Shed Stories #12 ‘Oh the Wind and the Rain!’
Well, weatherwise it has been a month of two halves! The first half very much brought this to mind:
No sun,
No wind,
No rain,
November.
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Shed Stories #11 ‘The Veil is Thin’
I write this on Halloween or Samhain (‘sow-en’) sitting in what is now my office but which was once Dougal’s bedroom and before that we managed to squeeze in both children in bunk beds. I am looking through a stained glass panel I made at my Hereford evening class, well over twenty years ago, of some Fly Agaric toadstools and, behind the glass, I’m overlooking our garden full of the golden and russet hues of autumn. The sky is brightening and I am hopeful of a good sunset and a clear night for an outdoor fire.
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Shed Stories #10 ‘Days of Summer’
Sometimes Lammas (the period from the beginning of August through until the equinox around the 21st September) just takes the wind out of my sails and I feel emotionally and psychologically flattened. I spoke about this a bit on an Instagram post in early August and was intrigued at how many people feel the same way. That, despite the busyness of summer and the beginnings of harvest plenty, there is something about this point, a hiatus, where a kind of ennui takes over and one can feel quite empty. One kind soul pointed out that I probably needed a holiday, and I suppose this is why we traditionally take a bit of a break at this time of year.
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Shed Stories #9 ‘Who Knows Where The Time Goes’
It seems an absolute age since I last wrote a newsletter at the end of May. That was the end of spring and now we are in high summer – Ha! Well, the weather might not seem exactly so but we have long since passed the solstice and there are already hints of the dreamy, melancholy air of Lammas.
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Shed Stories #8 ‘Heaven in a Wildflower’
Nature is holding our hand through these days. I feel as though this is the first newsletter I have written where the rain is not my main memory of the previous month!
May opened with bluebells and wild garlic and is closing with a profusion of comfrey, campion and hedge parsley. The latter abounds everywhere in frothing profusion, and when the sun shines through it it seems to create a hazy glance of an imagined heaven.
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Shed Stories #7 ‘Swanland Stories’
April has been an incredibly full month. As the sap rises my energy has been returning, and every moment has been spent creating in my workshop or making inspirational travels to the edges of our land- Cornwall and Pembrokeshire.
Next week I will be delivering some work to www.oldchapelgallery.co.uk (Herefordshire) for an exhibition that opens on Saturday 10th May and in June I will be exhibiting at www.tinsmiths.co.uk – more of that in the next newsletter.
Anyway, it seemed a good opportunity to get Dougal to write the newsletter this month and to fill you in on how he manages running our print shop as well as his other work.
Shed Stories #6 ‘I went to blow the fire aflame’
This year Easter, and the changing of the clocks to British summertime coincided, and to celebrate this arrival of spring, Mike and Seren and I cooked our supper over the fire in the garden and drank our first Pimms of the year! It was not a balmy evening (bloomin’ cold!) and the Pimms was probably a bit premature but it was lovely to sit out by the fire and listen to the birds singing their evening chorus and the owls calling out to one another as they began their twilight forays. It certainly felt like a beginning of better weather and times outdoors to come.
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Shed Stories #5 ‘Our House’
So St David’s day, March hares and the 1st of March are upon us. Usually February has a day or two at least where we can see and feel the promise of warmth and spring but this year it has continued January’s theme of wet and grey! But, nonetheless, the primroses are lifting our hearts with their gentle kindness in the banks and the daffodils are already trumpeting golden tunes to the skies. However, the real flowering champion of this past week or so has to be the blackthorn, which is heavily laden with its frothing foam of blossom. Even in the dullest days it brightens the hedges but on the rare moments when the evening sun breaks through the gloom the blossom lights up like a beacon of unutterable beauty and hope.
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Shed Stories #4 ‘Drive the Cold Winter Away’
It is almost Imbolc, the Celtic festival of spring, which is a time of the re-emergence of life after the hiatus of winter. We know that there may still be bad weather to come but we cannot help but be stirred by the fact that the song thrush is singing again, the snowdrops are well and truly out and the catkins are beginning to dangle!
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Shed Stories #3 ‘A Bustle in your Hedgerow’
It is early January and it feels as if we have been submitted to nothing but rain and greyness for weeks on end now. But this morning, whilst walking the dog, the sun made a weak and watery appearance. It was as welcome and beatific, as the smile from a beautiful and much loved old grandmother, and like a glimmer of reassurance that good things will surely come.
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