Pagan Eye: A Good Year for Bluebells in my Garden

It's a really good year for bluebells in my garden, so I've taken a photo of one patch. I realise they're hybrid bluebells rather than English ones, which is a shame, but most of those that grow in London gardens and parks are a bit of a mixture these days. I've blogged about the difference between them and the environmental issues here. 

Bluebells are among my favourite flowers and I love to see them in bloom around Beltane. I'm still hoping to get time to go to a proper bluebell wood this year, but in the meantime I'm enjoying the ones that grow by my doorstep. The Londonist has an article with good places to see them in London, so that might inspire a trip over May's bank holiday weekends.

On each of my Pagan Eye posts, I show a photo that I find interesting, with a few words about it. If you want to send me a photo for a Pagan Eye post, please email it to badwitch1234@gmail.com Let me know what the photo shows and whether you want your name mentioned or not. For copyright reasons, the photo must be one you have taken yourself and you must confirm that you are submitting it for A Bad Witch's Blog.

Other previous posts
http://www.badwitch.co.uk/2016/05/pagan-eye-bluebells-and-wood-anenomes.html
http://www.badwitch.co.uk/2020/05/pagan-eye-vase-of-bluebells-and-wild.html
http://www.badwitch.co.uk/2022/04/pagan-eye-countryside-bluebell-wood-or.html

A Yule of Woes: Storms, Floods, Ilness and Loss

You might have noticed I've not been blogging much for the past week. I meant to but, like many people, I've had rather a rough Yule. Shortly before the holidays I cracked a tooth and got a gum infection, meaning I needed an emergency dental appointment. The temporary filling I was given fell out over the Christmas break. I had a further emergency trip to the dentist and am looking forward to having the tooth removed completely on Friday. Added to that, I caught the horrid chesty cold that's been doing the rounds. It all meant I didn't feel like doing very much except resting in bed while others were partying and having fun.

But I know I've had a far better holiday season than many. That photograph, which makes Glastonbury Tor look so much like the romantic ancient Isle of Avalon surrounded by a lake of water, actually shows rising flood water that caused misery all over the country on top of damage caused by the December storms. People have suffered power failures, meaning they couldn't heat their homes let alone cook their turkeys - some have even lost their homes.

I've heard plenty more tales of woe. There seems to be more than the usual amount of illness around too, with people suffering far worse than a broken tooth and a bad cold. One of my friends woke up on Boxing Day morning to find her cat had passed away in the night.

If you have been having a tough time lately, I do hope things get better for you soon. Things always seem worse when the nights are long and the days are cold.

When I was lying in bed during the worst moment of my cold and tooth problems, feeling feverish and lacking the strength to even get up to make a cup of tea, I looked out of the window and saw the sun shining brightly in a clear, blue sky. I could feel the warmth of the sun's rays on my face. It got so bright I had to close my eyes, yet through my eyelids I could still see the brightness and feel the warmth continuing to intensify. It felt like energy flowing into my body, giving me hope and comfort - and making me think of an old punk song by the Stranglers, Always the Sun.

Maybe we don't always get what we want for Christmas. Sometimes life just gives us a poor run of luck. However good we might be at divination, we can never tell for certain what the future holds either. But even in the darkest times it can often be possible to find little things that cheer us up like a sudden ray of sunshine on a dark day.

And with the Winter Solstice behind us, and the new year about to start, there is one thing we can be certain of, that those rays of sunshine will get longer and brighter and lead us out of winter into spring.

The photo of Glastonbury surrounded by flood water was taken by Dave Phelan who said I could use it under Creative Commons (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)

It never rains but it pours...

It certainly has been pouring. Friday night's thunderstorm was followed by more torrential rain over the weekend. My car also developed an irritating fault - perhaps brought on by my reckless race to ER during the worst of the gales in the early hours of Saturday morning.

But, despite that, yesterday morning things seemed to be looking up and I was feeling quite cheerful. My partner seems to be recovering from his slipped disc - or at least the heavy-duty painkillers are doing their job - and he is managing to walk around a bit with the help of a rather pretentious-looking Gothic walking cane.

The rain had stopped and the world looked clean and fresh as I decided to take my car to the garage to be fixed. I felt nicely clean and fresh too, as I'd decided to use some lovely-smelling body scrub in my morning shower. It was one of those things I'd been given as a gift and was saving until the right occasion. As it turned out, perhaps I should have waited before opening it.

As soon as I set off in my car, I realised the journey wasn't going to be as easy as I'd hoped, as quite a few of the roads were flooded. But, with a lot of stuttering, my car made it to the garage - where I had to leave it, put on my wellies and walk home

Now, it can be fun to drive through huge puddles in a car and watch the spray whoosh up at either side - a bit like going down a log flume at the funfair.

However, when you are a on foot and the cars that pass you are all sending waves of water towards the pavement, it is a different matter entirely. As soon as I started walking away from the garage, I was getting sploshed.

Then one big van drove past really close, and really fast, and I was suddenly soaked from head to foot in filthy water that cars and vans had been churning through for hours.

For a moment, I was furious. Then, suddenly, I saw the funny side of it. There is something liberating about feeling that you are so wet and muddy that it doesn't matter if you get even wetter and muddier.

So, with a smile, I shrugged and leapt right into the biggest puddle I could find on the pavement.

And as if to echo my mood the sun peeped out through the clouds, giving the droplets of water and ripples in the pools silvery sparkles and the fallen autumn leaves a golden glow.

I sploshed home through the flooded streets, feeling a childlike delight in this world that had become a watery playground and putting my cares to one side, at least for the moment.

Link
http://www.badwitch.co.uk/2009/11/friday-13-unlucky-for-some.html

Storms and spring tides

I was woken at 4am by the storm howling in the darkness.

I went to my balcony window and lifted the blinds. It was pitch black outside and I could only imagine what was happening out there, so I went back to bed and lay listening to the sounds of the wind, the rain and the crashing waves.

Although my apartment was right on the coast, I know I was lucky. I was in Sussex, on the southern English coast, which didn't experience nearly such bad weather as Devon and Cornwall, where there were seven flood warnings in place and winds of around 80mph.

By 8am this morning the worst of the storm had subsided but I still had to fight against the wind when I ventured down to the beach.

I love the raw elemental force of a storm, especially a storm at sea. Although it can be immensely destructive, it is also awe inspiring in its power.

Today's storm came at the same time as the spring high tide, meaning the risk of flood was severe. It is, of course, a tragedy when lives and homes are lost in this way, but a storm can also sweep away dead wood - things which are ready to go - and make way for something new to grow.

Perhaps that kind of change was in the air. When I returned to London I got a phone call from a lovely friend who told me that she had decided to give up running a group that I belong to because she is expecting a baby. I think she made the right decision, although I expect it was a hard choice to make.

Weather superstitions

I watched BBC1's The One Show last night and saw weather girl Carol Kirkwood conducting a scientific study to find out if cows really do lie down before rain, as superstition suggests.

She monitored the movements of a herd of cattle for a day and also recorded the rainfall. She found that the cows did sit down before a shower started.

I'm not a bit surprised. If I had to stay out in the open for hours every day I think I would learn to become very observant of signs of changing weather, which is how much ancient weather lore and superstitions developed.

I know I would also become very observant of the weather if I was one of the unlucky people once more facing threats of floods after the severe downpours this week. Although I live in a part of London that has never been flooded, I have still checked the Environment Agency's website to find out if my house is at risk.

You can find details of areas under flood warning , and what to do if you are, at: http://www.environment-agency.gov.uk/subjects/flood/

A site on ancient methods of predicting the weather:

www.naturealmanac.com/archive/predicting_winter/predicting_winter.html

For more about weather superstitions, visit:

www.wildaboutbritain.co.uk/weather_superstitions