Clearances by Rob Cullen
Source: Clearances by Rob Cullen
Clearances by Rob Cullen
Visiting Scotland lots of times over the years with my Scots wife and recognising Welsh place names and what they mean pointers to a history never taught. Visiting Ethiopia and witnessing the same process threatening nomadic peoples viewed to be savages by the ruling elite, And nomadic people are under threat worldwide today ignoring what they can teach about sustainability!
I see my people’s names
in all the places I search
but I do not see them.
I read my people’s names
on the dry page of the folded map
but the land before me is empty.
I watch the landscape
identifying the marks
that my people have named
but the sound of their voices
is no longer heard.
They are quiet
no echoing of names called
no trail of our footprints
only the trail of names
in a land that calls itself
by a strangers name.
A land echoing in its emptiness.
The mountains are still with us
but we are nowhere seen.
“And we will present our eyes to the world.
Is it pretentions to believe that we are equal?
Is it asking too much that we want to live?”
(From Deliverance: Alan Stivell)
At Kinlochmoidart 1993.
When a Library Closes by Antony Owen
Reblogged on WordPress.com
And the two-legged wolves are hunting for prey
A poem about children alone wandering through Europe alone, Does it matter where they come from?
Imagine it is your child
Not a Syrian baby
Not an immigrant
Not a foreigner’s child
When the two-legged wolves are hunting for prey
..
Imagine it is your son
Alone in a land
And he has no clothes
When the weather is cold
When the two-legged wolves are hunting for prey
..
Imagine it is your daughter
Hungry and thirsty
Walking alone
Where no one speaks her language
When the two-legged wolves are hunting for prey
..
Think of your child
Without a mother
Without a father
Walking alone
When the two-legged wolves are hunting for prey
..
Think of your child
Unable to cry
When there is no one
To hold you
No one to protect you
When the two-legged wolves are hunting for prey
..
Think of those children
As if they are yours
Walking alone
So far from home
When the two-legged wolves are hunting for…
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Tick, Tock: Writers and Photographers Reflect on Time
In words and images, bloggers from around the world tackle temporality and the way we perceive it.
Source: Tick, Tock: Writers and Photographers Reflect on Time
travelling by reuben woolley
Source: travelling by reuben woolley
& cut heads will speak
we survive
in long
…………..occlusion
is no air here
no fresh
way of saying
………….they made a god
in someone’s image.they
move the strings
………….a rope
too tight.a noose
to silence
……………….these pages
close.a cut
head does not speak
they think.listen
……………….hear the verses
sing triumphant
..
Soils and growing
Sitting in the Artist Exchange meeting at Rhondda Heritage Park and in a discussion with Melissa Warren about her concern about an apparent absence of worm life in her growing space we moved to the benefits of raised beds and no dig growing to soil life including the worm population! And as the conversation continued I found myself sitting next to another artist who was considering experimenting with Hugelkultur beds!
In our orchard Garden I started to lay the beginnings of a 25ft Hugelkultur bed last year. I used large amounts of deciduous wood from pruning’s and some given to us by neighbours. I lay the wood on the surface of the soil. In the winter water runs from a spring into the orchard and I wanted to avoid channelling the surface water and ending up with a waterlogged bed! But perhaps the length of the bed meant I was being too ambitious as I ran out of soil and organic matter to top the bed off and it remains incomplete. So that’s a job for this year!
I also constructed a smaller 3 metre Hugelkultur bed in our kitchen garden. Unlike the bed in the orchard garden I dug a pit and filled it with logs and topped it with soil, well-rotted cow manure and straw. I planted squash which failed to thrive. In part to a huge invasion of slugs but also it became noticeable that the trench had filled with water. I discovered that we probably have another spring! So another job for this year!
Last year I also made a “conventional” raised bed with layers of newspaper, cardboard and straw. I covered it with hooped nett tunnels to prevent our chickens from destroying it. In December I planted it with blackcurrant bushes taken as cuttings from our mature bushes. I intend to inter crop with flowering plants for the next year – calendula and nasturtiums to bring colour and provide food for pollinators and other insects.
Which has reminded me of a description of my parents in law Jimmy and Pauline Andersons garden on Busses Farm by the cookery writer WENDY E. COOK in the introduction to her book : The Biodynamic Food and Cookbook: Real Nutrition That Doesn’t Cost the Earth
“My first introduction to a biodynamic farm was over 35 years ago, yet it made such an indelible impression upon me that I can still vividly recreate the memory. Nestling in the soft East Sussex hills, Busses Farm, run by Jimmy and Pauline Anderson, was a clear demonstration of a living example of biodynamics.
Walking through the kitchen garden was like being in a Monet painting. The French intensive biodynamic method was being practised, with raised beds and an exuberant riot of herbs, flowers and vegetables. Patches of marigolds, tagetes and nasturtiums tangled with bright blue borage, lavender, rosemary, courgettes, cucumbers and firm-hearted lettuce. Runner beans busily twined up poles and tomatoes grew warm, sweet and ripe.
If you managed to glimpse the soil through this cornucopia it was black and crumbly, the kind that produces happy plants. Bees provided the background hum as they gratefully progressed from flower to flower, spoilt for choice between gardens and orchards. This was the first time I remember hearing about companion planting.
Out in the fields was a herd of horned Sussex cows, most with their calves, for breeding as well as some milk cows; a few fluffy sheep that looked like an advertisement for washing powder, 300 pecking and excitable hens, and a wonderful workhorse that was used for transporting heavy loads.”
