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Sunday 23 February 2020

Out of Chaos Comes New Order?

Sitting, eating breakfast, looking out on a soggy, windswept garden, I was alarmed to note so many buds opening.
Alarmed, not because Spring is on it's way, far from it. I wait for the first shoots of Spring with great anticipation of the summer it will bring.
No, my alarm was raised by the date, 23rd February, rather early for the usual, Earthly cycle to begin.
Yes, I've enjoyed crocuses and alpine bulbs sitting in large pots outside my kitchen window, but I would expect that. They are sheltered from the extreme weather by the aspect of the house as well as gaining stored warmth from the building itself.
However, the exposed, northerly facing garden should not be springing into action (no pun intended) so early.
Our seasons are changing, that's all too clear. 
My predictions are, in the South-East we will get wet, wild winters and arid, hot summers. 
We will be conserving water from the winter to water the gardens, and the crops, in the summer as the continental climate slowly migrates north.
The rest of the country? 
Well I do sense, flooding in the winters with hurricane force winds, with very low rainfall in the summer months. 
It's all down to that Jet Stream and I am pretty certain we are going to see that behaving in a very different way than it has, as we slowly pull up the continental climate and pull tight isobars of wind and rain over us in the winter months.
Snow? Frost? Yes, but up North more than here, down south where that Jet Stream seems to sit high.
I'm ready for this. I am adapting my garden to be as insect friendly as I can so as to maintain one oasis of calm for them without herbicides or pesticides to damage or kill them. Lawns are going, to be replaced by shingle and bark clippings so rain still penetrates rather than runs off and planting will reflect a more continental habitat.
My greatest concern?
That jet stream could sink really low and get stuck, plunging us into the Siberian style winter with -50°C conditions, snowfall in the region of 6 feet and the realisation that this country will grind to a complete halt.

Sunday 16 February 2020

Quotation: Boredom stimulates the imagination in a way nothing else can.

Sometimes, when I read a book such as this, a gem drops into my lap, and that quotation is one of them.
About a woman who, having scored a hit with her first novel, is searching for inspiration to replace the utter flop she submitted as her sequel. she employs an age old tradition of complete boredom in the hope ideas would flow. Unfortunately, she couldn't still her mind enough for the flow to start, until.....

As I read it, I thought back to my childhood and my mother's response to my cry of, "I'm bored, what can I do?"
Her answer was always the same; she'd suggest I went upstairs into my 'playroom' ( a small box room filled with a wall to wall desk, cupboards, shelves and all the paper, pencils and other crafting stuff a child could ever want) and find something to do.

Boredom is a great creator; with nothing in its way, the right hand side of the brain kicks in, and ideas in pictures, sounds and feeling come out to stimulate the vocal mind.
It was during these moments, which quickly turned into hours, I taught myself how to make and create in papier-mache, how to use inks to 'colour' black and white photographs as the Victorians had done, how to sew dresses for my Cindy doll, how to use poster paints mixed with glue, glazing paste and sand to give a different textures, how a birds breast feather was attached using fishing lure feathers and glue.....so many different techniques and ideas, I wouldn't be able to list them all here, but safe to say, I would have failed to experiment and develop these skills if I had been stuck watching the TV, Netflix or a video game.

During the summer, boredom would lead me outside into the garden to create tents out of tarpaulins and my mother would bring out sandwiches and squash so I could play picnics with my teddies. 
As I grew older I would take myself off for a walk into Shaw's farm  and watch the cows, the chickens and listen to the ducks on the millpond.
It wasn't idyllic at all, the place hummed with the smells of a farm and I was continuously wary of the farmers dogs and tractors. The lane up to the farm skirted the crematorium and often the white smoke would be coming out of the chimney.
If the farmer at the bottom of the hill had turn the pig muck heap, the stench was gut-wrenching and on days like that, the bike and a few friends would translate any boredom into camps in the hawthorn shrubs, chasing each other in glorious games of 'IT', the dogs chasing at our heels keeping us safe from any unwelcome visitors and herding us together so none of us strayed far.
Boredom gave us imagination and once that had hit home in all its glory, it morphed into creating go-carts, small sail boats which we raced on the pond, and later, doing up old engines to put into racers, ab-sailing off the roofs of our houses (no, our mum's would shout at us if they caught us), bartering games, hula hoop challenges, skating...........

What made us different from today's youngsters?
We were allowed to get bored and find something more interesting to do instead.

How did it effect us? 
We all became good at writing from our imagination but also from our memories which we made every day we went out and played. And now? Even in my 60s I never have time to be bored. As soon as I have nothing to do which is mundane and necessary the radio/TV/phone/internet all goes off and I allow my mind to wander.
So far I've taught myself how to podcast, how to blog, paint and draw, travel the world and explore, make cards for birthdays and Christmas, garden, grow orchids, study politics, train as an nlp master and am now thinking of creating a sounds archive with social history relevance for the future generations of social scientists who will comb the net for such inspiration of the past.
And let's face it, I'm writing this blog now when I could be glued to the TV or watching Netflix or playing a game on my phone........ but what's more entertaining? For some of you I suspect the thought of doing something like this would be the last thing you'd want to do, but if you have very young children who are not already addicted to the phone or the tablet, may I suggest playing with them?
 Get some paper and coloured pencils, draw silly things and play the guessing game...what have I drawn? Or what am I thinking about? Or get a board game and play it for a while.
Sadly, parents fret they are not giving their children the very best of everything materialistic in life and forgetting the very basic gift of all,
Imagination.

Sunday 2 February 2020

February strikes and plants smile

Each morning I go into my kitchen, I am greeted by an array of plants. Some sit on a strategically placed table, whilst other wrestle their way through the litter of last summer in the 'house' border.
Most winters the view is one of hope and anticipation as pots filled with mud and borders covered in leaf litter, quietly bide their time, girding their strength for that burst of activity in March and April.
No, not this year.
The winter has been, as I feared, exceptionally wet, windy and dark, but the temperatures have hovered above freezing and for periods, hit double figures. Plants are confused and my garden is showing evidence of that.
With shrubs forming green buds and swelling them in readiness for opening, Spring bulbs are either flowering or reaching a point where they are considering opening.
But where are the pollinators? Still hibernating? Have you seen any bumble bees out and about?
Nature is out of sync.
The flowers are there, not to look pretty for our edification but to attract the insects so they can pollinate them, so start the process of regeneration for the next season of plant. 
The insects are paid in food which they in turn use to feed themselves whilst creating the next generation of their species to start the process again the following year. 
It's a win-win process, each relying on the other to be there at the right time.
And that's the rub. This isn't the right time. It might be nice for us to see a bit of colour during such a monochrome month but we contribute nothing to the survival of future generations of that plant. Society's attitude is, 'when it dies I'll get another one'.
What of those early bumble bees? The ones we need to survive so plants are propagated? Will they just starve to death having survived a series of months with no food?
I open my kitchen blinds and enjoy the Spring flowers. They give me great pleasure. 
But I also worry at the mismatching of timings between their arrival and insects emerging. 
I worry for our survival as a species, as we witness the extinction of insects most of society either ignore or do not worry about, not realising their unique contribution to our own food supplies in the supermarket today.
I make a cup of tea and think; before pollination by insects there were only grasses, a very nutrient poor landscape for omnivores like us.
I turn and make some breakfast.