Music to Write to: Maggie Beth Sand and Serpentyne

I'm a bit busy this week with a visit from the other side of Australia from my lovely littlest sister, so I won't write much. This album speaks for itself anyway.

I love medieval fusion music (as well as the really-truly medieval style music.)  This album is a firm favorite and on all my shuffle lists.

This is the song that got me onto this album, a share on Facebook from sweet Gary Colcombe of Celtic Myth Podshow. It's a reworking of a song from the oldest extant music manuscript, Stella Splendens, and that is also the name of the album.

This is a traditional Christmas carol.

Kalenda Maya.  So cheerful and uplifting, and some lovely hurdy gurdy action at the start.  :)

My favorite of all is the bouncy tune Ave Mater Dou Way Robin, but I can't find that on youtube.  If you like the other songs, buy the album and then you can hear it.  :)          

Trees, dogs and Poetry.

Tree planting started for me this week.  I only do seven or so at a time so I don't kill myself digging the holes.  The seedlings themselves are smalll but I need to make sure I'm not planting them over sheet rock, because if I do they won't be able to survive the long dry symmers.  So, down I dig!

My first seven this year went in beside the queen Jarrah.  She misses her friends who once grew here on her south side, and I am hoping that giving her some new company will cheer her up. All they need done in this pic is their tree guards to keep the ravens and rabbits from biting them off and to protect them from frost.    

 

Mum hurt her back a bit last weekend so her two dogs came with us for the run as well.

That's Tuppy on the left, then Mama Rosie, then her son, Angus and finally Grandma Tess. We didn't plan it that it was two black Labs in one house and two yellows in the other, its just how it worked out!

After planting, it was time for a walk round Moy-Mel.  It is finally getting green.  It is only ten minutes up the road from here, but it is much dryer there than here.

It was lovely to get these smiling pics of Tess, because she is one of those dogs who gets embarrassed about photos and usually looks kind of shut off in them.

And of course Rosie smiles nearly all the time!

I was hunting for something the other day and came across this poem I wrote as part of my Ovate studies with the Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids.  It is about trees that have been important to me.  Hmm, horses seem to feature in it too.  I still haven't spoken about me and horses much yet, have I?  Soon. 

Trees

Picnicking under the Peppermint trees

By the old carousel

At the zoo

Their spicy smell and

Willowy leaves all around us

My Grandparents

My Parents

My sister and I

In our little velvet dresses and white stockings.

Horses on the carousel to ride afterwards

That's why I remember.

Curled, nesting, imagining I was a wild beast

Or a little dog

Deep inside the pile of lopped branches

From the Cape Lilac

That stood in our back yard

Every year cropped to a bare trunk

but every year flourishing anew

A slim tunnel from the edge of the pile

Over and under branches and into my nest

Hiding deep in the soft, green, sweet-smelling heart

I was a fey child.

Tapping, tapping in the night,

Leaves like impatient fingers

The Umbrella tree that grew in my Grandparent's front yard

That dropped its fruit on car and lawn

And patter-pattered me gently to sleep each night

Making shadows on the ground

That moved and swayed

When the sea breeze came to call

A safe, gentle house

A protecting, nourishing tree to guard it.

Mulberry trees

I have loved a few

Small child

Climbing in the branches

Face and hands and clothes purple with juice

Primal hunter gatherer

Enjoying the berries even more for that

Than for their sweet taste

A tree that feeds so many

Feeding the birds to their fullest

Till their very droppings on the leaves turn indigo

Light green leaves with lines of beauty

Feeding the silkworms at school

Feeding us jam and pie

And still I love to pick and eat them

Stained like a child

Plantation of tall pine trees

Pinus Radiata

Humble timber tree

Much maligned for using too much water

Stealing too much nutrient

When uprooted to this unsuitable land

But the Black Cockatoos love them

And I love them

Teenaged, sister and I ride

Down the long, ranked laneways of straight pines

Whisper of muffled hoofbeats on needles

Rough-barked trunks all you can see in any direction

Easy to get lost

Fun to get lost

Fun to gallop down those laneways

Especially on cool, misty days

With only the roos bounding away

To remind us we are not in

Some medieval forest in Europe.

The bright red of the Coral trees

As they flower to tell us spring is coming

Great leaves, like hearts, falling in autumn

Green the colour of lushness

Bark like the skin of an elephant

Growing beside the stable where my good roan horse

Would wait for me to bring him his bedtime carrot

Growing both sides of the streets

That I love best to drive down

Hardy and cheerful

Can grow anew from a whole branch

Just stuck into the ground

A survivor

A teacher.

Jarrah Trees

My greatest tree loves

Sister and I, older now, riding again

A long ride to new places

Into a hidden valley of ancient Jarrah Kings

Silence, only hoofbeats

Tall grey trunks of great size all about

Grey-green canopies far above us

Awesome already

But then a raucous call and a clatter

And a long-tailed peacock male

Blue and metallic bright

Flies from high in a great Jarrah tree

And on into the forest

Right before our disbelieving eyes

A mythical beast, out of place

Hard to believe we are seeing him at all

Hard to believe he can fly with that tail

But he does

And we are stunned by the magic of that moment

And our luck in being there

Among the tall Jarrah kings and queens

At just the right time.

Me playing the Lyre... such as it is!

Please excuse all mistakes, and especially me forgetting the lyrics.  I wrote the bloody song myself, and have played it at least once nearly every day for weeks, and I still forget.  Lyme brain!  I can remember things better than I used to, but am still far from the top of my game, it seems.  :)

It also cuts off before the end of the last chorus.  I reached the limits of my elderly camera's memory card at that point!

I don't think of myself as a musician, just someone who likes to play at music, and I wouldn't normally put myself out there doing it, but there has been a lot of interest in this beautiful Anglo-Saxon Lyre that my Andyroo so kindly made for me, and now you can hear me playing it.

I hope it encourages more people to pick up an instrument, any instrument, and to have some fun. That's what it should be about, and music shouldn't be confined to the province of the professionals only. Anyone can learn enough to have fun and it is one of the things we can do that makes humanity worth it, if you know what I mean.  :)   

With all that in mind, enjoy!

The last version of the chorus that got cut off is:

"Odin the wise
Steady in comfort
Generous with pride
Asking of each of the Daughters of Odin
That little more
Which they learn
They can find. "

And then there's a nice little twiddly bit to end it that you'll have to take my word for.  :)

Thinking back, the one I did outside where Tuppence came between me and the camera and ate grass for most of it might have been better!   :D

Stand by.

It's my usual day to post but I'm trying to get some video of myself playing my lyre in which I don't suck mightily and a dog doesn't put their arse in the way of the camera.

I'll be back... maybe.  :D

In the meantime, here's pic I came across of myself, Rosie, and her litter brother, Inky, at retrieving training a few years back. I like it.  We look like we're keen.

  

Trees and more trees

A fun fact about me: In years past my nickname was TinaTrees, because I helped make a life size tree for a local amateur theatre production of Camelot.  I wasn't the only one working on it but somehow I became associated with it in people's minds. It turned into a major thing, making that tree. King Arthur had to be able to climb around in it, and Merlin had to jump out of a hollow in it with a flash of fire, and yet it still had to be able to be wheeled out at the scene change. I worked backstage on that production too and it was the best fun!  We out the back in the dark all sang our heads off along with the onstage chorus through the whole thing, and I think I cried every night at the scene where Arthur finds out about Guinevere and Lancelot, and laughed every night at the jokes too.  It was a wonderful production. 

Anyway, it's funny that I got that nickname for making a fake tree when I love real trees so much, and yet they didn't know that at the time.  :)

It has been a very tree-y week here. First up, this is the view across our neighbour's place from our north fence-line. I have a love-hate thing going with that pink grass. It is so pretty especially when the light shines through it, but it came in with those little Liquidambers there, I think, and man is it invasive!  Every year the patch gets bigger and it seems to keep seeding for the whole of Autumn/Winter/Spring.  I am going to have to fight hard to keep it off our land, but it hasn't yet quite made it to the fenceline, so for now I just look at it and glory, and worry at the same time.  :)   

Autumn is tree planting time here.  It gives the babies time to establish their roots ready for the dry summers.  Our local Shire does a very commendable and well-organised programme to help people restore the local native canopy and understory.  Each year people register and get given seedlings, and volunteers help to hand them out.  Mum and I signed up to help for one morning this year.

Look at all these lovely babies waiting to go to their new homes!

That's mum there in the second picture, with the volunteer organiser, Jolene.  I tell you what, if you want to meet the nicest and best people in your community, go volunteer at something.  Volunteers rock!

Here are some babies of my favorite tree, the Jarrah. Don't worry babies, soon you will be in the ground and able to thrive and hopefully grow into giants!

     
And there's me, since I looked unusually neat that day and should get a record of it.  :)

Tree news from Moy-Mel isn't all good.  The Queen Jarrah looks terrible after the Cockatoos came in and savaged her for her gumnuts.  There have been a lot of fires this year and food stocks are lowered due to this, so I think the trees that they can still use for food are taking more of a beating than usual.  I wish they wouldn't bite off all the branch tips as they feed.  They have balded her! I'm not sure she will recover fully from this.  She was already struggling both physically and in spirit.  This is not a happy tree.
         

In the foreground there is our little gift Liquidamber from mum, which has made it through its first year. It is going to be a very good one for colour!

In other more cheerful news, I got a photo of the amazing beehive we currently have up there.  They are settled on the outside of this tall Marri tree.  Can you see the combs growing down the tree, and the big bunch of bees at the bottom?  I was amazed.

The spot they have nested in is actually a scar from Marri canker, another thing our local trees are facing. Can you see the second big scar further down the trunk? It is natural to them, but with climate change the added stresses are letting this fungus beat the trees and we have no cure for it.   Depressing.  I sometimes wonder how my beloved Jarrah/Marri dryland forest will look in twenty years time, or if it will exist at all.

And here is smiley Rosie to cheer me up.

   
And here are mum and I out planting with the Friends of Black Cockatoo Reserve group.  That is Flossy I have there, who belongs to another member.  Even if I don't take my own dogs I end up getting down and doggy!  She is a total sweetheart and so soft to pat.

We have been on another controlled burn since my last newsy post. A night one this time.  I love this one of Andrew.

 
I guess you might wonder why someone who loves trees as much as I do might be willing to set fire to them.  Well, I stopped my car on the way home the other day to photograph this scene only a kilometre or so away from our cottage.

This is where a huge fire went through a little over a year ago.  Those trees are nearly all dead.  Aussie trees tend to be very fire proof, but not when the fire is as fierce as this one was.  Over 40 homes were burned down, and many of the trees will not recover.  And that is why I am willing to light low temperature fires that we control and that the trees are quite capable of recovering from.

And at home, here are my very own babies for this year, awaiting their chance to go into the ground and become trees too. The cycle of life goes on!

While the kitty sleeps on and dreams of summer... 

                  

Why Paganism?

My first answer to that was, "What the heck else could it have been?"  I was Pagan long before I knew such a thing existed.

I can't speak for all Pagans because we tend to be as varied and colourful as the autumn leaves on a Maple tree. 
 

Pagans must by nature be fairly independent thinkers, since the road to being a Pagan is not generally an easy or locally common one.  I just never connected to Christianity despite growing up going to Sunday School and such.  In those days, those long long ago days when I was young, Christianity was pretty much the only thing going, so I chose to go with nothing instead, but all the time I thought I had no religion, I was seeing divinity all around me in the oceans and the trees and the animals and the sky.
 

 
Then I moved into a share house with some Wiccans, and oh boy, did that open my eyes to a knew world!  Wicca didn't sit quite right with me either. I am more of a polytheist than a dualist, but I did love the focus on the wonderfulness of nature, of respect for our planet, and on the Feminine aspect to Deity.  I liked the way personal responsibility for being a good person was emphasized. I will be eternally grateful to those people for opening my world up like that.   Plus, they were very good fun to be around as well.  Pagans often have a good sense of humour and get a lot of joy out of life.  Also they like to dance a lot.

Generally not like this though.  :)

There are a lot of definitions for what sort of a Pagan one is.  I think I might be a pantheistic polytheistic universalist.  Something like that.  I speak to certain deities and guides who I seek out or who seek me out.  I keep my mind open as to what these deities really are.  They might really be beings from another plane. They might be my subconscious or my higher self, or emissaries from a Universal Mind that I can never comprehend. 

 Brigid by Susan Falcon-hargraves.

I don't mind not really knowing.  As the Taoists say, "The Tao which can be known is not the Tao."  Meaning that we really can't grasp the immensity of our universe and the spirit that rises within.  My deities and guides give me good advice and support in times of need.  They encourage me to stand in my own power and on my own honour. They don't ask of me anything that is outside my personal set of ethics, and as Odin once reminded me, even if he did ask something of me that was outside my moral code, I wouldn't do it.  Pagan gods vary in their formality, but Odin at least likes a bit of honest repartee and independence in his womenfolk.  :)

Image taken from here.

I do tend to think there is something more, some consciousness perhaps that makes up and is made up of the whole universe and everything in it.  How it came to be in order to make all this, both life and all the other wonders that make up our existence, well, I have no inkling, but I think some part of me will go back there one day to continue on the cycle of all that is, and then I will know again.

Image taken by Astronomer, Hakon Dahle.

Anyway, beyond deity, guides, and that ineffable Everything, I also acknowledge the divinity of all that is around me, (though I struggle with seeing it in some humans) and I talk to spirits in trees and rocks and you name it.  They haven't put me away yet.  :)  One day maybe I will be able to interact with them just like Lily does in Land of Fire, but in the meantime I am happy with my quiet meditation times connected to nature.

   
 Clear as mud maybe, but anyway, that's why Paganism. 
   
       

My favorite books: Sheri S Tepper's True Game series.

There are actually three trilogies in this series of books.  I can't quite remember which one of the first two trilogies was the lucky find by my sister, Jen, in a secondhand book store that got me started on Sheri's books, but I now have a full couple of bookshelves of them, every one she ever wrote, even ones she published under different names, in the genres of fantasy/scifi, mystery and even horror.  

I love them all, but I have a special fondness for the books set in the lands of The True Game. This is the omnibus of the first three books.

It's a world where a lot of the people are born to possess strange talents, though some grow up to have none and become the pawns of those with the power.  Their society revolves around rules of engagement that have evolved into elaborate rituals, with the most powerful players pulling together other talented gamesmen to play at wars.  So many rules, but they are broken often. It may be called a Game, but it is deadly for many. 

Peter has grown up an orphan in a school town, where the young are supposed to be protected from the dangers of the machinations that go on elsewhere.  He is waiting to grow old enough to find out what his power might be, or if he will ever have one. He thinks he is a nobody, but powerful people are starting to weave him into their plots, and at first he has no idea why.  The first three books follow Peter's discovery of his talent, and the adventures that follow.         

The second trilogy is about Mavin Manyshaped.  She has the talent of shape-shifting into pretty much anything she likes, a rare gift even in this land of wonder.   I think this is my favorite cover of all the varied styles these books have worn over their years.

Mavin's story is partly involved in the lands of the true game, but the middle book takes her far off to another land, to a strange society living in a deep cavern.  I think, of all the nine separate books, this middle one is my favorite.

It stands alone as a fantastic story.  I love Mavin Manyshaped.  She is so opinionated and strong, and oh, to have a talent like that!  What a wonder it would be!  The trilogy itself takes us further along the story from where Peter's trilogy ends.  If you buy it as an omnibus, it comes as The Chronicles of Mavin Manyshaped. 

The third series of books are the Jinian Trilogy.  Jinian has an interesting start to life in the lands of The True Game, but she has the fortitude to go on and become a force for good.  She has a talent that needs to be a surprise if you are to read it, but it's one I myself would love to have, even more than that of shape-shifting!

This is the middle book of the three, but I think the first one, Jinian Footseer, is my favorite. This series ties together all that we have learned or suspected from the first two, mostly seen from the point of view of this third character, Jinian.  I love Jinian too.  She is wise beyond her years and rather as I imagine Sheri S Tepper was when young, or perhaps how she wished she had been.  :)

Sheri has this amazing knack for building wonderful characters, but in my opinion she is also unmatched for world-building.  These books begin with a planet of strange wonder in which humans are the relative newcomers, but as the series goes on, we learn more and more about this alien land, and as ever, she has a gentle environmental message woven into the books:  Learn to respect and work within the bounds of your planet's needs, or risk losing all.  Considering these were written back in the early to mid eighties, they are farsighted indeed.

Sheri loves animals too, and it shines through all her works. Thank you, Sheri!  I will never write like you because I don't have your complexity of mind or life experience, but oh I do wish I could!

If you've ever enjoyed a fantasy book or even wondered if you would, I'll guarantee that The Lands of the True Game would be a very good place for you  to visit!  Since she has written 35 books, there are plenty more to explore after that!

If you are more of a mystery fan, try her Shirley McClintock mystery series, written as B. J. Oliphant, or her Jason Lynx mysteries, written under the name of A. J. Orde.