Category: Reflections

When Man’s Warehouse is Bare

Stellaria Infusing

Before Christmas, I posted about Nature’s cupboards being bare; something I wanted and needed to harvest wasn’t available to me. This time it’s something far closer to home for many; suppliers being out of stock. Perhas it’s the time of year, at the tail end of winter before the new season, but every supplier I have looked at for a recent herb order has been out of stock of something […]

Continue Reading →

When Nature’s Cupboard is Bare

Vivid blushing bracket

A little context…  …Skip to main article if you want I don’t learn do I. How many times have I told people to listen to their bodies?Yet, the ‘cold’ that I’ve had for two weeks and been ignoring, pressing on with work, hoping it will go away, hasn’t gone. Half three this morning, I wake feeling rotten, and coughing up copious amounts of dark, yellow-green phlegm – in plugs. Yuck. […]

Continue Reading →

Bound by the Weather

Once more, the weather disrupts my plans it seems. I was supposed to be teaching the first weekend of my course ‘A Year of Herbs’ today. But the season, and the weather has conspired to cast uncertainty on everyone’s arrangements and it is now a toss-up between running the course but at 11AM, or cancelling all together. It all depends on what the weather does. Yes, the full power of […]

Continue Reading →

Besieged By the Weather

Under a blanket of snow

As I write this post, I sit up late into the night – like I do many nights. But this night is different. I am listening to the sound of icy snow and hail thrash against my window, driven by a strong easterly wind. Normally, I would find the idea of snowy weather highly exciting – but not this time. This time, I find the weather to be threatening, worrying, […]

Continue Reading →

Winter Stillness… and Honeyed Ale

It is only 6 weeks to the start of the new year’s season starting to roll into full swing and for me, this time is a seasonal night of rest before the dawning of the new year. So I sit… And watch. I watch the dusk creeping in over the mountains. And stoke the fire for another early evening lost in thought. An aid to that thought is mulled drinks. […]

Continue Reading →

Why do I do it?

Another day comes to an end – I sit, in complete silence, the only sounds in the house are the tick-tock of the cuckoo clock, and an occasional rustle as embers settle in the grate. This is winter – not yet the deep mid-winter, but it is Samhain eve; to Celts the start of a period of limbo lasting until the midwinter solstice. And, as the sudden jolt of the […]

Continue Reading →

Seasonal Affective Order

Brown Birch Bolete

The year has well and truly turned. We are now at the half-way point between the end of summer proper, and the festive season of Yule, Christmas, whatever you call it. I never got on well with autumn growing up: a mixture of ME and generally overdoing it in the summer months always lead me to end up in a pretty ‘orrible state by the end of October. Then the […]

Continue Reading →

Flaming June

Well, midsummer is upon us. I will admit that it’s been a somewhat strange late spring/early summer though. Spring seemed to come late, with many things that would start in April only really blossoming in the second half of May. Of course, this meant an explosion in growth as nature ‘catches up’ with itself by speeding up. Now we’ve had a heatwave, and a week of wall-to-wall sun. And would […]

Continue Reading →