Ash Dieback and Fireplace Complications

Along with a squirrel and 

the blue tits and sparrows, pigeons and crows, 2 robins,

a cat and a slow worm,

I have a new visitor to the garden. Although I usually see pheasants on the ground I was surprised to see this one perched in my giant European Ash tree.

My brother-in-law thinks the tree may have ash dieback - a fatal disease of the bark and leaves. It can be slow, over several seasons, and the Woodland Trust website says no need to fell it unless it's a danger. 

But I feel quite heartbroken at the thought of losing it. It looked healthy in the summer - see below -  and it could be something else ...or the early signs were there already...... I just didn't recognise them.

Like we didn't recognise the early signs of Robin's disease.

There are complications with the fireplace. It's no longer simple. I have been to fireplace showrooms all over the region...pouring over brochures ....on the phone to supplier and builder.... getting dizzy reading websites.....and all with a time pressure to match the builder's date.

This evening I abandon it, and this constant vague feeling I'm getting it all wrong.... and take a long  exploratory walk all around my new village...and I'll pick up  the mantle again tomorrow when I'm ready for inspiration and kindness to myself.

Unpacking Judgements ...thank you, young plumber.

I wake to heavy mist hanging over the garden this morning. It doesn't totally clear all day....still blurring the views of the village when I walk up over the fields this afternoon.

I miss going to the farmers' market as young plumber returns with part to repair defunct valve. The valve that lets the water through the pipes even when it is switched off.

Also hard for me to switch off my judgements about his seeming lack of knowledge of plumbing.

I keep out of the way ....make him cups of tea....don't ask too many questions unless I can't help myself....notice how much I want to be right.....and make him wrong.

Three hours later he leaves ....water flowing right way in pipes....hot water ON and heating OFF.

I'm grateful to him for fixing my pipes( he did clear up all the mess)...and grateful to him for being the context for whatever it is that I need to unravel about what is going on with me.

I'm half way through listening to a Matt Kahn video about "Unpacking Judgements"...he says they are thinly disguised insights for our healing...we are here to heal ourselves and therefore everyone else. ....everything is here to help us. 

I doze off in the middle of the video so haven't found out how to unpack the gifts in my own judgements....but I'm sure it will include forgiving myself for having them.

And I like this reminder from Robert Holden 

The final (and only) act of healing is to accept there is nothing wrong with you. You might be suffering from psychology, have had a terrible past, got points on your licence—but your essence remains as radiant as a star. 

Fireplace and Flies

Writing is slow and inaccurate tonight as I have a sore right index finger....swollen....bulky with a bandage.

Thank goodness my sister is here when the very nice builder comes to measure up the fireplace...for  taking out the ugly 1970s cement and slate one, and getting the aperture ready for the new wood burner stove. Measurements drive me nuts and trying to visualise something without a picture just disorientates me.

I wasn't ever sure about the floating beam idea as a mantle above the fire...and talking it through with my sister and looking at lots of pictures of timber fireplace surrounds I get much clearer about what I want. I book nice builder to do the work in November.

I'm afraid this blog is going to become the story of my house renovations...I'm beginning to bore myself with  the details of it already.

 There is a big fat black fly buzzing around the glass shade of my bedside lamp. Dementing itself with  the brightness.

This afternoon when I was sitting in the sun on my bench the sound of the green/black flies almost drowned out the sound of the stream running behind me...that and the sound of the crows assembling high in the plane tree in the field.

I associate flies with hot tropical holidays...and the Mediterranean ....and my African childhood.

Not with a small village in the green Devon countryside in October.

Another displacement.

The Saga Continues....and Coffee with the Neighbours

The saga of the plumbers and the central heating continues.

My slim confidence broken after long phone call this morning with boss of it all. Nothing will happen  till Friday.

Not sure what it's all about for me...feel cross and let down ...disappointed, powerless and unsure.

So I'm just sitting with it all, not trying to change it... it feels familiar...so must be an old pattern...but still I'm pretty fed up. And only just warm enough.

I'm invited to coffee with my two immediate neighbours. Both amazing women....recent widows....  such courage....and humour they have. I learn  more about my predecessors in this house. Not sure I want to know too much. Prefer to keep trying to make it mine without more pictures in my mind and another's history to dissolve first.

But I borrow a  large hardback book about the history of  my new village with black and white photos in it of another age...that I do want to know about.

Stuck on the ON Position

When my visitors leave 

I walk along the banks of

the Great Western Canal at Sampford Peverell....

 lined with Moses bullrushes...

bursting 

open into fluff 

soft as the fur of this pussy cat snoozing on a tethered barge.

Clouds

float on water.....

swan and

bridge reflected.

I watch this heron flap in on a great wing span...

land in thick green shade on the far bank...

and stand silent....frozen.... wood-carved still....

patient as a Buddha.

Last night my central heating went on the blink. Although I turned it to the OFF position it remained ON - the radiators belting out a heat I didn't need or want. I finally got it to go OFF at about midnight but I don't know what I did.

This morning I called a plumber  - actually I called 5 plumbers  - and the one who came this afternoon looked about 12 years old with a sweet smile. My confidence in him was slim but he fiddled about with the motorised valve.... said it was stuck on the mid position.... and said I needed a new one ....and  a new thermostat control box....he would order it and his boss would fit it. I decided to trust him. Although I haven't got a date as yet. Meanwhile I'm grateful for the immersion heater and my open fire in the sitting room.

I'm reading a very good book by David R Hawkins called 

Letting Go - The Pathway of Surrender.

He says that...

"To be surrendered is to have no strong emotions about a thing."It's Ok if it happens and it's OK if it doesn't." When we are free there is a letting go of attachments. We can enjoy a thing but we don't need it for our happiness. There is a progressive diminishing of dependence on anything or anyone outside of ourselves."

To get to this point there is a lot of letting go of strong emotions to do. A lot of inner work to do.

My emotions..grief, guilt, regret, fear.... are definitely still stuck on the the ON position ....but instead of just turning them OFF, 

I'm practising the art of entering my sadness...letting it be without criticising myself for having it or trying to change it....and letting out the energy/the attachment  stuck inside it.... the already and always present fear of abandonment ...in place long before Robin passed. Crying a lot.

I'm getting a glimpse of what emotional freedom means. Not to be free of feelings but to be released from the power I give them to determine the quality of my day.....my life.

Just imagine being in charge of that ...in charge of the valve in the thermostat.