The Secret Garden

Sloe right down

*breathe in*.....*breathe out*

Ahhhhhhh.

After my Janet and John-style post on the merits of woodcarving, I feel the need to stop, take a breath, and rediscover why I blog. Having spent a glorious (pain-free) morning pottering around the house I have the headspace to write. My wrists are beginning to twinge already, but we'll see how far I can get.

I have noticed that my ability to write improves immeasurably when I have the time to sit comfortably and contemplate my navel for a while before hitting the keyboard. Now, I feel that after a stressful week that seemed never to end, it is important to stop and find my balance before I head into battle once more.

So far, May has been a busy month. It started with a back-to-basics camping trip that saw me rediscovering my inner survivalist and was followed by work, pain, and a heavy dose of the life laundry. Today, I have decided to put all of that out of my mind and get on with making time for those things that are healing for my soul.

With Beltane just behind us, there is a feeling of coming abundance - of warm days and time to be spent with friends - and in a way I spent today preparing for a party even if there is nobody coming round to enjoy it. I have made molasses gingerbread with fresh ginger, there are heart-shaped fruit juice lollies in the freezer, and I have just decanted the sloe gin from its preserving jar into its permanent home.

It's a delicious feeling, and I want to take the time to savour it, and to record it here. I get such pleasure from my Nigella mixing bowls (seconds but who cares) and the wide-necked le Parfait jars with their orange rubber rings. Is this materialism, or is this enjoying simplicity?

My plan for this afternoon is to use the spent sloes to make sloejacks, and maybe save the stones to make a heat pad with a remnant of fabric from my stash (something else I love to hoard). Three useful things from one simple fruit, and a connection to a passing season is medicine for my soul.

Ace of Cups

I have a new toy - it is a crook knife. These curved knives are used for scooping out hollows in wooden items like spoons, bowls and cups. I'm currently trying my hand at making a birch cup. These are traditionally called Kuksa and are used by the Sami people of Scandinavia. They're also normally made from birch burl, which has less tendency to crack than a birch log but I'm using what I've got. Townies like me don't often get the chance to wield an axe and chop up our own kitchenware, so I shouldn't be choosy!

I'd like to write something about the joys of working with your hands to make something useful, or the meditative quality of gradually scraping away the layers of wood to reveal a pleasing bowl shape, but my hands hurt from too much copying and pasting in my day job and my brain is fatigued from staring at a computer screen... so there's your answer right there. Time to get out more and enjoy life - my desk job is killing me!