Author: Tish Farrell

Magic In The Web Of It

I don’t think I’ve every thought about what spiders do in winter – apart from their sneaking into our house and lurking there for the duration. So I was mightily surprised on my way over the field to the allotment yesterday to find lots of webs like these among the tussocks of flattened, snow-emerged grass. I was also surprised to feel the sun warm on my head as I bent down to take this photo.

Up at the allotment, and despite the sudden warmth, all was in a state of post-snow-shock. The aged damson tree had lost a branch. The green manure mustard that I’d grown on several plots was sprawled about the place, and my pigeon defence system over the kale completely collapsed. It mostly looked damp and dreary everywhere.

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But I did spy some field beans sprouting, and the self-seeded marigolds were flowering heroically. I plucked a few leeks, and leaves of perpetual spinach, chard and kale.

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Then I wandered around other people’s plots, looking at what was what. At first I thought my only company was a wren, flitting like a little moth in the greengage tree.  But when I reached the big conifer on the allotment boundary, I spotted a Goldcrest foraging in its branches – our tiniest British bird (I think) apart from its cousin the Firecrest. And then there were the blackbirds feasting on a hoard of fallen apples. None of them stayed around to be photographed though.

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And that included the kestrel who was using the summit of an ash tree as a look-out post. It flew off as I drew near.  And it was then I noticed a very strange mist creeping across the farm fields towards the town. Some shape-shifting solstice invader masquerading as miasma…?

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P.S. “there’s magic in the web of it” is from Shakespeare’s Othello

Six Word Saturday  Please pop over to Debbie’s for more 6SW offerings.

Darkness And Light ~ Thursday’s Special

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Solstice – the longest night – a time for drawing in; earth quietness; immanence; a conjuring of new possibility.

This photo was taken a few Decembers ago – the view from the island of Anglesey looking across the Menai Strait to Snowdonia on mainland Wales, terrain of antique tales of shape-shifting princes and magicians, their black deeds and bloody conflicts.

Thursday’s Special ~ darkness and light

Wenlock Snow Walk

 

When I left the house I only meant to go to the Post Office, this to be in time for card posting to the US. But then just as I was setting off I also picked up my camera. From the start,  then, it was likely there would be diversions.

Outside the front door I had a choice – take the five minute direct way along the main road whose pavement was now heaped with dirty snow, or step straight across to Station Road and into Snowland.

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Snowland won of course. If I went this longer way I knew I could see what was what along the Linden Walk. There could be photo opportunities…P1030771

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…and then next I’d take the field path known locally as the Cutlins, from where, no matter the weather, you always have one of the best views of the town. This is where I stopped to take the header photo.

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The path brings you to the perimeter of Wenlock Priory. Once you are down there and through the kissing gate, you can just see the ruins through the trees…

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And it was at this point that I really did mean to turn towards town…but then, when I looked beyond the Priory towards the lane that runs through the ancient parkland, it was all too beguiling.

Just a little way then…

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I did eventually make it to the Post Office, where I had to wait and wait in line, all of us standing in a lake of melting snow which we had tramped in with us.

Outside again, the town looked very pretty. On the Church Green the trees were scattering their snow like confetti, and the ancestors looked well tucked up in their snow quilts…

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And as the sun was still shining I decided to take another path, back up the Cutlins but diverting along the Priory parkland boundary so I would end up on the old railway line below the Linden Walk.

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It was totally silent there in the cutting beneath the trees; no ghost of roaring Great Western locomotive, but I could see that things had not been quiet. There were a number of casualties – saplings felled by the weight of snow. It felt like Narnia: those first steps out of C.S. Lewis’s old wardrobe. No sign of Mr. Tumnus though. Better push on before the White Witch whisks up on her slay.

Back on the Linden Field quietness there was broken by distant whoops of joy. On Windmill Hill a family and their dog were busy sledding. It looked like fun, and I was tempted to make yet another diversion. But no. My quick trip to the post had turned into a two hour meander. He who presently binds books instead of building sheds might be wondering where I’d got to. And somehow lunch time had been and gone. How did that happen?

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Jo’s Monday Walk  Please visit Jo  for magic views from her walk around Belém, Lisbon. You will be glad you did.

Our Council Chamber ~ Not Frozen In Time But Five Hundred Years Of Continuing Tradition

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This is Much Wenlock’s Guildhall, standing in the heart of the town next to the parish church. It was built in 1540 after the dissolution of Wenlock Priory, so marking the end of monastic rule and the growth of secular, civic administration. The ground floor was originally a corn market, and several weekly markets are still held there. The upper floor has a court room, now a museum and gallery, and a council chamber, where our Town Council continues to meet every month.

Surprisingly Much Wenlock has a prestigious civic history for what today seems a small and sleepy town. It was first granted borough status by a Charter from Edward IV in 1468. This was to mark his acknowledgement of the  “’laudable and acceptable services’ of his ‘liege men and residents of the town of Wenlock’ in his gaining of the crown.” Under the Charter the townspeople acquired a certain autonomy and could organise markets and fairs, and have their own officers – a Bailiff and Burgesses to oversee secular matters. The Prior still held sway though, effectively acting as lord of the manor. But after the Dissolution it was down to the Bailiff and Burgesses to run the town.

We will soon all know what these pillars of the community got up to – at least from 1495 to 1810. Extraordinarily, the Borough Minute Book covering 300 years of civic pronouncements and records has survived, and this year the Town Council raised funds to have it conserved and digitised. Now there are teams of volunteers working on the transcription of the entries. There are 800 pages, since the Burgesses who had the book made in 1495 were looking ahead. They were also using a newfangled material – paper. It was expensive stuff too, for during the conservation process it was discovered from the water marks that they had commissioned only the best from a maker in Italy.

The whole thing is quite breath-taking. Almost too much to imagine in our little town of two and half thousand souls; even when we were looking at the newly conserved Minute Book back in September when it was given its first public airing. Our very own half-millennium time machine of bureaucratic declarations and decisions. It will not be a pretty story either, not all of it anyway. There will be hangings, and the poor will be shoved from pillar to post, but within these pages we might also perceive the seeds of English democracy beginning to swell and take root.

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Thursday’s Special: tradition

A Little Bit Of Earth Magic While Out Foraging For Leeks And Parsnips

Well one thing was certain, when I waded through the snow to the allotment yesterday afternoon – no-one else would be daft enough to be there. A hundred or so yards from the house, I almost turned back. The snow was coming in over my wellies, and it truly was hard work tramping through the low drifts. My well trodden path along the field edge was no longer familiar. The world was iced blue-white with only a passing buzzard to break the stillness.

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You might wonder what had induced me to go up there at all – with all the garden plots buried under a foot of snow. But I needed parsnips, and I needed leeks, and parsley and Tuscan kale from the polytunnel. And once I was there, I thought I’d better shift some of the snow from the polytunnel roof, since we’d been promised all-day snow on Sunday, which has indeed come to pass.

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It took a while to find and extract the parsnips. The soil wasn’t frozen under the snow-blanket, but was very, very sticky – doing a good impression of stuff stuck in quicksand. But mission accomplished, veggie-wise, I noticed a change in the light and started taking photos instead.

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As I was heading home, I realised I could hear the whoops and cries of happy sledders. You can just make them out on the hillside north-east of the church tower. But for the power-lines (that intrude on most views of Wenlock) it might be a traditional Victorian winter scene.

Which reminds me. While I’m here, I’d like to thank all the local farmers who have been out on their tractors clearing roads and spreading grit. My entranced-by-snow moments are all very well, but some people need to drive places. Multiple gold stars to the farmers then.

copyright 2017 Tish Farrell

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