Sunshine!

I think I have got so used to the rain and cold that the arrival of the sunshine has amazed me. It is too hot though. Like many others we always find the weather not to our liking but there is nothing we can do about it. I often wish that it would rain at night and be sunny during the day. No doubt some country somewhere is able to provide this by some means or other.

The wet weather had made gardening out of the question and last week when able to garden, I found the snails had had a field day. Around each newly emerging perennial shoots were several snails having a feast. I have lost a lot of plants like many others. The rain of course has caused a lot of flooding in some areas and the farmers are unable to grow their usual crops.

I know some people do not believe in climate change. After all the climate has changed over the centuries. But it is changing now and it is obvious it is changing. We don’t get the cold snowy winters that I remember when I was a child. We are getting more extremes of weather, longer wet spells and last year a very hot spell too. It is time to think about our food supply. I saw that one university has organised people to record what is going on in their gardens. Which plants came out earlier, which ones died when they would normally have survived and so on. This is a good start but we need to do more. Other countries are having droughts and famine. Are we going to be like them? Think about what you can do. Raised beds are good for growing veggies.

Beltaine and more

Yesterday for the first time in many years I joined in an on-line ceremony. When I was still working through my druid course I was a member of a Grove and stayed that way until about 12 years ago. I still did ceremonies at home until my best friend Simon died and I just felt unable to do a ceremony. Then Covid came along and made things worse and I also moved house. I found a group I could join but my physical health does not allow me to stand for very long. But over the last few weeks I have felt much better. I feel as if I have been going through the deep dark night of the soul and have emerged with more energy. So last night I joined the online ceremony of OBOD. It felt right and I felt a part of it too. In 2012 I had written a very short poem about Beltaine. Here it is;

The Goddess has dressed the land in green,

Scenting the breeze with her blossoms.

So now is the time to join with the God

Who will husband the Land and be King to the Queen.

Between them the Bright One, the Son of Light

Brings love and peace to our hearts.

The land is green, green in many different shades and it is beautiful. The hawthorn is in full blossom and scents everywhere. I feel part of this environment, I feel a deep connection with the earth beneath my feet and I feel a deep connection with our planet. As Jane Goodall said, ‘We’ve got to somehow understand that we’re not separated from it, we are all intertwined. Harm nature, harm ourselves.’

A new set of words

Over the last few years I have noticed lots of new words and I am never sure just what they mean. We have the Millennials, who I assume were born around the millennium, Gen Z who I have no idea about and we have the word ‘woke’. This word ‘woke’ has puzzled me for some time. As a spiritual person I am very aware of injustices and unfairness in our lives and always try to be fair to others, to sympathise and to make sure they feel OK with whatever is going on. I am also an empath which brings its own problems as I can sense when people are struggling too. Does this mean I am woke and if so why are governments trying to put a stop to ‘wokeness’?

Checking with various online dictionaries, being woke is being aware of social injustices including racism. As far as I can see, there is nothing wrong with this but our country and many others are slowly moving politically to the far right. Personally I don’t think this is a good thing.

I found a website with a chart showing the names for groups of people born between various years. So I am part of the Silent Generation! Gen Z are those born between 1997 and 2012 and Millennials are those born between 1981 and 1996. I’d love to know who decided all of this. I am very vocal about things especially injustice and racism so why am I classed as part of the Silent Generation. I know lots of other people my age who are also vocal about injustice too. What do you think about naming groups of people by when they were born?

Let’s stop there and look at a lovely photo of something in nature.

On the brink

I have a very strong feeling that things are about to change. I’m not sure whether it is for the better or for the worse, But I feel something big is about to happen. There is a lot of unrest in our world, not just wars but other political upheavals. The physical part of our planet also seems restless with earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.

I read some time ago that the positions of the planets in the next few months are exactly as they were before the events of 9/11. Many astrologers are forecasting more war and terrorism but I hope that will not come.

I also believe that many people are seeing alternative ways of living and working and that together these people can make changes in our world for the better. However it is a well known fact that you have to get rid of the old in order to make space for the new. Think about the ritual of spring cleaning, we clean our house and get rid of things we no longer need. Our house and ourselves feel much fresher then and more receptive to new things.

But we can change the world. An experiment some years ago where people all over the world were asked to pray together at the same time for the same thing, appeared to work well and what they prayed for happened. Can we pray for peace and make it happen? Can we pray for a better world and make it happen? Thoughts are like prayers; they are energy so let’s get together and send out our thoughts and prayers for a better world for all. Let’s choose the right path.

Is there hope?

It was good this week to get out into nature and despite the flooding see signs that spring is here and that the seasons roll on as before. It made me feel so much better about my life and that of others around me. Hope springs eternal is a well known quote and we should always have hope.

There is an eclipse next week which always bring changes often of the sort we don’t want, like earthquakes, volcanic eruptions etc. I also read somewhere that the planets are in an alignment that is only seen every so many hundred years and that the last time this happened there were very great changes in the world. Maybe this will happen again and we will see people change their way of thinking and doing and wars will cease. I don’t know what it will take for this to happen but it will need a great deal of change with those in power. So many seem to think that money is the most important thing but we can’t eat it!

Another thing that is annoying me is the use of AI. It appears everywhere including a bit at the top of a pdf file saying it can help me more. It has also appeared on my genealogy web sites too. I was told it could write my family history for me; I would rather do that myself as at least I know what really happened long ago. Where is our world heading? Do you have hope that it can get better? We need hope.

Some Improvements

A few improvements the last month or so. My eyesight is better and I have new glasses. This means I can read more but I can also see things outdoors and they are clearer and brighter. That is great when the sun shines of course. But Spring is definitely here as there are more flowers blooming, there are catkins and pussy willows and the birds are busy doing courtship dances. It is warmer but there is still a lot of rain. One day last week we had to turn round and go another way as the road and surrounding fields were totally flooded. But it was good to se the cowslips starting to open and the fritillaries. I have also seen a few Brimstone butterflies about as well.

I have found the last few months totally depressing with what is going on in our world, not just local, nationally, but globally. History keeps repeating itself and we never seem to learn as what we want takes over from what we need. Money seems more important than people and kindness is disappearing fast although there is still some around.

I decided that as I was unable to change the world I would change a bit more how I live, but I would also try to enjoy what time we might have left. I have just started work again on my bit of garden and I have been painting much more which is something that gives me a great deal of satisfaction and also is a way of meditating. I hope that in the near future our governments will wake up and realise what they have to do even though it may be something they don’t want to do. You can’t live on money and when the last tree is gone…….. you know the rest of the words to that.

Spring

Meteorologically Spring has arrived but we have seen spring flowers for a few weeks now. Everything seems to have come out around three weeks early, the snowdrops, the primroses, hazel catkins and pussy willows, etc. There has been so much rain that the ground is like mud. Trying to put in new plants is hopeless; as soon as you dig a hole it fills with water! I feel sorry for the farmers whose winter crops have rotted in the ground and it is too wet to plant more. Food might be scarce for a while unless it is imported.

Here, where I live, we have had almost three times as much rain as normal although normal now seems to have a different meaning. Not only is the weather chaotic but the world around us is chaotic as well. There is so much infighting in our government that nothing gets done and no-one seems to be able to put themselves in the place of those in great danger in other countries. It seems to be all about greed and keeping money to themselves. Yet the general public seem to be quite charitable. They raise money for those in need and those who need medical help, they donate to food banks and often go out of the way to help others. They donate money to help to protect our environment and not let developers destroy it.

Let’s hope the next few months bring some joy and hope to those who need it. I am stopping now as my eyesight is blurring again. Hope to write again in a few weeks. Here is a photo of a robin taken in January this year.

Looking at our world

We are half way through February and time appears to be flying very fast. But many things do not change. Some ‘sayings’ recently came to my mind. One is that ‘2 wrongs don’t make a right’. The other is that ‘an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind’. There are most likely to be many more ‘sayings’ like these. However it seems that some world leaders do not know these ‘sayings’ or don’t actually understand what they mean.

There are plenty of people who annoy me when I think about the above sayings. Those who twist words around to make themselves look good or innocent also annoy me. However it is what it is, another well known phrase!

But I want to be hopeful and I can see things around me that do give me hope. I see people helping others when needed and I see people helping to fill food banks and ‘kindness shops’. I also see things happening in the natural world. The weather has been very mild and plants seem to be coming into bloom about 2 or 3 weeks earlier than normal. I have lesser celandines out as well as daffodils and crocuses. I saw blackthorn blossom on the trees on Thursday and I have seen birds looking at nesting boxes with a view to moving in. I also saw a lot of dandelions on a grass verge. So I will continue to have some hope at least that our world will not only survive what is happening but will become a better place to live.

Signs of Spring

I’ve just taken a little stroll around the garden here. I have found dwarf iris in flower (in pots), some yellow flowers coming into bloom in the wild flower patch, lots of snowdrops and some new buds on one of the trees. Earlier in the week I had a short walk in one of the local nature reserves. There were signs of spring there too, hazel catkins, and new leaves on a hawthorn bush.

There is hope, nature continues to do it’s thing whatever we do. The birds nest and mate, the flowers keep growing as do the trees and shrubs. Yet the world around us is in turmoil with wars here and there and many natural disasters, drought, wildfires and floods.

There are times when I think I will be glad to leave this world and there are times when I have hope that things might change for the better and I want to be around to see those changes. Getting older makes you realise what you had in the past and whether that was better than what you have now. There are pros and cons in this type of thinking. Some things were better in the past and some things are better now. But we still have people starving and homeless. So there are still some things that have not changed.

Technology has brought lots of changes and some of those are really not for the better, if you think seriously about what technology is doing now and wanting to do in the future. Do you want a brain implant? Do you want AI to be around more? Some thoughts for another post at another time.

Random thoughts for the first month of a new year

We are almost at the end of January. It has been a rather strange month for me, I had an injection for pain in my left thumb and I also had the cataract removed from my left eye. Adding that to the changes in the weather from very cold to rather mild with a couple of storms thrown in the mix and I wonder why I still feel a bit unsettled.

Of course there is also a lot going on in the world, too many wars and too many miscarriages of justice. How have we got ourselves into this mess? How have we let politicians get us into this mess? Do we believe everything they say and do, or do we take their words and actions with a pinch of salt? Do we believe everything we read in the media or do we discern the truth from the lies?

One of the problems as I see it, is that news is instant nowadays. We have day long TV, social media and other forms of communication. People react instantly without thinking about what they are reading or hearing and before you can blink there is a long ranting group of people, moaning about something that never even happened. But they also ignore the real stuff. Why have we got like this and randomly believe what everyone else says before we look at the situation and find the truth? And why do we repeat everything we are told, telling others what could be untruths?