St. Teilo’s Day - 9th February
Celebrating the Patron Saint of Welsh Orchards
On the 9th February we observe the patron saint of orchards, St Teilo. He was born in Pembrokeshire in around 500AD, and was a famed healer across the Celtic nations. Most notably, he and a man named Samson planted huge groves of orchard trees stretching for miles as food for the Brythonic people 🌳
Recently I attended a wassail at my new local Bute Park Community Orchard. It has been a wonderful first year of the orchard. We woke the trees up with horns, whistles and banging on pots. We started with a blessing forthe great orchard guardian, a crab apple tree 🍎 Then, we walked to each British orchard tree in turn from pears and apples to plums and prunes to wake them.
