#snellblogs

The labyrinth

Feb 14 26

Blog by Lynne Pearl

A few weeks ago, I wrote:

The land is asleep and so are the trees, branches against a still sky.  It’s the cold at the end of the year and before the beginning.  Like a never- ending story.

And at the end I added:

We miss a lot if we don’t listen to the stories of our elderly.  I always loved the stories that my grandmothers told.  They were of another realm and we were lucky to access it and with that access we could access other realms and as we were open to the many realities we live in, so long as we can be with them, in them.

But this day I found a labyrinth on a cliff top overlooking the sea.  Most labyrinths seem to be half hidden dark things but this one was out in the open blown by storms and wind, rain too and the clouds overhead were running.

This labyrinth is set into the ground and is delineated with pebbles, maybe from the beach far blow where the tide moves restlessly, always there.  This is interspersed with grass but this time of year it hasn’t been cut for a long time so the pattern is nearly obliterated.  It’s not this, not that.  A labyrinth is illogical.  That is its very existence.

It twists and turns this way and that almost like alive thing, a creature, perhaps from the sea, like the night sea that I wrote about when I was staying down the coast at an old, forgotten hotel:

POEM: DEVONCOURT HOTEL SONG

THE DEVONCOURT HOTEL

SEA SONG

March 22

The sea is up in the sky

For me tonight,

The rooks caw flying home

And Aretha sings her prayer

For ever, for all of us,

As Ukraine teeter on the brink

And Ottawa tumbles over into chaos

While truckers take the city,

Is anyone listening?

The day slides off, mauve and grey,

Sinking sideways

As the massive pine darkens , friendly

Holding home for species.

There’s no one out there in the cold

And the singing stops suddenly

As if an invisible hand has flung silence upward.

…

When the visitors have gone and the nightjar sings, alone.

Sometimes the path turns back on itself.  Today of all days we have sun.  Every so often in the ground there are carvings of giant fossils.

It teaches us here to not mind our setbacks

Keep on till you get to the centre.  The centre, your centre.

From the centre point you can look straight out to sea, what is out there, depending where you look on landfall for thousands of miles.

It teaches you how to live, to keep on keeping on, to not mind.

Setbacks are for the best.

There is a bigger picture.

Snowdrops in Winter

Jan 31 26

Blog by Lynne Pearl

A few eeks ago I wrote:

The land is asleep and so are the trees, branches against a still sky.  It’s the cold at the end of the year and before the beginning.  Like a never- ending story.

But this morning I found evidence tha the land is waking up.  As I walked out the train station and past an embankment that mus get the earlymorning sun which was shining on it and  I found a whole clump o snowdrops, white as white against the dark green foliage.  Then there was another clump and on and on.  Whatever the embankment had it was the ideal situation for snowdrops.  My Mum always said they were tricky to grow.  She had tried and tried and niver could get them going and yet here they are on basically a dump piece of ground and it suits them perfectly and they were big ones too, not small but large and hanging heads.  And so many that I thought I could dig up a few if I just had a trowel with me.  They’d never miss them.  But I’d have to come with a pot or something.  Do the snowdrops technically belong to the railway.  I bet the land is part of the railway.  Do they know they are providing shelter to apples and snowdrops and multiple other flowers that I have to look up now that I’ve found them.

Then I met a lovely lady in the quiet of the United church high church ceiling who had been making a lovely flower arrangement for everyone to look at.  She’d lost her sons and her husband.  I flet for her.  What a thing it is, Spring is coming on and there are people with greif.  I have to sit with her next time I come to drink tea at their coffee morning.  We miss a lot if we don’t listen to the stories of our elderly.  I always loved the stories that my grandmothers told.  They were of another realm and we were lucky to access it and with that access we could access other realms and as we were open to the many realities we live in, solong as we can be with them, in them.  We are just open to that beauty and the Spring beauty that is all around us at this time of year.

Heres a little bit of poetry for the coming Spring

MOOR JOURNEY, LAUGHING JUNE

It’s the day of the rabbit,

Which means

The light is gentle, the rain is soft,

The clouds are heaped obscuring harsh light,

The sky is the softest of greys

And the air slightly warm…

Quoted from unpublished Manuscript of ‘Devon Love’

a few days later, we have had snow every day for three days straight but it melts by the afternoon most of it.  But the light is magnificent and the moon in the clear night sky is full and very bright.

Today the sea is very still, unutterably still as if it had forgotten how to move or make waves or have tides.  It is a blue of the deepest blue, sort of aquamarine, or sapphires, or cobalt all the colours in the box but it is its aliveness that is moving.  It is like a state of meditation clear and still before one has a wonderful inspiration or a poem comes.

The land is asleep and so are the trees, branches against a still sky.  It’s the cold at the end of the year and before the beginning.  Like a never- ending story.

SEA POEMS FOR WINTER:

BUDLEIGH SALT

Sun on the sea of glass

Surprising, its liquidity in December

The swell and fall on round pebbles

The curve of the bay, red crumbling cliffs

Sound continual

The sound of my soul,

An ocean inside

The same sound,

The sloughing and pulling...

IT’S AUTUMN:

OUTING TO BICKLEIGH CASTLE

Blog by Lynne Pearl

It’s autumn already we have had summer and there wasn’t enough time to get in the sea and swim. 

We went to see Bickleigh castle a whole coach load of us, in a small coach that was full with twenty adults out for the day.  Our kind driver drove us first of all to Bickleigh Mill, where there was a long stop for a leisurely lunch.  It was a cloudy day with puddles everywhere but it was crowded and warm inside.

When everyone had eaten their fill, we set off again, this time to cross the river by that wonderful old stone bridge that inspired Simon and Garfunkel’s ‘Bridge over Troubled waters’ so evocative of faithfulness and loyalty.  We weren’t going to explore the inside of the castle but roam the grounds.

We parked and entered by crossing first of all what had been a moat long ago.  There were the remains of stonework and iron gates.  Nearby was the roaring river which was high as it had been raining for days.  There was a small bridge over the river to the fields on the other side. 

The first area of the castle grounds was a courtyard with a cottage with an old thatched roof, followed by more cottages with thatched roofs.  Then we came to an area that had been stables for the horses that would have been part of the way of life.  Beyond the clock cottage, (so called because of the large ornamental clock on its roof ) was the castle proper, built in red stonework.  At the front door was a green plaque stating that this settlement had been entered in the Domesday book.

We continued walking to admire the main entrance a grand archway with two towers, the tower on the left was damaged, stones were piled nearby.

Through the archway was an open area of garden with more of the house of a different era, white walls with black woodwork.  Back through the archway there was another garden, a pond and beyond that autumn trees in full colour.

Returning to the coach we found the original walled garden and orchard, apples fallen everywhere.  It was beginning to rain so we made our way back and drove back over the river to the village, where we explored the ancient parish church which was begun in the 1300s.  It was dark and made of local red stone worked to perfection.  Either side of the front porch were two carved heads. 

After exploring the church, we waited outside for our coach back to the Mill for a final cup of tea and visit with the peacocks before we started back home for the evening.

Thanks to all and the coach driver!    

June 19 25

From Vancouver, to Metro town

I made it my goal not to get lost this day. So I set off on this straight busy road that is six lanes across.  We know from this that this is not a European city, the sheer vastness of the road and the traffic on it, but the road is straight and climbs uphill.  Today it is raining but not in a British sort of way but sort of bit by bit a little at a time, and blowing in my face.

I do find the bank and then I realise I could go into the mall and buy presents, so I decide to find a way into it on foot.  I have to walk all around the building and get to the front and enter there and even then it was hard to find the shop I wanted because it was on a higher floor and at the far end of the most enormous mall I have ever seen.  But I achieved it and was well pleased.

Then in the afternoon we went to a street in East Vancouver that had independent shops, organic food and little restaurants.   We sat in a café and health food shop called something like ‘Ambrosia Cherub’ and I sat there looking at a showcase of desserts and am inspired to go home and make them myself. There was date square, oatmeal raisin cookies, mango dessert and a raw bar.  My companion had a lovely mango lassi.  I had golden turmeric tea.  Everything was lovely.

The mountains are clouded right from the top down but they are still there watching and for a little while on the subway journey home I could see the foot of the mountains peeping out from the whiteness of the low cloud.

We had had dinner with friends, telling stories of whales and battles and heroes, Americans and Canadians but not much on life.  The food was enjeera from Africa with lentils and vegetables and split peas. Yummy.

Later we watched the Dylan movie about music.

June 19 25

From Vancouver, to Metro town

I made it my goal not to get lost this day. So I set off on this straight busy road that is six lanes across.  We know from this that this is not a European city, the sheer vastness of the road and the traffic on it, but the road is straight and climbs uphill.  Today it is raining but not in a British sort of way but sort of bit by bit a little at a time, and blowing in my face.  I do find the bank and then I realise I could go into the mall and buy presents, so I decide to find a way into it on foot.  I have to walk all around the building and get to the front and enter there and even then it was hard to find the shop I wanted because it awas on a higher floor and at the far end of the most enormous mall I have ever seen.  But I achieved it and was well pleased.

Then we went to a street in East Vancouver that had independent shops, organic food and little restaurants.   We sat in a café and health food shop called something like Ambrosia Cherub, I think, and I sat there looking at a show case of desserts and am inspired to go home and make them myself. There was date square, oatmeal raisin cookies, mango dessert and a raw bar.  Companion had a lovely mango lassi.  I had golden turmeric tea.  Everything was lovely.

The mountains are clouded right from the top down but they are still there watching and for a little while on the subway journey home I could see the feet peeping out from the whiteness of the low cloud.

We had had dinner with friends, telling stories of whales and battles and heroes and things.  Americans and Canadians and not much on life.  The food was enjeera from Africa with lentils and vegetables and split peas. Hmm.

And watched the Dylan movie about music.

June 4 25

THE PYRENEES AGAIN

Blog by Lynne Pearl

By some miracle we went again and the mountains were all as I had remembered for a whole year.  They give hope and beauty to the soul.  They are everlasting beautiful and the air up there is like diamonds and the light is like all the rainbows put together and made crystal. Up there it is just a heaven for everyone.  We go there and forget everything because it all does not seem so big anymore and we are just so happy to be there.

The stories are there. the trees are there and that magnificent river, turquoise and drawn from glaciers high up but nearby, just pummelling through the town and the domaine.  And always there is the singing of many people, they must all be happy to be here.

Then at night as night falls, they all are coming together with small lights but moving together, singing in unison, all helping one another along until they come together in the big square in rows to sing some more. 

We went one day to St Sauvin, where there was a magnificent old village church built like a fairly tale castle with a witch’s hat, sitting at the head of the biggest valley you have ever seen so that in every direction you look there are mountains, mountains and more mountains.  There is no world other than mountains, black and very far away tipped with pearly white.

Then another day following we visited Cite St Pierre, created so that everyone should be able to come to visit here.  We sit beside the lake which has that quality of perfect light and shines like a mirror.  There are water lilies too and you can now walk around the lake and climb half way upa  small mountainside before cascading yourself down beyond steep fields full of mountain flowers like a coverlet of glory.  And always in the background those mountains, very far away, very high up and glistening in black and a golden light so that you wanted to reach up and just touch them they are so close by.

THE ORCHARD DIARY  3rd Month

May 9 25

Blog by Lynne Pearl

The trees are more awake in fact I think they are now just about fully awake.  It’s quite exciting.

They have realised it’s time to wake up.

The yellow irises are out.  They make a big show from far off.  They are big bold beautiful flowers.  I walk in the drive and there they are surrounding the trees in the orchard.

The trees are just beginning their leaf time but they aren’t quite out yet, these are tentative beginnings of bigger leaves to come. 

There is one path that leads the length of the orchard and runs parallel to the drive in.  At the end is a door but I don’t know where it leads to as the lane, Ottery Moor Lane is just the other side of it.  It is in full bloom with tall tall Queen Anne’s Lace or Meadowsweet it is called.  It has the most wonderful perfume on the warm winds that come in May.

The Irises have a very delicate perfume too… The purple ones seem to come first and they are followed by the yellow all together.  We always had irises in our garden.  My Mum must have known how to grow them.

And here’s a poem inspired by a train ride in Spring time:

LETTER FROM THE LOOE LINE

Valley,

Gorge of yellow leaves

Dark green holly,

Ferns and sheep grazing.

Viaduct, slim. Elegant like a suit

Then trees, bare, silent

Wait, sleep.

Secret road to who knows

Along valley line.

Gold beech, at Coombe House

Says a sign,

But there is no house,

Just a crag of a castle

On a hilltop in the distance.

Then train manager marches through

To his driver’s seat

And we pull out to somewhere to wait.

Guard in the hut looks hopefully upline.

He’s boarding the train,

We move off

This time on the lower line,

Past sewer works,

Lodge Farm

More secret places

Known to no one,

Glimpsed and gone.

Horses graze in early morning blankets

(I miss the horses in the orchard at Butleigh home.)

Past whistle stops, more autumn leaves,

A bubbling stream, white

Running to the sea.

Tickets, given, inspected.

‘Perfect, a job on the rails.’

Stream moves faster now beside us

Broader,

Then big houses

Overlook

Waterfall, full, whiteness in the black water.

A forest surrounds us,

Saplings, ivy covered fallen trees.

Grey stone houses, whitewash

At Sandplace

Ancient trees,

Swathes of hillside, few remaining leaf

Gold, russet...