MayDay Trees

It’s the first of May, four and a half months since we planted the trees on Wild Lea, and high time for an uplifting catchup on their progress. In a word, miraculous. Planted into solid clay, rained on solidly for two more months, then subjected to increasing drought – and they are (nearly) all still there. We’ve lost maybe 4 or 5, but they could sprout later too. The oaks have been a bit of a worry as they are only just now starting to show any sign of life.

An oak showing signs of life

Contrast this with the two oaks that came from people’s gardens, with a more developed root system and a different planting method because of that (hole dug rather than slot planting). We’ve been told that oaks like a two slot planting – in the shape of a cross – so that the ‘glaze’ of the wall of the clay is broken. Good advice for the future.

All the rest of the trees seemed more than fine with the slot planting, in fact that method plus lots of hay mulch kept them pretty damp even through the dry spell. And ALL the willow cuttings in the Willow Walk have taken! Here’s a quick round up of a selection of trees:

Crab apple – rather a special one from the Orient! Seems happy enough in the Occident.

All the birches in the Avenue bar one have survived, though none has put a head above the parapet yet

 

Here’s an Alder that HAS ventured forth….

And a VERY happy Hornbeam!

This Yew made it, though one of the 3 Yews planted in the Dove corner didn’t; it was a seedling dug up from under a hedge, so not all garden reared trees are superior. I don’t think we dug up enough of its root system

And lastly, a Dogwood and a Hawthorn. Both bursting forth.

I hope all this makes everyone as happy as we are! With more time on my hands, my daily walk is around all the trees, so I’m keeping a good eye on them. We have plans in progress for watering. This week we were saved by the rain, but it wasn’t nearly enough to keep them going for long, so we have bought a large farm-sized water container, and also made sure that our water trough is working and available. The container will go on Dan’s trailer and we’ll get to all the trees that way.

When present restrictions on movement loosen up, we are planning to invite everyone involved in this project to an Open Day. Can’t wait!

We are already thinking about Stage 2 planting: the Wood. Not just thinking, but doing; Maya was alerted to some oaks that needed a home as a local nursery had been forced to close, so she and Cara planted 20 up by the entrance to Wild Lea, ready for the Woodland planting next Autumn. We’ll be in touch about that again, and will be looking for volunteers/benefactors again, and arranging another inspiring and heartwarming planting weekend.

 

 

Brigid’s Cross

 

A topic we are currently tossing around on our ABCD book group page is ‘Magical Thinking’, which originated in a post made by Judith Staines, of Taleos: talismans that ward off danger, in particular plague and illness.

Taleo in a Lao village

So I started looking around for home grown talismans (-men?), and came across the St Bridget’s cross. “Making a St Bridget’s Cross is a custom in Ireland. The St Bridget’s Cross is made out of plants called rushes for hanging above the entrances to dwellings to invoke the saint’s help in warding off disease.”

I’ve been aware of St Bridget, or Brigid, or Bridie, or Bridghe, for a long time, as she is closely associated with Glastonbury, my home town. On the outskirts of the town is a green hill (not the Tor, much flatter!) known as Bride’s Mound. For several years now it has been owned by a trust of local people who have so far successfully warded off encroachment onto the site by the neighbouring industrial estate, the former Morlands site. Excavations were undertaken in the 19th and 20th centuries, and I believe also recently. These have revealed the foundations of an old chapel, or maybe two, possibly corroborating the legend that St Bridget came here from Ireland and that this place was the entry point for Irish monks visiting Glastonbury, one of whom is said to have been St Patrick himself.

‘Bride’s Mound’, an etching, part of my ‘Holy Islands’ series

Bride’s mound during the floods of 2013

My etching was made in 2013 as part of a solo show at Glastonbury Abbey. But my interest stems from earlier than that: in around 1988 I took part in an annual ritual of making a ‘Brighde Doll’, in the Bridget Chapel that leans against the north wall of Glastonbury Abbey. A group of women friends had got together on Brigid’s Day, February 1st, to make a doll out of anything that they had/was lying around. Our Brighde that year is the one in the middle of my etching, with a cork for a nose (lavish wine drinking traditionally accompanied the ritual, or so we imagined). The 3 Bridghes, that one and the two from previous years, took up temporary residence at the Dove in Diana Griffith’s caravan, and there I drew them and made this etching:

The etching had the distinction of being considered for removal from an exhibition at the Black Swan Gallery, Frome, later that year, following several complaints from the public that it was ‘black magic’ and too ‘witchy’. Plus ça change….Luckily, it was saved by the then curator, who didn’t bow to public pressure.

So….later, in the ’90’s, I made many etchings from imagination, eyes closed at first, and then worked with what emerged. This one became ‘Old Biddy’ and shows Brigid with her cows.

Brigid, incidentally, can be seen with her cows in a carving on the side of the Tor.

Brigid milking her cow, bas relief on the outside wall of Glastonbury Tor

Here’s a lovely description of Brigid from the Glastonbury Abbey website: “Most of the miracles attributed to her were concerned with the relief of poverty or illness. She is reputed to have personally ministered to lepers and to have cured many. Legend draws for us vivid pictures of the kind of woman she was: her lavish generosity, tireless energy and irresistible charm, equally at home in the fields tending sheep or bringing in the harvest. She is found milking cows, making butter and cheese, and tubs of home-brewed ale.”

I love her more already.

So, today I set about making a Brigid Cross from reeds I found in the Whitefield. They were a bit brittle – the time for making these is reputedly February 1st, her day; also Celtic Imbolc and New Year, which would, of course, also have been the totally appropriate time to start guarding ourselves again the plague. But I managed, and here it is, the Brigid Cross, adorning the wall by my ‘magical thinking table’ by the door.

 

 

 

Happy Leap Day!

Ama Bolton’s irresistible poem for today!

barleybooks

I wrote this in February 2016 and have not wanted to change it since.
The book I had in mind? I finished writing it. It leaped across the Atlantic in December last year, probably straight into the publisher’s waste-paper basket, though I shall not know for a few months. But I’ll still come up laughing. There are far more important things in life than getting published.

And if celestial navigation is something you wonder about, try this.

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Morocco for Christmas – House and Garden

Our little Maison en Terre in Taroudant. Cool walls, warm terrace, glowing lights, snug rooms. Simple and elegant. Thanks, Catherine (designer)!

And now for the closing piece de resistance: Catherine’s garden just outside town, complete with dogs, cats, goats, chickens, a peacock, finches and a tortoise. Oh, and a stunning view of the Atlas too.

And a sunset to follow

Post script: two days later we were in a taxi with Samir, on the 4 hour drive to Marrakech airport. He was a lovely friendly Berber from the mountains, main man taxi driver in Taroudant, and blessedly good at his job. After a dawn drive back through the mountains and the foggy plain, he dropped us at the airport; we paid and thanked him and said goodbye. So that was that. Except that a couple of days later he texted Lilli to make sure we had got home alright.

Inshallah, as Samir said when we parted, we’ll be back.

Morocco for Christmas – Boxing Day Trip

Quite easy to guess where we are off to – the High Atlas Mountains which rear up behind Taroudant, and of which I have dreamed since my first visit to them in 2013. That time it was the north side, up from Marrakech. Here in sheltered Taroudant it’s the south, the sun picking out every detail of the landscape on this most spectacularly sunny day. I’m in heaven, in spite of vertiginous drops at the side of the road, and hair-raising hairpin bends all along the route, sometimes with a lorry swinging round them….but mountains are my element, a feeling, or some kind of memory, that I shared with my mother. Don’t ask why.

So here are some of my photos, firstly of the 2 1/2 hour drive up in our landlady Catherine’s rattly old jeep.

We were on our way to Catherine’s Moroccan friend Said’s sister’s husband’s ruin in a village high up in the mountains. Here is this enchanting house, where we picnicked and painted, and ate a lovely tagine prepared for us by the neighbours

After the picnic we walked around the village, which was really an assortment of houses threaded through the trees and rocks and remains of other houses in woods leading down to a valley. Across the valley was a house that looked straight out of Tuscany; French owners I was told. A different world.

People everywhere our side; no photos of them because they didn’t want that, but were friendly and, I guess, fascinated by our appearance in such a remote place. (Any photos of people, incidentally, are Catherine and Said).

We had to tear ourselves away from this magical spot in order to get out of the mountains by sunset. The light all the way down was blazing, the colours vivid and full of contrast, and again, people everywhere in the landscape – tending livestock, picking fruit, coming home from school, just standing there….

And here is our wonderful landlady Catherine who drove us safely all the way up and all the way down.

What a day. You would have loved it, Mum. This post is for you.

 

Christmas Eve Eve in Morocco Manifestation

We just happened to see this notice on a rather nondescript door (actually that of the Catholic Church) and decided to go. We had, like the rest of the world, heard about the murder, a few days before we got here, of the two Scandinavian young women just over the mountains from here. People had expressed their devastation that this should happen in their country, and a young woman had come up to us n a cafe and said ‘n’ayez pas peur ‘. We certainly weren’t afraid, but wanted to be at the Manifestation to be held outside the city walls at sunset. Took a taxi simply to find the place and ahead of us was this lorry :

A good start. And it was indeed a heartwarming event.

Manifesto

As the sun went down behind the ancient walls I was reminded yet again of our common humanity and that the lorry was right: Love is the way.

The White Wolves

So, we arrived in Taroudant after several hours on buses and were met by our French host Catherine together with friend Said. They showed us round, including the best fishmonger in the fish market , where to buy avocados ( off a giant barrow load) and whizzed us through the souks to the main square which is the beating heart of town. Eat at the Yassmin cafe, they advised, so a couple of hours later we did. Tagines there are cooked to order so we waited and watched the life of the Place, and at the very moment our food arrived, the police did too, wrestling a man into a back room of the cafe. All eyes on the Place ( lots) turned towards the Yassmin. Meanwhile we were a couple of mouthfuls into our tagines when rain seemed to come from a cloudless sky above, straight onto our plates.

All sorts of things ensued: we explained we couldn’t eat the food as we had no idea what had landed in them; the patron fairly reluctantly removed them though he said they had no more food, and then a police officer arrived to ask if we wanted to press charges on the person in the top terrace of the cafe who had, it appeared, spilt a bottle of water which had run down the awning into our plates. All eyes on the Place now turned towards us. No of course we didn’t want to press charges: we just wanted some food! This arrived eventually (a small plate to share). End of story, but quite a dramatic first day in Taroudant.

We told Catherine the next day and she said that the French would say we were like White Wolves (Louves Blanches), or as Lilli said, sticking out like a sore thumb. More elegant in French. ….

Here is a photo of the Yassmin- top terrace – bottle of water; table at the bottom – ours. Just to set the scene.

And ps, the man arrested was nothing to do with the water. We heard he was high on drugs and spent the night cooling off in a police cell.