Just popping in to say that at last I’ve seen my first swallow! They’re very late up here this year, I think the cold weather has slowed them down. although the cuckoo seemed to have no problem, he arrived last week. It has been dry but cold for weeks and the the plants are way behind, the blackthorn has only just beaten the hawthorn this year. The grass has been so slow to grow that Rob hasn’t taken his cows out of winter quarters yet!
I think it’s rained almost everyday for the past six weeks. On about four or five of those days, the rain has arrived in short showers overnight, and the day has stayed dry and clear. The rest of the time we’ve been sat in cloud, with either strong winds driving the rain against the house or, even worse, a steady, slow seeping drizzle that gets between the tiles surrounding the skylights and drips water onto the floor. On those dreary dark days it can feel like we’re living in a damp cave.
Given this, we didn’t think the chances of seeing the Jupiter – Saturn conjunction were very high, certainly not on the Solstice itself. But on Sunday the weather forecast was better and we made plans to travel down to Criccieth to see if we could spot it. The planets were in the south-west, quite close to the horizon and so were impossible for us to see from home because of the hills. We got there just as the sun had set and had a walk along the beach as the sky darkened enough for the stars to appear.
On the shot above you can just about pick it out (look up from the k in the word pick) Steve also managed to get a close up of sorts too. You could see the two planets clearly with the naked eye but it was better with binoculars – my eyes aren’t what they were unfortunately!
As it got darker the temperature dropped quite considerably and I was glad of my woolly hat, so you can understand my astonishment when a guy got out of the car next to me, towel in hand, and jogged down the beach and into the choppy water!
Winter and the world is distilled,
Crisped, quietened, not just when it snows.
On a day as bright as this
That nameless colour, not quite amber
or a purple of a willow shoot
or yellow of melted butter
But something in between
Is draped across the branches
So walking through meditative hills and woods
is an act of alchemy turning the frozen earth
into an extra-dimensional dragon
that breathes through rivers and fields as mists.
Look closely, the calligraphic twig tips
reveal their ideograms, creak their messages
for both living and dead, when the longest night
lets slip its dogs to devour the dying year.
New Year will arise out of the mist.
Conor Whelan.
Solstice Blessings to you! The Cân Y Gwynt, my Druid Grove, has had to cancel our Alban Arthan ceremony which was planned for this morning and this is the poem that I had chosen to use in the ritual this year. We have only managed to meet once since Imbolc, a lovely sunny afternoon spent in a little copse on the Pendragon’s farm at Alban Elfed.
On Saturday OBOD held their online Mistletoe Ceremony. I sat in the glow of the Yule lights and joined them. Lovely to see some dear friends taking part, and quite a thrill when I realised they had used a lot of my writing, woven in with video clips, chants and homily to produce the most perfectly imperfect, soul warming gathering.
I’m holding a little solo ceremony in the garden at 10.02, the exact time of the solstice, where the faeries and I will be partaking of an absolutely fantastic bottle of Chalice Mead which was a present from a friend.
I’m planning to resurrect the blog, in my absence WordPress has made some changes, so it will most likely be baby steps to begin!
Blessings of the returning light to you.
fi the faery druid, xx
When I walked Charlie last night, I noticed we had toadstools growing in the centre of the lane under the ash trees, so I went back this morning to take a photo. This part of the lane was resurfaced last year and the grass in the centre hasn’t had time to grow back yet. Most of the lanes round here have quite a covering of grass in the middle as the farm traffic throws down plenty of soil.
Our lawn is covered in toadstools too, must be the damp weather, but no fairy rings so far!
“The home is not the one tame place in the world of adventure. It is the one wild place in the world of rules and set tasks.”
– Gilbert K. Chesterton
It’s the third anniversary of our move to the Llyn today!
Ste has been working his way through our neighbour’s pile of wood (with permission!) to salvage bits of usable timber. On one of his visits she happened to mention that they’d heard a nightjar in the woods below and had managed to get a quick snap. The nightjar is a rare migrant to the UK and is crepuscular in habit so she was lucky to get photo. The sighting was reported to the data people and it turns out that it is the first record of a nightjar here since 1968!
The nightjar hides on the ground during daylight and is perfectly camouflaged to blend in with fallen logs and leaf litter. It likes marshy woodland and cleared conifer plantations and eats beetles and insects, although in folklore it’s blamed for stealing milk from goats! It has a silent flight similar to an owl – in fact an alternative name for it is fern owl – although the males do deliberately ‘clap’ their wings together as part of their courting flight.
Their call is an unusual burbling sound, a bit like the clicks and whirs of a static radio and is very piercing, although the bird was a mile down the lane I could hear it perfectly from outside our house. What a blessing!
Other bird news here is that we have blackbirds, robins, sparrows, blue tits, stone chats and pied wagtails nesting on the property. The blackbirds and robins are in small trees, the sparrows in the buildings eaves, the blue tits in a hole in the trunk of the old plum, and the stone chats and wagtails in the stone walls.
I came across the huge and woolly caterpillar of the Drinker Moth, and a beautiful common lizard in the paddock. There are adders in the marshy bit below (one killed a cow a couple of years ago) and so I have to be careful around the rocky bits, especially in hot weather!
If it’s a fine day I usually leave the kitchen door open, so that Tilly can perform her In and Out dance without my participation. Yesterday when I walked back into the room I was surprised to find a bird flying around, and even more surprised to find it was a swallow. It took up position on the bar holding our wall hanging up, and I was just wondering how to persuade it to go back out when it was joined by its mate!
What followed was half an hour of twittering as they flew around inspecting the beams and ledges. Fortunately for us, it seems they didn’t deem it suitable as a des res and eventually left. Before the cottages were restored in 2004 swallows would probably have nested in here as the cottage which is now our kitchen was a cattle shed and the one that is now our study/loo/crog loft was a store. Given that they usually return to the same area, these swallows were probably the great grandchildren of the last swallows to nest here.
Wishing One and All a Blessed Beltane …. and fun and frolics if you’re Bringing in the May!
I’ve just taken Charlie for a short walk along the lane to blow the cobwebs away. The gorse is in full bloom and the grass verges either side of the lane, awash with bluebells, look like ditches full of water on a clear day. There is cow parsley, red and white campion and tiny tiny pinky-mauve bells of whinberries on the walls. The bracken is starting to open, it’s new growth always a wonderful lime green, and the violin heads of fiddle ferns are slowly unravelling.
The blackthorn is greening, the remains of it’s flowers still on the bush, dried and faded like last weeks confetti. The hawthorn buds are just beginning to open, there would have been plenty of sprays of blossom for Beltane headdresses this year.
There is, as usual a strong breeze from the sea. Where the lane follows the hill round, the noise of the wind through the blue fir sounds like a car approaching, I always have to stop and double check. It plays each metal gate post like a pan pipe, each has it’s own tone and pitch. In the pause between gusts, I can just pick up the call of a cuckoo in the valley. Hurrah! Summer is a comin’ in!
In Africa the swallow is known as the rain bird because their arrival coincides with the rainy season. This morning, just as the first rain for five weeks began to fall gently from the sky I spotted our first swallows, it all seemed to fit perfectly. I have been anxiously scanning the skies for a couple of weeks now, back in Cheshire the first swallow used to arrive around the 15th but here in Wales they seem to be much later. When we first moved in, there were the remains of swallow nests under the eaves over the wood pile. The previous owners rigged up close circuit cameras and used to watch the comings and goings on their TV, but they’ve never returned to the cottage while we’ve been here.
Another bird I have been listening out for is the cuckoo, Caryl heard her first on the 20th but there has been nothing here. I live in hope.
The hares are about on the hillside above us; and one evening as Charlie and I took our constitutional, a fox gave us a start by jumping down into the lane, across, and then back up and out down the hill towards the marshy bit by the woodland. In the early hours one morning (on the way to A&E) we followed a badger cub down the lane, this is the first time we have seen a live one this close to the house.
The other sign of summer here is the return of Piers cattle to the field nextdoor. This year it’s a group of rowdy bullocks who disgraced themselves by getting through the fence (never has the term bulldozer been more apt!) into the field with Rob’s heifers. The girls were separated off quite easily, as they’re very good natured (Welsh Blacks) and follow anyone they know if they’re called (especially if they have a bucket with them!) It took a few attempts over two days to move the large beef bullocks back to where they should be, with a great deal of jumping, bucking and general argy bargy. I don’t think the farmers saw the funny side of continually running round a field waving ropes and jumpers but it gave us a few chuckles!
Meadow, Grove and Stream 