A WATERY WINTER SUN

The garden’s trees as seen through a rain drenched window today. And a watery sunshine illuminating the rain and storm clouds in the early evening sky.


The Rainy Day by Rabindranath Tagore

Sullen clouds are gathering fast over the black fringe of the
forest.
O child, do not go out!
The palm trees in a row by the lake are smiting their heads
against the dismal sky; the crows with their dragged wings are
silent on the tamarind branches, and the eastern bank of the river
is haunted by a deepening gloom.
Our cow is lowing loud, ties at the fence.
O child, wait here till I bring her into the stall.
Men have crowded into the flooded field to catch the fishes
as they escape from the overflowing ponds; the rain-water is
running in rills through the narrow lanes like a laughing boy who
has run away from his mother to tease her.
Listen, someone is shouting for the boatman at the ford.
O child, the daylight is dim, and the crossing at the ferry
is closed.
The sky seems to ride fast upon the madly rushing rain; the
water in the river is loud and impatient; women have hastened home
early from the Ganges with their filled pitchers.
The evening lamps must be made ready.
O child, do not go out!
The road to the market is desolate, the lane to the river is
slippery. The wind is roaring and struggling among the bamboo
branches like a wild beast tangled in a net.

THE CROW FAMILY AT HOME

For many years some of the crow family have felt very much at home in our garden and on top of the roof, eating from the bird table and nesting in an old empty chimney. When seen in detail they are all very beautiful birds. The rooks have a bluish shine on their very finely preened feathers, they shine. The hooded crows have both black and grey feathers and they only venture on to the patio from time to time, they mostly feed on carrion somewhere else. The jackdaws, also belonging to the crow family feed side to side with the rooks, they are not afraid of these black birds with huge beaks. One of the rooks, we call him Charlie, is very noisy and demonstrates his superior voice quality whenever there is something happening that he does not like around the place. Rooks are very sociable and we see them in groups of about a dozen, intermixed with jackdaws. They are said to hide food into a hole but I have never seen them do that around here. I have seen them play catch in the skies above the garden here, while being very vocal they fly after each other creating great manoeuvres. At times when I go into the garden, one of them, sitting on the roof will give out being very vocal and goodness knows what he is communicating to the others, they know I feed them every day in winter (mainly seeds and peanuts, sometimes table leftovers).
It is a pleasure to have them around, though in a way I might be fonder of the little birds with highly coloured feathers. The crow family are very welcome in our garden, and quite interesting to observe.
The Crow family

GLOW OF THE EVENING SUN

What a most beautiful day it has been, full sun and quite warm for the time of year. This evening I happen to be in the garden getting in the washing and noticed what beautiful light surrounded me, and how the evening sun was bringing out all the colours of vegetables and herbs alike. Magnificent especially as not long after that the moon came up, large and beautiful.

I feel so blessed with all the beauty that surrounds me. Really good to counter balance all the sadness and strife that is going on in our earth.

Feeling grateful.

KINDNESS

I have just come off the phone from my sister Josefine in Belgium, and what we do not hear about in the news here I will tell.

The fact that in Mechelen, a town in Belgium, there has been a large gathering the other day of people of the Muslim, Jewish, and Christian faiths, all together in brotherly love, praying for peace.

If you just look at the news there is a lot of scare mongering going on, but it is not the way it is. The feeling is not that we should be scared of our neighbours, but that we should show them extra consideration and kindness, and in this way evil is not winning, but goodness is.

Just thought I would share this.

 

PREDAWN KIND OF CLARITY

DSCF1092

“Outside, there was that predawn kind of clarity, where the momentum of living has not quite captured the day. The air was not filled with conversation or thought bubbles or laughter or sidelong glances. Everyone was sleeping, all of their ideas and hopes and hidden agendas entangled in the dream world, leaving this world clear and crisp and cold as a bottle of milk in the fridge. ”

Reif Larsen, from The Selected Works of T.S.Spivet

DSCF1092 - Copy

“Do you ever get the feeling like you already know the entire contents of the universe somewhere inside of your head, as if you were born with a complete map of this world already grafted onto the folds of your cerebellum and you are just spending your entire life figuring out how to access this map?”
Reif Larsen, The Selected Works of T.S.Spivet      

MEDITATIONS

“Your nature is absolute peace. You are not the mind. Silence your mind through concentration and meditation, and you will discover the peace of the Spirit that you are, and have always been.”
Anonymous

I’ve been walking the garden now every night to check on the slugs.  This has turned into a real meditation which I now look forward to.  Taking my time, I go out rain or not with my torch and a jar, I check all the vegetation for the little night creatures, the garden at that time of night is usually still, so still that I can hear the slugs move, or chew on a leaf.  The scents come out too, the sweetpeas, privet, and other more earthy scents, or just the fresh air give pleasure.  In the light of the torch things become more intensely focussed, things like plants or parts of plants that are normally barely noticed, strange that.

I treasure that time now, a good ending to the day.  I guess I owe a thank you to my slugs, by creating a problem for me they gave me a gift, and that sure is very much appreciated.
DSCF9578

DSCF9141     DSCF9526

DSCF2188

CATCHING UP

Having had a break from blogging, not out of choice, but collected my laptop today and it seems to be fine again, so I am happy, and have a lot of catching up to do.  In these last few weeks a lot has happened in the garden.

Due to fluctuations in temperature and cool weather the produce has not been plentiful, but most of all there was trouble with slugs and snails this year, there has been quite a bit of rain which did not help. In order to keep some vegetable plants alive I had to do something, and urgently, so I asked around as did not want to use regular slug pellets, and people said to go pick them off every night with a torch, which I did. One of the first nights I collected about four dozen of them, and for a week the story was the same. Eventually they started to become fewer and by now I collect only about one dozen a night. In order to help things along I also put out little bowls of beer. Yes the beer is working too.  Meanwhile I had become quite enthralled by these little creatures, there is a large variety of them and they are beautiful, gentle and the slime is not as bad as I thought it would be, before washing you use a dry paper tissue and it wipes off very easy. I have also realised that the paths around the vegetable beds needed to be clean and free of leaves etc… so I started a great clean up. The hedges had been cut and some leaves were still lying around, a great place for slugs to hide in.

Meanwhile I sowed more winter vegetables and bought beetroot plants as all my young plants had been eaten. I almost became discouraged when a cat again used the newly prepared soil and disturbed more plants. So off to the hardware store and bought piping (which was very cheap) stuck them in the ground and covered with netting which worked really well, kept cats out. I then started to prune some of the overgrown vegetation and the garden started to look real good again. Planted out leeks, sprouts, and beetroot for a winter crop.

One of the biggest permaculture lessons I learnt this summer is that when the wild plants start growing in spring, rather than just let them take over, as I did in my garden, I would give them some direction, and pull up a few here and there. When I decided last spring that I was going to let my cleavers (goosegrass) grow as I now considered it as food, I did not realise that they would take over several of the raised beds, they were entangled in the bean plants, the garlic, the fruit bushes and as for the back of the garden, that was totally overgrown.

As always, the garden keeps challenging me in different ways, giving tremendous joy and inspiration.

DSCF9055

20150725_174809

DSCF9065   DSCF9036