~hello again~

here i am again, dropping in to see what is going on and bring you some pictures of life here in this ancient forest since my last post.

i would like to say i have been busy but i haven't really.

in my guise as the wylde apothecary i had a commission to work on that happily arrived at its new home in canada last week and i have a pile of wood painted pendants that need finishing to be listed on my etsy shop.

i have been having a lot of bruxism induced migraines that seems to have been lasting forever~in reality about two weeks and a few days of semi-hibernation where i lay on the sofa reading and channel surfing.

however the sun and blue sky that has covered the land over the last two weeks has been utterly glorious...

the temperatures in the sun-trap of our garden has been high and because we had to trim back my canopy of rose and jasmine in my nook (asbestos removal) i have no shady bower to shelter under. so i had to improvise with a cheerful throw...

 as you can see Merlin found it to be the perfect play hammock!

i have had a few walks with swampy and flynt and all the animals are enjoying the sunshine too...

our garden is becoming glorious with the help of the sun. we had to make the decision to stop trying to grow grass on the bottom level of the garden. i don't know what the problem is but grass just wont grow into a nice lawn and so after 5 years of trying decided to pave the area and hopefully small, creeping plants might take to the gaps

fungi growing on a birch log 

   

solar water feature kindly given us by swampys parents

i am a total fiend for a hellebore, fern, aquiligia and fritillaria especially the fritillaria meleagris and have them dotted about all over the garden

swampy and i have totally different ideas about gardening and as a result we have spilt our garden to make us both happy. swampy has the front garden where he has the more showy flowers he loves, where he keeps the edges of the beds clipped and weeded. i have the back garden which in spring and summer bursts into a wonderful wild garden. i have planted many of the sacred trees~oak, rowan, silver birch, elder, holly, hazel, hawthorn. there are herbs growing between the favourites i listed above as well as primroses, primula, creeping jenny, sweet woodruff, ransoms, forget me nots, honeysuckle, poppies,...the list goes on and on. i have my small pond with waterfall and the solar water feature to give me the sound of flowing water.

swampy has been given the strictest instructions not to remove any of these...

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...

~and so where now?~

 

where now indeed?

 

 

what is important for me is to try and maintain the feelings this trip and my experiences brought me.

i know there is no way that those exact feelings can ever be recreated, in the way of everything they are part of the movement of life and they have moved on with the air, flowed away with the water that comes from the swallowhead spring

 

 

as with everything we must move forward, grow, change and develop

and that is where i am now.

 

i need to move forwards in order not to stagnate and develop on the feelings and change that i experienced during this initiation

my experience was too important for me not to lose it in anyway and with anything we have to make sacrifices in order to maintain something so special.

 

with all important things in life sacrifices are made, not the sacrifices of old of course but sacrifices nonetheless...

 

like so many of us social media has become an important way of keeping connected with friends and family but sometimes i have days where i feel i am keeping connected too much and i can find precious hours have passed me by while i have been busy keeping connected.

 

that is my sacrifice, to limit that connection aside from my daily connection with my family, tribe and wylde systerhood, and keep focus on the other...not to become too involved in the general of facebook or indeed the internet as a whole.

 

of course sometimes that is difficult to maintain, especially when i am not feeling at my best and my motivation is taken over with tiredness and pain...but i can at least try

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



~white, blue & rebellion~

i pulled back the kitchen curtains at about 6am this morning and was surprised to find everything covered in a layer of frost, but even better a pale blue sky that hints at another nice day here in this ancient forest.

we have had a few days of nice, but cold weather which is raising the spirits no end i can tell you.

i am hoping today will be the day for a photo shoot for the first of my etsy goods and i have set aside today for creating more goodies.

my 'secret nook' is up already!

i just need to encourage the long strands of climbing jasmine to start their looping journey around it~although i don't think it will need a whole lot of encouragement.

 i am now thinking that once the pots have been put back i shall light a small fire in my little iron cauldron and sit in my chair wrapped in a blanket to welcome my nook.

i am thinking i need another green man to decorate it...

~*~*~*~

in the garden the snowdrops and crocus have nearly finished now and our daffodils have started to flower bringing a nice burst of assorted yellow tones, the forsythia is still a glorious burst of yellow and i was pleased to find tiny buds on my oak, birch, hawthorn, beech and rowan.

we were in a small garden center the other day looking at tree's and found a small~well its about 7 foot~snake bark maple that had been reduced in price to under £10.

no other tree had been reduced and i can only think it had been passed by so often that they wanted rid of it the poor thing, so it is now happily sitting in our front garden.

there is a story behind my wish for a tree...and a whole lot more, in the front garden...

the front gardens in our small part of the village are rather...sterile to say the least.

we have two cattle grids that keep out the ponies, cows, donkeys and pigs as the front gardens are all open plan (my mum has two catches on her gate~one of them a special safety catch which means ponies cannot push it open easily). but that is no excuse for sterility...do you know there is nowhere for the birds to perch?

shocking.

when we moved in we were 'encouraged' to keep the sterile atmosphere for assorted reasons...even not to have anything grow up the walls of our house~none of which would stand up in my fictional gardeners court.

well now, if anything was designed to make me rebel is to be told how to have my garden.

but one house just around the corner is one i find so exciting...rebellious you might say and has been frowned upon!

they have bushes and plants everywhere and it gives it a nice feeling of privacy...then you walk around to our end of the cul de sac and its sterile city-central~board expanses of open lawn with flower beds only under the window. woe betide anything that eats into the expanse of lawn.

well no more i say!

we started by erecting an arch over our front door and planting clematis that could grow over the arch and then along under the eaves of the house...no?! how vary dare...

last week we planted two small beech hedge plants in the wall of bare cream brick wall between our kitchen and living room window, these we are going to grow up into a raggle taggle high but narrow hedge...and of course the maple which went in right in the middle of our lawn in front of the living room window...how vary dare...

we have a small acer in a pot which is going to go in the middle of the lawn the other side of the path and...we are going to put a narrow bed either side of the path and grow a lavender hedge...how very, very dare!

and we are going to paint our front door a bright poppy red...

to use the talk of my childhood...'ummm I'm telling...'

~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!

the journey continues to devon

merry meet )o(
these new forest ponies were just outside of a village called Burley, that we have to pass through on our way to Brockenhurst, i had hoped that there would be some donkeys to photograph but they were obviously busy elsewhere!
autumn does not seem to have reached the forest yet and the threes were still green with only a hint of the red,orange and gold i was hoping for, although up on the moor land it was very chilly and feeling quite desolate. not in a dreadful way though, more peaceful now that the summer tourists have left the area. we took the longer route to mum's via a road through a pine forest, known locally as 'ten bends' my favourite route to the village as we drive down a long hill through moorland and see the first cottages of the village sited down two dead end lanes called north and south weirs.it is a picturesque as it sounds.

driving home at 1am this morning the journey was magical as we had the moon shining down from totally clear skies and as our journey took us beyond any built up areas the whole land was bathed in the most amazing silvery light, it felt so special.

sam had brought me a gift from her recent yearly trip to Padstow~where she goes primarily to eat at Rick Steins fish and chip shop! but she went to the witchcraft museum in boscastle and brought me back the beautiful Green Man i have pictured here. I am so pleased with it!

Seth Lakeman and his band were fantastic and even sam enjoyed herself, although she took herself off to watch from the seats at the back, leaving me up front. this was the third time i have seen seth and his band and i have to say it was the best yet as they did a wide range of old and new songs and it had a really lively feel to it with invitations to hoedown! it was at this point i wished that sam was down the front with me as we are great 'hoe-downers' of old, when we used to follow a new forest based band called The Cropdusters~sort of hoe-down punk. it seemed that the folk up front last night were scared to move except to clap which was a real shame.

however i am hoping for better tonight...yes i am off again tonight to see them play at exeter university great hall and as this is their home ground i expect it to be as it was in december ~ much more riotous!

on that note i shall close here and have a look to see if there is a fish and chip shop in honiton i have a hankering for chips!