rubbish from the Alchemy Garden – about 5 wheelbarrow-fulls of good compost material, I’ll put that in the bin tomorrow. Also carved – I mean pruned! – all the honeysuckle, aquebia and climbing rose on the arched walk out from the french windows that borders one side of the Alchemy garden. Now I can see what I’m doing!

Lots of stuff coming up already, bulbs of course but also the beginnings of the herbaceous plants. The forget-me-nots are going great guns, tough little buggers but so lovely when you get that haze of blue in a few weeks time. Pruned the roses too. Everything seems nice and healthy.

The nettles are doing well! When and where don’t they? Lots of hand-weeding there to come but I need the soil to be a little less frozen to make it easier!

We did the 12 days stirrings of 500 from 26th Dec to 6th Jan, including all the flower garden as well as the fruit and veg. You can sense the vigour it’s given to the soil and the soil-life.

We’re in a no-no period right now so clearing up is all that should be done at present as the soil-beings are cheerfully working away and don’t want us to interfere! However,  Sunday thro to Wednesday are all root days in the Northern Planting Time so I hope to get some early seeds sown then. Will post what next week. Will do a 500 stirring again too on one of those days. I usually do one to prep the seed compost before using it, so likely Monday – have friends round on sunday but the might like to stir so wait and see. Collected mole-hills yesterday – the best seed-growing material when mixed with sand. You don’t need rich soil for seeds as the seeds have all they need within them. Potting on you need more food.

My robin-friend from yesterday came to supervise my work – she said I was doing OK (wipes sweat form brow!). it is so delightful to have a robin companioning me as I garden, very special birds – at least for me 🙂

Elen Sentier

behind every gifted woman there’s usually a rather talented cat …

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Nature red in tooth and claw

My son likes nature programs. We don’t have a television, but he takes advantage of other people’s and there are DVDs. Lately I’ve been exposed to some of this, and the kind of story telling that goes on around presenting natural history. I’m increasingly uneasy about it.

Nature programs, aimed at human audiences, concentrate on drama and focus on things we can easily identify with – the 3 Fs. Feeding, Fighting and Reproduction. You get a great deal of who eats whom, and the fighting tends to go with that, or around territories and reproduction. Nature red in tooth and claw – dramatic, violent, non-stop action.

There will be a lot of people for whom television is the only insight into nature. These programs create impressions of the wildness, aggression and breeding-orientated state of wild things. All very ‘animalistic’ – no subtlety, no culture… this is story telling that reinforces our sense of distance and difference from the natural world.

I’ve also spent time recently bird watching. Sit for an hour or two watching geese, swans, ducks etc on a large lake and the odds are nothing will die. There will be no big fight. There may be scuffles, displays and interactions of all sorts. There may be partner seeking and behaviour that reinforces group connections. There is the sheer beauty of the birds themselves, they way they move, their calls, the details of their lives.

I can’t imagine anyone would spend an hour watching a program that was just birds paddling around on a lake. But it’s beautiful to watch, and it gives a wholly different sense of nature. I’ve watched foxes and badgers out and about. I’ve watched wild birds in my garden, rabbits and hares in the fields. I’ve been whale watching, seen seals, deer – all manner of wild things. There have been only a few occasions when I’ve come close to seeing the 3Fs in action.

The stories TV programs tell about nature are fast paced, bloody action movies. They are emotive as well, encouraging us to feel sorry for certain creatures, empathise with the hunter this time, the prey another. But in the same way that 18 rated films are not representative of most people’s lives, so these nature programs don’t tell us anything about what most other living things actually experience. With 18 films it’s less of a problem because we have other points of reference. But for people who only see nature on the telly, it must be creating some perception issues.

If we saw the rest of nature as being far more like us, would we, as a species, relate to it differently?

Ogham: Luis – Rowan

The Rowan Moon is 21 Jan – 17 Feb

Rowan is the tree of quickening and of divination.

Rowan is a small deciduous tree, found high up in the mountains, sometimes called “The Lady of the Mountain”. The Rowan tree, also known as “quicken” and Mountain Ash in the Welsh Marches where I live, is a well-known magical tree. Quickbeam  is the its name in the countryside, it’s called the Quicken Tree, the Quickbeam (meaning ‘living wood’) the Witch Tree. Remember Quickbeam, the Ent, in LOTR ?

Rowan flowers

A member of the Rose family, Rowan is related to Rose, Apple, Hawthorn, Blackthorn, and Cherry, and grows no higher than 30-40 feet. It can live up to two hundred years. The leaves grow in pairs and are long and slender. In May, Rowan blossoms into clusters of little creamy white flowers. The tree berries in autumn with a bright red fruit beloved by birds.

The Rowan berry is bitter, but when mixed with sugar or other sweet fruits, is excellent in pies, jelly or jam. Rowan berries are also made into juice and wine. The berries provide vitamins A and C, carotene, pectin and essential oil, and stimulate the immune system. Medicinally, Rowan berries are a laxative, and can also be used for sore throats, inflamed tonsils, hoarseness, even diarrhoea. A decoction from the bark is used as an astringent.

Rowan berries

The berries were commonly used to flavour ale in an old Welsh recipe and were used as a coffee substitute. This fruit can also be fed to wild birds, to flavour liqueurs and cordials and can be made into jam.

It’s possible the word “Rowan” comes from the Norse word rune, meaning charm or secret. The Sanskrit word runa means magician, but it may also be from the Gaelic rudha-an, meaning “the red one”. Rune staves were often cut from the rowan tree which gives a leaning towards the Norse … but most likely all three explanations are valid. Its Celtic name is “Luis”, (pronounced ‘loosh’).

Divination

Rowan is a gateway tree.

The Celtic shaman’s Silver Branch, calling Spirit, opening the gates between worlds to enable divination, is often made from rowan.

It is burnt for to invoke spirits for divination, bringing inspiration. Rowan is one of the nine sacred woods burnt in the  Beltane fire as it is the tree of dragons, guarded by dragons. Walking sticks made of rowan will guide you through the Wild Wood and the Enchanted Forest.

Rowan is one of the trees associated with the goddess Brighid, Smith/Healer/Poet. She is also the spinner and weaver of the Threads, the Wyrd of the World. Spindles and spinning wheels were traditionally made of Rowan. It’s also called the Wicken Tree and used for divining – one of Brighid’s skills through her Thread-weaving and kenning of the Wyrd.

In Scotland, Rowan trees were sometimes planted near stone circles and said to be especially powerful. The Faer hold their celebrations in stone circles guarded by Rowan trees. Rowan twigs placed above doorways and barns protect against bad luck and the tree is used for protection.

Rowan is a part of the fuel for burning the dead, symbolising death and rebirth. In Celtic lands red food is food of the dead. As a quickening tree rowan works in both directions, opens the gateway between Thisworld and Otherworld for both death and birth … death to Thisworld is birth into Otherworld and vice versa. It also opens the gateway for the shaman to journey between the worlds to bring back the kenning that their folk need.

In traditional Celtic divination ritual its round wattles, spread with bull’s hides, were used to call difficult spirits to answer, hence the Irish saying to “go on the wattles of knowledge” meaning to do your utmost to find the answer, get information. Thickets of rowan are often found in places used for oracular work, e.g. the Baltic Amber Isles.

Working with Rowan

Divination is a charismatic word, full of glamour, seductive … how many of us can truthfully put our hands up and say we’ve never been for a reading? Mostly we want difficult questions answered. Such answers mean we can shift responsibility for the outcomes from ourselves by saying we were following the reading … “only following orders” – now where have I heard that before?

Divination is often associated with clairvoyance. The word comes from the French, meaning clear vision. Many ancient Celtic wells and springs offered clearing the sight, while this can well mean clearing cataracts it likely refers to seeing across worlds, to divination, to clairvoyance. Water was fundamental to the Celtic tradition, the lifeblood of the Mother, the silver threads of life-energy that run throughout the body of the Earth carrying the knowing, kenning, of Life as well as the stuff without which we cannot live.

Rowan will help you.

In order to be clairvoyant, to divine, one must know oneself, be true and honest to and about oneself, this is not easy! Rowan can hold the gateway for you to see yourself as others see you and to know yourself as you truly are. Often these are not the same, nor should they be. All of us wear another skin – as in the bull-dreaming divination – but it is vital for each of us to know when we are wearing the bull’s skin and when our own. It is this confusion combined with the wish to look good in the eyes of others that disables clear-seeing, clairvoyance. While we are inveigled by our needs to look good nothing will appear as it truly is.

Spend time sitting with these words …

• Clear Distinct Sharp
• Vision Idea Revelation Concept Foresight Prediction Sight Ability to see
• Divine Discover Guess Presume Discern Perceive
• Thread Fibre Gist Storyline Theme Plot Idea

You’ll find working with these words, ideas, will draw out your own concepts, take your ideas out of the box. Coming out of the box is going through a gate, crossing, walking between worlds … this is the beginning of seeing clearly.

Be assured that this journey will be difficult. We are all accustomed to the sway things are and wish to assume that they will be this way always … of course, they won’t. but take rowan, and take courage, walk into the darkness to find the light.

Elen Sentier

behind every gifted woman there’s usually a rather talented cat …

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