44> Sprung

Dangerous times.

I have come to recognise that I feel the Spring coming, deep in the resonance of the Earth.

Apart from more generous days, where the light slowly fades, rather than snaps out, the signs on the ground are scarce.

Woodpeckers start their aerial, morning chess games.
A few buds, some bulbs push up their battery powered spears.
Some hopeful birds try to muster a rallying chorus in support of El Presidente, the Sun.

But the real mechanism is deep in the ground, in trees and roots, and how the sun dripfeeds its life into rocks and slopes, and our hearts.

Dangerous times.
We emerge, awkward but driven, to scrabble on our plots of garden, our heads congested with plans and schemes, and aghast at the enormity of the Task Ahead.

I spent Sunday in the garden, doing nothing well, but knowing that rain was finally due, so trying to have some beds ready for it.
Then I headed for the forest, to cut logs into planks for my next hut.
Late and already tired.

One pinched tight as I pushed it into the saw. Larch has a reputation for such tricks.

I stubbornly pushed harder, then realised I wasn't going to win, and tried to withdraw it, without turning it into a missile: another stunt of a tense log. Pulling it back dragged the riving knife into the saw blade, showering my face with metal.
I bled profusely!
I bound my head as tightly as I could and drove home, grateful for my friends who were there to tend to me.

There was a magic in that blood loss.
A tension is released.

Spring has Sprung

43>My garden

My garden has come of age.

Three years on and I am planting potatoes back where I first started.

I am quarrying into the precious contents of my first compost heap and spreading it on as many beds as I can. The bottom layers are still crunchy with half rotted bracken, which dominated this land early on.

I have an army of weeds ready to march at a moments notice to any bare earth.


But the sparkling jewel in the crown is the robin who has adopted the garden, and proclaims his dominion in sweet song from a fence post.