Can we make swords now?

"Can we make swords now?"

asks great-nephew, after his hot, bounding visit to iBounce, a trampoline and sports centre on the industrial estate in Exeter.

"Have you  still got that bag of wood?  ( the dumpy bag of  kindling in my garage) And we'll need a pen knife... and we need to make three swords to have the battle."

 He has recently been immersed in the Lord of the Rings videos.

"And how can we make them silver? And what about the handles?"

His grandma, my sister - who is forever keeping up with such demands from his wonderful imagination, with her own practical, creative one -  suggests Duck tape.

I find one of Robin's old penknives....and within minutes she has fashioned a sword out of a short flat piece of pine, smooth edges, no sharp point of course, and wrapped round  in silver tape, which he is very happy with. 

For our swords he says we need strong sticks from the garden....which we pull out of a pile of fallen hazel branches which I've been collecting, under the silver birch trees. We wrap the ends in brown sticky tape (left by the removal men last year) to indicate handles. 

And then we have target practice -  taking turns to hit out at a bigger heavier hazel branch which he  stabs into the hollowed out stump of the third silver birch.

 After a sausage, mash, beetroot burgers and ice cream with raspberries supper we have running, chasing pretend fights with our swords, which are not just any old swords but those of Aragorn and Leogolas and I'm not sure who mine belongs to, but apparently it's too short...and I'm not holding it correctly....

"No, like this, you have to hold it with two hands".

And  I'm not sure if we are also fighting hoards of Orks as well as other malevolent monsters bent on our destruction.

But it doesn't matter because what matters is that he and his grandma are running and laughing and chasing each other in the evening sunshine in the full length of my unused garden.

While his father, her son, is in the hospital, throwing up, after enduring his fourth round of chemotherapy treatment.

The ever present, invisible sword of pain and grief cutting out the light.

Rooted in Each Fragrant Moment

In spite of beautiful blue morning, yesterday's sadness clings to me..a second  damp skin.

I walk with tears never far away...memories of Robin in his last days surface unbidden...slaying me in   the soft early light.... 

the fields, dew drenched. The air smells of damp, autumn  earth.

Black Beauty keeps eating the grass...

slowly moving towards me as I wait

at the gate for her. But she doesn't approach any further ...and I need to leave.

She's not alone this morning ...sharing the field with a few sheep..

who have long surprising tails..

and the ram has curled horns ...

and black speckled face and legs.

I'm not alone either... I see the sheep first in the distance, running towards something ....it's a woman carrying  a child, walking in the dew.

A  long band of  mist hangs over the valley...

 I feel this vista could be in another country..Italy....France...Spain.

Different sheep....

lit up by the sun...

shining furry beacons.

The Belgians in Devon..love them.

The sky  - a faultless blue.

Another woman .... walking past the horses.... I have seen her before in the same field...maybe she is their owner.

Back home I slip into my usual Thursday routine...taking the wobbly parcel of my grief with me into the familiar comfort of the farmers' organic market.

It slowly shrinks away as I dip into the baskets of green beans, young carrots, fat cobs of wrapped up sweetcorn and sugar snap peas....choosing next week's suppers is the perfect task at hand....as well as sharing it all with dear friends over two cups of oat milk mocha in our local cafe....helping me transmute this forever loss with their loving wise attention. 

Later I immerse myself in my favourite pastime ...cooking..... making tomorrow's supper for dearly beloveds..scrubbing vegetables, stirring pots of nourishment ....forgetting to be lost and alone and bereft.... rooted as I am in each  fragrant moment.

Spectacular Clouds and Tiredness....and Starling Power Abuse

 This morning's walk belongs to

the sky....

 and its spectacular cloud world.

A single horse

alone in a field...

 lone sheep...

seagull leaving the horse field.

The past is another country...

and today the clouds are

forging new unexplored frontiers in heaven.... I feel like a tiny insignificant  creature below.

Honeysuckle crown in the hedgerow.

Four cows have returned to the field bordering the stream at the end of my garden.

I find them quietly feeding on the other side of the wire fence at the wild end, where the little waterfall splashes, where I don't often go because of the high nettles and sprawling brambles...

but where it seems cows can reach 

the best green morsels.

The family of starlings have also returned ...renting the peace with

raucous squabbling

over the bird food

especially the little suet pellets 

which are their favourites. 

Their noisy flapping presence is a violent shift in the atmosphere ...the sparrows and blue tits, great tits, long-tailed tits, robins and dunnocks are quick silent friendly visitors. It feels like a broadside attack...a takeover bid...relentless power abuse.

How I feel about the PM attempting to shut down parliament.

And the careless deliberate burning down of the Amazon rainforest. 

The rain sets in early in the day soon after I return from my walk.. the temperature drops.....I feel my energy seeping away as I try and stay warm....the languid heat of a few days ago a fading memory.

I bake a batch of banana walnut and raspberry muffins....stay at my desk catching up with admin and emails....defrost thick vegetable soup for lunch...fighting off spectacular tiredness and sadness...giving in to it now.  

A slow dance with the heat....Mickey attack...Clearing out the past....and Gymnastic Girl

Bank holiday Weekend

The hottest since records began apparently.

I'm in my element. 

My soul flips into a slow dance with the heat.

I have an idea, when I'm awake in the night...sitting on the window sill....gazing at the glorious canopy of stars above me and the air is silk on my face...that I could sleep outside.....maybe in the summerhouse. 

So in the morning I empty it out.....sweep out the spiders and their webs with a long handled brush ....pull out  the strands of  ivy creeping through the wooden slats....I get sticky hot and filthy... it reminds me of working in Fiji on my brother's farm....so abandon the cleaning and lie on a blanket in the shade and read till I fall asleep. 

Although the days are blue and burning, the early mornings are shrouded in mist.....

I can't resist slipping through this open gate and 

walking along the rows of stubble barley ...taking in a much more open view compared to the one I have between the high hedges of the footpath...but I'm thwarted at the far end of the field...the hedge too thick...and I have to re-trace my steps. I feel I've trespassed .....glad the mist is dense at the brow of the hill so I'm not spotted....but I love this glimpse of wideness anyway.

Blackberry..

black slug..

 black Sloes...

Black cap...

Sheep in a mist...

This is Mickey who took extreme exception to me on Sunday morning when I was walking back through the  sleeping village.... ran at me and barked and barked and followed me, still barking, till people opened their windows to see what the commotion was about ....a man came out in his dressing gown, followed by his wife who tried to calm the dog down ....till finally the angry voice which had been calling 'Mickey Mickey' appeared in his tracksuit, and shouted at him to Come Here and apologised to me.

It felt such a personal  attack from such a tiny dog....I was afraid he was going to bite my ankle.....he came so close with such fierce intention and all I'd done was walk along the road. Maybe he didn't like having his photo taken. Fair enough. But he came for me before I took a picture.

I've always been a bit wary of dogs ever since I was chased by one as a child ....gave me terrible nightmares which I can still recall.

Later when it's cooler I clear out more junk from the garage and the mower shed...including stuff left by my predecessor .... pile it into the back of the car, and take it, the next day, along with the summerhouse contents - old dusty rugs and bamboo blinds -  to the re-cycling centre.

I also take a load of black plastic bags full of my old clothes to the  charity shop, book an appointment for a kitchen designer to come and measure up next week, and buy sage green timber paint for the summer house.

But it's too hot to paint....it rains in the night....maybe the moment has passed for sleeping under the stars.

But it did take me to a big clearing out of the past...of things that are mine and things that  never belonged to me....taking ownership of this space in a way I haven't done yet. And I will paint the summer house ......even if I don't sleep in it. 

This morning  I walk with an umbrella in the fields...

the rain constant and heavy.... but the air  tropical warm.

I spend a marvellous afternoon with my delightful and adventurous five and a half year old great niece and her grandma...playing imaginary games in the woods...shooting wild boar and deer with bow and arrow...preserving the carcasses with salt for the coming winter.

And then exploring further into the deep wood and finding two real badger sets, with fresh mounds of   caramel coloured sand piled up outside the cave holes dug into the side of the steep bank.

We all agree that this is exactly the kind of adventure that Grandpa Merfyn (my father) would be having if he was here now. I love it that she knows about him and knows she is following somehow in his fearless and sometimes hair-brained and risky footsteps. 

And at one point when the path looks seriously dodgy and slippery and steep she says,

"Follow me. I know what I'm doing. I'm gymnastic girl." And she certainly is.

Driving home at dusk I slow down for this scuttling partridge crossing the road....and stop to take this rather ordinary sunset as I approach the village. It's one thing I miss here  - I don't see the sun setting in the summer because it's always behind a thick high hazel hedge screening  the allotments on the far side of the road opposite my house.

But I love it anyway - a streak of gold behind the hills. And I aways have the hope  that comes with the certainty of sunrise tomorrow morning. Blazing or cloud-hidden....always there.