Category: Seasonal Living
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Samhain Approaching
As I sit here, writing this, the rain taps at the window, the wind howling down the street, carrying with it the scent of winter and the first of the autumn leaves. The sky is fast moving and furious – low dark grey clouds set amidst a backdrop of pure white/grey. The central heating has…
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Walking the Circuit of the Land: Plant Allies and Cycles of Healing
Last winter I moved from the city to a small, rural town, seeking a deeper and more frequent connection with nature, quiet space for introspection, and a more flexible lifestyle (as the cost of living is much less out here). I arrived on Imbolc, raw from almost two years of misfortune and disconnection, and felt…
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Forgotten Legacy – Fifty Years After ‘Silent Spring’
The fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Rachel Carson’s seminal work ‘Silent Spring’, was in 2012, published first in the USA in 1962. This was the first book of its kind – an outspoken, powerfully argued and well researched condemnation of the reckless use of pesticides in modern agriculture, in urban and rural pest control…
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Mad as a March Hare
Standing on the edge, with a cosmically delineated point where the tide turns from winter to spring, we teeter on the brink of the spring equinox. It is a time for madness. Many of us are not yet ready to run full tilt into the light of the summer sun – not yet ready to…
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Brigid Inspiration
Imbolc is the first pagan fire festival of the year and the first promise of spring when the Earth begins to stir into life. It is associated with the bride Goddess Brigit (my favourite spelling), Irish Goddess of hearth and home, who comes to me very strongly on the eve of Imbolc. Brigit is the…