Summer will pass but not before we sing

It's summer, or at least that's what it says on the packet. We have set aside the big (but just a little crazed and chipped) old mug and replaced it with an elegant, slender-stemmed glass. And filled it with sparkling bubbles dancing in a tartly sweet liquid. No more the thick, pleasing gunk that went in that mug, that can wait now, wait until the nights close in again.

It's summer, I know this as the swallows skim across the surface of the canal their metal blue backs catching the sun as it cracks between the tall trees on the bank. So I put down the solid, heavy-bottomed, tight-lidded casserole and drag, from the furthest recess of the cupboard, the big old wooden salad bowl. No more dark, rich stew of oxtail, mutton or game birds. Instead there's delicate spring lamb, just grilled, fresh sparrow's grass and salads of newly grown herbs, little green onions, juicy peppers and lettuce - crunchy yes but just a little bitter.

It's summer and men in white bestride the fields. A little green and red mars the whites, not like times before when the mud and clay caked knees, socks and boots. The games last a little longer, often ending in a draw. But this matters not as in this season we are less hurried, no longer frantic in our chasing of goals but happy to watch wait, to take our time at the task in hand.

It's summer and the old spirits - the gods of wood, hedge, moor and marsh - are about. Not crashing and bashing like the guardians of rain and wind but gentle, relaxed and smiling. Pleased to watch as the season's good things grow, as they mature. As nature's magic works its way into our pleased hearts to make us smile and laugh - helped as ever by the sparkles in that glass.

Soon, too soon, summer will pass. The cocoa mug will be on the kitchen table again. And we'll wonder if the dark drear of winter will ever pass. But for now we have joy and can feel summer's magic make us sing.

....

The Force of Nature - a meditation on hubris

We think it can be controlled, directed, bent to our purposes. We believe we are above it - better, stronger, in control, responsible. We blindly - gleefully even - lay claim to being responsible for all of nature's ills. It must be man we cry!

Yea, even when disaster strikes, we still want the crisis to be of man not of nature. We have turned our backs on the force of nature, waved away the truth that we are but scurvy ants scurrying on the surface of a small planet in a small solar system - a place governed by nature's power not the power of man.

Sometimes nature reminds us - in the most terrible, terrifying of ways - of her power. She says to mankind - I am in charge not you. You are nothing.

But we don't listen choosing instead to find reasons in the actions of men to explain the majesty of nature. Instead of recognising the sovereignty of nature, we look instead for man-made disaster.

Our breath is taken away when nature visits us with terror - we cannot explain, we cannot comprehend, we just have to cope. And to cope we must make our own, self-built disaster from the ruins of nature's act.

That, my friends, is hubris.

....

Growth

Spring is on its way, things are starting to wake up from winter's slumber. From resting out the deep cold. Growth begins - in tiny ways at first with the shoots of snowdrops and daffodils poking up through last years dried leaves, with the little pink buds on the currants and with the pale signs of future flowers now visible on the rhododendron buds.

However, winter isn't over yet - February, the month of snow, lies between us and the full flowering of spring. It may not snow - we might have got our measure with that hard, tough month of snow and frost before the New Year. But I wouldn't count on it - they aren't called snowdrops for nothing!

I've spent this morning in the garden. Just tidying, trimming and checking stuff out - plus shifting another ten barrow loads of leaves to a place where they can rot unmolested. And I was struck by nature's ability to spring anew - fresh from what seemed a dead world. The rhododendron our neighbours hacked back almost to the ground has sprung shoots - plus one or two buds. The big copper beech is lighter, somehow feels happier for having its canopy lifted and the roses - pruned right back before the winter - are showing how they'll grow again bringing with that growth those glorious flowers.

In our mad, rushed, tangled urban lives we find the seasons inconvenient - for many they've been replaced with 'climate control'. With systems regulated to provide an even temperature all year round. So we step safely from unvarying office temperatures, to air conditioned cars and from there to hermetically sealed, temperature controlled homes. Technology has banished the seasons.

So when those seasons fight back - when the winter throws snow at us or the summer delivers a heatwave - we moan and grumble. It is so sad that we - little ants scratting on the surface of a huge planet - think ourselves so important that the audacity of nature takes us aback. Why have the government not done something, we cry! It's getting warmer - it must be man's fault, we are after all so huge, so important.

Nature will win, dear reader. She always does - we watch helpless at floods, droughts and snowdrifts trying to pretend somehow we are at fault. We are not at fault - although it is perhaps the vengeance of Caradhras that we are seeing in these things. Nature is putting us back firmly in our place, laughing in the face of our hubris.

And then blessing us with new growth. Magic.

....

Symbiosis....

Gardeners know that, as you dig down comes the robin. For sure, that robin's mostly interested in the worms and grubs you're turning up - with the prospect of goodies from the earth. But he's also a friend - we feel joined in our labour by part of nature.

The robin lives in our garden because it's managed. We turn the soil unearthing food, we build sheds to nest in, we plant trees and bushes to roost in and, when the weather's bad we put down food. And that robin thrives - along with his brother, the blackbird and cousin, the wren. It's worth coping with the cat to live in a place of abundance.

This symbiosis - our pleasure for the robin's food and shelter - is central to our relationship with nature. It isn't the relationship of the 'bunny-hugger' - oo-ing and ah-ing at the pretty birds. The robin isn't an especially friendly chap but an aggressive, territorialist. Woe betide any other robin that wanders onto his patch!

No, this is a symbiosis of appreciation and recognition, of impermanence, of interdependency and, at the bottom, self-interest.

.....

A little on the glory of the garden....

****

After a day hacking. chopping, digging, mowing and trimming I feel rather better than I did yesterday. For sure most of my body feels like someone's been over it with a meat tenderiser but the garden now looks cared for - able to grow a little, to bud and to flower.

And the garden needs this care. After a week of so of letting it rip and few judicious cuts, a little reality for the burgeoning green stuff and termination for the weeds that get in the way of the garden's glory.

Nature does the good stuff - what I do is make it possible for that to happen.

.....

Wednesday Whimsy: why I believe in Fairies

It has long struck me as odd that it is socially acceptable to believe in ghosts but considered a sign of utter madness to believe in fairies!

Of course it was not always so as a couple of girls in Cottingley showed - sensible grown men and women were taken in (maybe distracted by the day job of getting thousands of Frances and Elsie's neighbours blown to bits in Belgium) by their pictures of real live fairies!

It does however strike me that fairies are far more believable and understandable than ghosts - which makes absolutely no sense at all to me. At least I can see a route back to belief in the spirits of stone and tree and stream - things that may have no reality but which chime with our love of anthropomorphic representation. Indeed this humanising of the non-human seems a huge part of our modern culture perhaps suggesting that Paul Jennings was not so far off the mark with his spoof philosophy - resistentialism. "Les chose sont contra nous" - Jenning wrote: and do we not echo that every day in our talk of bugs and gremlins, fates and breakdown?

Surely these are modern day nature spirits - the 21st century fairies. Far more real than ghosts - merely things to scare or else reflecting a fearful realisation that our time on this earth is short and we have no idea what does or doesn't happen after.

So yes, I'm prepared to believe in fairies. But ghosts - no way, no such thing.
.