I guess I don't expect flowers in November. Is this normal? I mean, shouldn't that be out in May? This week has been tumultuous in terms of wrong sleep patterns and discombobulating events. I have received feedback on two pieces. One I thought was a bit crap, but with the changes that one might actually get in the publication. The other one, i was excited about but it may not make it. I end up feeling.... befuddled. One of my friends said I should try getting a research post.

Kairos the Mystical Oak looks very mystical in those images! This is what he said: Home is a place and a time. Place is time that is rooted, which is why plants are always at home. Migration is a home that is routed. Roots and routes turn time into place. Tell the stories of your roots and routes to fix your mind in belonging. There is always the need to fix as the VOCs fix the water into rain and the chlorophyll fixes light into sugar.   There is no one to one relationship w

As well as feeding the crows in the park, I do have the fun of feeding the birds at the Reserve every now and then. These birds are somewhat familiar with humans and do associate us with food rather than threat. Not that they are so very keen to be focused upon... I put food in a huge feeder, some out on a table, and half a bucket on the track down to the Reserve. The reason for this is not as generous, perhaps, as might at first appear: the bird dudes do a lot of ringing her

The bird situation gets no better. I hear a wren. I think I heard robin subsong, and often hear robin complaints. I see blue, great and coal tits and occasionally blackbirds. The starlings and pigeons feast and today there was a magpie. Disconsolate, I have plodded to the park a few times and have been delighted to be remembered by the clever crows. The Driveways are the most present, the Unbrave Two (yes, only two) remain smart and alert and I also fed two other pairs, one o

A tree conversation for you. I was sitting under the oak that's in the centre of the picture on the front listing, but the pictures are of other trees... A large oak in a field elsewhere on the same estate (an oak by the name of Bulge), a lime a few hundred yards from where I was sitting and then some hawthorns and an ash down by a little brook.

...and what did I do with them? Well, I sort of left them too long and then threw them on the compost... Meanwhile, I am listening to Against the Machine by Paul Kingsnorth, which is invigorating. One of the things he would suggest is using the bloody quinces rather than buying avocados, Though that would hardly be top of the list of his critique of the times we live in. Some of his claims can sound reactionary... holding a political similarity, perhaps, with the likes of Jo

I went to London to see a play, on which more shortly, and I had scheduled time for a long walk. Two and a half hours. Off I set and in Regent's Park I came upon a chestnut felled as it was unstable and next to a footpath. It probably would have been fine for a few years yet, I reckon, so it's just as well I am not a Tree Safety Officer. You can see how the fungus was eating the heart out of the tree. Still, the detritus would drop down inside the tree, eventually become soil

I've been on bird feeding duty again, which is something I rather like. And I liked it that I heard and saw wrens, after my recent discoveries about them. I have been wondering if I could write something on the theme of the wren and sacrifice, the little death of the winter before the great birth of the spring. And of the wren singing throughout its dying, but still accepting the fate of the turning year... and how we, humans, maybe need to learn some of this humility.... It

...even though I managed to get a couple of snaps of them. The dunnocks always spend a long time deciding whether or not to move into open country. They can spend a minute or so looking and considering before they hop onto the green box. The garden robin is always unwilling to be visible. And the tits are not big fans either. I seldom get photos of wrens, but one day one landed close to me, looked at me briefly, and flew off. Then the next day I saw two chasing each other - I

And I managed to glean another post from the photos on that single walk. I love the cool tones of the pine bark and the warmth of the leaves! Loved it so much that I offer up a second example! And the trunk of this tree was especially pleasing. It's a year since my Crone ceremony. As predicted, becoming a Crone in ritual as well as nature was not a magic bullet to rid me of my misery. But there have been some good things... the ongoing relationship with Harry and Saskia; orga

Still walking at the Firs.... well, bot in real life, but as far as the pictures are concerned. It was with these trees that I realised that tree trunks are not really brown, and also where I saw ants busily walking up and down the trunk to collect something - I presume honeydew from aphids - from high up in the canopy. One of them has dropped a large spreading branch. At the foot of one, this large fungal fruiting body, like a papier mache rose with the diameter of a large d

A fallen tree, a feast for fungi. I think this is honey fungus - the species who counts in its number the largest living being... wait a sec... maybe there are two different Armillaria? Hard to be certain. And I didn't see the fruiting bodies. And besides, mushrooms are very hard to ID in my opinion. Still, I like these pictures And I like the reminder that not all fungi are good for trees. Harriet Rix's book explores tree/fungi relations and she is a little sniffy about the

Prepare for a series of posts about a single walk in Harlestone Firs. It was meant to be a ypga or a running day but I decided to walk and take my camera. As I have no friendly garden critters and don't run with the camera any more, my photo library tends to get used up fairly swiftly. There are many sweet chestnuts in the woodland. Many that have been planted maybe thirty or forty years ago, but also some lovely old ones. This was a coppiced stool with seven stems - or more

Before I get into that - see this? A bone right by Kairos. First time I had noticed it. It must have been brought there as it was on top of the leaves. But it was an old bone. So large, too... maybe a muntjac's back thigh, I suppose. I wonder who delivered it? Once upon a time, I had a poster of Flaming June up in my house. I liked the painting and the colours and, indeed, the title. The last two are echoed in this montage. The needles must be larch, I suppose and the ash lea

After seeing the squirrel on the ground, I was swept away by the sweeping grace of this oak. I have noticed it many times before, but on this occasion I was enchanted. There was something about the curves and the light, the reach and the spin, the moss and the bark. I just stared. Henri Bortoft advises that you experience the experiencing, and I think that an incident like this throws you into that state of being where, as it were, the experience of the tree IS the experienci

This is not a safari to find the Big Five. I scarcely see Five and never Big. I'm reading, again, or listening again, to The Song of the Dodo , which, like The Lost City of Z , reminds you that walking in the Amazon you might see nothing much for days on end. Diversity does not imply abundance. And you have to learn how to see. The squirrels tend to be the best bet, when it comes to mammals. These were young ones chasing each other. The two on the tree saw me and started shri

This is the end of Sean Kane's wonderful book. I have some comments at the end. Any reader of myth feels the sly tug of this claim- it pulls a person out of a dry rationalism back into some version of the Earth's poetry. However, this universal claim for myth holds certain dangers for the modern individual, and it is time, at the close of this book, to sound a warning. The warning is about the promise of redemption that mythology inevitably falls into in our time. For those o

Garden Robin is no more fond of me and Tane hasn't been back. Indeed, there's little of interest in the garden. I stand there. Enjoy my little trees. Hear rustles and cheeps. Come back inside. The days are closing in and the clocks change this weekend. An hour less sleep. That's a shocker. So, let's talk about my reading. A hearty recommendation for Sean Kane's Wisdom of the Mythteller . Hard to say what it's about, except to say that the world in which myth originates is the

...with three different trees. The first tree is one who was really struggling but is improving. I always think this tree is quite happy. Once or twice I saw a hare in this location. The second tree is Chronos, who had little to say today. I've quite often seen hares around this part of the Reserve. The third is Minerva, whom I sit in or on rather than next to. Once I saw a stoat here and another time a muntjac.

See the grasping hand of the being seeking to escape from the tree? This is an ash who had dieback. They have removed the branches that seemed likely to drop but allowed the useful trunk to stay in place. Along the track, there are many sick ash trees. They seem worse hit here than on the Reserve. Is it all the fertilizer? or their position as standard trees on hedgerows? I don't know, maybe the researchers do.... but I know that some woodlands are terribly badly hit. I remem