The week of the Wetland Flowers

At the weekend we went with some friends to see the Falls of Leny at Callander. They were pretty spectacular after all the rain, as you can see.

But the thing that made this trip was the sight of several flowers I'd never seen before.

This one is cow wheat. It was everywhere.

This one is marsh cinquefoil.

This one caused us some bother. The only thing we knew was that it wasn't ragweed.We finally decided that it must be goldenrod - not the Canadian one we see in gardens, but our own smaller native one.

But this one was the best. We think it is a butterfly orchid. I'd never seen anything like it before. I gather that this is a very good year for orchids because of the wet, and all I can say is I'm glad it's good for something!

Now that I am back at the desk, I have been updating the web-site, and I have added an article on Cistercian spirituality, (on the publications page) for those who are interested.It was originally written a good while back, but I've revised it in the light of the Beauvais film Of Gods and Men, and my more recent involvement in the Transition movement.

Pausing for Breath

These fulmars which I photgraphed on holiday, don't have much to do with this post, but it's a nice serene picture, and that's the mood Im in just now.

I had thought, now that our big family things are nearing some sort of resolution, and the dust is settling on a few major upheavals, that I would be getting down to giving poetry some serious attention. I have a mass of notes, a whole shelf of books to read and review, and some interesting lines of enquiry to follow up. It was all looking pretty exciting, though maybe, just a little bit like hard work.

However, while my attention was elsewhere, a backlog of house repairs and garden maintenance has built up, a couple of groups I'm involved in have called in some favours, and some cherished friendships are showing signs of neglect. I realise that I'm getting a little overstretched.

It's time for a re-think, a little quiet, a little re-ordering of priorities. I'll be back when we've had the roof mended, the immersion heater replaced, the mysterious cracks in one of our ceilings investigated. And while that's going on, I'm going to read some new poets, study Julian of Norwich, doodle a little, dream a little and watch birds coming and going in the garden and over the river.

See you when I get my breath back!

Walking the Territory in June

June had its moments - between showers.

This is British hogweed, not the giant Japanese stuff. It looks quite airy and delicate, and has nice seedheads in the autumn.

There are whole stands of this stuff growing along the riverbank -

It's comfrey, a plant which is not only brilliant for gardeners, providing a potash-rich mulch for tomatoes, but had many medicinal uses in the past. A wiccan herbalist friend of mine reckoned that it was a survival from the days of the Abbey, which might be the case. Augustinian Canons elsewhere had a very good reputation as healers, growing herb gardens and building hospitals within the monastery complex.

This year the wild roses are spectacular. I don't remeber ever seeing them so prolific.

Most of the nestlings are fledged now, though I notice that the sparrows appear to be trying for brood number two. The exceptions are the black-backed gulls, whose fat fluffy brown chicks are walking all over the roof of the warehouse their colony has nested on. I'm not looking forward to them taking off. The adults are big, noisy and aggressive and the colony has doubled since last year. I know magpies have a bad rep for killing things, but they are nothing compared with gulls. On Orkney I saw a black-headed gull stoop and lift a plover chick out of a nest without the slightest effort or hesitation. All the meditation on the circle of life and gulls have chicks to feed too doesn't always cut it when you see the bereaved birds circling ad screaming and trying to chase the predator away!

This is fairly irrational I know. I was delighted to find an owl pellet on the parapet of our bridge, but the owls could have eaten all sorts of creatures I'm fond of. And as for the seal I saw going down the river with the tide - that was pure joy, although it could have destroyed untold fish stocks as it came upstream. But there it is. I find some of my wild neighbours easier to live with than others!

Poetic Justice

Poetic Justice is the working title of an event taking place in Edinburgh in October. The Justice and Peace commission of the Archdiocese of St Andrews and Edinburgh are organising an evening of poetry, story-telling and song on 11th October. I am very excited about this, partly because the Justice and Peace tradition of our Church is very close to my heart, but also because it is a real breakthrough for such a hard-working serious-minded outfit to recognise the part that creativity plays in working for change. Some very classy artists are going to be involved in this, but the only other name I can confirm so far is fellow Red Squirrel poet Anne Connolly. Watch this space.

This is stretching the concept just a little, but last week Red Squirrel Press announced the 4th James Kirkup Memorial Competition. The set-up is a little different this year, so please go the the Red Squirrel website for more information. Anne Connolly and I have been named as judges; we are both delighted to have this opportunity to give something back to poetry.

I can't urge you strongly enough to enter this competition. Red Squirrel are fabulous people to work with. I'll look forward to reading all your entries!

The Missing Link

Patrick Geddes is a name that comes up often in the random hotch-potch of places I go - the Scottish Poetry Library, (he's the source of the logo "by leaves we live" geo-poetics, permaculture, education, ecology, philosphy, culture - he's had his hands in them all. For a long time I thought I should find out more about him, and then I came across this book, published by Luath in 2004 Think Global, Act Local: The Life and Legacy of Patrick Geddes.

It's a collection of essays reflecting different aspects of Geddes' life and work. It comes over as scrappy, slightly incoherent, and with strange gaps that make it hard to come up with a satisfying perspective on the man and his work, but after reading the second chapter 'Patrick Geddes - the Life' by Walter Stephen, I'm inclined to blame Geddes himself for that. His work was so wide-ranging and there is so much of it, that it is hard to pin him down anywhere.

I'm not sure this isn't half the attraction. I love this random, global, fast-moving, multi-disciplinary rampaging in all directions- I do a lot of it myself! I like his disapproval of the over-specialisation that was taking place in academic circles in his era (he lived from 1854-1932), and which has only got worse since then. And I passionately believe in engaging heads hands and hearts in the learning process (a phrase he coined).

I found myself intigued the work he did on the Valley Section, showing the intrinsic connection between the land, the people and the work they do (I'd add the language they speak to this nexus), which stresses the importance not only of adapting living spaces and working processes to the terrain where they are located, but also recognising the need for diversity and co-operation.

The most satisfying aspect of his work, however, is the 'observational technique' he advocates in design - the Diagnostic Survey and Conservative Surgery. We are very prone to starting our plans (for anything from a web-site to a new kitchen)with a blank canvas, and this sometimes leads to what I call the Pol Pot theory of organisation. You start with Year Zero, the concept rules everything, and heaven helpthe person, the piece of kit or the ornery fact of lfe that gets in the way. Not Geddes. He started with what's already there, assessed what happened in a particular place, and how it worked and how it met the needs of people living there. And then he changed only what needed changed. Moreover, he strongly believed in empowering communities to upgrade their environments themselves according to the needs they perceived, rather than the objuctives foisted on them from outside

This process - survey, analysis plan - is most frequently referred to in permaculture design, but it also came up in the YCW groups of my youth as the maxim 'See, Judge and Act' People familiar with the document of Vatican II Gaudium et Spes will also find echoes of it there, and consistently throughout Catholic social teaching. In this context, it is worth pointing out that Geddes' father was an elder in the Free Kirk of Scotland, and I had some significant preconceptions about Wee Frees knocked sideways when I read about his background. I never would have imagined that the Free Kirk was in discussions with Cardinal Newman, and the emerging Baha'ai movement.

This book has opened up significant and exciting lines of thought for me, which I hope to be following up during the next year.

The garden in June

Everything grew tall and lush while we were away, and the flowery places have filled up with colour.



The first roses are coming through, and the yard beside the house is full of scent from these albas, and the white sweet rocket that is in behind them.



In the greenhouse, it doesn't seem to have been so cold.



Even the pond has brightened up!



Of course there is the weeding to do, herb cuttings to take, and broccoli, leeks and kale to plant out, but we had the first gooseberry fool on Sunday from our own bush. It was fabulous!

The Week We Went to Orkney

Last week was all about stones. Nest spaces, cairns, brochs, walls, scree, cliffs, standing stones, hearth places, earth houses, burial chambers.



And birds, including arctic skuas, which I'd never seen before, and several daylight owls. It was cold and wet and sometimes windy. There will be many stone poems.