blogs Jan- May 09

26 April 09

Where was God today

For the past few weeks the weather has been beautiful.  The perfect Easter.  My husband keeps saying its been the best blossom he has ever seen.  And I agree.  Every year I agree.

Our garden this year does look more amazing than ever I’ve seen it before.  Our veggie plot has been promoted to 4 raised beds.  And today in memorandum of my Nanny and Granddad Baker, I laid an asparagus bed.  I love asparagus fern with its gentle whispering fronds.  And come the winter its beautiful brown stems with brightest pill box red berries, which the resident birds seemingly love.  Not to mention the sensuous delicate green flavour and the care with which one takes when tasting.  Perfect food.

The French dwarf beans went in and so did the tomatoes and some runner beans which the children brought home from school.  The Rocket is already for snipping with is peppery feathery ness.

Whilst I was preparing the earth in the recycled redundant tractor tyres of which I have four, to make raised veggie plots, I could here the urgent hoot of a mother blackbird trying to locate her off spring.

The evening before my husband had rescued the baby bird from the clutches of the cat and dog.  He shut them inside the house and the bird unscathed but shaken hopped about the lawn trying to find cover.  The mother bird was close by and the baby disappeared into hiding.  To where, my husband knew not.

I know they say you shouldn’t meddle with nature but it amazes me how all those camera men can film animals loosing their lives by bad luck or because they are weaker than their predators.  But Instinct as a mother meant that I would have had to catch that baby bird and put it in a safe place up high.

Instead whilst feeding the earth I sat listening and watching the distressed mother 14 hours later, still calling for her baby.  In her eagerness to find her child she lost all sense of fear and came so close, first to me and then to the sun bathing cat, but in her wise ness just high enough to be out of reach.

It was almost like she was asking for help.  So I did just that, I helped her look.  I scoured the beds, pulled back the undergrowth, scanned the log pile.  We were both looking, she was clearly distressed but we were both hopeful and not giving up.

But later on, after getting nowhere with our search, I headed back to the house, to ask my husband where he had last seen the baby bird.  But on the way down the old red brick path, I sadly spotted the fledgling with its broken little body, lifeless on the rocks.  It’s little life not barely begun.

I got that pit of a feeling right in the bottom of my gut.  That poor baby bird.  That poor mother bird.  I wasn’t sure whether to expose its little body up high so that the mummy bird could find her child and grieve and move on, or to hide its little body so that she remained ever hopeful.

In the end after a few hours of undecided sadness the children made a little cave of rocks over it and said a little prayer.

It’s not the first time it has happened in our garden.  I once went to investigate when I heard a robin chattering ferociously.  It was warning a fledgling of a different variety, that the cat was wandering around the garden.  I was out in the garden all day long on that occasion and every time that baby Thrush was in danger the robin started its chattering.  AMAZING.

That baby lived for several days thanks to the robins care.  But eventually too, I found the poor baby thrush whole unruffled but dead under the toad stall.  Its one thing killing to stave off hunger, but it something else to kill for the fun of it.

I Love Old Vinegar Tom Cat but when he’s gone I couldn’t have another one.  I don’t understand how anyone or anything could hurt an innocent baby, not to mention take another life at all.

So I ask you God where were you today ?

15 April 09

I wonder at what point I can call myself a writer.

Will it be at the point that somebody wants to read what I have to say.  I wonder myself sometimes, is it written with a reader in mind? Or rather selfishly, is it written for me?  So that I can get to a coherent understanding of myself and how I have understood.

A de-cluttering of my mind.

Can I only call myself a writer at the point that somebody pays me for what I have written?  I am almost sure that if somebody commissioned me to write, I could not do so.

Maybe a writer I am not.

Maybe I could be a poet.  At the point that I write and design and create the poem, I guess that I am.  I have even had one published.  Nobody paid me, but still I was the poet.  Maybe you don’t have to be awarded a title by means of payment, maybe poets and writers just are.

Or a diarist.  Or a philosopher.  Definitely not a blogger, for that is too unromantic.  Maybe I am just a thinker or a ponderor.

Or maybe one is a writer, just when the seeds or thought are blowing and floating around in ones head, like tumbleweed.  Seeds which are thoughts which are tumbleweeding along, until they embed themselves into a fertile soul and take root.  Thoughts which twist and tumble and turn into flowering, sweetly smelling, sometimes thorny, rambling roses.

Thoughts which stir ones mind and body and soul.

Or maybe a writer is somebody who can learn to cultivate or clip the rambling roses into shape.  Nice and neat and tidy.  I am afraid that I am not.

Or is it at the point that I am busting and over spilling with typing and tripping over language and letters to make some kind of sense of the ramblings.  So that my picture can be read.  I have no paint, therefore an artist I am not.

Maybe when you name me a writer or a poet then my heart will gaily sing and dance, just like the spring.  Only then will I truly feel entitled to my title.

Or maybe I am to be title less.

Or maybe I am just a romanticist.

Or maybe greatest of all, I am a lover.  For I am a lover of Love.  Not just any old love.

But Love.  True Love.  Like God x

8th April 09

Spring

Its spring, beautiful spring xx  My favourite time of year.  I don’t know whether I have such an affinity with spring because I was born here, or because it is the season of creation.

Birth and rebirth, with the plants and trees, budding and popping.  The breath taking ensemble of blossoms, and the beautifully perfect tiny details inside every flower.  Its almost impossible to have a perfect blossom.  I love the thick milkshakey double cherry.  I love the depth of quince.  I love the froth of wild hawthorn.  I love the slightly later simple, prettiest apple.  And the jolly crab apple blossom en mass.   But I think one of the sweetest most delicate early blossoms that stir me are the almond trees.

I’ve spent the last few days in the garden.  Its been invigorating.  My sister taught me how to weed properly, with a big fork and not a silly hand trowel and fork.  I’ve often wished my nanny’s or Granddad’s were around to teach me ‘the what’s and where for's’ in the garden,  Giving me their inherited tips, learnt from generations long since gone.

They had chickens and smoking compost heaps, and cottage flowers and vegetables, and fruits and concrete garden rollers, and knowledge.  They were hardy, not like me.  And they seamed to have patients and time…….endless time.

And when their time ran out, that knowledge went with them.  I wish they were here now to teach me.  I wish my sister lived closer so that she can teach me.  We are sharing long distance information, but this weekend it was proof, that its so much easier to learn when your practically working and sharing together.

I miss my family.  I miss my Grandparents and my Daddy who have died.  I miss my Mum who lives 1 ¼ hours away.  I miss my older sister and my younger brother and sister, who live even further away.  We all keep in touch often. We talk on the phone weekly.  Text sometimes daily.  And regularly visit each other.  But I miss living close to them.  I miss that easy cuppa just for ½ an hour.

Spring with all its activity keeps me busy.  The sun shining stops me feeling lonely.  It makes me clean up and reassess.  Prioritise.  I know I want to pass on to my children how to grow fruit and vegetables.  How to tend a garden and take cuttings.  How to make a sanctuary to rest in when the outside world makes you weary.  How to attract the birds and wildlife and insects and flutter byes.  How to get to grips with life cycles and our own organic ness.

So far we have had two successful seasons with sweet corn, leeks, beetroot, spuds, broccoli, peppers, tomatoes, garlic, beans, grapes, apples and plumbs.  The gooseberries haven’t come yet.  The rhubarb plant mysteriously disappeared after one good season and the cauliflower got cabbage white butterflies.  So we are getting there.

The sanctuary bit is still to come.  There’s often heat in our conversation, often volcano’s erupting.  Laughter turning to tears.  Or fun turning in to boisterous play fighting.  Five children now under eleven.  Girls provoking and deliberately annoying the boys.  Boys being over zealous with the girls and each other.

Sometime muma and Daddy are short and tired and speak with harsh raised voices, sometimes we are tired of sorting out squabbles and play deaf, and sometimes just like radio 4 says we shouldn’t, we shout.  Sometimes we teach by example, sometimes we try and teach diplomacy and negotiating skills.  And sometimes we make quite time a priority.

Its not always easy finding that sanctuary in a big family.  But we are always seeking and learning and often discovering it outside in nature, in the garden, when walking the dogs, or down the beach, or over the woods, or sailing in the summer time.  And that has its own peace.  Its hard work, but there is a peace that comes with it, after the chaos.  And especially at the end of the night and threaded throughout the sometimes long days, there is always Love.

Love is our sanctuary.

Its ironic that spring is all about life, when its been the time for Jade Goody and Natasha Richardson to die, not to mention the news that a dear old family friend Nanny Blanche has died.  On the other hand what a wonderful time to pop your clogs, the same season as Jesus.  My five year old daughter says Jesus died on a hot cross bun.  Come to think of it, I was born on Easter Sunday in 1970 and when its my time to go,  I wouldn’t mind going at hot cross bun time too.

A rebirth in heaven.

Sweet God Bless you all x Moonchild x

Pegasus floats silver in an amber mist
To deliver my love under moons sweet kiss.

x moonchild x

January 09

A Solitary Peace

I like myself.  I like my intentions.

I have met myself when I am in a raw state stripped away of all of life (other than survival) I liked me, the core of me.  What was left of me.  When everything else was stripped away.

When Sky almost died and Meadow was seriously ill, I was stripped to within the very depths of who I am.  The most basic level of being.  No faith (beyond faith) (beyond hope).

Suspended.  Levitating in a beyond desperate, beyond broken but somehow buoyant existence of complete focus on the undistracted fully present living pain of this immediate moment.  The now.

And when my dearest dear Daddy died and I was holding his hand and he breathed from my world to the next, nothing about myself felt weak or frail or wrong or bad, only good.

And I was left being half of what he had given me, half of what he had made me.  And I had loved with all of me who I had come from.  Not just the person carved out by a hard graft of a life.  Not the sometimes tired person, but all of him, the very core of him.  His very essence.  His very being.

And in these moments I found God.

Not perceiving me wrongly.  Not misunderstanding me.  Not reacting to me.  Not changing me from what I am.  Not causing me frustration.  Not complicating me.  Not controlling me.  Just simply letting me be.

I don’t always truly believe that we are truly 100% us.

We are almost a by-product of situations and daily occurrences and our mechanism for dealing with the daily interactions shapes us.  Unfortunately sometimes more than I would want it too.

After a difficult day of communication with blood relatives: my children and my husband are forever forgiving, accepting, unnoticing, and unconditionally loving, and there’s an easy acceptance and peace which we all breath and live and feel.

And by the end of a difficult days communication with friends or non blood people, I feel like hiding in the deepest darkest depths of the moon, and only venturing out once in a blue.  Not when I am blue.

Ironically whilst typing and listening to radio 4, John O’Donohue was on ‘Something Understood’

Night Night God Bless    x Amber x

7th January 09

Little Miracles

I am desperately missing the wisdom and quiet contemplation of my lovely next door neighbour who passed away last may.  I am looking after her home.  When you walk through the door you are enveloped by a kindness that kisses your body and soul from top to bottom.  You are spiritually hugged from tip to toe, you are gently loved.

Each room has an iconic image, she was a Catholic, and although this feels nice, it is hers and her families kindness, goodness and love that permeates every crevice and space surrounding the house, and makes it feel Holy and God blessed.

It is so full of richness of spirit, but only modest in possessions personal trinkets of personal value.  It has a breath of datedness about it, because things have been looked after and savoured, and only replaced when depleted or broken.  It is dated but in a timeless way.

It is a big house to me, which radiates a subtle heat and never feels cold or dark or empty.  We put up a tree to warm her children should they suddenly appear at Christmas.  I think the space had also been offered to friends if needed.

Yesterday I went to remove the lit crib from the front  window and put the old fashioned decorations back in their original boxes, in colour coordinated, old chocolate box tins, upon the trunk, on the landing, on the middle floor of the house.

I had my babe in arms with me, and did several trips up and down the stairs, which has a very low curved ceiling.

On my way down the stairs the final time, there was a blaze of hot sunshine beating in through the front south facing sash window, this window has real lace curtains.

As I walked back down the stairs, the shadow on the wall opposite startled me.  It was a perfect shadow of the mother Mary and her child.  It was clearly me with my hair down, holding Eliza Maude, but in silhouette, and it was a very powerful image of how I hadn’t seen  myself before.

This morning I was in the yoga cat pose in the bath, with the shower thrashing down on my aching lower back.  It hurts sometimes.  And my face as one can imagine was rather close to the white enamel tub.  I was completely unaware that I was watching the patterns being created by the trickling water, until the water trickled outwards making an absolutely precisely perfect love heart.  Which suddenly brought me to consciousness.

It has been a hard few weeks, especially this week with highs and lows. I need communication and direction, that’s how I function, interact, thrive, learn, grow, blossom.  I need theatre, the arts, literature and conversing.  I need to be able to fail and to be helped up again by the same people that I failed.

Today after a coincidence, I returned to Kathleen Raines poem ‘The ring’   It was read by a dear friend and a special person to me, at my wedding.  It is beautiful.  And spiritual.  And is how I see my relationship with God.

Sweetest God Bless x Amber x child of the moon