49> wishlist

Autumn clatters its leaves around me. 

As the stridency of growth draws back, I can see again. I found the exuberance of this magic summer overpowering. My bracken is now collapsing as dramatically as it grew.

 

I gave up on my garden a month ago, and am wondering if I'm really cut out for it. Maybe I'm a hunter gatherer, a trapper, a berry-picker. Maybe what I'm trying to make is a rich hunting ground, feeding rabbit and feral pheasant and snipe, bearing fruit and nuts. 

Why not.

Next year, next year. We are in the Season of reflection and forethought. Abundance too. 

I wish for a dry mouse proof storage space, a simple cluster of raised beds & covered grow pods, and a place to house a volunteer bracken-basher, tree planter, & gardener.

I wish for a thousand Sweet Chestnut, Wild Cherry, and Beech seedlings, and the help to ready the land and plant and mark them.

Most, I wish to allow the space in my heart for a sense of support and accord, and help, that is latent in this place.

I am realising more & more that we summon and invoke our own demons and adversaries. 

And can invite help and love and sharing of the magic equally

This hill is looking on with an amused, wise smile.

48> energy versus appearance

Hark Hark, The Park, the Dark!!

It's so easy to slip into patterns. Prejudices and antagonisms.

I suspect that the overall opinion amongst their peers, of how the Pembrokeshire Coast  National Park handled planning issues to do with Brithdir Mawr, and it's straw bale huts etc, was that it was unprofessional, verging on incompetence.

Here we again, it seems...

A story. 

So I hear, in the 1960s, a motley collection of creative folk descended on North Pembrokeshire. 

Artists, Sculptors, Writers, and Dreamers. Most seemingly knowing each other by chance, from meeting on a Suffolk beach. 

Wales has been the refuge of many such waves; of the 1950 war-weary and new homesteaders, of the 1970 hippies, and the organic growers. It seems to be a deep human impulse to head West. 

This group were a fine bunch.

John and Sally Seymour the visionaries of Self Sufficiency , John Brown the stick-chair maker, John Knapp-Fisher and Denys & Eirian Short the sculptor and artists. I am not a serious chronicler, no doubt they were many  more. 

They dreamed things, they made things. They were drawn to, and reacted to this amazing living landscape.

 A new world, often involving a mess. Mud, scrap metal, abandoned pots, failed or unfinished projects.

Magic in the Making is often Messy.

Hark hark, the Park.

If then was now, that 'creative bunch' wouldn't get a look in, as prices have spiralled, let alone the chance to spread stuff about and live and work and make a mess.

The Planning Authority here might as well seek funding from the Estate Agents, who are their main benefactors, rather than pretend to be protecting a vibrant, creative local economy.  We would at least know where we stand.

Buzz KnappFisher, John's son, has a Suburban Neighbour yapping at his heels about his piles of useful bits of metal, & the Park are back on their old default of seeing their core clientele as the property owning upper middle class, and are threatening Buzz with prosecution.

~ In that sweetsour reasoned voice that people adopt when they feel somewhere inside that they are talking total bollocks.

That whole motley 60s bunch of creative visionary incomers would be getting the same letters from the Park if it was around then. The Mud, The Mess, The Chaos. loads of it!

Prosecution Notices & Closure. 

And that sense of being watched, and criticised that goes with it. 

It's about time the Park just grew up. The  role we have given them in honouring this sacred landscape is crucial. It attracts creative, original  and innovative people, who add to its power.

We are all meant to be doing this together.