sunshine & showers

its been a long time again

i have been finding it hard to gather my mojo for anything much

and my words have refused to flow here, although i have managed to fill quite a few pages in my moleskine~mostly connected to my card readings from either my shamans oracle or wild unknown tarot.

i have been having the black dog lurk within my peripheral vision~feels of 'i just cant be bothered', wanting to go to bed at an unnaturally early hour, not eating as i cant be bothered to cook, waking with a feeling of dread even if i am not doing anything that day and more recently random feelings of 'teary'

i know the signs, i have had cyclical depression since my teens (with anxiety and social phobia long before that...goddess i sound a mess!) but i refuse to go to my gp. i have an irrational fear of seeing any doctor, the fear of being told there is nothing wrong with me...the whole 'you dont look sick' thing. 

so i shall bumble along and see how things go. 

the good thing is the weather is slowly, oh so very slowly, getting better. today we have another blue sky day, although it is a little chilly still.

even better the workmen we have had here for weeks and weeks have finally finished which means we can restore our garden back to the beautiful space it was before they arrived and we had to move everything, dismantle the pergola, move the ferret cage...all this has meant that i have not been able to sit in the garden in any way shape or form. 

arghhh its just been awful!

now they have gone, swampy has put up the pergola, the ferret palace is back in place, my chairs, bench, pots are all back in their places as are my assorted green men and woven wreaths hanging with hag stones. 

even better i can now see all the new life springing back to life, pushing up from the damp earth towards the ever growing heat of our brother sun...goddess it feels so good, i cannot tell you how good. the black dog is still lurking though, i don't know when he will decide to trot off...even today with blue sky, sunshine and being able to sit in the garden he sits, very still, deep inside of me and i cannot shake off the little kernel of fear that is sitting with him. 

i wish i knew why...

*****

i bought myself something i have been wanting for a long time...

a red deer skin shaman drum from shamanic drums and rattles

i have been looking at their etsy shop for ages and finally managed to pool enough gifted money...

as soon as i held 'her' in my hands i felt the most amazing connection and looking closely at the markings on the skin had the feeling of the duality of light and dark with what could almost be an image taken from my shamans oracle cards standing between the two.

she sounds beautiful and i have already started to use her when doing a guided visualisation.

i have yet to properly dedicate her as my journeys are being done to find out more about those who have reached out to me over the years...

one day i went through some old photos and found a load of me at glastonbury and the festival c,1990-2, i look so young!

resting my feet with friends katie and jake

the top of the tor~short hair and cape over black leather

i have been exploring elen of the ways for a while now~it feels right living here in this ancient forest where seeing deer is not an impossibility. i have quite a few single antlers and a partial skull with antlers still attached. this i am sure is why i felt so connected to my shaman drum.

last week i went out on a sunny day for a walk with swampy and as we got out of the camper a large herd of deer bounded across the trackway and through the woods in front of us. a few stopped to stare at us before bounding away and they all crossed the nearby stream and vanished from sight.

then as we were walking back we ended up following the tracks of a few deer who had crossed the open land overnight leaving only their tracks, which vanished into the woods where the herd had been a short time earlier...