Postcard - No 10
18 April 2024 - Where I ramble on randomly because…
Hello dear ones,
I’m hoping the days are treating you kindly this week?
For many months I have been wanting to tell the story of a tiny patch of woodland we uncovered in 2020 during the two months of days confined to our home. I’ve started so many times and fail with each attempt to sow seeds of words sufficiently well tended for you to imagine the becoming of magic this tiny wild forest deserves - any wild forest deserves in fact.
So here, just until words germinate into a story that is lush and rambling with wild magic I will begin at today…
The photograph above is the now.
I am a thief of nature… of a beguiling patch of light and dark that sits at the bottom of our field.
One day I will finish the story…
Randomly…
I never noticed that gorgeous, palest of yellow, Banksia rose tucked away in your garden, even when I know how well you loved roses, how did I imagine you wouldn’t have this particular rose hidden amongst the myriad others? I gather a few sprays for the table tonight, I have guests, you know them so do listen in, you will undoubtedly be spoken of at length and with fondness. You are missed greatly - by your garden also.
High winds have arrived, as they do in April. Changeable gales barge in from the north and then just as quickly turn gently from the south. They are gusty and strong, winds that weaken branches, dislodge those branches that fell into other branches last year making the lane an obstacle course of debris which I clear as I walk. Two aged oak - gentlemen surely - fragile and weakened with age lose their conquest to stay upright, leave a lighted space in a glade that yesterday was dark. They lie, two fallen sentinels, side by side waiting for their next work. Work that they will discover, is equally as important, they need have no shame.
Winter days escape from wherever it is they tuck themselves away when spring shows up all loud and green and warm, returning to knock, frigid and persistent. I worry for the tiny fruits on orchard trees everywhere and young vegetables planted during trickster days of warmth last week. I transplant all my tomatoes and tender seedlings into bigger pots and move them all to the safety of ambiant warmth. For the rest I say a prayer, cross fingers and toes and hope that my meteo is wrong.
As much as I worry about fruit trees, I worry about the amount of mustard my son eats far more! I wonder what harm I am allowing to hide on the inside of his beautiful young body. I tell him to research the side effects of his addiction. He informs me - grinning with the jubilance of teenage triumph over an adult - of answers that do nothing to compound such concern, quite the reverse; 10 grammes a day, he says, are very good for blood glucose and cholesterol. I lose.
The valley echoes as it begins to fill with the sounds of summer despite cold temperatures. Crickets, fooled by a brief vagabond warmth awakening from their dormant winter state - called diapause I recently discover - were singing in the meadows on two evenings. The cuckoo - and friends - are constant companions while I juggle spade and hoe. Hoopoe too, though shy to show their faces are calling from somewhere. The swallows, still, have yet to return and I harbour fear that two sparrow hawks nesting, one in the gable, one in the eaves, will deter them from staying even when they do. I continue to search the skies though, hoping eternally for sight of their acrobatic airborne art.
In the dusky light between day and night I watch the ghost shadow of an owl and wonder if, once again this year, we will find a nest of owlets cowering in the remains of log piles and hay.
I found a ball of fluff. It was alive… and then we found another!
Aveyron (May 2023)
I am thrown into mild/major panic when I realise I am running a day behind this week, just four days of fourteen remain until the last, longest, hardest term of the year begins but on counting the weeks remaining until the heady summer holidays, I am ecstatic to find I only have eleven weeks of classes to navigate instead of the thirteen I thought!
A writer I have been meaning to read for months is Quiet Reading with
I wish I’d had time sooner! Tara writes gently and beautifully, collecting peace and inspiring confidence in the human race. Her words are a delight.
And, excitingly I have just noticed the wonderful
has been writing here for two months and I hadn’t noticed!
The day is already moving too quickly, I must fly.
With love
When you wander about upon your hill, attentive to all this delicate majesty, we readers float along around you, like spirits, waiting to be brought to life by these postcards, so that we too can waft about upon your hill, and revel in all the beauty that you share. Thanks. Now I have owlets in my mind where there were none. What a wonderful thing.
Susie! Thank you for the kind words and the recommendation. You turned my head with the introduction to your post, full of mystery and anticipation for your reclaimed forest.
It's a privilege to see my name in a post that also has this: "I am a thief of nature... of a beguiling patch of light and dark that sits at the bottom of our field." (I think you are a *midwife* of nature, but a "thief" makes a good story.) ☺️