Thank you Winnie for your support, it means a lot to me, having you here. And everyone else, Welcome! I would like to have an adventure, lets walk down a trail and see what magic we can find, want to? There may be portals between the hedgerows and the corn fields so keep a good eye open. Whichever path we take let's keep nature close by our side and our hearts tuned to the divine, shall we? I have a feeling it's going to be grand. I'll meet you here by the blue door.
Sunday, July 18, 2004
Hair in Brambles
by Trendle Ellwood
Dr Johnson: ”Give me the town, Sir. The Countryman may be king of this holdings, yet, I tell you, Sir, he is the slave of his own acres.”
Squire Windrum: “Yes, Sir. But where will you find such willing servitude, or such happy kingship?”*
As I set out on the porch in the rain this evening I reached a spot of restful mind. It was then that the answer came to me to just let it go. I have been tending my flowers, picking the finest of them and loving them into creations and then taking them to market. The jams and the jellies and the berries I am selling wonderfully but my flowers, well I have maybe two faithful customers who really appreciate them but beyond that most people expect flowers to just be cheap at the farm market.
I find myself feeling resentful about this at times. One day I had the most beautiful Gladiolas for a buck a stem, and Gladiola bulbs are not cheap. I had harvested them in the bud stage, so that they would continue opening on into the next week. One stem had the power to fill a whole room with beauty. One lady came along and asked me if I would take 50cents for them. I felt like telling her that I needed to buy toilet paper on the way home. I mean what is the deal! She can’t fish out a buck to pay for my glads when she is driving a sparky van, get out of here! It is times like these that I just have to leave our booth for a while and go visiting with the other venders. I’m not going to hore my flowers anymore, I tell my friends. Hah! Can’t you see me sulking, the wounded flower artist adrift at the farm market.
Hubby takes people better then I do sometimes, just letting it slide off himself. I have got to get better at that. So spirit got to my heart and said, “ Let the flowers go, their time will come, follow your passion, there are lessons still to be learned from the bramble patches. “ So simple, why can’t I have just seen that instead of getting all stressed out and mad at people?
The other day as I was entering a bramble patch down the road at a friends, passing by on the road was a jogger, we waved, then he stopped and said “Trendle!” as if he knew me. I had not recognized him in bandana, sunglasses and tennis shoes but it was a fellow I know who has bought my flowers in the past. We talked for a bit and he couldn’t wait to tell me that he needed a bouquet. He pays me well, always slips in more then I ask, and he appreciates them so. As he jogged on I asked him if he preferred Sunflowers or Gladiolas and he hollered back, “Your choice, You are the artist.” and so the wounded flower artists heart was tended to. And she knew that she had been given a gift, when this John fellow jogged by when she was entering a berry patch.
I had to laugh out loud the other day when I was out in those brambles. I was thinking of last spring, and the day that I drove into town and took a part time job. I didn’t except the first place I walked into to hire me! I was just trying out applying to see how that felt! But bam, they took me up on it!
I cried for a week, I didn’t want to go. But I felt like I had to help out more, Hubby was going through a transition, I needed to contribute. He does so much. And so I went. It was a great place but I felt so confined. Applying myself to somebody else’s schedule. They even wanted me to control my hair, pull it back tight, to keep it’s fuzziness taunt. It was a perfectly nice place; I just felt in my heart that it was not really where I was suppose to be. So after one day on the job I called in and signed out.
I didn’t call my supervisor back when she phoned and wanted to discuss what ever the problem might have been and saying maybe we could work something out. I just didn’t think she would understand. Oh, I guess I could have gotten my way and since they had seen what a good worker I was, hah, maybe we could have made a deal that I did not have to wear my hair back tight. But it wasn’t just about my hair was it? I felt so foolish thinking it was about my hair, it was about something else but I didn’t know how to talk about it.
So I ran away from the job and ended up out in the bramble patch. It really wasn’t planned that bramble stalking was going to become my focus of the season. We took our goods to market, the tinctures, the produce, the honey, The pollen, the flowers and the berries. It turned out that the berries are the most sought after produce. We cannot bring enough berries and jams.
And so I found myself more and more often in the brambles. And while I am out there I think of what a lucky person I am. Some would not like to travel through nettle and thistles to get to the wild berry patch, but I find the nettle charming compared to the presence of tires on a street. Besides I know how to recognize their stingers and don’t let them get me. And the view of the sky and the clouds, the butterflies and the bees is superb. And some would not like the danger of snakes, the bite of the mosquito and the chance of getting ticks. But to me it seems these creatures are easier to understand then my own human kind, which fill the town. While I am in the blackberry thicket I wonder why picking wild berries is such a challenge. Why do they have so many thorns that grab at me? What are the thorns protecting them from? What are my thorns protecting me from? Do the bramble branches really need these thorns? Do the thorns make the berries sweeter? I do think the wild berry has something that the berries from our domestic thornless canes do not have.
Nettle and Beetles in the Berry Patch
Check out the white hairy stingers on the nettle.
I can handle the thorns pretty well, I just pull back the right way to get loose or they do get me and I just cuss a little, after all there is no one out there to hear me. Mostly I think it is just that the thrill of the ripe berry overwhelms my fear of the elements. When my mind is on the dangling ripe berry my body becomes of secondary importance. Oftentimes there will be the most perfectly tempting berry just hanging a little over my head and I just have to reach it but as I do, a blackberry thorn grabs me by the hair. Then the decision is to drop all and detangle my hair or to just pull forward after the almost in grasp berry, and let the bramble pull. And so I let the bramble pull.
She takes out a tuft here and a tuft there so that soon my hair is a mixed array, some of it still up in my bun and other pieces drawn out and falling, straying all around, a little like new berry cane shoots do. I had one of those live green berry runners reach out and wrap around me one day while I was picking berries. It had the thought to grow up me, as it swirled around my waist!
The brambles take freely; soon strips of my hair hang like shadows floating in the wind upon the berry brambles behind me. I wonder how many bird nests will be cushioned next spring with that hair of mine that I left a- dangling in the berry patch in pursuit of the wild blackberry?
When I come out of the berry patch I am sure that my hair must look like a birds nest itself. And I am certain that the next time I go to my twice a year hairdresser she will ask me if I have had my hair thinned. And so the brambles they want me to be wild and free, they have their way with me and my hairdo is opposite of the way that it would have been if I had kept that job in town. That is what made me laugh out loud that day in the berry patch.
Copyright © 2004, by Trendle Ellwood. All Rights Reserved.
*from Growing and Using Herbs Successfully (Garden Way Book) by Betty E.M. Jacobs
Dr Johnson: ”Give me the town, Sir. The Countryman may be king of this holdings, yet, I tell you, Sir, he is the slave of his own acres.”
Squire Windrum: “Yes, Sir. But where will you find such willing servitude, or such happy kingship?”*
As I set out on the porch in the rain this evening I reached a spot of restful mind. It was then that the answer came to me to just let it go. I have been tending my flowers, picking the finest of them and loving them into creations and then taking them to market. The jams and the jellies and the berries I am selling wonderfully but my flowers, well I have maybe two faithful customers who really appreciate them but beyond that most people expect flowers to just be cheap at the farm market.
I find myself feeling resentful about this at times. One day I had the most beautiful Gladiolas for a buck a stem, and Gladiola bulbs are not cheap. I had harvested them in the bud stage, so that they would continue opening on into the next week. One stem had the power to fill a whole room with beauty. One lady came along and asked me if I would take 50cents for them. I felt like telling her that I needed to buy toilet paper on the way home. I mean what is the deal! She can’t fish out a buck to pay for my glads when she is driving a sparky van, get out of here! It is times like these that I just have to leave our booth for a while and go visiting with the other venders. I’m not going to hore my flowers anymore, I tell my friends. Hah! Can’t you see me sulking, the wounded flower artist adrift at the farm market.
Hubby takes people better then I do sometimes, just letting it slide off himself. I have got to get better at that. So spirit got to my heart and said, “ Let the flowers go, their time will come, follow your passion, there are lessons still to be learned from the bramble patches. “ So simple, why can’t I have just seen that instead of getting all stressed out and mad at people?
The other day as I was entering a bramble patch down the road at a friends, passing by on the road was a jogger, we waved, then he stopped and said “Trendle!” as if he knew me. I had not recognized him in bandana, sunglasses and tennis shoes but it was a fellow I know who has bought my flowers in the past. We talked for a bit and he couldn’t wait to tell me that he needed a bouquet. He pays me well, always slips in more then I ask, and he appreciates them so. As he jogged on I asked him if he preferred Sunflowers or Gladiolas and he hollered back, “Your choice, You are the artist.” and so the wounded flower artists heart was tended to. And she knew that she had been given a gift, when this John fellow jogged by when she was entering a berry patch.
I had to laugh out loud the other day when I was out in those brambles. I was thinking of last spring, and the day that I drove into town and took a part time job. I didn’t except the first place I walked into to hire me! I was just trying out applying to see how that felt! But bam, they took me up on it!
I cried for a week, I didn’t want to go. But I felt like I had to help out more, Hubby was going through a transition, I needed to contribute. He does so much. And so I went. It was a great place but I felt so confined. Applying myself to somebody else’s schedule. They even wanted me to control my hair, pull it back tight, to keep it’s fuzziness taunt. It was a perfectly nice place; I just felt in my heart that it was not really where I was suppose to be. So after one day on the job I called in and signed out.
I didn’t call my supervisor back when she phoned and wanted to discuss what ever the problem might have been and saying maybe we could work something out. I just didn’t think she would understand. Oh, I guess I could have gotten my way and since they had seen what a good worker I was, hah, maybe we could have made a deal that I did not have to wear my hair back tight. But it wasn’t just about my hair was it? I felt so foolish thinking it was about my hair, it was about something else but I didn’t know how to talk about it.
So I ran away from the job and ended up out in the bramble patch. It really wasn’t planned that bramble stalking was going to become my focus of the season. We took our goods to market, the tinctures, the produce, the honey, The pollen, the flowers and the berries. It turned out that the berries are the most sought after produce. We cannot bring enough berries and jams.
And so I found myself more and more often in the brambles. And while I am out there I think of what a lucky person I am. Some would not like to travel through nettle and thistles to get to the wild berry patch, but I find the nettle charming compared to the presence of tires on a street. Besides I know how to recognize their stingers and don’t let them get me. And the view of the sky and the clouds, the butterflies and the bees is superb. And some would not like the danger of snakes, the bite of the mosquito and the chance of getting ticks. But to me it seems these creatures are easier to understand then my own human kind, which fill the town. While I am in the blackberry thicket I wonder why picking wild berries is such a challenge. Why do they have so many thorns that grab at me? What are the thorns protecting them from? What are my thorns protecting me from? Do the bramble branches really need these thorns? Do the thorns make the berries sweeter? I do think the wild berry has something that the berries from our domestic thornless canes do not have.
Nettle and Beetles in the Berry Patch
Check out the white hairy stingers on the nettle.
I can handle the thorns pretty well, I just pull back the right way to get loose or they do get me and I just cuss a little, after all there is no one out there to hear me. Mostly I think it is just that the thrill of the ripe berry overwhelms my fear of the elements. When my mind is on the dangling ripe berry my body becomes of secondary importance. Oftentimes there will be the most perfectly tempting berry just hanging a little over my head and I just have to reach it but as I do, a blackberry thorn grabs me by the hair. Then the decision is to drop all and detangle my hair or to just pull forward after the almost in grasp berry, and let the bramble pull. And so I let the bramble pull.
She takes out a tuft here and a tuft there so that soon my hair is a mixed array, some of it still up in my bun and other pieces drawn out and falling, straying all around, a little like new berry cane shoots do. I had one of those live green berry runners reach out and wrap around me one day while I was picking berries. It had the thought to grow up me, as it swirled around my waist!
The brambles take freely; soon strips of my hair hang like shadows floating in the wind upon the berry brambles behind me. I wonder how many bird nests will be cushioned next spring with that hair of mine that I left a- dangling in the berry patch in pursuit of the wild blackberry?
When I come out of the berry patch I am sure that my hair must look like a birds nest itself. And I am certain that the next time I go to my twice a year hairdresser she will ask me if I have had my hair thinned. And so the brambles they want me to be wild and free, they have their way with me and my hairdo is opposite of the way that it would have been if I had kept that job in town. That is what made me laugh out loud that day in the berry patch.
Copyright © 2004, by Trendle Ellwood. All Rights Reserved.
*from Growing and Using Herbs Successfully (Garden Way Book) by Betty E.M. Jacobs
Comments:
Post a Comment
