Unpicking Old Patterns
Fresh perspectives, herbal spring vinegar recipe and misunderstood molluscs!
Tender and tentative
When I look up from my desk below the window, life looks and feels to be thriving outside, almost overwhelmingly so. The wisteria and clematis entangling the south side of the cabin are in bloom, the magpies bob their tails in greeting on the upper branches of the pine tree, and the newts enjoy a satisfying plop into the pond every time I walk past.
At the moment, I feel more like the prickly roses that frame the front entrance to the cabin, full of tender, tentative shoots and the occasional scraggly branch displaying last year’s shrivelled hips.
Tentative and tender, with a prickle or two.
This afternoon, I ventured out into the garden and made friends with all the other tender, tentative tips - those of lemon balm, cleaver, dandelion, nettle, chickweed, mint, garlic mustard, and plantain. I picked a few of these tips and bottled them in a jar with apple cider vinegar, soon to be transformed into herbal spring tonic full of mineral goodness.
Here’s a link to a recipe if you’d like to make some too (you can also ready up why new shoots are so good for you at this time of year). Use whatever edible herbs and weeds you find in your garden. Once ready, enjoy a spoonful with food or spice up your salad dressing.
A little reminder
A field full of care is a powerful thing. If you find yourself needing a little TLC this week, you can join our online Radiating Heart session tomorrow evening (and every Sunday night for that matter) at 8:30pm via Zoom.
It’s free and everyone is welcome. During the session we’ll practice a Heart Lock-In technique together. Learning to activate and radiate renewing emotions is incredibly beneficial for ourselves and others - and especially potent when practiced collectively.
Unpicking Patterns
I have a plan up my sleeve for this summer. It involves me, and you (if you’re interested), windswept paths, sunrise swims, curious seals, sleeping outdoors, comradeship, inner exploration, and outer adventure.
To bring this idea to life, there are a few things I need to do first. One, which I completed this week, is a two-day Outdoor First Aid training course.
The phrase “you’re going to need to attend another first aid training” has a habit of engendering a guttural “uggghhhhh” from me - they’ve always involved a lot of sitting, a lot of lecturing, and a lot of PowerPoint. Layered over that is remembering that at school, I spent so much time doing things I didn’t want to do, part of my adult self is preconditioned to dislike anything I’m told I have to do. No matter how valuable.
Curiously, I have a dear friend whose natural reaction is the absolute opposite of mine. She genuinely expresses excitement about first aid courses (weird, I know!) During a recent conversation, she widened my perspective by sharing how empowered she feels knowing how to care for people in an emergency. She recounted how, on top of this, every time she attends a training, she volunteers to be the test dummy to overcome her feelings of social awkwardness. This brave and wonderful friend inspired me to approach it with an open mind.
The training turned out to be a hilarious (and educational) experience. Our trainer was an ex-army parachute medic with a wicked sense of humour, a penchant for dramatic role-play, and funnily enough - not a fan of PowerPoints.
One of our first assessments involved checking whether the casualty was wearing an ID tag. On locating the tag, a member of our group was asked to read aloud what the casualty’s condition was - it read ‘nutter’. As we looked up half baffled, our trainer smiled and said, “Well, there’s not much we can do about that, is there?”
He was accompanied by his feisty co-trainer, AKA his sister-in-law, who donned the role of real life casualty for many of the scenarios. We’d venture outdoors and find her in all sorts of contorted positions adorned with fake gushing blood (it was literally spurting from her leg as she controlled the pressure with a pump in the backpack next to her), stick on oozing wounds, blue lipstick, and a white powdered face when demonstrating signs of cyanosis. All of the above she did with gusto outside in the pouring rain, over and over again. I am in awe of that woman. I can only imagine how much fun she has at Halloween.
I can’t believe I’m actually saying this out loud, but I think I enjoyed myself AND feel pretty confident about what to do in an emergency.
Check out their website if you, or your workplace, are due for a training soon - they offer a variety of standard and specialist trainings.
Slugs - Misunderstood Molluscs
If you, like me, wonder why your seedings aren’t growing, it’s worth checking under the seed tray. I may not be picking bowlfuls (literally!) of slugs off the flower field anymore at Wildling Studio, but it turns out the slugs here enjoy playing silly buggers just the same. This one fancied a game of hide and seek, (or is it sardines the way he’s squished himself between the modules!), I decided to play a game of flick over the hedge instead.
For anyone else who finds themselves in a love hate relationship with slugs, you might enjoy this short article - Misunderstood Molluscs.
Housekeeping
If you’ve recently been in touch by replying to a Substack post and I haven’t responded, it’s most likely I haven’t received it. A friend shared she’d been in touch after a recent newsletter but we realised the reply didn’t come through.
If the same thing has happened to you, feel free to resend it to camillevh@googlemail.com, I always love hearing from you.
Love,
Camille