Adventures and earning my keep

I spend a lot of time travelling in the summer. You’ll have seen in my previous post that I recently spent a week in Copenhagen – it was that wonderful luxury that is a real holiday. It’s usually been the case throughout my life that when travelling I am also doing some kind of work, either voluntary or paid. I live on my wits, and I live like a mouse – I have no expensive tastes and generally try to make my enthusiasms pay in some way – I love the natural world, so I’ll do little jobs for nature reserves and kill two birds with one stone, as the ill fitting cliché goes. I’ve done some amazing things in my life by living that way. But Copenhagen was a holiday pure and simple, and for me it was expensive.

The problem with having such an incredibly tight budget is that even the smallest indulgence has to go by the wayside when times are hard, and a huge indulgence like a holiday throws everything out of balance.  I don’t know if anyone noticed that this website vanished for a day or so recently -  it’s because my yearly hosting and domain bill had been due… and I’ll leave you to guess the rest. I am hugely relieved that I didn’t lose The Birds In The Meadow and have to start again, it was always meant to be self sufficient and has in fact paid for it’s-self many times over as well as providing much needed income.  However, having re-purchased my domain name and hosting, it seems that I have also run out of hosting space on the server which in plain talk means I can’t actually continue a picture heavy blog here any more ’till I sort out my finances and buy some more webspace. A fine mess, and I’ll apologise for it right now. If anyone’s interested, there is a 15% off sale over at the shop, which I’m hoping will help the process along. I know, I have no shame. Well, maybe just a little…

In the meantime, I’ve dusted off a Blogger blog I began earlier this year and kept very much under my hat because I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with it, or even if I could find time to keep it updated. It’s called The Aethernaut, and I’m thinking of it as a picture heavy personal diary, a little more succinct than what I’ve made here. You can keep an eye on me over there, and most important for me at the moment, it’s not likely to vanish any time soon.

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Holding Post…

Could it really be that two months and indeed a whole season have passed me by since I last wrote here? This morning on the way to the shops I was jolted awake by yet another sign of time passing – the rowdy screeching of swifts overhead, the first I’ve heard this year. Despite the cold, it must be summer.

With every passing sign of spring – the first snowdrop, the first lesser celendine, the first wood anemone, bluebell, swallow sighting… I’ve been wanting to write and celebrate. There hasn’t been the time though, so even though I note these changes and absorb their import they have passed here in silence. It’s felt so wrong, and now that I’ve started writing again I can barely collect the discipline together to figure out what I have to say. There are the swallows, and bluebells, and Beltane woods, and a feeling of the headlong rush of life that has broken the banks of spring and flooded into summer already. I feel knocked over and swept away by the flow of it all of it all… and then I have to go and do the chores.

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What do we know

I saw so much that day, but it’s the ephemeral things that I can’t get out of my head.

Pine tree tops
In the blue night
frost haze, the sky glows
with the moon
pine tree tops
bend snow-blue, fade
into sky, frost, starlight.
The creak of boots.
Rabbit tracks, deer tracks,
what do we know.

                   Gary Snyder

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Happy Belated Midsummer

Midsummer this year was a far gentler affair than last years epic  night walk up Snowdon - wow, was that really a whole year ago? R and I went instead to visit his parents in Hampshire and had a peaceful time strolling about in the countryside, eating his mothers home made delicious Victoria sponge cake and generally taking it easy. Midsummer is a special time though, and we spent midsummer eve skulking about in the fields wondering what would be the best way to mark it. Remnants of freshly harvested hay laying strewn about in the grass seemed too good not to play with, so we constructed a double spiral and spent a giggly half hour or so walking it’s curves as if it were a labyrynth, occasionally jumping into or out of the centres and generally thinking about how midsummer is one of the hinges of the year. Everything (apart from birdsong, which is already thinning) now feels to be at it’s peak, but already we are on our way to autumn.

Heavy workloads mean that we are both early to bed these days, but I suffer from insomnia and vowed to myself that if I awoke in the early hours I would bend this curse to my advantage. Sure enough I was wide awake at 4.20 am, so I quietly dressed and went outside. I’m glad I did. I’d hardly been out of the door ten minutes when I noticed a dark shape moving at the far end of the field. I raised my binoculars expecting a rabbit and instead was delighted to see a fox, apparently pounce-hunting for voles. I was hidden from view by a gatepost; the creature had no idea I was there so I settled to watch.  I assumed after a few pounces that foxy was having no luck, but then a second fox jumped up from the short grass, and the two leggy creatures started frolicking like spring lambs. It was a vixen and her mate; rather than hunting she’d been playing, trying to rouse him from a doze! I was entranced. Of course at this time of year I should have realised that there was something missing from this picture but it wasn’t missing for long as a third fox, their single cub, bounded out of the hedgerow and joined the game. They scampered and raced, cavorted and leapt, throwing bits of hay like confetti as they played. This went on for ten minutes or more, until one of the cubs’ games of hide and seek went on a little longer than before and I realised they had melted into the hedgerow for good.

I wandered across the fields hopeful of a badger sighting, and the pale dawn arrived rose petal white – a cloudy day. No badgers, they were probably already in bed as I was dressing, but I did get to see another fine dog fox on his way home from hunting. Wild foxed these – not your insolent unafraid urban critters but wary and suspicious, and for very good reason.  It was about six am when I wandered back over stubbly fields and already the sound of shotguns was punctuating the air. Hampshire is not a good place to live if you are furred or feathered, or so it seems to me. As I walked I found this pheasent’s egg, raided by one of the foxes perhaps or even a stoat.

Pheasants, introduced to this country purely as moving targets and preyed on by all and sundry may be cossetted by gamekeepers for the early part of their lives, but seeing that broken egg reminded me that theirs is a crummy lot really. Heartily glad to be top of the food chain I made my way back to the house.

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Blogiversary…now we are 2!

Today I settled down to do some much overdue writing for this blog when I noticed there was something familiar about the date.  After a bit of embarrassed rummaging I found that yes indeed, today is the second anniversary of The Birds In The Meadow.

It’s so easy for me to let dates like that go by,  if I know what day it is at all I consider that good going. I missed the first anniversary and the fact that I’ve made it this far without celebrating seems wrong, so I’ve decided to have a whole week of festivities!

But before I write any more about that I’m going to think about these two years past and why blogging, crafting and this site mean so much to me.

To me, this site is…

• A diary. I never realised just how much blogging would become a record of some of the best bits of my life. I don’t write about much personal stuff here, but looking back over what I’ve written I see that this blog has grown into a living souvenir of big adventures, small insights and those ephemeral little things spotted along the way. Just looking back over these two years in the blog is often enough to keep me going when life feels rough.
• An open window. Through writing here I’ve also been given the chance to enter the insightful, funny, imaginative inner worlds of other people who write their own blogs. Some of these discoveries have been truly inspirational in ways that go beyond anything I could write here, and to those whose blogs I read I have to say a really big thank you for letting me in. Your candour, humour and warmth make being stuck behind a computer for several hours a day a far more rewarding experience, and encourages me with my own efforts.
• An apprenticeship. Since I opened the shop I’ve watched my practical crafting skills go from strength to strength. The imagination and diligence it takes to ensure that everything is robustly made and true to my recycled, repurposed or vintage ideal has tested my patience, tenacity and occasionally the will to live, but it’s been worth it just to know that what I make does not, as the old chestnut goes, cost the earth. What’s even better is knowing that there are people out there who care about these things as much as I do, and are prepared to take a chance on ordering from a small scale designer like me.
• A place of learning. I’m no wildlife expert; I have curiosity and a keen eye, and these things alone have got me a long way in the past. As a direct result of writing here and reading other nature blogs, my curiosity had become voracious and I realise with each passing day how little I know but want to know. I’ve learned more about insects and wildflowers in these past two years than I probably learned in the lifetime that went before,  but I’ve barely scratched the surface. I read field guides as if they were novels and devour literature on local wildlife wherever I go, but I’m still hungry. The learning I should have started in childhood only really got into full swing quite recently, and as direct result of researching stuff to write about here, I’m musing very tentitavely on taking some higher education.

In honour of these things and many more, I’d like to offer you a generous slice of cake, a glass of whatever takes your fancy and a toast to all the good things that blogging and the internet can bring. Remind me of some more! What are you raising that glass to?

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