Clear Skies, Bright Stars. Advent and Hope for Peace.

Here is a seasonal post inspired by  Dverse Poets and the stars.

We are now back at Navasola and although the stars and the sun do shine very brightly here I will miss being with my daughters this Christmas. It will be our first Christmas outside the UK and our first at Navasola. We were first greeted in Seville with grey and overcast skies; same as in London and other parts of the UK over the past month.Today the sun has come out bright,warm and strong and with the clearer skies the stars too are shining bright in the very dark skies we have here in the Sierra Aracena.  The viburnum tinus berries are metallic and bright. A Sardinian warbler, great tit and jays were gathering food by the house and now and again a butterfly flies by! The vultures also enjoyed the thermals when I was out on a walk with Lotti and Ruth. See post on Autumn for Ruth’s photography and links to her art work. She inspires me to draw!

We are looking forward to finding out more about how Christmas is celebrated here and in particular the Feast of the Kings on the 5th and 6th of January. Here there are processions showing this part of the Nativity story and children get presents.

It is the end of another blogging year and I have been inspired by so many of the links made to Navasola through nature blogs and many others now. I have managed to read some books by Opher Goodwin and in particular Anthropocene Apocalypse and Ebola in the Garden of Eden. Both very good reads and with current concerns about the future of our planet. Opher Goodwin

 

I am also glad to be linked to Dverse poets who have managed to spark some poetic muse in me. The poem below is inspired by poems by Victoria Slotto and Bjorn Rudberg  about the stars. I have also linked to another poet Malcolm Guite and bought his book with poetry for Advent. These have inspired me to write this poem about the stars I saw above Navasola in the summer months.

Stars over Navasola

Above the silhouette of trees appear a clarity of stars
Numinous and numerous I search for one.
The childhood star my father saw I saw.
The Pole star’s perfect North still guiding some.

 

The wizened faces of the chestnut trees with me stare,
Abandoned olive branches touch the sky I seek to name,
With virtual app- titude we see the lights of Vega and Altair,
Bright threesome pulse with Deneb and the flighty swan.

 

An owl sounds out from Navasola East.

The moon still hides behind the hill.

Through the dark of earth and sky, wander many a beast.

Summer sounds and warmth surround me still.

 

 

Now in December’s dark chill drawn days,
Advent’s hope casts doubts on the prophecies of stars.
What and where is that bright star, the magi say?
How much to know, how far to go, to go, how far?

 

 

 

An Autumn Walk in the Sierra Aracena. The falling leaves of the ancient trees. The photography and Art of Ruth Koenigsberger

Old chestnut trees in the Sierra Aracena

I am so pleased I have the opportunity to share the photography and links to art work of my friend and neighbour Ruth. Her photographs come from walking around the countryside with her dog, the lovely Lotti. ( featured in previous posts and a surrogate dog for me at present!) When I can I walk with her and breathe in the beauty of the changing seasons we have here. I have also shown her garden with all the poppies in my previous post and haiku to Liberty, Love and Light. The link is to her art work at the Artagora Galeria Virtual Ruth Koenigsberger. I love the way she can capture both colour and light. For me there is a deep link to nature in her work and a spiritual light within her creative art. Try the link on her name and walk round a virtual art gallery too! There are  castano trees, ancient chestnuts from the Sierra and the Caldera in La Palma but also some imaginative interpretations of our world from the inner eye of an artist.

I miss all my friends in the Sierra Aracena as I have to be in the UK for a short while. Many there live a peaceful lifestyle that can bring them close to the natural world through organic gardening, permaculture, spiritual practices, yoga and of course the creative arts. It is almost a year since I wrote Bats on my Birthday and have found blogging useful to warm up my writing muscles. I hope to write more stories and poems to help us come closer to this wonderful and diverse world of nature.

For this week I want to highlight the need to care for the living systems on the planet. There are so many people who want to rise above the atrocities in Paris and send a message that we must change the way we live in this world or the living planet will suffer and not be able to give us and all other creatures the habitats and food sources we need to thrive.

As I cannot walk on the Climate Change March  on the eve of the talks in Paris I will try some virtual walks like this one in the Sierra Aracena. Let’s hold the Climate Change talks in the light  and where possible petition and campaign for the change our planet needs.

The lovely Lotti

Hollyhock and black carpenter bee in Ruth’s garden. October 2015

More mushrooms and one for the pan

I can see Autumn will be a busy time as the chestnuts need to be collected and wood too for the winter. The gallipierni or apagador of the macropiolete family was edible. It found its way to the frying pan and we survived. But the very rose shaped red mushrooms, possibly from Russula family , like all rather red ones are best avoided. Lots of smaller mushrooms and these possibly are hallucinogenic and hard on the stomach!
Back to work now for the final chestnuts of the season on a glorious sunny November day.

A poem for Peony: The Wild Peony Forest; cycle of change from March to May, paeonia broterii,

Dverse poets have suggested a prompt based on ecopoetry. Do check out this inspirational poetry group at  Dverse  . The poetry bar is open and serving up so many different ideas most of the week. Ecopoetry seems to be a different term being introduced by groups such as Green Spirit and Resurgence. Alice Oswald is also mentioned and I find her a fascinating poet who has such an observant style that also brings out deep emotions. I’m not sure I want my own writing to be put into a category and I had never come across this term before but I certainly seem to be focused on my own and others relationship with the natural world at this point in time.

Trevor organised a nature course here some years ago and it was led by the botanist Teresa Farino. This started my inquiry into the plant kingdom. I was also given a mother’s day present of the Alice Oswald anthology, Weeds and Wild Flowers.  I loved the Snowdrop one ,’ A pale and pining girl,head bowed, heart gnawed’ ……. ‘ her wildflower sense of wounded gentleness’

I wrote this poem early on in blogging inspired by the wild peonies here at Navasola and in the Sierra Aracena. It is January 2016 now but on our return from our special birthday trip to the Azores within 10 days there have been changes. The invasive mimosa is out in its bright yellow headdress, the almond blossom is delicately feeling for the early bees, and the peonies are beginning to thrust through the cold ground. Some are near paths so I stick sticks around them so we don’t forget and tread on these wild sisters of the many cultivated ones.

 

A Poem for Peony and all those wild loving sisters

Ms Peony Broterii

Wild genes live dangerously

Not cultivated carefully

Like your gardened sisters.

But your barb is in your poisonous roots,

Anchored, aching deep in chestnut groves,

In the shade of veteran friends, long standing,

Bringing you your strength, uprightness, roots rooted.

Unlike the myriads of visitors ready to be satiated

In your open sensuous bloom.

Bringing a light touch on velvet petal,

A rubbing of stamens, a staining of pollen,

Buzzing bodies beating,

Intoxicated with your nectar.

They stay only for their own satisfaction.

You may have some regrets, a sense of loss

As petals fall and breezes betray your beauty.

But your thrill is in your seed pod,

Ready to ripen, always ready,

To begin again, always hopeful

To survive into another Spring.

Only the danger of the human mind
Can threaten you.

Georgina Wright

 

 

Mid May, seed pod, ripening and hopefully fully fertilised by an amazing range of insects that have loved being inside this peony!

Part of peony forest in full bloom – April to May

Early May

Pollination, fully open to the sun and all insects!

The first Peony bloom in Navasola East, by an old chestnut, attracting insects. April.

Wild peony forest –  Early March.

Peony Plot in Kew gardens.
Over 30 different types of peonies and now reclassified!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Link to Dverse   For the ecopoetry prompt  January 2016

With thanks to the poems by
Alice Oswald, Weeds and Wild Flowers ( Faber and Faber ) and to the peonies and photos taken at Navasola among the ancient chestnut trees.

Originally written in 2013 and posted then.

The Wild Peony Forest! Signs of Spring at finca Navasola. Update on Birds Spotted or otherwise!

Wild peony forest

Spring is finally in the air but emerging much more slowly at this altitude and even in different places on the finca and in the Sierra. On the road to Aracena there are some almond trees in bloom and as you head  down to Seville lots of Mimosa.  The mimosa has caused a bit of a botanical debate and the mimosa on the finca by our house is different to the mimosa seen on the beach in Cabanas, Portugal. Neither are really called mimosa and are acacias, and originally from Australia.  However they are supposed to be good at preventing soil erosion with their roots but also around our house are plentiful seedlings and some emerging as young trees. We have a big decision to make about the mimosa tree as it is right where the solar panels should go. However, we do have a lot of younger versions willing to take over.

Mimosa in full bloom by the house

The wild peonies are natural to the area and seem to now be growing much more prolifically around and near to the old chestnuts. With the ground around the chestnuts having been cleared to collect chestnuts over the past few years, this might have helped the wild peonies. They are still emerging and look like mini forests near the chestnuts. Many also seem to want to grow on the paths.I have put sticks around them so that anyone walking might notice them and should I remove the one in the middle of the track at the entrance to the finca and put it in a wild flower garden?

More birds seem to be arriving and we are trying to distinguish the different types of warblers. The Great Tit seems to have finished trying to break into the house as it would regularly bash its beak against one window and then fly to the other side of the house and knock against that window! I had a lovely view of the treecreeper on the mossy rock outside my window while I was resting and feeling sorry for myself with toothache!  It brightened my day and I did attempt to draw it as I do not think I can ever capture on photo the birds around here.  One moment in your sight and then gone. It’s if they sense the binoculars and a camera, well at present forget it.

The birds seen by the fort in Cabanas are much easier to spot but would need patience and a long lens. This year I will try drawing them in their spotted spots. Hoopoes under the old pines, Goldfinches chirping and flocking together into the pines and onto the white broom. Tiny warblers by the fort in the shrubs; Bigger warblers flitting into the air over the almond trees; A few Swallows winging over land and beach.There were egrets in the almond fields and crested larks quite bold by the rubbish bins. House Martins attempting nests under the edges of balconies. And on the beach signs of cormorants and curlews, smaller waders like the whimbrels and redshanks, turnstones, ringed plovers along the muddy stones, sanderlings rushing along the edge of the tide, and this time one lonely oystercatcher! There has always been a vast variety of birds to be seen along the beaches of the Ria Formosa in February.