Notes from the Lookout
Regular newsletter from a herb garden in a new-build housing estate overlooking the Clyde Valley.
#Plantsplacepoetry
Season of the Crossroads
The season
We are coming close to the autumn equinox, the tipping point of the year. From now until March there will be more dark than light, and the air is full of movement and change. Everyone is back from their summer holidays, new terms start in schools and universities, summer migrants are leaving and the first pink-footed geese are already here. It’s the second harvest - the vintage - the fruit trees are bearing and bee-keepers are taking honey, and as the gardening season winds down we are beginning to reckon up how it went, and where we go next. We are at a cross-roads moment, a pivotal moment for reflection and reorientation. My own spiritual tradition has tended towards the cerebral and abstract in recent history, but I notice that our liturgy is more embedded in the seasons than I thought and we are making the same movement into the dark half of the year, thinking about the journey to Jerusalem, invoking the guardianship of angels, reflecting on the central motif of the cross, and moments of commitment to the way ahead.
It’s a time for re-evaluating, and I will certainly be doing a lot of that as I go into the fourth year of living here, and the new writing that comes out of it.
Territory notes
The rune for harvest is the same
As the rune for the day of reckoning
from The Wren in the Ash Tree, Canto 2 The Outcry
Hips haws and rowan berries are brightening in the hedges, fallen beechnuts cover the footpath and the leaves are fading. I’ve seen the first skein of geese over the house, and we have had a sudden cold snap, with heavy dewfalls, if not frost. A robin has claimed our garden for the winter, and the blue tits are back on the feeders, among the sparrows and starlings. A lot of starlings seem to have moved on, and the winter migrants haven’t arrived yet, but there are a few residents which stay all the year. This has been a very poor summer - not much sun, and very little warmth - and wet, of course, though not as wet as some places. Although lavender, orpine and buddleia flowered prolifically and we had plenty of bees, there were hardly any butterflies at all until the late sunshine of last week. The swallows and swifts seem to have struggled, and we saw very few, and I have only seen one bat all year.
There is very little colour left in the garden now, as many of the flowers I was depending on for a late display sulked and performed badly. The wetter bit of the garden, by the north-facing fence, is as saturated as it gets in February, and we are going to dig into it to see why the drainage is so poor. The soil is stony at the best of times, and there is a fair amount of builders’ rubble in it too, but this is extremely bad. I have wondered if there is an underground watercourse there.
My total harvest for tomatoes is three. The damson blossom was sparse and no fruit set at all. The blackcurrants were counted on my fingers, and the gooseberries not much better, though we did get two goes at gooseberry fool. In the kitchen this should be the time for jam, pickles, jellies and vinegars, but so far I have done very little, apart from picking blackberries. The apple tree set fruit but the apples are small, and not ripe yet. I have made spiced apple butter, and apple jelly, but that is the only jam I’ve made this year. No pickles, either!
The herbs have survived, and the more hardy ones did well, but the annuals were a disaster, even marigolds. I added mugwort and vervain to the magical garden, and sowed wormwood and mullein for next year, when I’ve curbed the exuberance of the marshmallow and elecampane. I’ve added agrimony and viper’s bugloss (one of the many candidates for atterlothe, in the Charm of Nine Herbs, but in my garden it will be for the pollinators) to the mix too.
The big disappointment is my willow tree. I bought it as a dwarf, which is easily curbed by pruning and has pretty catkins, but it turns out to be a more ordinary white willow, growing enormous already, no catkins to speak of, and with a potential root-reach to undermine the house. It will have to go, but I will replace it with a ceanothus which a friend gave me from a cutting. Summer flowers just when I and the bees need them, after the primroses and before the lavender, and a most glorious deep blue.
Herb image
News
In poetry news, I have a weird Fox/fairy folk poem in the latest issue of The London Grip, and there will be another in Atrium in November. My web developer daughter and I are still working on the new website, which we hope will launch at the end of October.
There will be two major changes to the shop at that time. Because of the massive increase in postage rates, I regret that I will have to charge for p+p from the 1st November, so if you have been swithering about buying books, you’ll save by doing so before then. And I will be withdrawing my first two collections, Wherever We Live Now and The Territory of Rain from the shop. They have been out of print for some time, and I have very few copies left. They are at a bargain price too - £5 each - and there will be no charge for p+p within the UK until November.