Happy New Year!

Wishing you all the very best for 2012 ~ Morvah xxx

Blessings to the Gardener

                                 Blessings to the gardener                                     

Who turns his back to the rain,

Who bends his  knee to soil and stone,

Whose quiet hands,

Cracked and black with juices

The robin loves.

Whose master is daylight,

Whom the moon allows,

Who searches the skies,

 Whose hunger tells the time.

Whose blade is sharp

Who knows a spell

For every blight and blow,

Whose work folk attribute to God,

Who turns the loam to flowers..

 Morvah ~ Christmas 2011

Maths and other things

 I'm often surprised by today's children who, upon being asked what they enjoy at school, frequently reply 'Maths'.  I suspect this has much to do with technology and enlightened teaching methods sadly unavailable in my youth.   My Father worked with numbers for most of his life and rather misguidedly had ambitions for me to do  the same. He was flogging a dead horse.  With his Mercury conjuct Neptune in Leo trine his Mars in Aries, maths was instinctual to him and he could add columns of figures in his head with the facility of an idiot savant.  Not so his Saturn return eldest child! Whereas we had so much in common, he and I, my Mercury in Pisces ~ renowned for its stupidity, was poor Dad's Waterloo!   His terrible fixity of purpose, compounded by a square of Saturn in Scorpio to Mercury, drove him to demand that my primary school should set me maths homework every night, which he would supervise. My desperate attempts to please would dissolve into Pisces tears at his impatience and my inept fumblings at comprehension would drive him to despair! Then we would both lose our fiery tempers and all was lost . I hated maths with a passion after this and escaped it whenever possible. I always enjoyed geometry however and my long-suffering teachers were often bewildered by this anomaly in an otherwise hopeless case.   Of course the truth of it was that Dad didn't know geometry and I liked drawing. Geometry offered  useful drawing techniques, it was beautiful in a way that mathematics could have been without the emotional trauma.  Years passed, my maths never improved much but strangely blossomed when I took up astrology around my Saturn return. My Saturn -  only ten degrees away from my Father's - is trine  the guilty Mercury in Pisces so I suddenly found myself working out proportional logarithms to calculate lunar progressions and converting obscure daylight saving systems to sidereal time, both without benefit of a calculator. Dad would have been so pleased had he known, but of course you don't mention astrology in a Catholic household do you?  How's your mathematical ability? What's the astrology?
      Here are a few Mercury in Pisces things and some other things from the last week.

                                

  Research has shown that in speaking about their work, mathematicians use the words 'elegance', 'truth',and 'beauty' more than everyone else combined.

  Everything you've learned in school as 'obvious' becomes less and less obvious as you begin to study the universe. For example, there are no solids in the universe, there's not even a suggestion of a solid. There are no absolute continuums. There are no surfaces. There are no straight lines......

                                Buckminster Fuller

' THE MOST BEAUTIFUL EXPERIENCE IS THE MYSTERIOUS.. IT IS THE SOURCE OF TRUE ART AND SCIENCE'

                           Albert Einstein    

 


           ' When I am working on a problem I never think about beauty. I only think about how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it to be wrong.'

                       Buckminster Fuller

      


  'I saw, as one might see the transit of Venus, a quantity passing through infinity and changing its sign from plus to minus.  I saw exactly how it happened...but it was after dinner and I let it go,'

  Winston Churchill  (My Early Life, 1930)                                                              

   'Grown-ups never understand anything for themselves and it is tiresome for children to be forever explaining things to them.'

             Antoine de St Exupery

                            

Apology

Sorry if people have been checking here for new posts and found me missing again ~ The articles are here waiting to post but blogger is refusing my photos at the moment! As soon as I find a solution I'll be back! Lots of love to all of you ~ M x
  Experimenting with firefox but alas still no photos!

Waiting for Venus

                                                                                                                                             
  After many days of gloom, the Sabbath sun shone fair across the land so that it was decided that the gardeners should spend the late afternoon at Sancreed Beacon in the hope of seeing the conjunction of Venus and Mercury in the western sky. The dusk was clear as the Moon rose over the bay, the only sound that of rooks,rising and circling their roost beside the church far below. We  climbed to the summit for the best view but a very chilly easterly made it too uncomfortable to stay long and we soon scuttled back down out of the wind.  The sky slowly turned golden in the west, while behind us,the bay shimmered in pink and blue stillness. Jupiter rose below the moon, huge and sparkling but still no Venus...

 

The Sun had set and we should have been able to see her but the twilight was just too bright. By now the temperature had dropped and we were freezing.  Reluctantly we decided to make our way home as by the time Venus was visible, Mercury would be long gone.  There aren't many days left to see this rare event -on November 10 - 11th, Venus, Mercury and Antares will be closest together, about 30 minutes after sunset . If you have a clear western horizon, look out for them - this won't be visible again in any of our lifetimes.  Regretfully but glad to get in the warm car we trundled home through the now dark country lanes.

               By the time we arrived home Venus was twinkling  beautifully - we could see her through the kitchen window ! The UK weather forecast isn't too good, but if you get a chance - pop out for a look at the heavens - we have the Taurus Full Moon on Thursday evening, Jupiter will be close behind her. Mars is visible now in the Eastern sky towards morning and the winter constellations are breathtakingly beautiful! 

16 9 11 Pluto in Capricorn Direct

     Dark Lord, my tipple of choice today!    It was in the spring of 2009 that the first whiffs of sulphur indicated that Pluto, my chart ruler was about to perform some dirty moves from his newly aquired residence in Capricorn,  squaring my fourth house Sun back and forth for a very long time. I have some spectacularly unpleasant memories of this era; we had fears, phobias and insomnia, damp and dry rot, vicious neighbours, dentists from hell (when Saturn made up the T square from Libra in December 2009) and more recently, swine flu, a plague of rats, no hot water for 4 months, impending homelessness (all at once) and associated financial doom! What with the all pervasive general global dissolution -  this year has been harsh !    A transit of Jupiter to said 4th house Sun fortunately allowed us to find another place to live in the nick of time but Uranus' ingress to my poor battered 4th has presented us with 'Quirky House' which may in time engender some affection but is presently reflectively symptomatic of its heavenly counterparts - ie cold, unfriendly and hard work - Oh Noooo! That's me...
  Today Pluto goes direct, leaving forever from a position 30 secs ahead of the square to my Sun, Mars will end its miserable tenancy of Cancer and move into Leo on Sunday so I'm daring to hope for somewhat better times.  A toast then my friends - "To Pluto and Security Regenerated!"     

 Pluto PS:    As I write, the body of a third miner has been found at the Gleision Colliery. Living as I do in a former mining area and as the grand-daughter of a man who died from the effects of a mining accident in the Welsh Valleys, my thoughts and prayers are with the families and community of the lost. 

cloud tinkering

Here it is folks!     Cloud tinkering -  the new seratonin!

(CLICK TO SEE LARGER VERSION )

Down to Earth

' Black August' as it is becoming known has finally departed and with it go the problematic skies we've been enduring. September looks a bit more stable and though the Grand Cross energies are never far away, Autumn promises to be a little more comfortable than 'Summer' was.
   Certainly the stormy skies and damp drizzle are giving way to autumnal gold and if it does rain, we're likely to have a proper soaking which our thirsty gardens really need rather than uncomfortable damp which does nobody any good. Now the fruit can ripen, the swallows can fly away south and we can begin to tidy and feed the gardens up ready for their wintersleep.
                                  

   It's easy to forget a sense of horticultural urgency at this time of year - there's still so much to do but there seems to be time enough to go walking on the moors instead, feeling the sun on your shoulders and smelling that particular autumn smell that goes with a deep buzzing of contented bees.
   Out towards the north coast then and up into the hills. The winding single track road climbs up and up, past gates and ponds, stiles and lanes going nowhere till all of a sudden we arrive in a ramshackle farmyard and finish the climb to Chun Castle on foot through the heather.

        It was an Iron Age fortress, a great circular granite castle with outer walls and inner hut circles, a huge well and smelting pits for tin. Tin slag was found here, dating the Cornish tin trade to at least 2000 years.  It was rebuilt for occupation again in the 6th century and retained its grandeur until the 18th century when the stone was robbed - reputedly to build Madron workhouse and pave the streets of Penzance.   

It's a grand place to sit and survey the moors and coasts of Penwith, the views are breathtaking and there's a sense of importance about the place which contrasts strangely with the quietness of today.

   Out across the heather and short Cornish Gorse, a path leads westward, with the sea below, to Chun Quoit,  a Bronze Age dolmen, several thousands of years older than the castle.

It's the best preserved of the Penwith Quoits, surrounded by round barrows and small piles of stone, it is clearly a Place of the Dead with a special connection to the sea. The little village nestling below is called Morvah which has the Cornish meaning 'sea graves'.

It's a very special place among so much that is special. The views are just too spectacular to attempt with my little camera - or any camera most likely. The experience is multi-sensory, expansive and a touch spiritual.

As usual, our cloud guardians are watching as we leave for home:

 Some kind of Stone-Age Superman looms up over Carn Kenidjack - the place is stiff with Giants and some of them can fly!             Have a good weekend   M x

Full Moon 20 Aquarius

                                                   Full Moon Blessings

Happy Birthday Leos

Thanks to all of you  for your sunshine,  to Steve, always xxx, to Brenna, beautiful Grand-daughter - hugs! Happy Birthday Susannah, lovely lioness! Happy Birthday Neeti, wise and generous spirit , May your Great Star shine on you now and forever.

          

Let my soul smile through my heart and my heart smile through my eyes, that I may scatter rich smiles in sad hearts.

Paramahansa Yogananda

        Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.
                                                                         Albert Einstein

You must understand the whole of life, not just one little part of it. That is why you must read, that is why you must look at the skies, that is why you must sing and dance and write poems and suffer and understand, for all that is life.

J.Krishnamurti

Has it gone?

Peeking out from under the blankets as Mars stomps away from the Grand Cross. Anyone still in any doubt about astrology?

Happy Birthday Ano!

xxx

Hope

  In the lane to the sea, doing great business! Show 'em how it's done girls!

Leo New Moon

The Sun, Moon, and Venus are fine and dandy, sending pleasantries to Uranus. The Sun's already shining  bright as you drop down from the High Moor towards the sea and along the farm lane the pigs and cattle are dozing in the shade. Two pounds in a box at the farm gate will get you a day's parking in a little field beside the lane and off you go, through a scrabble of hens and a waddle of ducks onto the track which drops down, down to the cove below.

It's not for the faint hearted, this track, it starts easy and gets tough if you have short legs - being hewn from the cliff face by miners and fishermen with no consideration of 21st century pleasure seekers. Often the cove is deserted, but today is different. Intrepid families have braved the mile long, rocky path and the separation from phone signals,shops and electricity to spend a good old-fashioned day on the beach. 

It's rarely safe enough for swimming here - there's no lifeguard and the currents are lethal but today is different - little ones bob about on bellyboards, a snorkler circuits the cove and teenagers try to swim to the headlands -nobody is in any danger at all.  The eager collie swims out and back a dozen times, finds friends to play chase with, no-one stops them, no-one worries, everyone is safe today. Families swim, blow bubbles, pitch tents, play cricket and picnic. No-one  gets drunk, nobody cries. Fathers lift tiny kids onto huge rocks and they are king of the castle, they laugh and do it again.  A seal comes in close,watching this extraordinary day. The children are fascinated by him and by the incoming tide which surprises their sandy feet.

You sketch a bit and take a photo or two but it's a day for just being part of the place for awhile. The spring tide is rushing in. Presently there will be a scurry for the long climb back and you're a bit slow so you leave now and take your time. Climbing back up the hot and dusty hillside, the sound of children having fun echos around the cove and up the valley. You stop and look back, resting a moment and it's then that you notice  the angels..... 

thick as a bag

Hereabouts they describe fog as 'thick as a bag' and that is what we encountered  on the cliffs at Morvah when we took our painting stuff out at the weekend. So the painting's a bit impressionist - fine by me. It was still nice; quiet and still - the sea way below just shushing onto the rocks and a baby skylark in the bracken behind me frantically calling for his Mum and food.

       Humbling reminder that nature is the better gardener and has the best hard landscaping! A lesson to observe how plants interact and always look harmonious together in the wild...Look, look  watch, learn....

 Off to try again today - the sun looks as if it may shine awhile - I badly need some sparkly sea and some blue.

Here today....

More sadness these late days than the throat can swallow.More violence than the skin can flinch from. More tears than my eyes can cry.

 Fly away Amy, lighter and brighter

Bow your heads Norway, your children are gone