Lugnasadh (1st August) - also known as Lunastal or Lammas - stands more or less for the start of the grain harvest and there are all kinds of harvest/earth mother goddess vibes about it. In the yearly cycle of readings of my own tradition, many of them feature either harvests, or farm work, or feasting of various kinds - all eyes are on the fields. It’s a busy time!
Where I used to live, we were surrounded by fields of wheat and barley and I didn’t realise how much I missed seeing the wind across the crop making it ripple like the muscles under the skin of a long-haired cat, or the thin chatter and bustle of sparrows and finches gleaning the fallen grain, the swallows and skylarks coasting the air. But here we mostly have tall hedges, sheep and horses. Even when there are cornfields you can’t see them from a car. The nearest we got to it was when we mowed the wild edges of our lawn. About a million sparrows and juvenile starlings descended on the path where the seedheads dropped and the neighbours’ cats suddenly got very interested in our garden.
The compensation is a glorious range of wild flowers in the hedgerows, the road verges, under the trees. I’ve seen more vetch and bedstraw, wild carrot and viper’s bugloss than I’ve seen in years, plus varieties of thistles and willow herb I don’t remember seeing anywhere else. It makes a mockery of what our estate maintenance people told me - that wild flowers don’t thrive here. They really do, and I hope it augurs well for insects. The bees seem to be doing alright, but like everyone else, I’ve been astonished by the lack of butterflies. There were a few whites and orange tips back in the spring, and an odd over-wintering peacock, but nothing lately, and up till last week I’d seen very few swallows or housemartins. The cold wet weather seems to have hit them hard. But last Friday I heard a lot of familiar chattering over the house, and the sky was full of young swallows. It was about the time the social media was full of ‘flying ant day’, and I guess this year’s brood had taken full advantage.
In the garden, the herbs are at their peak. I’ve harvested lavender, yarrow, chamomile and oregano, and I’m drying flowers and seedheads for winter arrangements. The vervain (small and not very conspicuous but pretty) and elecampane are in flower, and what does well here is thriving. I have not quite got my head round why some things are not - the horehound looks scorched and puny, and the green sage is pale and yellowing, while the purple sage has romped away. I have a lot to learn about this garden.
I had a kind of a plan for this new look newsletter, part of a long-term strategy for my on-line and writing life - and so far it has all gone to pot. I’ve had COVID, dealt with many family things and been distracted by politics on many levels - and found unexpected successes and diversions as I circled round and round what I tried to do.
First, though, some actual news.
I will be at the Wee Gaitherin Festival in Stonehaven, which describes itself thus:
Three days of readings will take place from Thursday-Saturday August 1-3 in the main function hall at Number 44 Hotel, Allardice Street, in the Market Square. The events will feature poets ranging from the renowned to the unknown, and from twenty-somethings to octogenarians, all on an equal footing - our program is out now!
`I’ll be part of the Red Squirrel Press showcase
Red Squirrel Showcase: Elizabeth Rimmer,
Edwin Stockdale, Helen Boden, Hazel
Cameron, Tim Turnbull &
Carolyn Richardson
After a writing drought, I will have some new poems published in The London Grip and Atrium, and a review of Marion McCready’s Look to the Crocus is due out on the Glasgow Review of Books site shortly.
The big news, though, is about the website which is undergoing a revamp as we move to an AI free provider, and I am thinking hard about giving it a new direction. Most importantly, after about twenty years, I’m thinking of retiring the burnedthumb brand. The new website is going to be under my own name, and probably will have fewer blogposts. Most new content will be going out here, in these newsletters. This feels very odd, but I want to do more long-form considered writing, and also to publish more reviews and essays in other outlets, so I need to focus my writing better.
Subscribers will be the only ones getting all the first peeks at new poems, drafts and scraps of interesting herb lore, so I would be interested to know what you would like to see more of.
Have a good harvest season!