A good day

Yesterday morning I saw this beautiful wild plant for the first time.

Flowering Rush

My Book says it’s Flowering Rush, rather uncommon, flowering from July – and there we were, Ellie and I, on our nearby canal in June, and it was dotted all along the bank.

Well, My Book is over 60 years old and it gets a lot of things wrong because so much of both countryside and climate has changed, but I love it because it was given to me by my parents on my eleventh birthday and it’s full of my annotations and observations over the years.

Needless to say, it’s falling apart now, and if you know of a good bookbinder who could repair it for me, do tell.

My ancient and  battered Oxford Book of Wildflowers

Next I saw this tall scruffy plant which I find rather menacing as it grows in gangs and looks like a Triffid (as in the 1981 TV adaptation of John Wyndham’s book). It’s called Hemp Agrimony, but is no relation to Cannabis (sadly) or Agrimony  - which is a small yellow spike of a flower, and one I also saw this morning along the canal.

Hemp Agrimony

Hemp Agrimony

Agrimony

The next plant to catch my attention was this Meadow-sweet, so-called I presume for its scent – a weird almondy one. I like its confidence and its scatty prettiness and am trying to grow it round the pond in my garden.

Meadow-sweet

Sunny St John’s Wort was in flower for the first time this year. As you probably know, the word ‘wort’ means any plant that was used medicinally and St John’s Wort is still used to cure depression (but take advice as it can also be harmful or interact with conventional drugs).

St John's Wort

Lovely Scabious, which actually prefers dry places, was in evidence from time to time, well attended by insects like all flowers of the Daisy family to which it belongs.

Scabious and Hoverfly

Yesterday was a good day.

 

The Grand Western Canal near Tiverton in Devon is a Local Nature Reserve and well worth a visit at any time of year. Yesterday it was full of birdsong as well as wildflowers, and when I find out how to transfer audio and video clips from my phone to my computer I’ll share some of that with you as well.

Reading, writing and being a zero-dimensional, non-existent point, floating in space

Since Frog died I’ve only been able to read light novels with happy endings, and I discovered in the library an author called Sarah Morgan who fitted exactly those criteria.

I’ve now read almost every single one of her books at least once, if not twice, if not three times, including the romances she wrote at the beginning of her career (what me, a one-time serious book editor, reading romances? Whatever next?) so, when I saw her latest book A Secret Escape on offer in Sainsbury’s recently, I snapped it up.

At the same time I saw Here One Moment by Australian writer, Liane Moriarty. I haven’t been able to read Liane for the last few years because she’s too worldly and cynical. You can never have too many books piled on the bedside table however, and it could be that I was stronger now, so I bought that one too.

 

I spent the first three years after Frog died clearing his Stuff from driveway, garage, shed and music room not to mention the rest of the house. He was a bit of a hoarder. Then I turned my attention to the structure of the place, doing essential repairs and improvements just in case I was going to move.

This month at last I’m free. I’m without clutter, builders, visits and visitors. It was deliberate. I wanted the rest. I wanted to get back to myself. But yesterday morning I wrote in my journal (my post-Frog record of thoughts and feelings, my best friend, my ladder of recovery), ‘It’s all a bit meaningless without Frog. He was my purpose and my sounding-board. He saw me, so I was me.’

 And I thought of a passage in Here One Moment, which I’m just about managing to read. It's not uplifting me, like Sarah’s books do, but I’m intrigued by the subject matter – psychic prediction – and I’ve no idea how it’s going to end.

In the passage, a mathematician is describing a letter she wrote to her fiancé when he was fighting in Vietnam (no, I didn’t know that Australians were drafted for that war either). She is remembering a lesson from school.

    “… a point is ‘zero-dimensional’, meaning it doesn’t actually exist. But once you have two points – two non-existent points – you can fill the space in between with lots and lots of points, and you get a line, which has length, so it’s now one dimension, which you could argue means it does now exist.

    … I told Jack that when I was with him, I felt like I was close to understanding what I had nearly understood that day.

   I told him I was a zero-dimensional, non-existent point, floating in space, until I met him."

When I first read that, I cried. As I copy it for you, I'm crying again.

 Thank you for reading this blog and being that other point at this moment.

 Maybe writing is an answer.

The Greenfinch

Greenfinches used to flock to our bird table, especially when we put out sunflower seeds. Then, about twenty years ago, they vanished. They had apparently fallen prey to the parasitic disease Trichomonosis which they were thought to have caught from pigeons, and their numbers had crashed by 60 per cent. I added them to my list of birds I no longer see, like swallows, barn owls, thrushes and pied wagtails.

At the end of March I was staying with my brother D at his farm in West Sussex, most of which he is now leaving to nature. The birds were in full spring throat and in among the dizzy-making tangle of sounds I caught something new - an insistent but gentle chirring noise. I didn’t know what it was and neither did D – who is an expert on birds – but Merlin, the trusty smartphone app which identifies birdsong, told us it belonged to a greenfinch.

I started to hear the noise everywhere, in the garden at home, on my long rambles every day with Ellie (who is now 15 and not showing much sign of slowing up). The greenfinch became my bird of this glorious spring, my bird of the year.

If you’ve read previous posts, you might remember how important affirmations are to me, particularly since my husband Frog died, three and a half years ago. I recite them to myself every day and hope that one day they will stick. Some I make up myself, some come from that inspiring book You Can Heal Your Life by Louise Hay, and one – the queen of them all – comes from a medieval woman mystic whose name I’ve forgotten.

A few days ago I was dozing in the garden and the greenfinch was chirring as usual, and the sound was so beautiful and loving and warm that my half-asleep brain connected it with that queen affirmation. The greenfinch was chirring ‘All is well’. He was telling me that he and his species had come back from the brink, and so could I.

Crab-apple blossom (I think) in a hedgerow a few weeks ago

Norwegian Independence Day, vintage hi-fi and trying to live on an even keel

Today is Norwegian Independence Day, a yearly event marking the end of nearly three centuries of control by Denmark. In Norway it's a mad happy day, filled with parades and parties.

Here is my Norwegian flag flying on the edge of the garden, the first time I've hoisted it myself as flag-flying was Frog’s domain.

The Norwegian flag has double significance for me as, unbeknownst to me, Frog had ordered me one just before he died and it arrived the day after he died, along with some brackets for hanging spotlights, which was a project he was engaged on at the time. (As you can see, his death was a surprise to us both.)

Frog was a hoarder and I’ve been clearing his stuff continuously for the last two and a half years. On Wednesday the lovely AtkinsAuctions from Axminster, whose strapline ‘Old style values, New style auctions’ describes them perfectly, arrived to take away Frog’s collection of what’s called ‘vintage hi-fi’ but most of which he still used. I’m hoping their online auctioneering will reach the geeks, and Frog’s equipment will go to good homes.

Even though I have exciting plans for the space that’s left, it was a sad and momentous day and yesterday my back gave way as I was clearing weed from the pond. Was it connected to the loss or was it the result of all the outdoor work I did last week when the weather was so beautiful?

Either way, it’s given me the day off today, which is actually rather nice, and all sorts of sedentary possibilities have been flooding in, including this blog post.

I do tend to drive myself, probably in order not to think and feel too much, and have begun to veer between manic activity and depressive slump. Not good or pleasant. So, in an effort to get out of that pattern, I’ve cut my coffee consumption by half (from a double espresso at breakfast to a single one). It seems to be doing something.

Ellie’s a bit like me, in that she finds it hard to slow down, even at the age of 14, but here she is recently in peaceful mode.

A winter's walk by the sea

I’ve been getting in a terrible tizz about my future – to move or not to move, whether it’s OK to sell some of Frog’s stuff (do I want to keep it as a memento or is it better to move on?), how long will it be before I’m too old to manage on my own and what will I do then, ?

So yesterday, the dog and I took off for a walk by the sea.

During the walk I met a lovely woman and we had a long talk that started with our dogs - what else? -  and went on to range from reincarnation to quantum mechanics, stopping off on the way at Tolkien and Philip Pullman. As Bilbo Baggins used to say, you never know what's going to happen when you step outside your front door.

The weather was perfect – bright but not too sunny, a light wind, moderate temperatures – and there weren’t many other people about. All my worries blew away and I wanted to keep going all day but I realised that I’d come out without any money and no map and had left my water bottle in the car. 

So after a couple of hours I took the sensible option and walked back to the car along a filthy farm track, my feet squelching in a mixture of animal excrement and mud. I was glad of my hefty boots and knee-high waterproof socks.

Next time, I'll go better prepared.

Probably.

It's hard when the way ahead is so unclear.