nesting

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The wind comes in from shadowy island forests, gathering sea dreams, threading through lemonwood leaves. We sit and hug our knees in the dark garden, a little cold, our eyes full of fireworks residue - red, gold, glory. We swallow the wind, speak it back again as stories.

imagine running away towards the edge of the world, just you and me with a backpack full of chocolate ... imagine stretching out under stars on a long lonely wharf ... imagine sailing by the lamp of the great white moon ...

We pile up our books and put things in baskets.










A sad bird goes back to her flockmates with the hope of a gentle indoors home. When she hears her brothers tweeting, she scrambles and cries, trying to get to them through the walls of her carry box. And a half-crazed bird goes back to being a happy bachelor. He sings again, after three days of bewildered silence at the onslaught of inconsolable tears (which for budgies sounds like squawk, squawk).

Some things love to fly and shimmy and sing in sunshine and wind. Some things love the comfort of a skyless home.




In the twilight we take our rose-scented dog wandering beneath the soft trees. We watch children run between each other's houses. We bring home wild roses and hopes and bright cheeks.




And Rose scoots, round and round, as if all the bricked-up stillness of the past year is uncoiling from within her.

what lies beneath

---

on the letting go ...

succulent sunshine
fish & chips salted by sea wind
a big book of Robert Frost's prose
coming by chance upon good friends and spending the afternoon with them
children roaming the beach
mothers laughing in the leaf-fretted shade
fresh strawberries shared around
gathering wildflowers
walking home through trees and gentle peace

... there is such happiness to be found when you relinquish the troubling things.

so far

I step carefully through my morning, too tired to trust the ground. My daughter scoots around and around the house. All my concern about the wind was for nothing. This is the windiest place I've ever lived. And Rose rides through it, smiling as I haven't seen her smile in months, letting her tension fly away.

It's not my Place, but it's a nice home to spend some years.




The garage floods. Housemate swore the washing machine was all ready to go, but hadn't connected the outlet pipe. Oh well, I didn't want to use that now-soaking computer anyway. And I saved my baby photos just in time.

A spur-winged plover flies past. Thrushes in the hedge sing gorgeously. We could be in meadows, in wooded hills far from suburbia, if we go by the evidence of birdsong, windsong, and the white peace alone.

As for the new bird, she will not be quiet. Actually, that kind of loud piercing chirping is an astonishingly effective form of torture. The neighbours must hate us already.

Rain comes. It falls so gently, graciously. I can hear it on the concrete, in the gutters, through the trees. I can hear the rain.




We now have three chairs. And that's all we're going to have for a very long while. I stand for a moment in my schoolroom, with one hand on the table I made, covered with the softly flowering tablecloth I made. Here's my ground. In my strength and my independence and the things I will do for my child. Next week we will begin lessons again.




The housemate phones. This afternoon, can you flatten and fold boxes for my friend who is moving this weekend? I look around at my still-boxed lounge and schoolroom, my pile of clothes, my newspaper-wrapped dishes that need washing, my bags of books, my dirty floors, my laundry that now must be handwashed and line dried (despite the rain), and I sigh.

There will be pancakes for pudding.

today

woke 6am from guilt-ridden dreams, dragged self from bed

made breakfast as quietly as possible

sat for some treasured quiet time on laptop - but only 15 minutes left of battery, and electric cable is in sleeping child's bedroom

worked on story, decided nanowrimo is not for people with too much professional history to write "any old junk" for the sake of speed (sorry no offence to those doing it)

unpacked books until others got up

made breakfast for Rose, got dressed

more unpacking

washed walls, windows, doors, started setting up homeschooling room

set up nature table

hung new curtain in homeschooling room

hung fleece fairies and two framed paintings in homeschooling room

two sets of new tables and chairs arrived in large terrifying boxes

toilet broke

went out for lunch, spent two hours doing huge amount of shopping to replace food spoiled during move

magically transformed shortest checkout queue into slowest simply by the power of my presence. twice.

purchased beautiful little girl budgie, she turned out to be histronic, squawking loudly all afternoon

made up cage for new budgie, poured seed into container and into great heaps all over concrete deck

convinced child sweeping seed from deck was an educational pursuit which furthermore would earn her my undying esteem

fixed toilet

put up hooks for towels and dressing gowns, discovered too late that had permanently attached the wrong ones on bathroom door

just about crippled self putting together one chair (five to go) and large table using incorrect screwdriver and hands that fit child-sized gloves, wished for first time for husband (who could divorce me once table and chairs were constructed)

called away from my table to help housemate construct theirs

noticed housemate has hands almost twice my size but made no comment

attended to hysterical bird, decided her name is Anne because she talks too much

hand-washed laundry as washing machine not yet connected, put in spin dryer

returned to constructing second chair

handled chaos as dog ran away and child gave screaming chase along busy road

welcomed home very happy dog, very white-faced child

secured dog indoors with amazing show of wordless patience and restraint, managed to calm child

made dinner

ate dinner while watching celebrity chef demonstrate how to make scones, supposed no one has grandmothers any more to teach them these things

listened to housemate hammering in screws for their glass table

moved rowdy budgies into garage out of concern for neighbours, realised this only caused the noise to echo loudly, discovered child making shushing noises could calm them, pondered how to set up camp bed for child in garage so she could shush at them all night

helped housemate carry their table to its new location

assured housemate the table looked just fine without the little plastic thingamys which had accidentally been left off, and therefore complete deconstruction and subsequent correct reconstruction was entirely unnecessary

put in desperate call to friend who is a budgie breeder, listened politely to her excitement at us having such a happy, ready-to-breed bird on our hands, judged from her gleeful advice to "put them in the sunshine and listen to them talk to each other" that a covered cage in a darkened room is the best option

while on phone to friend, boy budgie, who has lived happily outside in new cage for three days now, suddenly proves he can actually escape cage by sliding through bars - spent next twenty minutes weaving colourful ribbon through bars to prevent further escape (sorry lad, you must accept your romantic destiny)

happily sacrificed embroidered couch cover as budgie cage cover in the interests of sanity

returned to efforts with second chair only to discover hands have no strength left

folded laundry and put away

cleaned shower

persuaded child to set fireworks off tomorrow night

fed dog

washed dishes

tucked child into bed, hugged and talked with her for a while

argued with self that enough work had been done today to excuse pudding of low fat ice cream and strawberries, lost argument, sat down with cup of tea and handful of cashew nuts to write blog post

discovered had no remaining capacity for complete sentences

noticed several emails awaiting my attention, decided to answer them in the morning

arranged new bed for dog

greeted child in search of drink of water, assessed loose tooth, did further tucking in and hugging

am now going to bed

sahar dedyshka

It seems we have a domovoy here. He hasn't thrown anything at us yet, but he does not like the bedroom assignments I have made. His response to them has been a strong offensive odour only I can smell! So tonight we will be sleeping in different rooms. I certainly do not wish to offend my domovoy since I am lucky enough to have him.

In England, these creatures are known as hobs.




Once we lived in a house with a very unhappy domovoy. The house had been mistreated over the years by former occupants, and was dreadfully haunted. (Infact, it was rather famous for its haunting.) The domovoy had become maddened and would throw things, make loud banging noises, and scratch the walls. I wish I understood then what I do now; perhaps I might have been able to soothe him in some way.

The house we have just left was absolutely tranquil in terms of spirits. Something lived in the deeper shadows of the back room which no one used, but it never really bothered us. It was quite strange really to live without an obvious spirit presence around us. We had come from a place where we literally bumped into them in our kitchen and watched them run happily along the hallway, and got up to open the front door for them, mistakenly thinking their footsteps were of our housemate coming home from work. I think that the lack of this at Rose Cottage contributed towards its lack of homeliness.

And now I must go on with my unpacking. Many blessings to you all.

the riverside teahouse

We have moved in. What a lovely home! We have done a little unpacking, a little cleaning, but are trying to take things slowly as there is a long busy week ahead of us and we are not as young as we once were. Really, I was surprised by how little I could carry today! Gone are the days I could lug boxes alongside the powerfully muscled Moving Men.

We had Chinese takeaways for dinner then began what we are determined will be our new after-dinner ritual: we went for a walk along the river and through the park. Although it is not as beautiful as an English countryside, the neighbourhood has a real charm which already has drawn us in.

Rose pointed out that there are lovely pink and crimson manuka (tea) trees in our garden, so we have formally named our new home The Teahouse. Or as I shall always consider it, since if two words are good then surely nine are even better,

The teahouse by the river,
under the lemonwood trees.

See, it already has its own tiny poem. It's that kind of house.

But I am very tired now. So I wish you good night.

house of winds and lemons and love

Her name is Lillian. Actually, I think her name is Claire, but everyone else says Lillian, for important spiritual reasons which I appreciate since my own daughter has Lily as part of her name for those same reasons, so I will quietly concur before she simply becomes, from rapid habit, New House.

She smiles at us as we walk through her spaces cleaning them, blessing them, filling them with our dreams. She showed me how I could get my big, sunlit schoolroom in the room without right angles after all. She shared her own vision of a cosy lounge as I vacuumed the back room, and I saw all at once how it could indeed work.

I sense she wants to be lived in. I sense she loves being cleaned, coddled, opened, filled up with light.




I hope you all had a blessed holyday, whether it was Halloween, All Hallow's Eve, Samhain, or Beltane. We tried to wash our faces in rose petal dew this morning, as is our custom on this day, but the sun had already dried the flowers. So we washed our feet amongst the grass instead. I gave Rose a bird-decorated box filled with fire-coloured, gold-hearted chocolates and a candle to celebrate the light. She also got an azalea bush which she planted at the new house. If we weren't in the middle of moving, we would have gone out gathering flowers and making brightly coloured suncatchers for our windows.

I am so looking forward to the restoration of our warm and peacefully rhythmic life once more.

image credit

for samhain in summer

pumpkins unfurled in savage happiness
and long strings of pearls
dozens of silk-wrapped wishes
and some grey kittens
stacked in the arms of an angel
to feed the universe


carry on tuesday
(it's been a long while since I wrote a poem - I know, it shows.)

in the bothy & the frothy

At the edge of a valley there is a grey and gold house, hedged in, a little damaged by unkind people who did not know how to bless it with cleanliness, with love, when they left.

You walk through tree shadows to its door.

You walk through an elegant front of the house (frothy), no doubt welcomed kindly by our dear housemate, to reach where we will live, Rose and I, in the sweet cosy bothy (back of the house).

We have a lounge, a schoolroom, a bedroom each (at last!) and a large white bathroom.

We have a kitchen with more windows than walls.

Outside, pavement will hold rainbows and dining furniture and a blissful sun-loving dog.

If you stand in the garden, sunlight blessing your head and filling your heart with the lovely sense of an island holiday, you will see lemon trees, lemonwood trees, and a green blossom of grass leading up to houses on a hillside. At night, they will sparkle in the dark.

If you turn a little, you will see this ~




Unless it is raining, which seems to happen often in this quiet, forest-rimmed town.

If you wander along the gentle tree-lush street, you will soon find a playground, a stream, a bakery, a fruit shop. If you travel for ten minutes, you will come to my favourite little coastal village, where you can buy a hot chocolate and sit on the beach, looking for dolphins, listening for dreams.

Home.

It seems strange to not be there yet.

Jenn

Happy birthday to beautiful Jenn!! One of my absolutely favourite people in Blogland. I feel very blessed to have gotten to know her a little through her weblog and her kind comments, and to have been inspired over and again by the activities, ideas, ideals, and spirit she has generously shared.