Reaching for Light
Gill’s Pondering July 17th 2024
Responding to your post, love not hate, (daily posting 15th July), in the shady dark spinney, a group of astilbes are reaching for light from a sea of nettles, brambles, large ferns – all overpowering strong competitors.
The sunlight on the pink flower plumes brings joy into a dark corner.
In this little bit of wood, we are working towards a balance of ‘weeds’ aka wild flowers, and plants, with strong enough introductions to try to thrive. So far it’s willow whips growing into shrubs we will coppice or pollard, Angelica archangelica which may seed there (flowering for the first time), shuttlecock ferns.
There are celandines in spring and enchanters nightshade going to seed now, both impossible to eradicate. So we’ve added bluebells in a drier slope (flowering from seed this spring, seven years after sowing). Wood sorrel is welcome and is spreading.
One willow variety has black catkins with red stamens – all descendants from a couple of twigs used in a flower arrangement at St James’s Whitechapel long ago, either at a flower festival or patronal – the twigs have rooted in Lancashire (two gardens) and now Cumbria. A companion with happy memories of times shared, people who arranged the flowers, wonderful Petertide and patronal liturgies and other significant occasions.
Happy memories of love shared, through the light shining into the shady spinney – as complex an environment as our lives, communities and nations. Love never ends/fails (1 Cor 13)!
[Gill Henwood]
Lord of all life,
you created the universe,
where all living things reflect your glory.
You give us this great and beautiful earth,
to discover and to cherish.
You give us sun and moon and star-lit sky,
everything that gives us light,
light for our eyes, our hearts, our minds.
Mr G's Ponderings 