Raw Tart with a Heart – white mulberries, gojis and a raspberry + black mulberry doing an impression of a yew berry!
As you can see from the above, I’m having camera encounters of the strange kind (Mercury is currently retrograde). Apart from the above unalterable towering tarts, said camera is buzzing like an angry wasp and the screen’s shimmying as if on psilicybin mushrooms! (My Pentax K1000 of decades still works a treat. Digital schmidgital)
So a belated wish to you for momentous joy on that extremely plashy, pluvial Full Moon in Leo last Friday 14th February. No doubt the lunar pull added to the heady tempest in the UK.
The date is adapted in many countries to commemorate the death of St Valentine circa 278 AD. Legend says that St Valentine’s Day evolved from the pagan Roman Lupercalia, a bit of a Love-In, which was fine but it went against the new Christian religion, so it had to be adjusted. Like Christmas, Easter and the rest.
In Love, whether you are more of the Petrarch’s pining for luscious Laura de Noves denomination (who wrote 366 sonnets longing for her);
Vergin bella, che di sol vestita,coronata di stelle, al sommo Sole
piacesti sí, che ‘n te Sua luce ascose,
amor mi spinge a dir di te parole:
or happily hitched or yet, as bawdy Byron’s dissolute Don Juan,
Marriage from love, like vinegar from wine A sad, sour, sober beverage – by timeif you weren’t able to spend Valentine’s with your dream Schatzi/e, Beloved, Paramour, Amante, then it’s always heartening to: “Love the one you’re with” (Crosby/Stills) to spread a little love and appreciation to those present, dogs and plants included!
The plant world is my entheogen and has divinely made my Valentine’s weekend perfect. (Though, not cut-flowers or plants from shops and garden centres anymore which, sadly, are sprayed with lethal subtances such as the hazardous glyphosate “Roundup.” If you find an organic house-plant company in the UK, please let me know).
The plants we sought were the wild, edible variety which possess a vibrantly different energy and provide the crucial bitter element so lacking in our hybridised, fructosed fruits and vegetables.
After the hearty, tarty breakfast pictured above and under a heavenly, cerulean sky, the first Spring-like day of the year, we headed to Barnes Common and harvested: wild sheep’s sorrel, three-cornered leaks, red-top nettles, baby yarrow, wild chervil, dandelion cleavers and chickweed. We ate yellow gorse flowers and nibbled lime buds.
I felt earthed and also in spirit again: in tune with my own Nature and the Cosmos. How I long for the scent of linden and elder blossoms for their fragrant, healing teas and spellbinding beauty.
We sat with Elda Mor, the wise woman spirit of the elder tree (whose wood must never be burned); with the oak, yew, ash, holly – who only has spikes when younger to prevent being eaten! We learn so much about all the plants from feeling their vibration, listening to their messages – as well as from the enthusiasm and knowledge conveyed by Chris Hope of http://www.ipsophyto.com
Though, Milton’s Adam was not in the same blissful state as I always am in Nature!
Eve speaks to Adam, Paradise Lost, John Milton 1608-1674With thee conversing I forget all time,
All seasons, and their change,–all please alike.
Sweet is the breath of morn, her rising sweet,
With charm of earliest birds; pleasant the sun
When first on this delightful land he spreads
His orient beams on herb, tree, fruit, and flower,
Glist’ring with dew; fragrant the fertile earth
After soft showers; and sweet the coming on
Of grateful ev’ning mild; then silent night
With this her solemn bird and this fair moon,
And these the gems of heaven, her starry train:
But neither breath of morn when she ascends
With charm of earliest birds, nor rising sun
On this delightful land, nor herb, fruit, flower,
Glist’ring with dew, nor fragrance after showers,
Nor grateful ev’ning mild, nor silent night
With this her solemn bird, nor walk by moon
Or glittering starlight, without thee is sweet.
Whichever unique and creative ways you celebrate your life, coupling, pairing or nexus – enjoy your feasting, singing, dancing and loving – and not just St Valentine’s Day, but every day and in each gloriously spontaneous moment!
Above all, nourish, nurture and adore YOURSELF!
To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance. O Wilde.This love radiates from all your well-loved and loving cells to others, reaching universes far, far away…..
Ti amo! Ti voglio molto bene.
Dawn X
Raw Cacao Fudge and Dark Cacao
Which forms, in fact, true love’s antithesis;
Romances paint at full length people’s wooings,
But only give a bust of marriages;
For no one cares for matrimonial cooings,
There’s nothing wrong in a connubial kiss:
Think you, if Laura had been Petrarch’s wife,
He would have written sonnets all his life? from Don Juan, Byron
The final note from a perfect union between two poets, Robert and Elizabeth, that did endure beautifully:
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of everyday’s
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love thee with a passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints, — I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life! — and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Piscean
Solstice Tree - Earth & Cosmic Energy Merge 
Very interesting, Have a wonderful day 🙂
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Thank you for visiting my site, Gede. Yours is gloriously tranquil with uplifting and calming contemplations. I enjoyed your “Painting Emotion into Harmony” article which reminds me of Milton’s “The childhood shows the wo/man, As morning shows the day” from Paradise Regained. I eat some wild and sea weeds! Perhaps the metaphorical weeds/frustrations are energy medicine self-reflections.
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I admit that the unalterable erection confused me somewhat! So did the word “entheogen” but I’m always happy to learn a new word 🙂 Since the 14th our weather has started to mellow and perhaps the warmth of Valentine’s Day played a part. I hope you are not under water, Dawn. Its difficult to adore anything when the floodwater pours in! Luckily we are almost 200′ above sea level. It will be a bad day when we get flooded.
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Sorry about the confusion with the tall tower of a photograph, Andrew. I nearly abandoned the post altogether. It’s not advisable to purchase new equipment during a mercury retrograde either. The odd thing is that the photos (that I tricked it into taking at all) are all the right way up in my folders. I tried switching them sideways to make them appear horizontal in WordPress.
Thank you, we are without major flooding fortunately in this part of the Thames (unless the Thames Barrier fails). I’ve sailed through there a few times when I worked in the City as an event organiser, and I found it a bit eery. As the crow flies in West London, I’m less than a mile from the river but I walk past and levels are normal. I’ve seen it much higher with regular tow path flooding on the Full Moons of each August; and have been caught calf-deep with the regular, sudden tidal flow in Richmond.
Our foraging guide who lives on a narrowboat on Thames or Isis has had some very serious struggles to keep afloat since early December. Being on a boat in a great deluge only seems to have worked for Noah! In previous years, I’ve seen photographs of boats flung far away into a field. The problem has been, again, interference with Nature. The Victorians built on reclaimed land as well. I read once that, in places, the Thames was three times wider than it is now. Asking for trouble, as Viktor Schauberger would have no doubt said, had he been permitted to speak out.
Coasts and plains were meant to flood from the Nile to the Mississippi. These waters brought minerals to the soil where people then planted their vegetables which absorbed the essential minerals we need in our own bodies. Chris agrees. He was born in Somerset and says the plain flooding is meant to happen.
I’m disappointed with scathing remarks on radio shows about it being their own fault for “building” their houses on flood plains. Those people bought what they believed were bona fide safe houses. If purchasers aren’t informed geographically, then surveyors cannot be so named unless they have full spectrum knowledge. Isolationist informationism has caused enormous problems throughout many areas of society.
The question upon which to reflect, of course, is why have government faces permitted this profitable building knowing full well rivers have burst their banks historically? I think we can work that out.
I love learning new words, too! “Entheogen” is sometimes applied to substances like Ayahuasca, but just looking at simple chickweed is all it takes for me!
Finally, although I haven’t commented every day, I absolutely love the daily BAD on your site!
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I thoroughly agree that surveyors should include warnings about flooding risk when they write a report. The problem surely is that if they did then the properties would fall in value and probably insurers would hike the premia again. I am not sure whether all the poor unfortunate people will be covered. Maybe the insurers will claim act of God. At the moment I suspect people buy either blind to the risk or simply take a punt that they will be lucky. If you think reclamation in London is bad wait until you next visit HK and see whats left of Victoria Harbour. The Star Ferry has moved and the crossing is sorter. The wags claim we will all be able to walk across soon. My other new word this week was ‘nystagmus’. Not one I am going to use much! I’m glad you like BAD. Its a lot of work but fun too. Stay dry!
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You’re right, Andrew. A friend last week was renewing her home insurance and flooding is no longer covered. With this exceptionally mild Winter, there’s no chance of the Thames freezing over either, as it did in 1700s(?) when they had fairs and fires on it! There has been quite a loss of trees and there are reports of sinkholes (there’s a new word for me) in Kent, SE London, Hemel Hempstead, Rickmansworth, High Wycombe, also on the M2 and a Victorian build in Ripon in Yorks where half a house has come away. Porous rock and rain erosion, it seems. My Italian friend told me of the constant storms in Rome in January. In November 2013, Clyclone Cleopatra killed 18 people in the beautiful island of Sardinia (Olbia) when floods poured into streets, sweeping away cars and bridges. It’s a turbulent world, alright. Edgar Cayce predicted this in the Mediterranean and the US East Coast, but timelines can change. The best we can do is stay as prepared as possible and remain calm at the eye of the storm – as long as that eye is not in a state of nystagmus! Thanks for the new word.
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