And finally, the pond

Ever since we visited my sister during the Easter holidays earlier this year, and Rosie spent the best part of a weekend making a whole fishing village for the wee pond in my sister's garden, Rosie's been obsessed with the idea of having one in our garden. A Big One. I quite liked the idea myself – if not for quite the same reasons as Rosie (it's not like I need much of an excuse to find a home for yet more fish) – and it also presented the opportunity to a) tidy up the garden and utilise an otherwise neglected and ugly space, and b) have a rethink about how I use my devotional space outside.

Our garden's layout is kind of awkward – you step out onto a flat patio with some decking and then the lawn is on a terrace about two metres above it, which is accessed by some steps. The lawn itself is mostly on a slope, and the flower bed is wedged up in the top right-hand corner at the back. When we moved in I extended the flower bed a little and put in the rowan and some fruit bushes, along with bits and pieces to create a wee shrine space. There's a tiny pond (or puddle...) and a cairn, and the plants I put in were intended to have some kind of seasonal link, or else were significant to me in some way – plants that remind me of some of my ancestors (those I knew before they died, like grandparents), and some juniper, which I can use for saining. Like so:

As you can see, I'm not the greatest of gardeners. In my enthusiasm to fill up space as quickly as possible I've over planted, and I feel so bad at the thought of thinning the bulbs out (I've nowhere else to put them and gardening shouldn't involve having to kill pretty things!!) they're taking over... It's all thriving, at least, I suppose. Though I'm going to have to thin the bulbs out this year, for sure.

Given the flower bed's situation – right up the top of a hill – it's a wee bit exposed to the neighbours and so the lack of privacy doesn't really encourage me to use it as an active shrine. The ground gets boggy in bad weather, too, which makes getting up there more of an adventure than I'd like. Over the years I've maintained it as much as I can with a view to creating a wildlife-friendly space, with the process of gardening itself being a kind of devotional act of sorts, in memory of my granddad (gardening was his passion). But while I make almost all of my offerings outside, I've always gravitated towards using the patio area, which is more private, instead of using the shrine for that kind of thing, which is what I'd originally intended.

So in committing to getting a pond, the obvious place to put it was just off to one side of the patio, where we have some ugly gravel going from the paving slabs to the fence (I presume it was put in as a moisture trap, so it's probably not something we should take out completely). The previous owners had tried to cover it up with some decking surrounding a gas-powered barbecue, but we didn't use that (too expensive) and the decking was rather worse for wear now, so something needed to be done with it sooner or later.

The soil isn't very deep round here so digging a hole for the pond wasn't going to give us much to work with, and let's face it, Mr Seren – who has a tendency to hiss dramatically at the sun before running back indoors – was never going to commit to digging it himself and it would be way too much for me to do. So instead we chose a raised pond – not the best solution, because I don't think it will be as wildlife friendly, for one, but it's better than nothing. Removing some of the gravel to get down to a flat, smooth surface took a few days or so (which I did myself, so I did it in short bursts, not wanting to over do it), and then it took a few trips to the DIY store to get enough sand to make a safe, flat base to put the pond on. All in all, the pond is about 700 litres (around 150 gallons) when full, but Mr Seren's worried about the mess that would make if it burst, so we're playing it safe, for now, and it's about two thirds full at the moment.

A trip to the garden centre procured some planters and plants to go in. As I did with the flower bed before, I wanted to put in plants that are significant in some way (and will encourage bees etc), but I was less successful in getting the specific ones I wanted this time around; I think it's not the best time of year to start off planting for a lot of the kind of plants that I'm after. I couldn't find any wild primroses for sale, or any wildflowers like cowslips and so on – which are past flowering now – and it's not really the best time to try and sow my own... I've made do with some blue primroses, and bought a couple of poppies (in memory of my granddad), a foxglove (for the spirits), some lavender and rosemary (because I like smelly plants), along with some daisies, an anemone, an astilbe, and... more. I put in some evergreens to give a bit of greenery in the winter, and I managed to find some juniper, too – a common juniper this time. When I got it, I decided to take a walk along the coastal path from the garden centre to the nearest village where I could get the bus home, and I made some cow friends along the way. I took some photos on my phone after the came over to say hello, but I don't have a cable to put them onto my computer... They were more keen on trying to eat the juniper poking out of my bag than saying hello to me, to be honest, but they deigned to allow a quick tickle seeing as it brought the nommy closer to them, and that kept me happy, at least. I'm sure they'll thank me for not giving them an upset stomach in the end, as I'm sure something like juniper would if they tried to eat it...

I also got a rush for the pond, along with another oxygenating plant (a marestail, I think), and some spearwort (sadly already almost completely eaten by a voracious and surprisingly waterproof snail, but there do seem to be some new shoots coming up so I'm hopeful it will pull through). Today we got a waterlily and some fish, and I've moved the more established rushes from the "puddle" as well, to make sure the fish have enough shade and plenty of nooks and crannies to lurk around if they want to. I'll get a replacement for the puddle, but the rushes in there had long overgrown the space anyway, and they were a little worse for wear after Oscar decided their only purpose was for him to rip out of the water and tear around the garden with them.

Bad Dog, Oscar.

Once things are more established, we'll get some pond snails, too, to help keep on top of the algae, although after a couple of weeks now we already have a few water beetles that have moved in and it will be interesting to see what else we might get. Beyond flies and midgies... The local fish shop tends to recommend waiting at least a month before introducing algae eaters, so we should be able to get them in a few weeks. It would be nice to have some frogs, too, so I need to think of a way to allow them to get in and out easily; I'm not sure about piling up stones to allow access, in case they rip the liner, but I'll need to figure that out somehow, and make a nice shallow area to encourage frogspawn/tadpoles eventuall, as well. For now, though, this is what we have:

We got three fish, by the way. One shubunkin, one Sarasa comet, and one yellow (or buttercup) goldfish, mainly to help keep on top of the fly/midgie larvae. And because I like goldfish (I already have 11 fish – three fancy fish, two platys, and five cloud minnows – in two tanks, so Mr Seren is breathing a resigned sigh about the pond at this point). So far only the shubunkin, which Tom chose, has a name, Max the Mutant, because it's mostly blue and white but has one red eye so it's rather distinctive looking. Rosie chose the comet, which is unofficially dubbed "Ghost" at the moment, because it's completely white, but as yet the yellow goldfish remains nameless. She's quite friendly with Ghost, though. Maybe I'll call her Whoopi.

It's all a work in progress, really, but the poppies, lavender and daisy-type plant are already flowering, and the digitalis is just about to. Before we got the pond we also bought a picnic table, so I've moved it beside it all for a comfy spot to sit while I might enjoy the view. It's midgie season right now so the usual times I might want to sit out are right when the midgies are wanting their dinner, but once the weather cools down that shouldn't be a problem.

A while ago I added some links to the Crafts section of the Gaol Naofa library of the website, with ideas for things to do to help make a wildlife-friendly environment for your bioregion. I've been meaning to trawl for more to link and ideas to add (if you have any, please share!), but things like bug hotels and bird baths would be a perfect addition to the space (or up in the flower bed), and the summer holidays is a perfect time to get a project with the kids going. I'm going to look through those and see about what I can do on the cheap, and I'd like to get a bird table, or something, so I can use it for somewhere to put offerings out of the dog's way, and maybe add some more decorations to give some interest once the summer plants start to die back – I couldn't find anything sufficiently tasteful at the garden centre, but Mr Seren thinks that in the absence of an exact replica of the Brigid statue from the well at Kildare (Rosie wishes), we should maybe try to find a peeing Sheela-na-gig water feature... It's kind of tempting, I have to be honest, though I doubt such a thing exists.

For now, until I can get somewhere to allow offerings to be safely made at this spot (I usually put them up on a part of the wall, which terraces the lawn off from the patio, on the other side of the garden where the dogs can't get at them), I can still make libations as I sit. Not pouring them into the pond, obviously. Eventually we'll add some more pots and containers around the pond, too, but for now I want to see how what we've already got will do against the slugs and snails, and what might need repotting next year. I think there'll be a fairly high attrition rate, to be honest, but we'll figure things out, I'm sure. As it is, it's a start, and that in itself provides a focus for me to keep at it and tend to it. Rosie's still figuring out how to make a fish-friendly, but decorative "boat," meanwhile... Priorities, right?

Devotions and disability

For anyone who's followed this blog for a while you'll probably have picked up on the fact that I deal with chronic pain on a daily basis, mainly because of how many variations on "Oooo, me back," I manage to come up with...

I've had problems with my back since I was a teenager, on and off, but after two pregnancies things got considerably worse and the problems more persistent. A brief stint with a chiropractor helped me get back to normal, ish, after I had Rosie, until my back totally crapped out just over four years ago. I wish I could say it crapped out while I was doing something exciting, but I was just sitting at the dining table at the time. Sad but true.

Since then I've had surgery, which helped me walk without aids again, as well as get off the morphine, and I've got a regime of medications that help me manage the day-to-day pain – I'm still on pretty strong painkillers, but not as strong as morphine these days. After this amount of time I have a good idea of the things I can and can't do, and I know my limits. Every now and then something happens because of my own poor judgement or "just because" and I have a bad flare that has me incapacitated and doped up on stronger painkillers and muscle relaxants for weeks at a time, sometimes months, but over all I wouldn't say I'm proper disabled. I'm a part-time cripple, at the most.

I'm painfully (no pun intended) aware of the fact that my problems are chronic and degenerative, though, and this means that eventually my back problems will worsen significantly. At that point further surgery might help, again, but whatever happens I'll always have to deal with the pain and the side-effects of the medications, to some degree or another, as well as the limitations that come with having an Officially Shite Back (or degenerative disc disease, if you prefer). Sometimes those limitations aren't just physical – not being able to push a trolley round the supermarket once it's full, say – but can affect me in other ways.

In particular, it can affect how I might express myself religiously or spiritually. When I plan out what we're going to do for festivals, for example, I have to make sure I don't over do things and try to cram in more than I'm capable of. If I have big ideas then I have to accommodate a bigger timeframe to ensure it gets done. I have to have an idea of things I want (or need) to do, as a bare minimum, as opposed to the optional extras that I might want to do as well – things I can juggle around or postpone in case I'm having a bad day, or whatever. If I need to spread things out over a few days, then that's OK; there's no point trying to battle through the pain and do for the sake of doing, right? And if I need to do something lying down rather than sitting or standing, then that's OK too. Needs must, and all that.

On top of that, I need to think about what I'm going to be doing and whether or not any medication I need to take might affect my ability to do that. For the most part my medications are an essential part of my daily routine that help me keep feeling "normal" now – missing a dose of Tramadol causes withdrawal symptoms, for example, that will have a knock on effect on my ability to sit still – missing a dose or taking it too late means I'll get relentlessly resltess legs and increased pain,  for one thing, which inevitably affects my concentration. But during those times that I might be prescribed extra meds, like muscle relaxants, even the effectiveness of a simple prayer can be affected by having taken a diazepam; drifting off to sleep mid-prayer or being unable to concentrate properly is hardly conducive to being able to be at my most receptive or communicative. So in those cases, timing is important.

So it's all been a bit of a lesson in compromise, and certainly in mindfulness, and it's definitely spurred me on to try and be more adaptable and flexible in my approach. When I was starting out – before the problems kicked in – I'd often concentrate on cramming in as many details as I could, and I'd worry about making sure I got everything done. Having to accommodate a baby, and then a toddler and a baby, helped me relax a bit on that one, and I slowly learned to aim for more realistic plans. It helped me realise (and not without some gentle but sage prodding from those wiser and more experienced than I) that while the doing is an important part of any religious practice, it's not the be all and end all of it. The doing and the details are important, of course, but there has to be a balance. When you start getting so caught up in the details that it starts to overshadow your actual experience, then it's a problem...

On the other hand, however, when you have to be aware of your own limitations it can be easy to get caught up in them, too. It's easy to start obsessing about what might happen and the what ifs... It can be easy to think that there's no point doing this or that because you might suffer for it later... To the point where you end up barely living at all. It seems that maybe the fear of pain, of negative consequences, is often greater than having to deal with actual outcomes. So it can be easy to wallow in those limitations, getting to the point where no real effort is made, and these are all traps I've fallen into at times. At the same time, I won't say I've never made rather stupid decisions in spite of knowing my otherwise sensible limitations, either.

It's all a bit of a delicate balancing act, and I don't think there's any particular right answer. What works for one person may not work for another; what works in one moment might not work in the next. It's a constant, evolving process, and to be fair I think that's the same regardless of your limitations and abilities, or lack thereof. The bottom line, however, is that being somewhat limited in what I can do, at times, it doesn't make my experiences any less real or meaningful to me. It doesn't make them any more real, either, because I'm still me regardless of how capable – physically, mentally or emotionally – I may or may not be at any point in time. What matters to me is that I try, and I do (as much as I am able), regardless. Sometimes I have to accommodate my limitations, or accept that I'm simply not able to do something because of them. Sometimes my inability to do may not be physical per se, but mental, or emotional, for sure.

Ultimately, it also occurs to me that in spite of however I may or may not be likely to end up, I can still appreciate, and be thankful for, the now. On those wallowing days it's something that can be easy to lose sight of. And regardless of however I might end up, physically, it won't prevent me from being able to do something in one way or another. It may, however, take some adjusting, and compromise. Mentally and emotionally, there may be some catching up to do when the time comes, too.

But if there's one thing I've learnt, then it's that I'm more than capable of getting there in the end – wherever "there" might be. My idea of what I should do, of what's necessary as part of a practice that's fulfilling to me, has changed many times over. One size does not fit all.

The belated Bealltainn post...

It's been a quiet month, blogwise here, mostly because I've not been up to much up until recently, and partly because I started writing this post and then kind of forgot to finish it... But as far as the "not being up to much" part goes, I'm making up for that now that I'm a little more mobile. And I have a new macbook to play with! I'm still trying to remember the old shortcuts for everything...

But Bealltainn came and went without much of a hitch. We had to spread things out a little, but there was the requisite cleaning and tidying, followed by the churning and feasting, baking and eating, offerings, devotions, saining, and the making of charms:

We also collected some dandelions from the garden to make a posy:

And that became part of an offering to a nearby rowan when we collected some of the wood.

Thanks to my drug-addled brain convincing me that there are in fact 31 days April, we were a little slow off the mark and most of our celebrations began on the day instead of the eve, but that didn't seem to impact anything negatively; if anything, it gave me more time to myself to get things done while the kids were at school. Somehow, in spite of all the planning and preparation, these things always seem to manage to sneak up on me, anyway...

For our feast we had some roast lamb, which I was intending to serve with some bannocks; I didn't quite have the energy or strength to make them at that point, so the bannocks came a day or so later with some stovies for dinner; I made two lots, one a Fife bannock, one a Brodick bannock. The Brodick bannock is still my favourite:

And best laid plans and all that, but we haven't yet managed to obtain a tree (or raised pond), although we now have a picnic table for the patio (although of course, since we got it it's rained nonstop). We're still intending to get a tree, though it may be a little too late in the season now, but as I've improved, physically, I've managed to get out and about a bit at least. On my travels a few weeks ago the hawthorn was just about to come into flower:

And now its bloom is in full swing. The bluebells are on the wane now, but there's been plenty of it along with the wild garlic, which is extremely fragrant:

And the red campion is starting to come out in full bloom, too:

After the loss of our favourite wooded area to logging a few months ago, my travels have gone further afield to find a new spot:

It's a little less remote and peaceful, but beautiful, nonetheless, and there are lots of little wooden bridges over streams that flow into the burn, and plenty of waterfalls:

On my way home, the dogs and I stopped in at the beach to make some offerings to Manannán, a sort of belated Bealltainn visit which has unofficially rounded off the celebrations. All in all, I got just about everything I wanted to do done, although I didn't succeed in involving the kids as much as I'd like to have – my drug-addled brain's fault, really, but still. Hopefully our Midsummer celebrations will go more according to plan.

Spring in the woods

Not being up to much lately, I took pity on the dogs yesterday and dosed myself up and hobbled out to the woods to see if the bluebells are out yet. It's my favourite time of year when the woods are awash in a carpet of blue(ish), so it's something I always look forward to and come hell or high water I'll get out and enjoy it dammit. And being the caring sharing type, I took some pictures to put on here...

The bluebells seem to be a little late this year (compared with previous years, anyway), but they are indeed just starting to come out:

This is from the woods right behind my house, which gets pretty boggy in places, and I think I found some marsh marigold as well:

Or, in Gaelic, lus buidhe Bealltainn, the yellow plant of Bealltainn. Tempted though I am to go back and pick some to hang above my front door for Bealltainn, I've been brought up to think that picking wildflowers is Bad, so I'll leave them be. Way back when we first moved here I'd hoped to get some for the garden, but I couldn't find any at the local garden centre, which is a shame. But as the almost unfurled flower there shows, summer is very nearly here.

Along with the bluebells and the budding marsh-marigolds, the ferns are starting to unfurl, too:

Over the mild winter we had, it seemed quite a few of the ferns lasted a lot longer than usual in the more sheltered spots around the village, but the cold snap at the start of the year killed them off. Soon they'll be back again, trying to take over my flower bed.

Along with the ferns and the bluebells, there's a smattering of wood sorrel (again, I think...) here and there, hanging around in clumps at the foot of trees:

Our walk yesterday started off sunny, then came the April showers. It's good for the garden, at least; we've had some beautiful weather lately and things have started to get a little parched. Not usual for round here at all!

And then we have some golden saxifrage, which seems to like hugging the side of the woodland paths wherever the bluebells and ferns take a break:

There's not much else in flower yet, but there's plenty of fungus around, helping the dead wood rot down:

Just as I did a year or two ago, I'd like to get back into learning more about the local flora and the rhythm of it as the months roll on. Learning more about the bioregion, as it were, to keep in touch with the place. If I get anything wrong then please let me know!

Book review: A Golden Treasury of Irish Poetry A.D. 600 to 1200

A Golden Treasury of Irish Poetry A.D. 600 to 1200
Edited and with translations by David Greene and Frank O'Connor

Not too long ago I reviewed Kenneth Jackson's Studies in Early Celtic Nature Poetry, which I really enjoyed. This book here would make a nice complement to that volume...

I'll start this review with the caveat that I'm not a poet. When it comes to poetry I both suck at it and have very little clue when it comes to the technical stuff beyond the fact that "poems don't always have to rhyme." I covered early Irish poetry as part of my studies at university, but since I both suck at it and have very little clue about it I can probably sound pretty convincing when it comes to pointing out alliteration and the kind of tricks that were used, like starting a poem and finishing it with the same word... And that's about it. Metres? Technical terms? No clue...

But this book starts off with a good introduction to the history of Irish poetry and covers some of the tricks and techniques that were used as they evolved throughout the ages, and even a person like me could understand it. It's not jargon heavy, so won't overwhelm, but at the same time it's perhaps rather superficial. In fairness to the authors, this book isn't intended to be scholarly -- aimed at an academic audience -- so that's hardly a surprise. It gives just enough to allow for some context and that's about it.

Greene and O'Connor mark out four distinct periods of Irish poetry, giving a basic idea of the different kinds of techniques, genres and phases the came into or fell out of fashion with each period. These kinds of things can help identify a timeframe for a particular poem, which is useful when looking at language alone might not be helpful; sometimes poems are written in a deliberately archaic fashion, so they might appear older than they actually are, etc.

After the introduction we move on to the poems themselves, each of which have a brief introduction to them and are then given in the original Irish and then the translation. This was one of the downsides of Jackson's book I noted, so here it's a definite plus. It's worth noting that the editors are selective with some of the poems -- the more difficult pieces, or the longer ones, aren't necessarily presented in their complete form, and any mention of truncation is usually just in the opening commentary rather than explicitly marked out. They don't necessarily go into the whys and wherefores of the editing choices they makes, so if you're looking for something that gives a rigid academic approach with copious notations and references, this is not the droid book you're looking for... *mystical handwave* But they are up front about this and they do give references so you can hunt up the full version if you want to (most of them are scattered about online).

As for the poems, some of them are pretty obvious choices that you kind of have to add to a book about early Irish poetry -- The Lament of the Old Woman of Beare, The Deer's Cry... Yes, you'll find them in most volumes on early Irish poetry, but the translations/interpretations given here may be of interest, to see where Greene and O'Connor's efforts might differ to other translators, and in some cases there's some useful commentary given on what certain words mean, or how interpretation may be ambiguous, and so on.

Otherwise, there's a selection of early Christian poems, nature poems, excerpts of poetry from various myths, and some excerpts and fragments taken from marginalia in manuscripts, a selection of the triads, and so on. What you get is pretty diverse, which gives a good overview of Irish poetry in general, and amongst these there were a number of poems that I've not seen anywhere else. Some of them are of interest to me as a Gaelic Polytheist -- there's the poem by Blathmac where the famous line muir mas, nem nglas, talam cé (translated here as "the fair sea, the blue sky, the earth") comes from, which is often used as an example illustrating the concept of the three realms (I'd wondered about the context of this line -- for reference, it comes from a poem on The Crucifixion). There are a couple of casual references to deities that I wasn't familiar with, too -- a reference to Donn in the afterlife in a poem that's otherwise full of Christian references. Some of them are just interesting because they're beautiful, or because they illustrate the time and place they come from so perfectly. Or they're just amusing -- my son found this satirical quatrain to be hilarious:

A-tá ben as-tír,ní eprimm a hainm;maidid essi a deilmamal chloich a tailm. 

There's a woman in the country (I do not mention her name) who breaks wind like a stone from a sling.

To be fair, fart humour is a guaranteed winner with a ten-year-old (OK... and his mother...but if you're interested it's discussed in Robin Chapman Stacey's Dark Speech: The Performance of Law in Early Ireland), but I'll give this as an example of the formatting as well -- the translations aren't given in the same layout as the Irish, which is kind of annoying. I suppose on the one hand it doesn't matter because you won't get the same sense of rhythm as you would in the original, but I like to see how the sentences are split up if I'm looking at a poem in more depth, and it's not east to see like this.

I only have one more comment to make, and that's on the rather overly critical nature of the commentary by the editors at times. While on the one hand the editors show a genuine appreciation for the poetry, there were some bits that struck me as a kind of undercurrent attitude of "how quaint" that some of these poems, that are so beautifully written, may be the product of people who weren't professionals in such a field: "Their aim was instruction and edification, and the literary beauty which they so often achieved might almost be described as accidental. The author of the versified 'Apochryphal Gospel of St Thomas,' for example, was unaware of the stupidity of the text on which he was working, but he wrote with the freshness and charm we associate with the beginning of literature in any country." That kind of commentary, to me, does a great disservice to the authors of those poems, the movers and shakers of their day. It also seems a little simplistic to say that their achievements were "accidental," even with the qualifier of "almost" thrown in. But if you disagree with their assessment, as I do, then it's not a huge mark against the book over all.

If you're interested in Irish poetry and looking for inspiration then this is a book I'd definitely recommend. Although you can find almost everything in here online, you have to know where to look and the translations given -- if any -- may be out of date. Here, you'll certainly find them in a more convenient package. I'd say it's one for the bookshelf for sure.