Today, as the dates move on and we deal with the anomalies of global warming, in Scotland after a week of high summer, we are thrust back into autumn with a drop of 10 degrees and almost constant rain after too constant dryness.
Some species are keeping time, the rowan, the oak, the horse chestnut seem to be clock right, but there is confusion and I hope an oak I planted on a loved one 8 years ago has survived despite an early leaf loss.
Please go out this Sunday, enjoy and take time to breath in whatever season it is with you, and notice the tiny and the big around you. For me, I am obsessed with a wasp nest at the end of the street unnoticed by all) busy, but drunk and dangerous in the seasons change and I will be in it watching and enjoying the drama.
I have foraged pounds of blackberries and I am about to gather my annual mast, this year, the oak has done well and the acorns are perfuse. I am also about to lay hedges and plant out the trees I have grown on down the ally beside my house. We are in scary times where small acts make big changes. Be 'The Man Who Planted Trees' fight quietly for a planet and life.
Robin Harfrod wrote this today, and I love it, so I am passing it on.
'Foraging connects us to our distant ancestors who once roamed vast landscapes for sustenance.
I recall Henry David Thoreau, as he strolled the woods around Walden Pond, saying that he went to the woods to 'live deliberately.'
On this late summer morning, cloaked in mist, foraging becomes a meditation, a deliberate act of reconnecting with nature and oneself.
As I wander, the mist veils each branch and leaf, as if protecting long-held secrets.
The scent is a complex blend of decaying leaves and the musk of damp soil—nature's very own incense.
The world appears as an impressionistic painting, with outlines softened and colours muted.
What could be more evocative of Monet's ethereal 'Water Lilies'?
Through the fog, I spot young new nettles and dandelion leaves, their usual sharpness muted by the mist.
These are not mere weeds; they are treasure troves of flavour and nutrients, revered by cultures past and present.
And there, cloaked in silvery dew, is a stand of wild sorrel.
I taste a leaf.
Its tartness, a shock and delight, feels like a message from the land: awaken, it says, for life is here, brimming beneath the surface.
Doesn't the act of foraging awaken something in you?
That deep, ancient code that knows the secret voices of the earth beckoning you to listen closely.
This misty morning becomes a liminal space where the lines between past and present, between the human and the natural world, blur and merge.
I leave the forest, pockets full, but not just of plants.
In these quiet hours, I have harvested something ineffable.
Like Wordsworth wandering his beloved Lake District,
'I have reaped 'thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.'
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