perplexity and peace

I'm grateful for dentists ~ honestly! I know that without them life would be a lot more painful and horrible...can you tell I'm trying ever so hard not to complain about the challenges of impressions and extractions...and having to eat cold cauliflower cheese very, very slowly. I'm also grateful for anaesthesia, but I don't much enjoy that either... As a matter of fact, in this respect,my usual blatant disregard for injury deserts me totally - well it's self inflicted normally so that's ok!
    I remember my friend Dan who was trollied off for cancer surgery laughing, saying that the dentist still reduced him to a nervous wreck and so it is with me, nothing else comes close...Still, I'm grateful for dentists, honestly!
             Gradually the world outside is beginning to dry up, the sweet peas are spending the daylight hours outside now, the tomatoes are up and I'm hoping for a dry spell over the weekend to get a patch dug for shallots and garlic and to get some salads started. It's a flower day tomorrow Moon gardeners (sidereal Libra/air sign astro peeps) so I'll be sowing some aquilegia and gypsophila  in the propagator.     

 

 

Today I'm grateful for peace. Our country is being run by a bunch of crazies and I don't expect that to be changing in a hurry, but so far,thank heavens, my life and that of most of us alive in Britain today has been lived without the daily horrors and deprivations of war. As a child in the early sixties I used to hear heavy planes droning overhead as I lay in the huge iron bedstead of my Grandmother's  spare room and quake with terror waiting for the dreaded 'atom bomb' to explode. I'd heard my Nan and Fred the Baker discussing this phenomenon in some detail when I should have been elsewhere ~ invisibility was one of my several talents ~ I never told them that I was scared but I still remember the terror, night after night as the planes came in low to a wartime RAF station nearby.  Last year, I was following Harry Fear's late night broadcasts from Gaza as Operation Pillar of Cloud took place a world away. Drones endlessly circled the city all the long, dog barking night and I got just a whiff of the same feeling. With today's atrocities reeling across the TV screen, I'm feeling more grateful and privileged than I can say that I have lived my life in relative peace.

Aromatics

Thanks to the person whose vehicle number plate 666 RRR made me smile.
    Today I had every intention to go to the allotment and make a start on cutting up the pittosporum tree which blew down last week and is seriously in the way of progress. A combination of drizzle and lethargy weakened my resolve however and so I turned my hand to making tummy salve.
         Butters, oils and beeswax combine to make an aromatherapy treatment for nervous tummies. You know, it's when you're worried, angry and generally emotionally overwrought, the digestive system is often the first way your body responds. You're 'gutted', 'sick of it', running to the loo and worse.  This pleasantly fragrant salve is massaged gently over the solar plexus chakra in a clockwise direction ( that's the way the digestive system works) to soothe and relax the jittering and churning which are so uncomfortable. Soon you're breathing more slowly and deeply and feeling calmer and
back in control. This salve doesn't react badly with sunlight on the skin and it's safe during pregnancy ~ it will even help to prevent stretch marks.

  
 There's a good strong one for adults and a milder version for the under 12s. A baby salve is on the way too just made with pure camomile.  I'm grateful that we can almost always find something in our environment to comfort and heal . Do you have a particular wild plant that flourishes in your garden? Before you complain too much, just check on the medicinal properties of that plant - does the answer ring any bells?

Buskers

Snowdrops, as you probably know, are best planted 'in the green' - meaning in full growth, and here in the far west that's about now. So I was delighted that after a few whopping hints, the Beloved arrived home at lunchtime today with a couple of nice clumps of snowdrops ~ thankyou, you're a Goody!

 

I love street music; In town this afternoon it was really good to hear the first buskers of the year, Flats and Sharps ~ a young Penzance bluegrass band ~   (you can tell if they're good because they have a guitar case instead of a hat) doing rather well too, deservedly so, thanks to them and all musicians,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Y0Z81t9hfo

 

catch them here.

 

For myself and many of us who work alone, one of the best of modern innovations is the podcast ~ hours of cold and tedious work now fly by in thrall to a multitude of  fascinations. I learned more stuff about the Iron Age today than I realised there was to know and if I listen to it a few more times I might even remember some of it. Gratitude then to experts of all sorts and to the BBC which in spite of some glaring shortcomings is still, in my opinion, worth the licence fee.

And although in principle I'd rather supermarkets didn't exist, I have to shamedfacedly admit to being rather infatuated with the brand new Sainsbury's store which opened here a month or two ago, I'm captivated by the little solar panels on its carpark lamps, its recycled rainwater in the toilets and its lovely lighting and air conditioning that you actually don't notice - it's just clean, tidy and lush and though I may well fall out of love with it and its GM Desiree potatoes quite soon, like all infatuations, it's pleasant while it lasts..

 

Smelly Henry

Monday is housework day chez Morvah so today I'm grateful for my little vacuum cleaner whose  smiley face belies its true nature and purpose which is to fill the house with the fragrance of 'Old damp dog, lately cavorting in foul marsh' while it does its job of sucking up our filth. So I'm thankful for nice smells again; the room spray of fresh roses that I made before Christmas comes into its own on Mondays.  Thankfully, open windows are at last an option again, and it's possible - if a tad ambitious - to hang washing outside, it seems so long....
     I'm grateful for little snippets of interest and amusement from my friends on facebook. I like that it's possible to  'chat' in real time sometimes or to take hours or days over a conversation, or just send a smile or blow a kiss if there's no time, so thankyou all of you - you make my day better by being there.  Of course it's also a source of learning and I'm grateful also to those of you who teach me so much about so many things ~ we're all learning together perhaps, even we old'uns! My long love of astrology, studied alone for the best part of thirty years has been enhanced  so much by finding the astrology community online ~ thank you all.
  

                                                                                                                                                                                  

We've lived in this street, with a couple of short breaks, for seventeen years. In that time we have lived in three of its eleven houses and made gardens in all of them. Sadly two of them have been cleared away for the purpose of displaying rank weeds and rubbish. The first is next door to where we now live and has been stripped repeatedly of any sign of survivors of my planting and left to long grass and mud - until this winter a new tenant has arrived and started to dig over the garden. She has struggled through  water and mud to get it done and planted up. She's very young and keen and we can't wait to see flowers over the garden wall again so I'm grateful for my lovely young neighbour and to all those who make gardens everywhere, Spring is on its way!                                                                                                                                                      

 

Sunday

Any of you still up and reading this on facebook should be in bed.I should be in bed and am only here by dint of commitment to a daily stint of gratitude.  Plenty to be grateful  for today, none of it Earth shaking but all of it a pleasure.
   For Sunday morning lie-ins and slow breakfasts and for a gorgeous, sparkling sunny morning with the first ground frost of the winter, I give thanks.  That we live so close to Marazion beach I'm grateful. Rarely - maybe August bank holiday - have I seen so many people there as today. Granted, at least half of them sat in their cars eating burgers and chips without even a window open, but at least they got away from the TV.  The beach is still all over the car-park and is strangely loose and gravelly, there's a lot of seaweed and disconcerting bits of cars but for beach starved walkers it's a dream.

    I'd also like to give thanks  (I've been watching the BAFTAs) for :

                 The Beloved, who is my best mate and who cooks on Sundays,
                 Pebbles ~ I never return from the beach without a pocket full of pebbles,
                 A very weary dog who had a happy time chewing seaweed and smiling at people,
                 The smell of Date and Walnut Sunday cake in the oven,
                  And finally my bed ~ I love my bed and happily I am off there now,
                  Sweet dreams!

Calm

At bedtime the world was in turmoil, wind and water and LOUD....by morning the wind had dropped to a stiff breeze,the rain had stopped and it was so QUIET you could hear  the birds singing. I'm grateful for quiet, so grateful, it's balm to the soul.

                          "  Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises,
Sounds, and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears; and sometime voices
That, if I then had waked after long sleep,
Will make me sleep again; and then in dreaming,
The clouds methought would open, and show riches
Ready to drop upon me, that when I waked
I cried to dream again."            Shakespeare   The Tempest

      Nice enough for a walk up on the moor after collecting our eggs at the farm where newly born calves and budding daffodils herald the spring.  It  was still breezy but with moments of calm when the sun felt warm on our faces ~ bliss!  Jester was beside himself and ran around like a crazy pup with an expression of pure joy...So I'm grateful today for Sunshine, for the good clean air up there that gets you high; for the fabulous views of the bay to the South, the hills to the East and West and the rocky outcrops of the high moors above the North coast and that the great sky above is once again full of birds.
         I'm grateful for the heartstopping green of mosses in the granite hedges. Unshaded by leaves, they flourish and flower before the spring, loving the wetness, tiny perfection.

 Back at home, tomato and chilli seeds have joined the flowers in the propagator today..will we get a good summer to grow and ripen them this year?   It's an act of faith, some you win, some you lose ~ every year a different success and a different failure so it usually pays to plant a good variety.
   I'm grateful for afternoon snoozes too ~ dog and self spark out.  Looks like being fine again tomorrow ~

Lunacy

It's a short one today because it's late and I'm too tired to write much but hopefully the power will stay on long enough for a little natter...Isn't it amazing how quickly you can get used to things?  A couple of months ago, a storm like the one blowing out there at the moment would have had me peering anxiously out of the window, listening for the next howling gust and being generally a bit agitated. Tonight it's not bothering me half as much, I'm just truly grateful we're not flooded.
      With no possibility of gainful employment and climbing the walls with cabin fever, we took advantage of a break in this morning's deluge to make a quick foray to the allotment in search of veggies. Nobody else was about but it actually felt rather nice to be out; it was very mild and green, a definite air of spring - the birds think so too.

    The allotment path over the stream was too alarmingly flooded to cross so it was a much longer walk than expected to go the long way round. The heron who fishes by the bridge was diverted too, forlornly flying around looking for somewhere safe to find lunch . The allotment is best described as 'laid waste'. A few dry days and it'll look less daunting I imagine but there's so much to do, things should be planted very soon and there isn't a hope at the moment.  Very grateful for a good bag of vegetables though; parsnips, leeks, sprouting and kale, rosemary and pussy willows for the windowsill.
        What made me most very grateful today were a couple of pots of golden crocus bursting into bloom in spite of the weather. They're new corms this year, bought from the garden centre in September and I'm willing to bet that before planting out in our courtyard they've never seen actual daylight or rain or moonlight and yet...in another pot are a mix of crocus that have been kept for several years, flowered, died down and come back up without any interference from us. Today the yellow crocus in that pot broke their buds too, and you know why ? Because it's the Full Moon!  My sweet peas and antirrhinums are coming up too for the same reason. I'm grateful that regardless of the machinations of mass producers and their genetic tinkering, the Moon still effortlessly beckons and we all respond...you didn't? Are you sure?