Beltaine~Lá Bealtaine

for some today marks the begining of summer~the solstice a matter of weeks away~and everywhere new life is springing up, suddenly, almost with a blink of the eye i find myself surrounded by differing shades of green and the various colors of the flowers.


when we lived in bournemouth, although it was only a small city, we were surrounded by houses, hotels, shops and thinking back now i realise how little green we had around us~from our windows i could
see only few trees~i could literally count them on one hand! it was easy to lose the seasons, seasons were followed by the tourists flooding down to the beach, the arrival of the exchange students.
then we moved to dorset where we were surrounded by trees and the cycle of life became much easier to follow~

then returning to the new forest, where life is even more peaceful~no tractors going to and from the fields on our doorstep! we have no sound of passing traffic to disturb us here in our little corner so this morning i woke early to the sun streaming in the bedroom and nothing but the multitudes of birdsong coming through the open window.

so how will i spend today?
i free day~i finished my latest essay and so i am giving myself some freedom today.
the sky is now full of different shades of grey and it doesnt look as if i will see anymore blue sky and sun today~

*blessings to you this beltain~however you spend your day*

~profits before our planet is not big or clever~

moonroot has blogged this and it is important enough to spread around

no impact man has blogged about the big companies who put their profits and big fat salaries before our planet...this is what no impact man wrote...

'On April 23, Andrew Revkin of the New York Times published a story proving conclusively that the so-called Global Climate Coalition, a group representing industries with profits tied to fossil fuels, knew that they were lying when they ran "an aggressive lobbying and public relations campaign against the idea that emissions of heat-trapping gases could lead to global warming.'

so folks, go and read more of what no impact man has written and please spread the world

~& again~

i am hoping to have a clear night every night, but not holding my breath!

this morning i woke to a very misty world but it soon cleared and today blue skies and the odd cloud are above us in the new forest.

so what is in store today? well off to the farm shop and as we usually do look at the plants.
fingers crossed we shall see some foals on the way. it was upsetting last week as some moron driving too fast killed one of the village donkeys. that is the downside to living here~over the years we have seen so many poor horses and cows laying at the side of the road because of the thoughtless actions of road users~have even seen them nudge horses with their cars if they are standing in the road to make them move.
will they ever stop to think this is the animals forest.

i guess another downside is the holiday makers, when i was small i remember it not being so busy but over the years i guess people want to get out of the cities and towns for a while and that is what we have to put up with living in such a beautiful area.
as is usual across the world we get good and bad tourists~the bad are ones who leave their litter and try to sit their children on the ponies and then get upset when they get bitten or kicked.
peanuts

~moon~

the thinnest slice of the waxing moon showed itself from the front of our house last night~after a day of dark skies and pouring rain it was good to have lovely clear skies

~of barrow's*moots & bodhrans~

fired up by my recent tree oracle we set off for the 'southern' stonewylde moot at avebury and it was a lovely sunny day as we drove through the forest.

our journey took us through the ancient village of downton in wiltshire, about ten miles from our own village. i have fond feelings for the village as i have roots there going back, as far as i have researched so far, to the 1600's. this village and the ones of whiteparish, sherfield english and compton chamberlayne are all within ten miles of salisbury and i have traced family back to the 1500's in compton chamberlyne

old sarum

bronze age round barrows that dot the land around stonehenge~these are part of the winterbourne stoke barrows

heading out across salisbury plain the weather does not look good

the neolithic silbury hill~the tallest man made mound in europe

the following pictures are all of the moot at avebury~most of us were meeting new people for the very first time but we all connected and good friendships were forged during our time together
*look out for the crop 'circle'*

a goodbye group photo~until we meet again

more barrows~this time just outside of avebury

our route takes us across salisbury plain

taking a different route home we drive by stonehenge as the rain statrts to fall

the rain continues beyond stonehenge

sailsbury cathederal

a few miles down the road and back in the new forest the sun is out and it looks like summer

foals are starting to spring up all over the forest now


~of bodhrans~

carp had arrived in avebury earlier than all of us and had been in the henge shop where he had something to show me~a beautiful bodhran with a triskele painted on the skin. as is usually the way of things i did not have the money to buy it there and then, but handling it made me want to get myself one even more~almost as if there was a vibration calling to me. he had also brought his didj as he was hoping to go to the west kennet long barrow to play for a while in the chamber, so he gave a short solo performance~the sound was amazing so i have decided to buy a didj once i have my bodhran and had a few months practice.

oh and he gave us the most wonderful bird house he had made (picture to come!) so thank you so much!

~of drifting & my oracle~

just lately i have been in what i call a 'drifting' frame of mind, finding it hard to settle to anything apart from my studies, even though i have sorted my timetable so i had more time for 'me'

it even means i have been drifting from my path, well not drifting, but finding its hidden in the background, not shouting out at me, but being there in a subtle way.

*of course it never goes away*

i have always considered myself as a pagan born~i can never remember being anything but, so, no it never goes away...it just hides, tucked away inside me, keeping me warm, sustained and reminding, every now and then of its being.

these reminders come to me as gentle tugs and one of those tugs came today, prompting me to work with my green man tree oracle, where the thoughts of 'lost' came from me and from where beech came to me

*what lies beyond the threshold?*

it turned out to be quite interesting as it actually ended up mostly responding to my unconscious~tomorrow there is a gathering at avebury of folk from a forum swampy and i are members of, but me being me...i hate meeting new people, even meeting a single new person is bad enough (remember my post about being shy?!) but meeting multiples of this single person is enough to put me in a drop dread faint just at the thought of it...i feel i should have smelling salts stowed away in my bag to be brought out at the slightest hint of having to socialise...well anyway my beech card, oh how insightful...

*i am a creature of habit, finding it safer, easier to cosy up to what is safe and familiar~safer than crossing the threshhold and all the uncertainty it holds. but what is beyond the threshold is new experiences and life enhancing lessons~i am being told to cross the threshold...*

so i see that its time to stop being afraid, confront my shyness and take that step over the threshold...

it also made me think of new things

*that what is over the threshold may be enticing me into a new experience*

i have been exchanging e-mail with a friend, i shall call him carp(hello carp!)and we have been talking instruments, he plays the didgeridoo and his partner has just started to play his bodhran and it has made me want to get back into playing music. i started with the fiddle, moving onto the penny whistle, both many years ago, and for whatever reason stopped playing. recently i have have had such an urge to start playing something again, i think it has something to do with swampy and his guitar, and from my 'chats' with carp have decided on the didj and bodhran. so i have been doing some research on both and hope that, given the bodhran is slightly less expensive than a didj (which i hope to have by the end of the year) a bodhran will come first



i have found a chap in Antrim~ being part Irish of course i want an Irish made one~ who makes both harps and bodhrans and will personalise them if requested, so have decided to accept the wisdom of the beech and get myself one after our up and coming h van camp.

i am actually feeling quite excited about it~something new that will give me a lot of pleasure

~garden update #2-planting~

here we are again with more on our garden~as i mentioned in the previous post we are starting from scratch so are buying an assortment of plants, some to give us some instant color, others that are quite established and will develop nicely over the coming years.

we love the goldfinches that come to feed on the niger seed...along with siskins, green finches, bull finches as well as dunnocks, sparrows, wrens, blackbirds, robins, blue tits, great tits, coal tits, starlings, doves, wood pigeons...and it seems our list grows each week~we feel so lucky. but i wish the crows were bold enough to come down.



evergreen honeysuckle 'halliana', it is the same as we had in our garden in dorset and the smell of it when flowering would drift in the evening air~fingers crossed for the same with this one. the other climber is a semi-evergreen...



rosa banksiae 'lutea' or more commonlly know as a yellow banksia rose

some general plants, including my favorite calendula...the frame for the honeysuckle was made by swampy with hazel branches i brought with me from dorset...we had a 10 foot one to hold up our washing line and i am now wishing i had brought that with me too








the grass seed is coming along nicely~it actually looks even better now, i must take a new photo! we put plenty down, enough for grass and the birds.

tomorrow is shopping day which means our weekly trip to the farm shop where we will buy a few more small plants to start filling in the gaps

~garden update #1~

well i decided it was high time to give you an update on our mess of a back garden~remember i said how grotty the last owner had left it? well we discovered last week that the 'rat catchers' had been sent round to deal with rats...in the house!...and the whole back garden was a mass of dog poop...now i know why it all smelt so bad~inside and out.
rest assured it is nothing like that now!

tatty and overgrown~funny how cody always seems to sneek into the shot!

breaking the ground~swampy starts to dig over the mess of grass and weeds

a small amount of rubble left over from when they built our home~we think instead of taking it away they just left it in the garden and let it grass over

swampy decided the only way to do a good job was to completly dig it over and remove rubble as he went

very odd~we discover the end of an old brick wall sticking out from the end of the path, about a foot down. there has never been a building on this spot, all i can think of is that it is part of a long wall coming up from another building nearby

evidence of the old barn that was nearby, that i remember when i was tiny~a large lump of brick and flint wall!

we have had to design the garden around a manhole cover!

an ever growing pile of rubble!

nearly finished!

cody 'helping'~with our makeshift soil sifter

i have an aversion to plain old flower beds so insisted on adding a few curves to keep things interesting.

*there was nothing to save from when we started so we have had to start from scratch*