Month six of the restriction and summer moves into autumn, and the micro life continues.
The skies suggest that autumn has indeed come to the forest again – the 22nd is the Autumn Equinox – balance of light and dark.
Still, we have an Indian summer – what the French call ‘Les jours de St Martin’ – and it is almost 30 in my garden. The forest plants are not fooled, however. The ferns sense it first and begin to turn brown.
The heather also appears, and crab apples – a sharp, wild apple that people pin and make Crab apple jelly as a kind of met accompaniment:
Then, these little fellows – Sundew. They are in fact a carnivorous plant – their sticky stems attracting small insects which get stuck on them. They then digest. They are actually quite rare, but grow well in this hidden corner of the New Forest.
I have my own harvest. Tomatoes from my plants which soon turn red:
The last rose of summer from the bush that grows and climbs against my house;
Then, this visitor. I hate spiders!! I try to persuade her to live outdoors, but she explains that the clue is in the title – ‘house spider’. They are harmless, and even keep other insects down, but I have to struggle to co-habit with her.
Lots more cooking and a consignment of fresh fish from Newlyn Fish market!!
I also re-arrange my room with warmer colours for the season.
I continue my read and view run-through of Shakespeare plays. Firstly, two brilliant productions from near all-black casts and the Royal Shakespeare Company.
Then, a lovely adaptation of King Lear with Anthony Hopkins, Emma Thompson and Emily Watson. What a character Edmund is: the first ‘new age’ man:
Lots of reading and listening.
The sonatas of Viktor Ullman.
Then some Argentinian guitar music – it is where I should now be. Ah, my heart aches….
I have just re-read Hidden Riches by Desiree Hirst – a bit of a mysterious writer to me as, despite the fact that the book is brilliantly sourced and referenced I can find almost no other publications from her. What happened? Anyway, she deals with the esoteric tradition that goes back to Plato, the Kabalah, Hermes, and Gnosticism and tracks it through to the renaissance and the poet William Blake, who has been a spiritual teacher for me since around my mid 20s. A remarkable read (thank you Robert Fripp for gifting it to me).
I have also read a book that had a seminal effect on my at about the same age:
With its apocryphal words:
Contemplate the fire, contemplate the clouds, and when omens appear and begin to sound in your soul, abandon yourself to them without wondering beforehand whether it seems convenient or good to do. If you hesitate, you will spoil your own being, and become little more than a bourgeois façade which endorses you and you will become a fossil. Our God is named Abraxas and is both God and the Devil at the same time. You will find him both in your world of delight and of shadows. Abraxas is not opposed to any of your thoughts, or any of your dreams, but he will abandon you if you become normal and unapproachable. He will abandon you to look for another pot in which to cook his thoughts.