~feeling the earth~

~*~my tree~*~

i have been feeling *other* just lately~it started before the solstice and has just continued.

we were away last week and i spent much of the week just sitting under the tree we were camped under~just staring up at the trees and the sky, watching the birds.

i keep thinking more and more of the insignificance of much of the world around me and the significance of our (when i say our you know i am talking to you pagans out there!) spirituality, both collective and individual.
so much of society is superficial and meaningless~people(not all people, but they are out there as you know) who's spirituality is money and possessions and appearance. yes i have my laptop, used for blogging and the work for my degree, and my ipod, a gift i love as it gives me my 'omnia fix'.

but it doesn't make me who i am~who i am comes from deep inside, from the blood of my ancestors who were all, what i like to call ~sons of the land and sea~ farmers, miners and mariners, something even deeper inside that has passed down to me, dormant for years in my line, to see beyond what the eye can see, to see further inwards,to be more aware...

i have been working on planting my sacred garden and outside shrine/alter and maybe this has kick started something new inside of me that has been hidden deep within me. this is the first time i have had a very secluded garden and so the first time i have been able to create a sacred space.
i have been spending more time outside, even in the rain and so love to just be aware of the world around me~both seen and unseen. i feel as if my body has become like some magnet, attracting the vibrations of the land around me and the memories it holds of the ancestors and their beliefs.

~*~are you feeling the earth today?~*~

~the garden~

these sweet peas smell amazing





our baby blue tit~they all fledged and still come back to feed.
at the moment they look as if they are wearing tiny little fuzzy berets!

i picked out a few photos of what we are growing in our garden~a great deal of it is wild flowers grown from seed with some plants bought from the farm shop and some that grew up here at the side of our house and that we were able to move...when we moved here it was so overgrown we just cleared it and waited to see what has grown up. we have been pleseantly surprised for we have about five different kinds of geranium~including the lilac/purple one here, which is growing up one of our windows.

i have unconsciously started a morning ritual of going into my garden~it feels a very comfortable place and is secluded and peaceful. i love going out there and checking all the flowers, listening to the bee's and i have such a strong feeling of contentment because this is our 'forever' house, it feels more and more that we are taking root here.

we have been here nearly a year now and the dirty, neglected house and garden are slowly evolving into a much loved home.

yesterday we cycled to my mums house, something we could never have done before, and it felt so good to peddle evangeline down the road, surrounded on all sides by tree's in the afternoon sun.

visiting your blogs it looks like you all had a great solstice, wherever and however you celebrated. i saw coverage of the stonehenge celebration on tv and was so glad i was not there~its a place of the ancestors but standing there with 35,000 others i dont think i would find the peace i want!
some of our friends went to Glastonbury Tor to celebrate and its possible we may join them for the winter solstice...

*~*if not my special garden is the perfect place for this solitary, solitary*~*

~solstice blessings~

*~*sending solstice blessings to you all across mother earth*~*

i was up for the sunrise this morning after preparing my fledgling sacred space in our garden last night.

as i stepped out of our back door the only sound i could hear was the fist birds and the humming of bumblebee's on an early morning hunt in the flowers of our garden~then the first flush of pink tinted the clouds.

there was nothing elaborate, i sat in peace, watching the clouds drifting by with glimpses of blue between them, the birds sang, a drift of jackdaws flew over to sit in the oak and the bee's hummed away, still gathering busily.

so the wheel stops and then starts its turning again and the holly takes the mantle from the oak and we slowly start our drift towards our next festival~lughnasadh and the start of the harvest

~pass me the mead~

lindisfarne mead

i need to celebrate!

i recently submitted an essay on the role of religion in the continuation of the wars of three kingdoms and it was driving me crazy~it was one of the most difficult i have done and from browsing the course forum lots of people were finding it difficult...a real struggle.
the week i set aside to do it was made more difficult by having really bad dizzy spells and three, yes three migraines and at one point i felt close to tears with it all (yes it was that bad)and wished i had never decided to follow this particualr path~

why chose to wade through piles of paperwork, books and research when i could be out in my garden, reading, crafting?

but wade i did, not even needing the extension i had asked my tutor for, although i was dreading the results coming back.
well they came yesterday and i receieved a fantastic 72%~not far from an A grade.

now i am all fired up and feel much more positive for my next one which is on the atlantic slave trade and due in about three weeks. i had hoped to be able to go away camping next week without my books but really dont think i will be able to get that far ahead with my work over the next four days to allow for that luxury~i shall have to see.

~Bloomsday~

~yesterday was Bloomsday~

when james joyce fans recreate Bloomsday, the fictitious day at the centre of "Ulysses" when fans of james joyce dress in 1904 style, attend readings and celebrate at various venues from the book.



my 'yesterday' was somewhat less exciting!


~i had some sky blue gingham arrive which i am using to finally finish off my custom book/dvd/cd shelves.
~we incorporated our trip to the farm shop with buying curtain poles~we were kindly given enough fabric to make curtains for every window (some rooms still have no curtains!) and as swampys niece is coming to stay soon we thought it was about time we spent some time getting the house and not the garden up together.
~swampy gave my 1966 singer sewing machine a good service and put up one curtain pole.
~i did not get my books out at all.



so today i am going to have to spend a big chunk of today on my studies, if not i will have to take my books away camping next week.

~of earth energy...~

*~pointed quartz mounted in silver~bought many years ago in Glastonbury...hanging from natural hemp thread*~


visiting the wonderful miss*r i had such a sudden urge to take my own quartz pendulum into our garden to see what the energy was like.

well my quartz went wild over most of the garden and so i took it inside where it was much the same~except for the one room which is still much the same as it was the day we moved in~where it was all but motionless.
i finally decided to stand where i thought was the centre of our whole home~garden and still the quartz reacted to the energy really strongly.

this has pleased me, it reaffirms to me the good feelings i had about this place from the beginning, seeing beyond the years of neglect to what it could become~what maybe it wanted to become.

sometimes my spirituality seems to hibernate, burrows deep inside me until something occurs to bring it to the fore~for a few weeks now it has been quietly fizzing away, closer to the surface, for a few days now it has been slowly starting to erupt, like some wild pagan volcano! its been so bad i have not been able to concentrate on my studies, i keep having to go into the garden and just sit or stand~in a way today has given me a reason why i get this need...

...and of course we are a week away from the solstice~with the sun at the hight of its powers

*~* the power is charging the earth's energy and we can all start to feel it flowing up and out*~*

~in my skin~

one of my 'twins'~both are on my inner arm, just below my elbow~a mirror image of each other

i was having some unsure thoughts yesterday of how i was concerned someone was no longer themselves so naturally i phoned my dad~its always dad i turn to at times of crisis, whether real or imagined.
his partner adele answered so i spoke with her, asking her opinion too and she said something that really surprised me.

i have always been, if you have read an earlier post, very shy and consequently i have grown up with a supreme lack of confidence in everything surrounding me

*too tall, too fat, too broad, not clever, too thin, not interesting,too pale, too ginger, too freckled, too weird...oh my an endless list that i am sure many of us have*

so now i have found out how inaccurate my personal impressions are.
i am seen by both my dad and adele as a very strong person, that i am very confident 'in my skin'~with who i am...i don't change my personality in order to fit in with others or my surroundings~according to adele just like my dad.

*isn't it funny how others can see the inside of you?*

~manchester & london~

in two weeks my sister and i are off to manchester to see take that on their 'the circus' tour and as usual we are staying over night at an hotel

here...

the following weekend we are off to london to go and see them again (yes again!) at the O2 arena so we are having a night in london...

here...

the royal horseguards


how swanky is that?!

do you suppose i need a posh frock just to check in?!

~of a drifting day~

I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars.
walt whitman

i couldnt sleep last night, i had 'the hills of connemara' running through my head, i couldnt even see the waning moon properly as it was so low the hedges were hiding it~i was still awake at dawn and as my bed faces the window was treated to the sight of an apricot colored moon set against the background of a dawn blue sky~by this time i was actually too tired to get my camera, unlock the doors and go out to take a photo, so the one above is a 'net' found one, to give you an idea of what i could see.

but what a sight to greet the day with!

i had planned on doing the research for my next essay today, but first my dad phoned and we had a nice long chat about my studies and our family tree~the conversation turned to portsmouth dockyard and i discovered that he trained there as a coppersmith before becoming a policeman~i dont know why but i never knew that and feel really pleased, he also slipped into the conversation that he had had a 'crisis' and bought another motorbike...he generally does this when he has a 'crisis'!

...then my mum came around to see how the garden was coming along

...then i remembered i had to charge my ipod and update my druidcast

...then i decided to check my garden

...then i decided to blog...

ho hum, how quickly the day passes...so i am now listening to omnia and planning to e-mail my friend carp

*~*good job i am a week ahead with my work*~*

~i am sorry...~

*i just need to get this off my chest, so to speak, then i promise, no more ranting!*

a small, bigoted 'political' party has won a very small minority in the european elections.

thank goodness they only have a very small minority and i hope it stays that way, or i will be driving pippin onto a ferry and across the channel faster than a robbers dog

to give those of you an idea of what kind of party they are, they now have a 'youth party' whose mascot is 'billy brit' (oh yes~fantastic isn't it?)

this group/their followers harp on about british pride and tradition and of 'foreigners' taking jobs away from the british, what a load of old codswallop~taking jobs away?

good grief~i saw a tv documentary last year where they were discussing the jobs that were available at the time and they interviewed a young lad, and he said he would rather be unemployed than take what he thought to be an underpaid, menial job.

that's the kind of attitude there is over here, old and young alike (not everyone let me remind you, but they are out there) thinking they are too good for the jobs available and yet moaning that people come over from europe and take their jobs!

as for british pride~this party makes me ashamed to be british.

go here for an idea of the kind of group they are, a nice little feminist blog

~of rain~

be still, sad heart! and cease repining;
behind the clouds is the sun still shining;
thy fate is the common fate of all,Into each life some rain must fall,
some days must be dark and dreary.

from h.w.longfellow 'the rainy day'


good grief, it only started raining in the night, and my oh my did it come down!
swampy got up in the night to check things and found water creeping in the back door, an old towel was laid down until this morning when he checked and cleared the gutters.
i was dreading getting up to see what it had done to our plants but they seem to have stood up to the downpour well and the grass looks much better for the soaking.

it has rained hard all day, well tell a lie, most of the day.
it was clear enough for me to hang out the blankets i have over the sofa and armchairs to give them a good airing, then it started to pour down again and it has not stopped since.

it seems that just a day of cloud dampens my mood~strange since i am such an autumn/winter lover, i guess this last winter i must have depleated my stocks of sunshine and i really need some now.

we have been busy watching our blue tit family~despite leaving their nest they still hang around our garden, being fed and practicing feeding themselves. and toay we had a new visitor~a squirrel, the first we have seen in our garden since moving here.

we also think we have either a fox or hedgehog come to attack the rubish bag, which we tuck, hdden, around the corner by our back gate~i guess we cannot put off buying a proper dustbin any longer! the other night while in bed i heard a sound of something jumping our fence, which is about 6 1/2 foot high~do foxes jump fences i wonder? i dont think its a cat as we have not seen a single one since moving here.




still with the nature that surrounds us~two weeks ago our neighbour found an egg, carefully 'planted', in one of her flowerbeds and she was convinced it was swampy and her son playing a trick on her. then last week swampy found one in the flowerbeds that run along the side of our house...we soon discovered that foxes prefer rotten eggs to fresh and our local one has been stealing the eggs of our friend, owen's, chickens and carefully hiding them in the surrounding gardens to come back to later! apparantly the cubs have been seen around so i will have to keep an eye open for them~with my camera at the ready.

i am grateful to the rain for one thing, and that is i have been tucked up at my table, surrounded by books and papers getting the work done for my next essay~as we are off camping in two weeks time i really want to get well ahead with my work, so i can have five whole days to enjoy myself. we are actually only going a grand total of five miles down the road to milford on sea, but the main aim is to meet up with good friends we have not seen since september. it is also cycling distance (for me!) to the sea so i will be loading evangeline and swampys mountain bike into pippin, as fingers crossed it will be glorious weather and i can go in the sea.

and now...time for a cup of tea and sit on the sofa with this...



i finished 'the darling buds of may' last night and just couldnt wait to start this again!

*~*i hope wherever you are your weekend has been a good one*~*

~on a lighter note~

*~The Song of Wandering Aengus*~

W.B.Yeats

I went out to the hazel wood,
Because a fire was in my head,
And cut and peeled a hazel wand,
And hooked a berry to a thread;
And when white moths were on the wing,
And moth-like stars were flickering out,
I dropped the berry in a stream
And caught a little silver trout.

When I had laid it on the floor
I went to blow the fire aflame,
But something rustled on the floor,
And some one called me by my name:
It had become a glimmering girl
With apple blossom in her hair
Who called me by my name and ran
And faded through the brightening air.

Though I am old with wandering
Through hollow lands and hilly lands,
I will find out where she has gone,
And kiss her lips and take her hands;
And walk among long dappled grass,
And pluck till time and times are done
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.


*~*~*~*

i am afraid i do have the odd rant that spills over into my blog and the last one i had to get out, purge myself of it so to speak~and i feel much better now and the words of Yeats, above certainly helped.

~rats & sinking ships...~

...are the words that come to mind when i think of our government at this point in time, but i like rats, so maybe i need to find another word...

the news here in the uk has been changing faster than you can blink.

it seems everytime i turn on the news some new mp is coming up with feeble excuses for claiming stupid amounts in expenses~'i forgot i had paid off my mortage'.
oh come on, even mp's are not so wealthy they dont watch their mortage payments like a hawk and possibly even celebrate when its paid, they certainly wont forget...

or, looking at things that have been claimed for, then maybe they would.

i think there are many people here who believe that they should survive on their salary, which i am sure is fairly subtantial, and nothing more~the ordinary person in the street has to, i bet you do to.
of course they harp on about having the second home because they have to travel to london or their constituancies~well boo hoo~there are thousands and thousand of folk who have to travel miles everyday to their work and i bet they cannot claim as much, if at all in, expenses.

i thought the other day how my gramps must be rolling in his grave over this~he was a life long labour supporter from a very long line of dock workers and bargemen in portsmouth dockyard and i am sure his grandfather would have been a member of the party before they were even called the labour party.

and now the pm is having a re-shuffle~where will it all lead to?


on a totally different subject~i hope these two miscreants make some lovely, new best friends during their long, long time in prison...

~ahhh rest~

*~*take rest; a field that has rested gives a bountiful crop*~*
Ovid

i have finally finished my 'hair tearing' essay on religion and the wars of the three kingdoms and it has been submitted. i knew if i didn't then i would just keep going over and over it, changing little bits here, little bits there.

so its, gone and i have just sorted out my study timetable for the following four weeks~my work on the slave trade is due in on the 10th june and as we are going camping for a week in order to meet up with friends, i need to be really organized.

so now i have resolved to take note of the quote above and take the rest of today and all of tomorrow away from my studies~to let all the information slide from my mind, leaving me open for all the new information.

*what luxury*

~'perfick'~

rough winds do shake the darling buds of may,
and summer's lease hath all too short a date;
sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,

i adore this and thinking of it yesterday before the migraine hit prompted me to get this, well read book from one of my many, many bookshelves...



it just seems to be the most 'perfick' book to read, while sitting in an english country garden, where the birds are singing, the skies are blue and you are faced with the prospect of gorgeous ripe strawberries for tea!

*~*which takes me to this*~*

Oh, to be in England
Now that April's there,
And whoever wakes in England
Sees, some morning, unaware,
That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf
Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf,
While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough
In England - now!!

And after April, when May follows,
And the whitethroat builds, and all the swallows!
Hark, where my blossomed pear-tree in the hedge
Leans to the field and scatters on the clover
Blossoms and dewdrops - at the bent spray's edge -
That's the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over,
Lest you should think he never could recapture
The first fine careless rapture!
And though the fields look rough with hoary dew,
All will be gay when noontide wakes anew
The buttercups, the little children's dower
- Far brighter than this gaudy melon-flower!

Robert Browning (1812-1889)

~another anniversary***Tiananmen Square~

was it really twenty years ago i was watching the footage on tv and oh so hating the chinese governemnet?

yes it was and yet last night it was if all clocks had turned back and it was being re-lived.

the bbc~for once put aside their usual dreadful programming of insipid 'find a new celeb' crap and banal sitcoms and soaps to screen the journalist kate adie's return to tiananmen square.

the government tried and executed many of the protesters, others were able to flee into exile and have been unable to return and many, many people are under the watchful eye of chinas big brother...for such dreadful actions as posting a tiny newspaper article asking people to remember the Tiananmen Mothers

and today china has shut down twitter, hotmail and flickr to stop communications about the event....the trouble is they are always stopping communications if the party does not agree.

and remember that earlier this year was the 50th anniversary for the Tibetan uprising...ooop's sorry the 'peaceful liberation'........arrrrrghhhhhhhhh i could scream...what a pile of utter crap.

call me paranoid but i wonder how much chinese authorities are monitoring the channels of communication today?

~of a breeze & migraines~

hooray! while still hot today we have a lovely cool breeze blowing, making sitting in the garden much nicer.

we have been busy monitoring our bird box as the babies inside are now poking their heads out and we discovered one sitting chirping on our fence, it then hopped down onto the little hanging water feeder before falling into the flower bed below. we watched it for a while to see if it could fly back up but was unable, so swampy hurried out and popped him/her back in its home with its brothers and sisters.

oh i know there are some folk out there who would harp on about letting nature take its course, but i am sorry we wont let any of 'our' babies suffer. i sat watching for a while longer to check the parents would sill come back and feed them and they did~so to me all is well.

in fact sitting here now, with the back door open i can hear the babies chirping like crazy, you wont believe how loud they are. last evening i was sitting out as the sun was going down and was rewarded by our robin bringing two babies into the garden for a brief visit, having a quick drink and popping back into the high hedge where they are nesting.

i have been doing my essay today, it is finally coming into its final form and all being well i shall submit it tomorrow afternoon or early friday.



the annoying thing is last night i started a migraine, which went and then came back today at lunchtime, complete with really bad dizzy spells (why then am i blogging now i ask myself?) so i have asked my tutor for a day or two extension, just in case it gets worse and i cant submit when i had planned to.

*anyone else get migraines?*

so on that point i am going to make myself a strong, sweet coffe and lay down on the bed for an hour or two and fingers crossed it will go

*~*~*~*

if anyone has some healing energy to spare i will be grateful

~scorching sun~

image by naul ojeda

another hot and sunny day today and we are off to our local farm shop for our weekly shop, then when i get home time to get my books out again for my essay.

yesterday i could have cried, trying to put all my research into some coherent form in my quest for good grades. in my last two essays i have had clear passes in the 60% range, which is good but in my last course i was getting passes in the 80% range~but i keep reminding myself that i am slowly creeping up the ladder and work will be getting harder the closer i get to my degree.


*~*~*~*

phew!
its hot out there!
we were back home before midday, it was so hot we just did what we needed to and rushed home.
crossing over the high moorland the ponies and cows could be seen sheltering under clumps of trees and we had our very special 'air conditioning' system on maximum...forget high technology air-con, in our old van we have a system like the ones in 2cv's~ a little button that you turn to lift a little flap that allows air in through the 'dashboard' (there is no dashboard either just a little ledge)...all very basic but it works okay for us.

~blazing june~

*june came blazing into the heart of the new forest today*

after a day of continuous rain and high winds we have had a few days of clear skies and high temperatures...to hot for me!

we have been busy finishing our back garden and are finally ready to sow the last patch of grass seed and i have been busy with my assorted areas~plenty of color to attract the bee's and butterflies...which includes my favourite heartsease and calendula, my herb and vegetable area and my shady area.
yesterday we popped round to my mum and wandered through her wild garden~it is a huge garden with no structure, things are just left to grow year after year and so she has a multitude of native wild plants and so she had gathered me two small lady ferns for my shady area as well as a whole lot of bluebell seed pods. here the bluebell is a protected species and you are not allowed to sell the flowers or remove the tubers.
i dont think taking seed pods from my mums garden to plant in my own 'wild' garden counts

i woke at my regular time this morning, usually between 6.30 and 7 and carried out my usual routine of opening any closed curtains and the windows, letting cody out the back door, put the kettle on for one 'twinings everyday' and one lemon tea~his and hers.
today however the back door remained open and i plodded out in my vest and pyjama bottoms to check my vegetables, salads and newly planted plants~oh and to make sure none of our baby blue tit family had dropped out of their nesting box. they are now big enough to poke their little heads out of their door and i was close to heart attack yesterday evening in case they fell.

so what has the day in store for me?

well i have an essay on religion and the wars of the three kingdoms to have in by friday~i have the main structure of the work typed out but after a chat with my tutor i need to do a minor re-think, so that will be my priority~although i can sit here at my desk with the window open and enjoy the day.