51>Fearsay

The weather has a still icy deadness today. Like being in an abandoned fridge. This is not West Coast weather, which usually has a flow to it, of cloud and sky and showers and shifting winds.
I am weary of winter now. Its mid March, nearly the equinox, so when the sun shines it gives an appreciable heat, but then I wake to a day like this, and feel the chill cling like a shroud around my bones. I have little fight left in me. All too easy to feel edgy and poor.

I went to the hill yesterday, stopping to buy croissant in the local shop.The wind was an icy easterly, but I lit the stove and lingered over coffee until the day got some heat in it. I pottered. Things have shifted on then from the first fine days that were stifled in the blind panic of too-many things to-do.
Pottering is a fine and productive state of being.
I bet God potters. Sows a few galaxies, then goes in the God hut for a trowel, and ends up talking to his sister on the phone for an hour. But pottering breeds no panic. There are so many useful things to do, you can do no wrong, once you return to the garden.
In the autumn I had covered my raised beds in a thick, stinking layer of seaweed. I turned this in, hoping it will accelerate it turning into soil. The more I get involved in tasks on the land, the less my feeling of hostile eyes in the village below.
I met an amazing dog walker on the lane last week, who said that a friend of hers had talked of my hill "swarming" with hippies, and was this true? Her friend was adamant it was, and said that she would know, because she was on the Community Council.
It feels like there are a bunch of folk competing to project their fears onto me and my project. None of them have even been to look!
Carol, the dog walker asked me if I would address the local WI. I think this is a brilliant idea, and a strong antidote to the negative mood being spread by the others.

It's a strange honour to be demonised by such Fearsay, but I would like to clear the air.
 For the sun to shine, and the breeze to blow fresh from the sea.