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Books, snails and the start of spring
The sun is streaming through the window, painting rainbows from the myriad of crystals hung from the curtain pole. Dust is dancing lazily in sunbeams, and although it’s still cold, both inside and out, I feel like spring is starting to make an appearance. One brave crocus and a single snowdrop have popped their heads up under the birch tree, the slowest start, but a sign that we are tipping over into spring. They’re a week earlier than last year so a good sign things are shifting!
It is joyously light at 5pm now here in Yorkshire. Arriving home in twilight instead of pitch black, the tantalising promise of longer days to come. This week has seen the dreary January grey give way to crisp February days. Marking Imbolc at the beginning of the month lifted that heaviness of the long UK winter for a while, at least.
I’ve been reading a little more, which has been a pleasure. Since going back to university I’ve found it very hard to have enough ‘brain’ left to be able to read anything outside the mountains of information I have to absorb for my studies. I love reading, but I only managed 11 books last year, and seven of those were the Harry Potter series I read in seven straight days when I had covid. I miss reviewing books on the blog so really want to bring that back. The lure of escaping into a book is strong at the moment!
The start of spring brings an urge to plant every single seed in the seed tin, way too early, but I’m resisting. Our spring seems to take a while to get going here, and it’s usually April really before the growing season kicks in. I’ve planted things in February before and paid the price! Last year we inherited a heated propagator which we filled with much enthusiasm, before realising it was still too cold to transplant the energetic seedlings anywhere else. So we’ll try and hold off on that too. I’ve stocked up on flower seeds from Higgeldy Garden and veg from Real Seeds, as well as some seed saved from last year – mainly runner beans and field beans- I’m really looking forward to planting!
My aim is to grow at least one vegetable that doesn’t get eaten by the mammoth snails we get here that could eat their way through a stone wall if they tried hard enough. They’re a different breed, I’m sure they have sharp teeth and muscular jaws.
The cottage rumbles on – the January rain has somehow made its way through the thick stone walls into the living room, we’re hoping due to a leaky gutter that we have had fixed, so fingers crossed it’ll dry out soon. I’ve been attempting to motivate myself to clean by making ‘cleaning caddies’ with exciting-coloured sponges and cloths, alongside various homemade cleaning potions. It’s yet to work but has been fun to put together. I feel like if I leave the caddy in the middle of the floor of the room I want to clean it’ll remind me to do the cleaning whenever I fall over it.
This week’s book is The Square of Sevens by Laura Shepherd-Robinson – I’ve just finished her previous book so was really excited to get the ARC for this one! I’ll review it over the next couple of weeks. It sounds right up my street, and a great distraction from university.
I think that’s everything. I’m off to sit in a sunbeam for a while 🙂
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Fitting In
Hello from a dreary Yorkshire day -the cloud is hanging low down the valley, bringing a sort of quiet dampness which I love. In this weather the birdsong seems louder, the colours more vibrant against the grey background. The river runs peat brown, dark depths. I wandered up the valley earlier, just to get out the house, relishing drizzle on my skin and the lack of anybody else around.
2023 has been a funny one so far. After the tumult of last year, it sort of seems that all the pieces of me that have been flying around are settling, finally. I feel solid, somehow. I’ve been in a contemplative mood recently – the prospect of turning 40 this year has meant I’ve been looking back, in a way. My thirties have been a decade of discovery, for sure. I left a few jobs, started others, left them, picked up a chronic illness. I worked through depression and put on a lot of weight. I also got a master’s degree and started a PhD. I began therapy, properly, which has been a huge help, and still is. I’m also one of the large number of ‘older’ people, especially women, finally finding out that they are neurodivergent. It’s been a wild ride, but for the first time maybe in my life, I can say I’m beginning to know myself.
I think I’ve needed to wait until now, to start this blog properly. To feel in tune, not only with the turn of the seasons and the passing of the days, but with myself, too. I’ve always felt slightly outside of the norm, just that bit out of place, but not been able to explain it. I fought against it, maybe my whole life. But here I am now, four decades in, understanding it all finally. Sort of starting again, creating a space where I fit perfectly. I’m looking forward to not trying to be someone else for once, worrying about fitting in. I can fit into my own place, just for me.
I feel the pandemic was a turning point for a lot of us – a point where things could fall apart. Through the loss, hurt and pain, we could see the things that were really important. Our stories are personal, yet somehow shared against the same background. The world trying so hard to get ‘back to normal’ is leaving so much of that new wisdom behind. Collective trauma needs time for grief, time for recovery. Grief for loved ones, for life as it was, for the world. It’s a time to follow our hearts now. It’s time to bring change, and I feel that personally.
The sun is breaking through the cloud now, the last few minutes of golden light peaking over the fence to next door’s garden. Soon it will rise high over the rooftops, bringing heat, light, new growth, long days. Not long now. I’m being pulled back to my path, back to the wheel of the year, and I feel comfort in that. Deep roots, new growth.
So what does this all mean for this blog? It’s going to be a place to drop in and find rambling midlife thoughts, quiet places away from the shoutiness of general life, introspection, a lot of nature, growing things, and seasonal bits. Terrible crafts. Folklore, liminal places, travel, connectedness. A place that doesn’t really fit in, but welcomes everyone who also feels that way, too. We can all fit in here, together. Or fit out. Embrace the weirdness! And bring tea. Oh! And there will be books. Of course.
I’ll make a visual version of this post over on YouTube, too. Mostly I’ll just be reading it, but maybe another thought or two will pop into my head as I go?! Who knows. I really enjoy making videos, and although they’ll probably be terrible quality for now, it’s a way to gain momentum at least! You can subscribe here if you are so inclined.
Stay well, friends 🙂
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A New Year
Hello everyone and of course, happy new year for 2023. It’s here, 2022 has finally faded into the distance, although I can’t help but feel I should be watching my back somehow in case it hasn’t quite left. I hope everyone is feeling ok and can look forward to the year ahead at least somewhat!
For me, it seems that the little idea-seeds I planted in my mind back at the end of October seem to be wanting to grow after a few months ‘thinking time’, so I’m here, riding the wave of enthusiasm, and hoping that those little seeds will grow into something more. It’s been a weird time in life, but amongst all of that, this blog seems to be emerging. So this post is kind of ‘watering’ it, I think!
I’m great at imagining the end product, and terrible at every step in between now and that end. I know where I’d love to take this blog and associated bits and bobs – but how to get there, I’ve no idea. I’ve made many false starts, mostly now confined to the desktop recycle bin or the great cloud in the sky. But I’m planning on sticking this one out! I have an exciting-looking mic arriving and one of those magic circular lights. After trying to squish this blog into some sort of order or shape, focusing on ‘one thing’, I gave up and finally decided to let go and just make it a reflection of myself. A bit chaotic, a bit distracted by shiny things, and a place where I’d like to hang out on the internet, too.
The mic and the light will hopefully encourage me to finally start putting my actual self out there – my short lived youtube channel for my previous blog was one of the most fun things I’ve done, so I’d like to do more of it. I’ve bitten the bullet and set up a new one for the Ginger Feather – you can subscribe here. The blog, of course, will finally start to fill up with books, things I find interesting, terrible crafts, day to day thoughts, nature, and hopefully become a nice space for people to virtually visit.
I think it’ll begin to reflect a bit of me as I expand back into a sense of self after a few years of ‘discovery’. I’ll be 40 this year and I’m rather looking forward to it – my 30’s have been a wild ride, mentally and physically and I’m ending the decade a very different person to when I started. This will be a place to settle, to explore my 40’s, to document whatever life brings.
Welcome to the Ginger Feather!
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August Updates & The First Rain
It’s nearing the end of August and the first rain has finally arrived after the heatwaves. Proper rain, falling freely from grey, leaden skies. I’ve been out, face turned to the sky, feeling the fat raindrops on my skin and breathing in that heady petrichor, water mixed with the dust of long summer days. With the rain comes relief, a release of a tightness I didn’t know I had.
Now, with my stripy top steaming dry on the bannisters, I sit in a blanket and bounce to myself on the old leather-covered poang chair in the office (a freecycle find). Ag the cat joins me, sat on the large office desk (again from freecycle), a drop of water on her chin from drinking out of my glass a few moments before. She is most disgruntled by the rain and has been complaining vocally, a yowl from a few gardens away, growing louder and more demanding as she nears the front door. She temporarily forgets her cat flap, of course. Either that or she’s got me well trained. I feel it’s the latter. I have some crisps and she is oozing towards them, trying to be subtle.
Summer this year has been hot and dry, with high temperatures, sticky days and nights spent sleeping downstairs covered only with a cotton sheet. The birch tree yellows now in pseudo-autumn, a result of stress due to the dry conditions. Blackberries arrive early, tomatoes are over and done. After two and a half years I finally caught Covid , luckily feeling only a little grotty for a week but left with a breathlessness that persists still. Uni work ebbs more than flows, as does the blog. A million possibilities makes it hard to focus on one. But the tide will turn, as it always does.
Summer has been full of wild swims and long, dusky evenings, moths and bats and parched grasses reflecting the setting sun. Slow, almost static days, spent under trees and parasols, eyes closed and the scent of baking flagstones in the air. A little upheaval, a little settling. Holidays and home days. A busy spring gave way into a slow, lethargic summer, and I fought against it for a while, but now, I slow too, matching that exhalation after lughnasadh, the ripening of harvest after the burst of spring growth and energy. Plants dwindle, readying for colder months ahead. I find myself reflected in them, a need to stop fighting against slowness and just be, for a while. Just breathe.
I hope, though, to write a little more here as I settle back into the rhythm of this house, this land and of myself. In these quiet moments, I hope I find direction, a little honesty, a little inspiration. To write out the reflections of days and to follow that focus. The blog will come from there, if I let it.
And that is it, for today. The cat has long disappeared back into the rain which is still falling, falling as if saved up for months. I feel the land stretch up to meet it, the water bringing a new energy to the valley. Time to shift, I feel.
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Sunday Chat, 29th May 2022
Hello,
I can’t quite believe it’s Sunday Chat time again, another week has flashed by in the blink of an eye. It’s cold here today, that chill wind over the last few days has reminded me that summer isn’t quite here yet – the jumpers have found their way back out of the wardrobe and the heating has snuck on for a day or two. The UK weather, notoriously indecisive as always. Mr. GF is laying paving slabs (from freecycle!) outside and I’ve got a cuppa and a biscuit (or two) and am settling down to write this Sunday post under a blanket. I’m quite looking forward to having a catch up so please share what you’ve been up to this week! How has your Sunday been so far?
The moors at dusk (not that you can tell due to the grey clouds!) I’ve had a slow week again, mostly pottering around the house and garden, a few errands run and that’s it. It’s one of those times that is small, quiet, kind of folded in on itself. I somehow just wanted to be alone, forget the world for a bit, spend time hiding away. I’m not sure why but some weeks are like that, and I’m learning to go with the ebb and the flow. I spent a while fighting this sort of feeling, but eventually realised there’s strength and healing in it, learnt to listen and to relax into it. There’s still a tinge of guilt, that ‘should be doing something’ feeling that never goes away, but it doesn’t shout any more, just mutters along in the background. It helped to pop up to the moors for an evening – the wide spaces always help me gain some perspective.
Something that has brought me great joy this week are the lengthening days – there is a glow on the horizon still at 11pm now, and I just feel my soul fizzing with the joy of it.
Beautiful greens I’m a light person, a heat person, born in June and full of it person. Those evenings that go on forever, those days that begin before we’re even aware of it. Just a soft touch into darkness and then off again, that swirl of energy, life, warmth. I could live my life in summer, always. May is that tantalising month, that promise that it’s coming, the slow tick up the track, just before the rollercoaster tips over the top and rushes into the riot of summer. Soon, so soon. Although as the sky darkens this afternoon and the wind cools even more, I’m not sure it will be all that soon at all…
Weather aside, everything is green in the valley. To look around is to absorb millions of shades of green and it is absolute joy. It’s weird but just spending some time looking at all those different shades makes my eyes relax somehow. It’s sort of a reminder that instead of screens, this is what I should be looking at instead! We walked around a local nature reserve this morning, under branches bursting with those soft new leaves, almost like velvet.
In garden news, the blue tits fledged earlier this week, and sparrows this morning – I love to watch them all learning how to ‘bird’… cue much falling off bird feeders and shuffling precariously along branches. I sat in the car and watched a new fledgling blue tit perched on the woodpile, being fed and ‘encouraged’ by the parents – I made an Instagram highlight if you want to have a look (it’s called ‘fledglings’). Very cute indeed!
The garden is blooming well – here’s a little posy of flowers I collected displayed in a very upmarket ‘vase’ – a tomato sauce bottle! I really like the shape of it, don’t judge me ;). Here there are chives, bistort and ceanothus.
Yes I even left the labels on! So, that brings me to the end of this post – a quiet week all in all! Do you find some weeks quieter or slower than others? How do you feel about slower times? (And let me know if you also use ketchup bottles for vases…)
Shine on,
Sal 🙂
This week I’m:
Reading – The new book from Dainty Dress Diaries aka Catherine Carton. She’s one of my favourite YouTubers and this collection of 50 DIY and upcycling projects is just what I needed to spark my creative mojo!
Brewing – Darkwoods Coffee Roasters Colombian Mikava. Full of funky fermented flavours, fully recommend if you’re into great coffee that tastes unique.
Watching – Huw Richards and his fab garden – recently talking about how he has stopped weeding, very inspirational for us as our garden is about 90% weeds and we’ve just been letting them get on with it to be honest! We’ve been watching Huw for years and his videos are an absolute goldmine if you’re into any sort of gardening or interested in permaculture or no-dig.
P.S. My coffee wax melts arrived and as promised last week, I can report they smell lovely! I got the morning coffee ones from A Slow Sunday. Plus there was a free sample of ‘Spring Blooms’ which is also beautiful and will probably fall into my online shopping basket at some point in the future 😉