A couple of years ago, during lockdown, I felt drawn to explore the stories of Moses and the Exodus.
One of these was inspired by Moses and the burning bush, where he takes off his shoes because the ground is holy. This poem now finds itself at Diana Butler Bass’ The Cottage, as part of her marking of the season of creation. It’s so good to be part of this beautiful musing on an important season, to be marking a shift in awareness as we begin to pause and reconsider our relationship with the rest of life on this dear blue-green planet.
I hope the link below will take you to her rich and thoughtful exploration of this theme.
Gradually, we’ve been reducing the size of the unmown places in the grass. It’s been growing so fast this year, and the flowers have had a second and a third go. The sun and the rain have kept everything flourishing. There are small frogs and grasshoppers, and many bees still. It’s worth going very slowly, giving everyone a chance to hop out of the way, and leaving places of refuge. Little by little….
I wish I’d taken a picture of this patch above in the week before it was cut, when a round shape appeared flattening the stems. We were pretty sure it was the muntjac who is a regular visit to the garden – earlier this year, there was a youngster too. You can read more about the deer in the garden here and here. She is a joy. I do worry about her crossing the road between the woods and the garden, about the speeding cars – but the only time I have ever seen her trotting along the road, everyone stopped and waited for her to be safe. Kind drivers!
As I sat by her space I imagined her presence. I felt the hum of the cars through the ground. And I thought of all the places where the creatures who used to make a home no longer do – all the absences. I felt the loss, even as I felt the beauty and abundance of this late flowering meadow. And so this poem emerged, in fits and starts. It’s taken its time, has a basenote of loss, and I hope it carries the gentle tenderness of the deer, and the many creatures I feel kin to even in this one garden.
What the space holds
There is a space in the long grass, a flattened disc of green stems, while all around late flowers nod. A curved bowl, waiting, rimmed with golden light.
Low down, face close to grass, I hear the hiss of breeze through stems, the buzz of bees, crickets, even, perhaps, butterfly wings. But there is no trace of whoever comes here, night after night, and circles, and settles to sleep. Too sweet a hay-smell for fox or badger, too big for cat.
I open my mind’s eye to the night, quiet, and across my heart a dark shape with long, delicate legs steps gently, picks her way through the black shimmer of stems and fills this space with a shadow – a shadow whose heart beats and ears twitch. I see a dream-deer, breathing, her brown sides rising and falling as the space fills with living warmth, with the softness of deer, with the gentleness of one who comes by night.
And as I dream, as I treasure the absent deer, I think of all the empty spaces and places, holding now only memory, fading, or worse, nothing. I think of the absences that there have been and that are yet to come.
Patterns cut out of sky where flocks of birds, tumbles of bees and butterflies are not, but once were. The rivers where there were fish, who are not. Places where the beavers and the big cats and the red squirrels are not, and their spaces cradle nothing, empty and mourning, Earth’s arms aching.
This soft round space that has become a bowl of dreams does not know if the sweet deer will return tonight, as car sound rumbles through the earth.
This bowl in the grass ringing with her absence, with the absence of all creatures who are not here, but who once were, as I run my finger around the rim, and feel the tremor of loss upon me, and through me. May she be safe. May she and all creatures be safe.
The final lines of blessing draw on the Buddhist practice of metta, or lovingkindness, meditation, which I have found deeply helpful and incorporate into my prayer and contemplation regularly.
When I was writing about the spaces where creatures are not, I remembered a wonderful Matisse exhibition we went to of his cutouts, done in his final months and filling his rooms with birds and flowers. I imagined the pieces of paper uncuring from his scissors and falling to the ground. I wondered if what we would be left with would be these negative spaces, with the birds and flowers no more, or if we would find our hearts opened to care for those we share this beautiful green world with.
Growing a garden which you hope will enrich and support wildlife, as well as provinding beauty for your own eye, is always full of suprises. This is no formal experiment, where we surveyed the insect and bird populations before we began to do things differently – in no small part because the process is changing and evolving and not based on a single decision point.
Last time I shared a poem with you, I hinted at the mysteries of not knowing. There are so many creatures I have no name for, yet, and I’m content to find out slowly. You can read that last poem, about the twilight creatures, here. This new piece carries a description of an unknown insect. I’m afraid I didn’t have my camera with me, and still don’t know what it was. Maybe one day I’ll find out! (Edit 22/7/23 see end of post)
This second “Unknown” poem also holds within it a reflection on seeds, and our tendency to see things as small acts.
Unknown – Oxeye daisy
This morning, the oxeye daisy cradled an insect I had never seen before. Unknown, unimagined, strange and handsome.
Long, black, elegant, with an abdomen scriven in yellow runes. It stroked its long, curled antennae tenderly, as if they were locks of hair. Not knowing me, it knew no fear. It did not fly as I gazed.
That small pinch of seed from last year – tiny, dry as sand – each day brings a new and wondrous fruitfulness, an unanticipated beauty, a new joy, a new abundance. The scattering of it was no small act, it seems. And I am coming to think that there are no small acts, after all.
For those of you who are interested in the readings followed by many churches, now is a time when the parable of the Sower is often called to mind – along with other seed related parables. This reflection on the scattering of seed, and the fruits that follow, draws on the insights of those stories. You could begin to explore those insights here, and here
Edit 22/7/23: In the comments below Caroline suggests it was a longhorn beetle. Here’s a picture from the Natural History Museum – a spotted longhorn beetle. It’s the one I saw! Welcome to the garden, little friend.
Once again, I am astonished, delighted and honoured to find something I wrote has made its way in the world, and is keeping the most excellent company with Diana Butler Bass as she shares from the last day of the Wild Goose Festival in The Cottage.
Please do take the time to read her reflections, and those she has gathered. It is a rich feast, with much to refelect on. The theme of Sower and Soil seems more relevant than ever as our soils become depleted on many levels. I am very struck by Cathleen Falsani’s reflections on the parable of the Sower from Matthew’s Gospel, which really resonate with me.
The parable is one I’ve returned to again and again, it seems to carry richer and different meanings whenever I encounter it. Here are some links to posts on the subject, in case you’d like to follow today’s readings.
Welcome back to the blog! Thank you for joining me here in the garden again.
One of the great joys of summer evenings is going outside to look at what’s happening in the warm, long twilights. In particular, I love to look for bats as they tumble and swoop over the long grass, and above the shrubs. Last year, we had a bat recorder in the garden, part of Transition Woodbridge’s wildlife corridors project. It’s fascinating to find out what treasures we have, and to work together to try and encourage more. There was an evening event with feedback, and you can find out a bit more about it here, following the links. I was sad to have missed it, as we were away. But I know there are bats here.
The garden at night is a very different place from in the day, quite mysterious. I’ve been thinking about the many creatures who come to or live in the garden who I don’t know and can’t name. I’m learning all the time, but the more you find out, the more you realise how much you don’t know. I’m learning too not to mind the mystery, to find out what I can but to just enjoy the beauty and variety of creatures we get to see, and hear. To notice the detail and the behaviour of creatures that may in time help me to find out what they are, but now the noticing is enough, and a real source of delight. We know the muntjak and the fox, and a hedgehog from time to time, are there at night, we hear an owl and know there are mice, and probably voles, but the unknown creatures bring something special to the experience of being in the garden too, Not rushing to id everything, but instead being open to observe with awe, is something I’m coming to love. You don’t need to know what things are called to appreciate them. You can also do your own naming!
So this theme, of unknown and unnamed things, begins to unfold in this poem. I think there might be a few more pieces exploring this way of seeing too.
I don’t have the tech for night-time photography, so the words will have to do.
Unknown June twilight 10 o’clock
We went outside to look for bats, up against the navy and turquoise sky, up among the slick sycamore leaves, up above the long grass where pale moths flutter.
We waited in the thickening dark, quieting, and then saw a black shape twisting and swooping amongst the other night-flyers – a heavy beetle lumbering, ghost-moths, silver gnats.
In the day, all can seem sweetness and light. The smell of roses and lilies hanging in the soft air. Our own familiar world, we can think.
But now, darkness reaches closer than our outstretched fingertips. The bat flies overhead, joined by another, and another, and we hear sounds too down in the long grass down in the deep cover of the borders. A rustling and a moving that grows louder as the space is transfigured by darkness, strange creatures blooming in the imagination, unknown and unnamed.
As looking up again, I see the gathering stars sometimes obscured by stretched and fluttering wings. There is so much unknown to me, so many names have never been on my lips. The quietness of unknowing is upon me, even as
I seek to learn. And I find I am discovering, mainly, what it is to live in wonder, to walk slowly, and in awe.
Last month we took a few days to visit Norfolk, staying by the Wash. UK viewers of Winter Watch and others may have seen some awe-inspiring film of one of the UK’s greatest wildlife events – sometimes called the Snettisham Spectacular. Maybe you’ve been lucky enough to see it for yourself. We decided we’d go and try and catch this sight, when a very high tide drives the birds off the mix of saltmarsh and water, into the air in huge flocks, and down into lagoons cared for by the RSPB. Their website (linked above) will help you get a taste of what its like, as well as some information about when these high tides happen.
Of course, there are never any guarantees with nature, but we got up very early and went to Snettisham in the dark, on a cold February morning, full of anticipation. I’d decided on flasks of coffee – which turned out to be an excellent idea! It was the most moving experience, deeply awe-inspiring, to see a landscape so full of life, and the wildness behaving freely as it should. I am sure that there have been times when there were more birds, and more wild, here, but it was nonetheless a glimpse of a more beautiful world, the world closer to how it should and can be.
You may also be aware that this precious landscape is vulnerable, and a new development could have a huge impact. If you want to find out more about that, you could begin here.
I wanted to try and capture the beauty of what we saw, and also the depth of experience that aroused in us and the others perhaps who were gathered there, and so this poem recounts the journey through the dark, and into the dawn-light of this beautiful sight.
Out in the Wash-marsh, the dark-before-dawn, we walked uncertainly, deeper in, listening warily for water sounds, mud sounds, as we heard, out on our right, the loudness of bird and tide. Restless, growing, imminent.
The path seemed so long in the dark, unknowing and unseeing as we were. On and on until at last we came out of hedge-shadows and reed rustles, out on the open bank of shingle, with a chill wind blowing, with the dark softening into the grey of mist and ice-fret, as out of the greyness emerged a gathering crowd, moving, looking, watching that density of black birds emerging too, out there on the mudbanks and sandbanks, crowding as the water was rising, All prickling with anticipation, all readying for flight.
Through a lens you could see the black backs of oystercatchers, tens of thousands, all facing one way, bright beaks aligned like many compasses.
And further out, paler knots, rippling over the shrinking land, their voices sounding together as water lapped and lapped ever deeper, full of fish washed in on this rapid tide, followed by the hungry seals, heads up, and hunting.
The bird noise grows, and the waders begin their great lift, A few at first, tip toed, up and down like dancers performing the perfect jete. Then, as waves pour over their islands and there is no room for all these birds,
They lift and stay lifted, from the edges, like a great cloth, swirling now above fast running water rilled with small waves.
And then the oystercatchers begin to pour like dark smoke, like sentient smoke, as one, all to the right, pour down into the lagoons behind us.
While the knots, catching the rising light, rise too, turning pale now, loud with cries and loud too with wings, like a great crowd running joyously, like a shining cloud swirling in the wind but with mind, with being, with will, a great pale creature rustling and winding through the air over us, close and low, and then down in a whispering snake’s head behind.
And again, and again, rise up more swirls of birds, faster and wider by the tens of thousands, of wings all together, birds turning together, a miracle of unity,
As wings beat like hurried feet as more people rush to look up, and the waves take more and more ground from under us all.
And I cannot tell you what joy, what exultation – And I write from longing to tell you what joy, what exultation, we humans, standing, feel in this wide and wild abundance, this wild and wide abandon. This deep unity, this wide-wild-eyed seeing into the communion of things.
As a sudden sound is added even to all this loud crescendo, like thunder, like jets,
The rise and beating of great wings – pink footed geese beyond number, beyond measure,
filling the sky with clouds of moving birds, spinning fast now into great skeins that wind over the deep distance, loud and louder bright on the dawn,
Bright with the wonder of wings lifting, Bright in this new, steady, giddying light. A light that washes through us all A light that holds us all As dawn breaks us wide open.
I hope this gives you a glimpse of how beautiful a sight it was, and how transformative.
Yesterday evening I had the great privilege of reading this poem to open a series of talks organised by the Woodbridge Climate Action Centre. Local friends, tickets are free, and are going fast. The series is called Regenerating Living Landscapes, Working with Nature.
It is possible that a recording of last night’s event may become available. If it does, I’ll make sure there’s a link to it here.
19th May Note: As you can see from the list above, tonight is the last talk in the series. Once again I’m delighted to have been asked to read something, and the poem I’m going to read is A Good Place, which is also on this blog. As usual, click through to read it.
Hello again! Thank you so much for joining me here. I’ve been taking a break from blogging, if not from writing, for a few winter months. But as the days are lengthening and the sap is rising I’m emerging from winter hibernation by the fire.
Yesterday, for #International Women’s Day, I joined some of the wonderful women and men who make our small town such a special place. We’d been invited by Counsellor Caroline Page, who organised the very special gathering despite seriously failing health. There was cake and poetry, an old wind-up gramaphone, and Suffragette colours – a celebration of women who had lived in the town in years gone by as well as those we know and love today. It was full of life and joy and friendship. Many people shared, and I hope to be able to put a link up in time to more details about the poems and stories that we read and heard together.
That morning, I’d been watching the pigeons in the trees in front of our house – a remnant of an ancient hedgerow we’re gradually restoring – and took inspiration from their eagerness and their clatter. So although this is not a poem about women, it’s a poem about life, for all of us I hope, and the awaking of spring. It was my contribution to the feast.
I’m sharing it as part of my inclination to awaken and to clatter, to be hungry for spring and for life. I hope you enjoy it.
Pigeons in the blossom – Early March
Now that the cherry plum is blossoming – hedgerows white and frothy, flowers pale, bark dark –
pigeons come through the grey sky, clattering as they land opposite my window, their collars brighter than the blossom where they perch and peck.
Sometimes one, often more – armfuls – they balance across the scrubby tree like vintage decorations, nodding their blushed heads hungrily, pecking so many buds.
The top of the tree is almost stripped bare – no fruit high up then, no precarious balancing on shaky ladders in the summer to come.
Lower, thinner, branches are tested again and again by fat feasting pigeons, hungry for rich bitterness.
I feel inclined to join them, to taste that blossom too. I know the hunger for spring, bone-cold and weary as I am. And I am coming to see their wisdom as I too feel the urge to awaken and to clatter, to feast on life with its bright blossom, its green buds, again and again.
Pigeons seem to be a bit of a theme. Not the most popular bird, I know, but I do enjoy watching them. I do hope to be an equal opportunities appreciator of nature, and to celebrate all the creatures who share this patch of garden wild.
Here’s a few more poems, if you’d like to read on.
It’s getting closer to Christmas. Unusually, this fourth sunday in Advent falls exactly a week before the day itself. And it’s cold here in the East of England, with a biting wind driving down from the north. And once again, the news is as bleak as the weather. So, what treasure might we find buried in the cold hard ground of this time? Are there signs of a different way of being, of living, getting ready to uncurl and grow?
The word, the theme, for the week to come is Love. And we remember the old carol….
Love came down at Christmas Love came down at Christmas, Love all lovely, Love Divine, Love was born at Christmas, Star and Angels gave the sign.
Worship we the Godhead, Love Incarnate, Love Divine, Worship we our Jesus, But wherewith for sacred sign?
Love shall be our token, Love shall be yours and love be mine, Love to God and all men, Love for plea and gift and sign.
There is a mystery we can enter into as we draw close to the year’s midnight, in this darkness where something hopeful and joyous is emerging. And the sign of it is love. Simply love: the token and the gift and the sign. As we approach Christmas, we can reaffirm that gift of love. We can consider what it might mean this week, for us, to live from a place and awareness of love. If Love came down at Christmas, what would that look like for me, at this time? Can we accept the gift and sign of this love? Can we receive it and allow it to change us, so we too are part of the new growth of this silent, midwinter spring?
As ever, this Sunday has it’s readings. Here’s the one from Isaiah 7..
Again the Lord spoke to Ahaz, saying, “Ask a sign of the Lord your God; let it be deep as Sheol or high as heaven.” But Ahaz said, “I will not ask, and I will not put the Lord to the test.” Then Isaiah said, “Hear then, O house of David! Is it too little for you to weary mortals that you weary my God also? Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Look, the young woman is with child and shall bear a son and shall name him Immanuel.He shall eat curds and honey by the time he knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good. For before the child knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good, the land before whose two kings you are in dread will be deserted.
And where that word – Immanuel – is translated as God with us.
It’s a profound promise. That God is with us. Even when we are unsure what we mean by God, even when we lose sight of what might seem clear in clear daylight, maybe we can come to know that we are held and accompanied in love. This, to me, is increasingly the heart and core and hope I hold onto. That God is indeed with us. And it is good to become alive to this in the bleak midwinter – as Christina Rosetti also wrote.
Recently some friends and I were discussing “God comes to you disguised as your life,” as Paula D’Arcy put it. The many ways we can find this “God with us” in all kinds of places – unexpected, joyful and difficult places alike. What if we could shift our hurry to categorise things as good or bad, this or that, and let them be, and wonder what they might teach us? Of course, we need to challenge injustice, work to make things better, but all of that begins with a clear-sighted seeing how things actually are – just the things themselves, viewed with compassionate curiosity. The gospels are full of hardship and difficulty, and love, companionship and healing. I am increasingly valuing the questions and uncertainties in the story – where things that seem bad, are turned to the good, and that which seems good, turns out to be less so. We can see instead how these things might work towards love, friendship, wholeness.
Some years ago I attempted a paraphrase of the beginning of John’s gospel. I thought I’d share it with you today.
Beginning
It started with the Word, who was there before the dawn of time – before the earth, the waters, the stars – there with God, was God. For in the beginning, there was simply nothing else.
But then, the Word began to work. When the Word spoke, the universe spun into song, and all things came into being. Without the Word there was only empty blankness.
For the Word, the universe burst into life like a desert after rain. This was the Word’s work – unleashing life and light – glorious and radiant, warming our lives like the sun in spring.
This is the light which shines through our darkness – cold, smothering darkness where nothing can grow. And the darkness draws back at its touch, not understanding a light that cannot be put out.
Then, the Word, source of life and light, came into the world he made, but the world hid its face in its hands. It did not recognise him. He reached out to his people, and they turned away.
Yet to all who welcome him, believed in him, he held out his hands to give them such a gift – to know that they are a child of God, Born of God.
So the Word, the One who was there from the beginning became flesh and blood and chose to make a home with us in this fragile, changing world.
He came with open hands to bless, brimming over with words of truth. He has unlocked Heaven’s storerooms and poured down gift after gift for us.
We saw his glory with our own eyes – we saw him shining with life and light, we saw the very One who came to us from the Father.
For no one has ever seen God. But this Jesus, the One and Only, who was there at the beginning, has made God known.
As the days have grown darker, and colder, I’ve been thinking about Advent, and hope. Traditionally, Hope is the theme of the first Sunday of the season, the first Sunday of the Church year too. Autumn seems to have been long, and restorative, and I’m not quite ready for winter. But here we are, nonetheless. And winter has its consolations.
I think there is wisdom in the old practices of having Advent as a time of quiet, reflective, waiting – a little like Lent before Easter. It’s so at odds with the flashing lights and loud shops and busyness, that understanding, but we can perhaps catch moments where those wintering practices are possible, and might help us….. pools of quiet light where we can breathe and think.
I’m also intrigued by the more medieval practice of putting yourself in the place of the people of Israel as they waited, not quite knowing what they were waiting for. Of not naming Jesus and Christmas, but instead allowing what we long for to be recognised and owned and prayed and worked for. In our context we join so many people throughout history who have felt the future to be shifting and uncertain, and who have longed for a kinder, gentler and more beautiful world. Taking some time to know and feel what we lack, what kind of world and lives we desire, might help us too face a troubling future with some courage and determination.
So Hope is a good place to begin.
Ah, hope. I’ve been turning over in my mind what it means to nurture hope in a world which seems increasingly unstable in climate and economics and culture. I’ve settled, for now, on making a distiction between hope and optimism. So, for me, I’m thinking of optimism as an opinion that things will work out. Something tied to outcomes. I see hope as a stance, an attitude of the heart and spirit, that it’s always worth looking for what brings life, for what is good. It does not require us to be naive about the dangers and difficulties around and within us. We are called to be as wise as serpents, and as gentle as doves – Matthew’s gospel.
Nonetheless, it’s worth working as if the world-as-it-could/should-be is here, emerging amongst us, small as the signs and growth may be. Not a glib avoidance strategy that it’s all fine, really, it’s all going to be fine…. but as a deliberate and courageous stance, holding on to a vision of how things could be. With the cost of living crisis bringing fear and hardship, and with the climate noticiably more unstable, we need courageous hope that’s prepared to work to refashion things around us in defiance of what we see. There is real power in such acts.
The picture of the bulbs and the bookmark at the top of this post relates to an action I took with some friends in our local high street to coincide with last year’s COP. We handed out bulbs and bookmarks, and encouraged people to think about ways they could plant hope. You can read more about that here.
As Advent begins, we re-read the words of the prophets together. They often spoke into desperate, unpromising circumstances with a mixture of a vision to hold in our hearts, and actions for our hands to do. Those actions can be prophetic themselves, speaking out and making plain God’s dream for the world – a beautiful, hopeful vision strong enough to withstand hard times – brave enough to choose to be born to a poor family, who sheltered in a stable, and had to run from a murderous tyrant. This is how hope was offered to the world, in the infant Jesus.
During this Advent series, I’ll share with you some extracts from my books. Here’s something from The Bible Retold , as the retelling of the Hebrew scriptures comes to an end, and we look forward..
As the walls were rebuild, so were the people. For God was building them into a new kind of kingdom. Isaiah the prophet wrote: “This is how to truly serve me: unbind people who are trapped by injustice, and lift up those who are ground down. Share your food with the hungry, and clothe the cold – that is how to live in the light!”
The people listened to his words of bright hope. “There is much darkness in the world, but your light is coming! All nations will be drawn to you, and they, too, will shine!” ….
“A child is born to us, a son is given. Authority will rest on his shoulders, and his names will be Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. His kingdom, his peace, will roll across the lands, and he will reign on the throne of David for ever.”
We give thanks for the work that is being done right now, in our communities, to clothe, and feed, and seek justice. May we have the courageous vision to join with that work of light.
The days are dark, Dear God, give us your true light.
The days are dark, Dear God, give us your true life.
The days are dark. Dear God, give us your true love.
From Prayers and Verses
The Advent Candle Ring is from the good people at The Chapel in the Fields It gives me great pleasure to know that the oak at the base was once a lectern, and the lighter wood on top a dining table. The words written around it are from the ancient chants, the “O” Antiphons. These chants came into being when people did not call for Jesus to come at Christmas, but instead used names from the Prophets – like Emmanuel, God with us – to name their hopes. The first few centuries of the Christian Era saw these great prayers, the “O” Antiphons, sung during Advent, calling on Christ to come now, and to come again. You can listen to the old chant, and read Malcolm Guite’s sonnet, and much more, here.
This coming week, let’s hold on to hope, look for signs of the life of God breaking through, and see where we can be part of that move towards a more beautiful, loving, hopeful world.
From the top photo…..
I made my bookmark with a stamp by the lovely Noolibird.
I’m really pleased to be part of Transition Woodbridge’s Wildlife Corridors project. You can read more about Transition Woodbrige here, and Wildlife Corridors here.
We’re a group of all sorts of people from about the town who are seeking to make it a bit more wildlife friendly, and learning and sharing as we go. So below, you’ll find a little story about one of our hedges which I wrote for the group’s newsletter. We’re beginning to do more of this – passing on our often falterning steps towards a different way of thinking about our gardens. Here, our hedge had a beetle problem, and we tried a gentler and more natural approach to the plague of viburnum beetles than we might have done in the past. We’re delighted that the hedgeline is gradually becoming much more beautiful, diverse, and better for a wider range of creatures than simply the dreaded viburnum beetle!
After the account, you will find a poem drawing on this same hedge, and its story of renewal.
A hedge story – from pest control to native beauty.
It was a thin strip of dark green, between drives and walls. Our viburnum hedge joins what’s left of the original roadside hedgerow with holm oak and wild cherry plums to the network of gardens and trees behind. A narrow corridor of life, but with precious winter flowers for the bees, and just occasionally, a wren or a bluetit nested there. It was part of the planting we inherited.
A few years ago, it began to sicken dramatically. Viburnum beetle. It looked devastated, and I had my doubts if it would recover. We consulted the RHS website, cut away the worst of it, and scraped out some of the soil underneath where the grubs overwinter. As I did so, I felt the poverty of the soil – it was grey, had no structure, with no visible worms or other minibeasts. So we piled on the homemade compost and autumn leaves. We also decided to enrich it more permanently with native plants – for as it was, it could not renew itself, and the long strip of monoculture was an easy target for the dreaded beetle.
I bought some bare rooted spindle from Botanica and interspersed these with hazel that the squirrels had kindly planted around the garden. In the autumns to come, I’m hoping for a blaze of butter yellow hazel, with bright red leaves and pink/orange berries from the spindle. All to fall to the ground and feed it.
It’s limped through this year’s drought, but we’re getting there. It’s drawn in so many more creatures already. The insects are returning. The soil has worms, and frogs and mice make their way along it. At night bats hunt over it, and by day, the dragonflies. Many plants are finding their way there, each making their own contribution. At first, it was mustard garlic. Now, there’s purple toadflax, birdsfoot trefoil, various bedstraws and all manner of other plants. Butterflies and caterpillars, bees and hoverflies, and a healthy range of beetles are making a home here.
There’s a trellis separating our neighbour’s drive from this hedge and, in consultation with them, we’ve planted garden seeds and cuttings – vetch and perpetual sweet peas to improve the soil, honeysuckle, roses and jasmine. Again, I hope that next year it will be truly beautiful.
And as for the beetle attack… there have been a few nibbled leaves in the last two years, but nothing more than that. And, if some of the original plants die, there is plenty of life to take advantage of the light and air they leave. We have moved from a dark monoculture to a diverse and increasingly native abundance, with so much more food for all life. The viburnum still gives flower at a time of year when the natives are quiet, and deep cover too for plants and animals and birds. But the natives are making their presence felt now, and bringing so much beauty, diversity and abundance. It’s becoming a joy, and an example of how gentle care can slowly move a garden to something far more alive. I’m watching what it’s doing with real delight. What will be next?
And now the poem…..
Green ink 1 Hedge
And the garden now is my poem. So this hedge, this long line of joy and work, rhymes its meanings back and forth, carries them through seasons, through drought and cold by bird and frog and bee. Carries deep memory of the land, of wood and hedgerow, orchard and field, and deep hope too, for what may be, and what is becoming. And growing.
For joy and work wrought it, and renewed it, planted these saplings of spindle and hazel that will be red and gold as leaves fade in late sun, fade to such an illuminated brightness.
And I see what may be, what are, sweet rose cuttings unfolding, and growing, as honeysuckle twines, and jasmine – tiny, with tiny leaves – grows now in warmth, and sweet peas begin their work of rising up from hard coiled seeds.
All this abundance given freely by the garden and gathered, and tended, and shared, as she freely gives more – wind-blown seeds and bird- carried berries filling the earth to overflowing, as together we make a line of such richness and beauty, thought and imagining, sibilant as the wind whips through it, sounding like words spilling on the page. These words. This page.
I would write in green, I have written in green, working with all this life. Patient, resting in its waiting, and growing, and fading, ending, and beginning again. And again. This long line of green.
Andrea Skevington 