Autumn came early and with "the whirling wind's tempestuous shocks" and mighty gales and deluges.
After a very cool and wet summer and with the word out that the winter ahead will be early and harsh.
Yet our large new garden in warmer climes has delighted with its abundance and variety. And has fed since May. Even now there are runner beans, something we could not have grown before, without shelter, and a rich variety of greens and roots. And potatoes stored.
Our dogs enjoy the vegetables as much as we do.
And already we are selling excess and cut flowers at markets, and perennials are seedlings for next year. Sweet William, sweet peas, and there will be stocks and pyrethrum and all the old cottage garden favourites. Maybe sunflowers if seed allows.
It is sweet and wholesome to pick and gather for market, and the House has flowers in richness.
We are gathering apples in an old abandoned orchard. So often these are allowed to go to waste. Sweetness to stand under an apple-heavy tree, shake the branches gently and hope that the apple-rain misses the head..
We came in heavy laden to be greeted with a large sack of windfalls from another source, so apple -processing is in full swing. Apple and blackberry jam, as the crops in the hedges are rich this year, apple butter, and tomorrow, apple and lemon chutney. The dehydator we were given is working hard also.
Old skills with thanksgiving for abundance.
To offset the scene here in Ireland as the abuse revelations and their consequences continue to unravel their unsavoury and dark webs.
In the last year, attitudes have changed, crystallised, hardened. Few are in denial any more. How can they be? Especially when clergy continue to display arrogance and lack of penitence.
It is not easy to walk the streets wearing the Holy Habit... And yet the dark looks are more honest than the wrong subservience we saw before. And there is courtesy and openness also when folk hear that we are not Irish and that we own no property or money and the work we do.
At markets, it is the knitting that sells most. And always when things are dark and heavy and hard, there is solace and comfort in working a bright and lovely hat for a child, knowing the money it fetches will heal and save other wee ones. Weaving prayer and love into the work.
So let fingers fly and the colours of the world God gives us spill out as days shorten and darken and the winds of winter whine and whistle.
All and each can bring hope and healing in a world gone crazy ...
Blessings and peace...
