~what a few days~

i didn't have the heart for any blogging yesterday for when i called the vets, expecting to bring him home i was told to call back later when the vet was free~well vets themselves never tell you that your dog is fit to come home and so my heart sank into my boots.

despite being on a drip and antibiotics for 24 hours cody was still poorly, refusing food and drink and with nasty green discharge from his nose.
they had decided to x-ray him after all and would call us back later.

we were both sick with worry waiting for the call.

they must have worked quickly for they phoned back within half an hour to say there was something stuck in his lower intestine and when they had tried to put the breathing tube down him it brought up a huge amount of green bile~as he was sedated they were going to operate straight away as this was obviously something serious.

two hours later we called and they had removed a moldering conker(buckeye)which had been there for some time...they are very toxic to dogs and we have been very lucky not to lose our beloved cody.

he had to remain at the vets last night for he was still refusing to eat and drink, although they were sure that this was because he was still not recovered from the anesthetic.

we are much happier today for when i called this morning he was awake, bright, had eaten and drunk some water and if he continues to do so we shall be collecting him later this afternoon!

~a cody update~

well the vets called and because cody was so good and let them examine him properly they were able rule out anything stuck in his throat, they took a load of blood for testing and it turns out he has a really bad tummy bug.

it seems there is a bug going around our area and some dogs, cody for instance! are not responding to their original antibiotic treatment and so become worse, needing a stronger dose of antibiotics.

this means no sedation, x-ray, anesthetic and endoscope! what a relief!

they have put him on a drip however and keeping him overnight because he had become so dehydrated~hopefully in the morning he will finally get to eat and all being well we shall have back home with us soon after.

oh but it is so quiet here without him-it was horrible coming home with none of the usual wild, springer greeting and it is so quiet without him wandering around with his tags on his coller tinkling away. he has been so poorly that all of his christmas presents are still sitting, untouched and his bowls, washed and sitting ont
the counter top.

still fingers crossed we will be back to springer mayhem tomorrow or soon after!

~thoughts across the miles~

thank you for your kind comments on yesterdays post

cody is spending the day at the vets today for an x-ray and if they find nothing he will have an endoscope examination~the vet thinks that there may well be something stuck in the back of his throat where it could not be seen when he was examined on christmas day.

i am clock watching for they said to phone after 2pm for an update~i am really hoping it is something silly and easily resolved

~please send some thoughts codys way today~

~refund please?~

~oh my word~

i was expecting a lovely few days of very little, i had cleared the washing pile, vacuumed and washed the floors, presents sat under the tree and Aristophanes 'Lysistrata' had been consigned to the bookshelf for a few days and a nice glass of ginger wine was calling me...

cody had had a couple of restless nights, was bringing up foam (honest blogger!) and not eating or drinking so we ended up at our vets on christmas morning, leaving £114 lighter (all the available money we had left~broke honest blogger!)and with a dog full of antibiotics and some hydration fluid for his water bowl...

the vet thought he had picked up a bug of some kind and expect things to get back to normal in a day or two...fair enough. that night and everyone since he has slept the nights through, been keen on his walks but eaten and drunk very little, so i am expecting to be back at the vets tomorrow.

boxing day morning found me calling an ambulance for swampy~i get out of bed to find him crouched over a chair with chest pains, bad chest pains...the ambulance was there in only a few minutes and left half an hour later with not only swampy but our neighbour/friend who was having problems breathing.
her son and myself followed by car, my mum came down to babysit cody and swampy was sent home 14 hours later. they had done all kinds of tests and could find nothing and he is much better now.
consensus is the pain of his rheumatoid arthritis is causing referred pain.

yesterday we had my family to visit and that was really nice~

however today i have spent on the sofa in a fitful worried state about cody. he is usually such a bouncy, happy dog so to have him just laying around with none of his usual sparkle is filling me with utter dread~i keep going over what the vet said and reminding myself that it could take a few days for the injections to kick in...but to be honest i want them to have kicked in immediately with none of this unhappy moping...even his favorite cup of tea is not enough to tempt him...

~yule blessings~

i have vowed to spend the next few days internet free~with strong hints to swampy to join me!

its a quiet evening here in this ancient forest and a feeling of joy and contentment fills me

wishing you all a blessed yule


xoxoxoxoxoxo

~a funny midwinter~

well not so much funny haha as~strange

the weather has been freezing and sunny and vast areas of the village not touched by the low midwinter sun remains frozen from day to day~today walking back from my mums home i passed a row of four donkeys all enjoying the leaves remaining on a large blackberry bush, their shaggy fur drying in the patch of weak sun.

i have been feeling very contented~settled this past few days and for the first time i do not have the feeling for 'christmas' as i have in past years

its almost as if the enforced change brought about by my nans passing this year has made me not worry about not feeling the same about christmas any more.

christmas to me has never been about religion~when i was small it was about a holiday from school, maybe snow, our annual monopoly marathon and of course presents.

when my dad left my mum it was about keeping things nice for my mum, then when my gramps died it was about having nan here instead of alone in her flat...

and now...

christmas is still about family~of me and swampy sharing the day with my mum and sister and her new boyfriend (another change to our old chrsitmas tradition) but to me...things feel oh so different.

this year i feel i have been given the keys to alter my perception and not feel guilty about not feeling 'christmas' as my family perceive it, instead it has been my pagan path that has been in the foreground~i can finally say to myself that yes i am celebrating the solstice/yule/midwinter not christmas.

it doesnt matter that i give gifts and send cards relating to christmas because in my heart i know what matters to me and i wont stop celebrating with my family because of it~i can still respect what is important to them and enjoy the day with them...

while there in my heart and surrounding me in my home is my own path, keeping me warm, nurturing me, bring me joy

~solstice blessings~

so the darkest time of the year is falling behind us

it is now the time of the oak king

the wheel of the year has turned~and we are faced with the prospect of light and warmth~renewal as we look to new life and inspiration for the days ahead

in the darkness before dawn i walked our home, lighting two candles on our alter for the Dagda and Brighid~both symbols of the promise of light and life...

then out into the garden, dark and frosty underfoot i light a candle at the alter in the garden sending blessings across the land to friends far and wide

*****************

~however you celebrate this time of the journey back to the light i hope your day is filled with peace and joy~

~yule gift~

our good friend al visited today, a freezing cold winters day here in the new forest, with the most wonderful gift~which of course we had to display immediately and in the most prominant place in our room...

~the most perfect green man~

isnt it wonderful?! if you click on the first picture see if you can see another little face peeking out from the leaves~can you see it?

the photo above it of the stag is the work of our friend layton who is an amazing photographer and who has permission to 'stalk' the local new forest deer herds for his photographs~unfortuantely he does not have a website, but take it from me his work is amazing.

it is made by a very talented man and friend of al's on the craft circuit, simon coupland~
i have seen many things on his website that would also be perfect for our home!

~*~*~*~*

going off on a different tangent, i thought you would like to see a photo i took of my festive hair earlier today while the light was better~

i love it so much!

~feeling festive~

the tree is up and christmassy bits and bobs fill our little home.

we have had quite a few frosty mornings and clear cold days~the past few days we have had flurries of snow and the temperature has dropped really low today and we are forecast snow for the weekend

you can just see the first flakes of snow falling...


i thought things needed to become a little more festive...

from this...

to this...

~out of a pagan closet~

i have never 'broadcast' myself as following any particular pagan path, i have always kept any particular leanings, one way or t'other, tucked deep inside me

i have found myself wandering more and more down a certain path and recently i finally felt an invisible push to take a leap...to be more open about my path and celebrate it

its only a matter of days now until the winter solstice and since samhuinn i have been working my way thorough the perennial course in living druidry and reading emma restall-orr's 'what is druidry?', provided by the druid network~going from leaf dance moon to fire friend moon and soon, to move onto the quickening moon~a blue moon which falls on new years eve.

anyone who has read this blog for long enough will know i have had times where my spirituality tucks itself away deep inside me and there have been times when i felt as if it was gone from me forever.
but no, it would always come out from its warm hiding place, if only briefly, to remind me in small ways it was still there~to deep within me for too many years to ever leave me...

~a glimpse of the moon
~stopping to dip my hand into a brightly running stream
~walking some sacred or ancient space and being aware of the ancestors~of the feeling of being so at one with the land beneath my feet and with those who had walked here before me...

my spirituality has been as cyclical as the the turning of the wheel~over the years i have dipped into different strands of the pagan path, satisfying myself with knowledge gained,friends met, but never feeling settled, never feeling that particular path was right for me~never really feeling at home.



about two years ago i discovered the order of bards, ovates and druids and the british druid order and was introduced to the druid network by a fellow blogger.
i dug deeper and bought some books on the history of druids and finally i found druidcast ~ listening to the the music, interviews and stories it felt as if i had finally come home~things fell into place and made more sense than anything~in a way nothing has ever done in my spiritual life.

i have been creeping my way around the perennial course for some time now and listening to druidcast gave me the gentle push i needed.



i have found the work and thinking needed for the perennial course and the words from 'what is druidry?' to be really inspiring~really sparking my awen into life and bringing me such joy.

of course like anything you only get out of it what you put into it and i would say to anyone here looking for more insight into druidry to check the links i have here on this blog.

~all photos*laoi~

~new link!~

there seems to be a problem with yesterdays link so hopefully this one will~apologies!

~its not wrong to want revenge~

i just hope the law of threefold return really catches up with these sniveling little scumbag, waste of space, moronic excuses for humanity...if not a baying crowd of animal right activisist who only want a laugh

http://www.bournemouthecho.co.uk/news/4788359.Boys_stamped_on_fawn__for_a_laugh_/

~'no crap low fat stuff'~

...were the words just bellowed out to swampy in the kitchen.

see its my moontime and this month i am feeling really nauseous and have the kind of cramp pills cannot stop. i have been on the sofa all day with a constantly topped up hot water bottle wedged against my back and glass of orange juice with which to take my tablets...catch 22 as i feel too sick even to drink.
swampy has just been into the village to buy my a big pot of natural yogurt as that is the only thing i think will be any good right now...

he came home with the news he had bought the very last pot~otherwise i would have had to settle for pro-biotic LOW FAT...

sorry but i have problems with low-fat. having diabetes and high cholesterol (gifts from the duke and kimber line...thanks folks!) i well know i have to watch what i eat (and actually eat regularly...its the old catch 22 again) but i refuse to buy low fat but instead make compromises that allow me to have the full fat (and more tasty!) versions of food...you know what...i might even spoon some orgainc honey into my yogurt as well!

i have been sleeping much better this past week, without my usual valerian tea and i have given in to the increasing chill in the bedroom by putting on a thick wool blanket i was given by our old neighbour.
she had seen what i call my blue 'heir-loom' blanket on the washing line~this is one of those indian style blankets popular in the 1960's, and bought by my mum before she was married. well my neighbour kindly gave me a similar one in cream, green and orange and in near perfect condition that she had bought in 1964.

i love blankets, especially old ones and my mum told me today she has what sounds like a point blanket tucked away in a cupboard~i have hinted quite strongly i would love to see it...so fingers crossed!

well now the johnny depp version of 'charlie and the chocolate factory' is about to come on and i love it so take care all my readers!

~ancestors~

in this period between samhuinn and the winter solstice i have been thinking of my ancestors a great deal and finding some frustration in how far i can can trace my roots.

i have gone back a long way with some of them~
to my great x 12 grandfather john lywood who was born in compton chamberlayne in wiltshire in 1550, my great x 8 grandfather simon edsell born a few miles from compton chamberlayne in 1685 and the betteridge's, chalks and chandlers...both villages only 25 miles from where i now sit and before changes to boundaries part of the new forest.

then there are the hawkins, duke, fletcher and sparkes from portsmouth, only 30 miles away and the kimbers from small villages south of newbury

some of my hawkins ancestors

not forgetting all of my welsh and irish ancestors~williams, byrne, gaul, sullivan and flahavan.

so many ancestors coming from within a 45 mile radius of here...my forever home

whenever we have been away and drive home i always get a strong feeling of being 'home' long before we actually reach the village~its a very powerful sense of belonging to the land...not just to the land, but this very land i live on now. many were farmers and farm labourers and so had a strong connection to the land they worked~obviously following what we now call the wheel of the year.

i wonder how far back these people go, these people whose blood i carry~researching the surnames in my bloodline some originate from old-english, some from anglo-saxon, one,ormes, comes from old norse~such a mix of people.

its no wonder i feel such a connection to the land, that i feel i belong here~i wonder how i will feel when i travel to wales and ireland? will i feel a strong connection to that land i wonder?

~december~

after what seems like days and days of strong winds and lashing rain the sky cleared yesterday, the wind dropped and we woke this morning~the first day of december~to a pale blue/white sky and a heavy frost.

its wonderful~everything feels so still, motionless.

we went away for two nights at the weekend to join other members of the vanfest committee, staying at the three counties showground and so when i woke on saturday and peeked out of the window of 'pretty pagan' i was greeted with this view...

driving home however was dreadful, we were driving south and the bad weather was heading north/north west and so we were driving into the bad weather and it was getting colder and colder.

we drove down the long road, from one village to ours, the trees had finally lost the last of their leaves, making it seem even colder

the bridge which allows us to cross the river into the village was high...

and the smaller streams further on had burst their banks, making silvery streams across the grass

the trial run of pretty pagan went well~everything worked that should, the layout we have designed works and the huge bed was very comfortable~and so swampy has come home keen to get working and get it all finished. the only problem we had was heat! we were using a small fan heater which was really noisy and so now need to look for something that gives out decent heat with no noise!

now it is back to normal and my studies...