Imbolc is an old Gaelic word, there in the earliest of writings. It means “in the belly” and it is easy to see why this turning point in the old Celtic and Gaelic calendars was named for it.
I love having a craft activity in my life. Simple, repetitive, meditative hand work. Knitting or hand-sewing or embroidery, whittling or sanding or carving, painting or potting or mosaic. You hear so much of how healthy it is to do daily meditation, but I don’t have the self discipline for it. Life beckons from too many places.
My Halloween lantern for tonight. A particularly daggy one, but Happy Halloween everyone anyway everyone! I am remembering to be grateful for what I have inherited from the ancestors, generation through generation. Music, stories, art, science, inventions, roads, trainlines, medicine, tools. I am remembering to be grateful, and in gratitude, pay it forward.
It’s the southern hemisphere equinox at 3.30 pm today, the moment when the earth is exactly half way on its journey round the sun between the short shadow full face to the sun days of midsummer, and the long shadow late mornings and early evenings of midwinter. In gardening terms, it’s time to start planting things that need the threat of winter to persuade them to store food- garlic and…
OK, so we have cultural drift, and we’re not so connected to the seasons that we feel the affront of pumpkins in spring. But can we do a little bit of reinvention? Dressing up is very Beltane (especially as it tends towards the burlesque), but I can connect Princess Leia or the Incredible Hulk to Beltane easily. Street parties and pool parties and water fights and icecream, parades and costumes…
In the southern hemisphere, we are about to turn the corner into Spring. We are about to pass the point on the bell curve when the rate of change in day length begins increasing exponentially. The season of short days is about to end!
The actual solstice is not until the early hours of Wednesday morning, but since this is the closest weekend, we celebrated last night, and I had to share my gift with you. I have been grumbling so relentlessly lately about the turkeys and bower birds raiding my garden, that it inspired Henry, a most magnificent scarecrow.