Gooseberry Jam for Eva

I first met Eva not long after moving to Wales. Within moments of meeting, she had signed me up as a volunteer at the Day Club for the elderly she ran in the village. She would have made a great army recruitment officer.

Small in stature (under 5 feet) yet huge in personality, Eva was a force to be reckoned with. Always immaculately turned out and with flawless coiffure and makeup, a lifetime of chainsmoking had left her with a deep, gravelly voice with which she belied her ladylike exterior by peppering her conversation with choice profanities. Blunt to the point of rudeness, never failing to call a spade a bloody spade, she prided herself on her fierce honesty and refusal to take any nonsense from anyone. Strong men quailed when confronted with her glare.

Yet she was also incredibly kind hearted, generous to a fault, hardworking and completely dedicated to both the Day Club and those she loved.

I was lucky that she took a shine to me straight away, and forgave any of my slip ups (such as the time I left a kettle boiling in the kitchen and got distracted, only to return twenty minutes later to find the room filled with dense steam) with a mild, "Well don't do it again!" rather than the strict dressing-down reserved for those who had truly offended her sensibilities.

About five years ago, Eva suffered a serious heart attack. The Day Club went into a kind of numb shock. Eva was the heart, soul and backbone of the club. No one had truly understood the extent of her dedication and sheer hard work until suddenly she wasn't around. After a few months of limping along without her, she returned, yet the heart attack had taken its toll on her health. She continued organising there for another year or so, yet it was clearly too much for her. Eventually, she skilfully manouevred me into replacing her as organiser of the Club, and (by now in her seventies) became one of the members instead of the chief worker.

However, it was hard for Eva to sit on the sidelines and watch, where once she led. For a while she didn't come to the club, preferring to stay at home alone. Any solicitous enquiries about her welfare or whether she was lonely were met with sharp rebuttals. "I have plenty of friends!" She would snap. "You don't have to patronise me!"

Happily, she eventually began to attend again, although I believe she never stopped seeing it as 'her' club. She certainly never hesitated to tell me what I was doing wrong or how I could do it better! But at the same time, our relationship deepened into mutual respect, and more than that, true friendship. Eva couldn't drive, so I'd take her shopping sometimes and together we'd happily trawl Carmarthenshire's plant nurseries, second hand shops and markets, or go to the local village fetes together. She would also advise me on how to live my life, sometimes quite hilariously. One of her choicest bits of wisdom, which made me laugh out loud, came earlier this year. She knew that T and I had split up, and when I said I was going on holiday to Spain with a (female) friend, Eva advised me "That's the spirit! Find a nice bloke, and enjoy yourself for a couple of hours." Awww, I thought. She wants me to find a holiday romance! But then she added, "Then tell him to p*** off!" which had me in stitches.

It turned out that I loved making jam and Eva loved eating it, so she'd save all her old jam jars for me and I'd send them back re-filled every time I made a new batch. One day when I went round, she'd found an old jelly bag and the stand for it which she no longer used, and gave them to me. Needless to say, her kindness was well-repaid in all flavours of jelly! I think of her every time I use it.

Eva particularly loved gooseberry jam, so I always kept her well-stocked. She declared the batch I made last summer the best she'd ever tasted, and having just completed this year's batch, I would love her opinion on how it compares.

Sadly I can't get Eva's opinion. Sadly my dear, irreplaceable friend died, quite suddenly, in April. Sadly, I didn't realise just how much she meant to me until she was gone.

Eva was a true character, a one-off. Fierce, kind, uncompromising, funny. I will think of her and smile every time I make jam. Especially the gooseberry.

Strawberries and Cream

My head said, "You can't eat strawberries and cream for breakfast!" as I searched the fridge for inspiration this morning. "Be sensible. You always eat something low fat, high fibre, low sugar for breakfast."

***

My head said, "You can't start a new relationship. You're just on the rebound. You aren't even properly divorced yet."

and few weeks later,

"You can't be in love. It's too soon. It's not safe. You're too old. It's too late."

***

I smiled.

Sometimes my head doesn't know the whole story. Or even the half of it.

But my heart does.

***

This morning I ate strawberries and cream for breakfast.

They were sweet and juicy and delicious, and my head had to admit that sometimes my heart knows best.

***

Summer Solstice Blessings

Yesterday, I joined with friends to celebrate the Summer Solstice. In the garden of one of the Moot members, we first blessed the area he has earmarked for what will eventually become a stone circle within a grove of trees. The area already feels magical, sacred. I hope we will all celebrate many more festivals together there over the coming years.

Then, as the evening sun slanted through tall trees we watched a ritual drama unfold. The Oak King and Holly King battled for supremacy - the Holly King (of winter) eventually claiming victory over the Oak King (of summer) whose strength begins to decline along with the sun now that the longest day has passed.

However, the visualisation that followed reminded us that there is still plenty of summer left to come, many more blue skies and sunny days before the cool breath of autumn is felt on our skin. The visualisation took us to a midsummer celebration where we took stock of our many blessings at this time, and afterwards we were each given a pouch (handknitted by Pinky) to which we added shells and beads to symbolise those blessings. I took a small, yet perfect spiral shell for mine, which seemed to me to sum up the simple contentment with life that I currently feel.

Having found myself again I have also found new love. My relationship with - well, let's call him IB for now - is blossoming and I am very, very happy.

I am planning for my future and examining ways that I may be able to stay at Halfway Up A Hill, instead of moving as I first thought I would have to when T and I parted.

I have begun co-teaching a series of magickal workshops with a friend, which are going even better than expected and bringing in a little extra cash.

And later this week, my parents will finally - after all kinds of delays and disappointments over the last two years or so - move into their new home, about 10 miles from me. It will be so lovely to have them close by.

So many blessings, summed up in one tiny shell.

Today, Halfway Up A Hill...

Today, Halfway Up A Hill, the sun was shining, and the sweet, heady scent of elderflowers drifted on the breeze.

Bees bumbled happily in the comfrey patch, swallows swooped and dived in a blue sky and a cheeky blackbird feasted on newly-ripe redcurrants.

The cats - Bear, Marley and Herbert (who had stopped by for a visit) sunned themselves on the warm paving.

The chickens wandered happily through lush summer grass, scratching for delicacies and murmuring gossip to each other. The geese cooled their feet in the pond before dozing in the shade of the elder tree.

And Moonroot worked in the garden, enjoying the sensation of warm, damp earth on her hands and the sun on her back. Later she picked the first strawberries of the season and planned an afternoon of elderflower cordial making...

Life is sweet.

The Return of Happiness

Driving the last bit of the journey home from Witchcamp this year, as the sun shone and my favourite song blasted from the CD player, I suddenly found myself crying. Not tears of sadness, but tears of happiness. Tears of joy. I realised with a bit of a shock that it's been far too long since I've felt this way.

The last couple of years have been such a struggle. Even before T announced he was leaving, back more than a year before that - in fact since the Summer Gathering in 2007, it has felt like some kind of a pall hung over my life.

The Summer Gathering was an amazing and life-affirming experience in many ways, and here on the blog I chose to focus on that aspect. Yet there was another side to it too - a huge amount of very stressful and frankly exhausting organising; and worse than that a lot of emotional fall out from the cancellation of Avalon Witchcamp 2007, creating conflict and drama within the British Reclaiming Community. In trying to see, hear and understand all sides of the conflict, and attempting to calm things down and build bridges between warring factions at the same time as creating and holding together the huge experiment in fundraising that was the Summer Gathering, I allowed myself to become completely drained. I knew it was happening at the time, and fully expected to feel washed out for a month or so afterwards. What I didn't expect was to still feel that way more than six months later. I actually began to wonder if I was suffering from some awful undiagnosed illness - cancer, diabetes, ME? At the same time so many other things were going wrong in my life and the lives of those around me, everything seemed like an uphill battle.

And then of course, just over a year after the 2007 Summer Gathering, T dropped his bombshell and my world shattered. Many people assured me that time is a great healer, and although my head believed it was true, sometimes it was hard to convince my heart.

But it is of course, true. As time passed, more and more sunshine gradually crept in through cracks in the pall of depression. And finally on that drive back home from Avalon Spring any remnants of the pall just evaporated, and light and life poured back into my soul. I cried and cried and smiled and smiled and just whispered, thank you, thank you, thank you to the multiverse. Thank you for my life. Thank you for this beautiful world. Thank you for such wonderful family and the best friends anyone could hope for. Thank you for Witchcamp and freedom and laughter, thank you for sunsets and summer and swallows, thank you for hope and healing and joy. Thank you.

I am once again my old self, the one I have been trying to remember and revive for all these months. That in itself is reason enough for joy. But there is more - my cup truly runneth over! Since returning from Avalon Spring, a new romantic relationship has unexpectedly begun to blossom. I won't say much more just yet as it is still very new, and feels very special.

What I will say is that I can't believe I am this happy. I have done my time under the pall, and as promised I have been healed. Happiness has well and truly returned.

Thank you, thank you, thank you!

On the Magic of Time and Hope...

Photo: Clifford, the Earthspirit Dragon (part mural, part 3-D sculpture), who watches over the main meeting room.

One of the pieces of advertising we put out for this year's Avalon Spring read: "In the leafy freshness of early summer, step out of time between the mists of Avalon at our magical intensive, Avalon Spring. We will meet together within the sacred enclosure of Avalon, to create sacred space and experience ritual, trance work, visualisation, ecstasy, sacred drama, ecomagic, dancing, chanting, storytelling, community building and have lots of fun!". As it turns out, that is exactly what we did, although in the weeks leading up to camp we had worried that things might turn out very differently...

Photo: A close-up of Clifford - isn't he gorgeous?

Bookings were very slow coming in this year, and we mused on the underlying reason. Was it the economic downturn and a lack of funds that was preventing people from coming? Or had the Witchcamp model run its course in the UK? Was it just a quiet year, or was it in fact the end of an era? Avalon Spring is a labour of love for those of us who organise and teach it, and we didn't want to think that this could be the camp's last year.

To make it more affordable - in case the economic climate was to blame - we made the decision to shorten the length of camp from 5 days to a long weekend (23rd-25th May) and reduced the prices accordingly. After the change was announced, only two of those who had already booked decided not to come after all, and suddenly bookings were coming in thick and fast. Phew - so it was only a shortage of funds keeping people away!

Somehow we condensed things down into the new time slot. To our great amazement, time seemed to stretch to accommodate us, and much, much more than I would have thought possible somehow fitted neatly into our schedule. Nothing felt rushed or pressured, yet everything we had wanted to include was included. Bríghde Éire (Anne-Marie) and myself taught 'The Path of Devotion', examining a variety of devotional practices and the question, 'How many ways can we pray?'. Georgia Midnight Crow and Dawn Isidora taught 'The Sacred Sexual Soul', dealing with issues of sex, love, spirit, personal boundaries and finding our own authentic selves.

People enjoyed the work we did, they enjoyed the evening rituals around the fire, the venue, the food. The sun shone and the rain held off! The feedback we were given from everyone was without exception positive. Yes, they loved it. Yes, they want it to happen again. Yes, they would like it to be longer next time, and yes, they will be coming back.

Photo: L-R Georgia Midnight Crow, Dawn Isidora, Sylvia Rose. Also gorgeous.

After the campers had left, we remaining organisers planted two trees, an ash and a crab apple. We had brought them as a gift for Earthspirit, our venue for all but one of the Witchcamps we have held each year since 1998. Our initial expectation was that the trees would be something of a parting gift, in thanks for and acknowledgement of the good times we have spent there over the years. Many of us feel a deep connection with the Earthspirit land and the many beings who make their home there, and in thinking this may be our last year it seemed an appropriate gesture. And yet Avalon Spring 2009 has shown clearly that things are not over after all. Times are tough all round, but with imagination and flexibility we have been able to find revitalisation.

In the end, the tree planting was done in an atmosphere of quiet joy and hope, as we softly sang chants that sounded like lullabies to the young trees. This won't be our last year. We will return, and be able to watch our two small saplings as they grow into beautiful trees. May they and Earthspirit and the Witchcamp community flourish! Blessed Be.

P.S. Leaf's well-written and interesting account of his experience at Avalon Spring this year may be found here.

Tragedy

Buffy and Angel's gosling - so new to the world it was as yet unnamed - has disappeared.

Last night when I went down to shut the little family into their shed for the night I couldn't see the gosling, but assumed s/he was probably safely snuggled under Mama Buffy on the nest. Even so I had a mild twinge of unease, so to be certain, after shutting the shed I checked all round the goose run and in the pond. I found nothing out of the ordinary. I knew the devoted parents would never have left their offspring unattended anyway.

This morning when I opened the goose shed the bad news was confirmed. For the first time since she began incubating her eggs, Buffy came out of the shed as soon as I opened the door. Followed by Angel. But only the two of them. I checked inside the shed - perhaps the little mite had taken a chill in the cold, windy, wet weather. But no, no ailing gosling, no sad little corpse.

I can only assume that some predator - a buzzard, red kite, rat, weasel, stoat, mink or polecat? - must have snatched the gosling. Whatever it was must have been quick and sneaky to have outwitted Buffy and Angel, whose entire focus was their baby.

I know they are grieving, as they did last year when Snowy died. I just hope geese have short memories, and they are not left hurting for too long. At least they have each other, a rock solid partnership for comfort. Looking back over the posts I have written about them and the other animals here at Halfway Up A Hill it's clear to me how unique and individual a character each creature is, how rich and complex their relationships with each other. How anyone can deny that animals experience emotions as we do is beyond me.

Sadly that includes grief sometimes.