Shiva's and Metta's Mother's Sutra

There has been much about soil over the last few months on my facebook page mostly because it is the International Year of Soil. When i used to think about soil in the past i thought about it has having nothing to do with me. I mean soil, right? I do literature. No idea what that has to do with me. How times have changed. Yes i garden at school and at home, but soil, as it turns out is so much more to us than we could ever imagine. Steiner in his Agri lectures says soil is the diaphragm of the earth. If we think about what lives beneath the soil and what lives above it - they are completely different. Above the diaphragm is the head - the head is 'dead' in that thoughts have a crystalised deadened quality to them. What lives below the diaphragm is the digestion and reproduction system. The heart is the mid range. It is the interchange between the thinking and willing sections of our bodies. The soil is like our heart. It is the rhythm of life itself. A living warmth is ...

Be more radical Some days it just seems like you should have just stayed in bed. I could have sworn Mercury was in retrograde. I had an argument with my mom, i did not manage to get any work done on the building site and i was stuck in traffic for nearly half an hour - which is pretty unusual when you are in Belfast. By the time 5.30 pm came round i just wanted to hide. And then i felt pretty shit about all the things in my life - but then i also remembered that i should be grateful for all the people who love me and also how stupid am i? Do other people go through these phases as well? Irrational misery? When for no reason they feel shit about themselves even though there is nothing to feel shit about? Only the day before i was feeling great. So after i fell off the TV table while trying to retrieve a couple of lit crit books for Oisin and getting very annoyed with him in an irrational fashion because he was not to blame for these games boxes being left out, i went to bed an...

This is my class at the start of the academic year.... I took lots of photos which is probably why they are used in this promo. I say that the work we do is so good of photographs, in fact it is so hard to resist taking photos every single day I have been having very vivid inexplicable dreams lately. Last night i dreamt i was in this huge place - it was sort of like a cross between a train station and a very large university. A single building, made of concrete, several stories high. I sometimes visit this place in my dreams. The last time i remember doing this i was running all around campus trying to look for a class. This time however i sat in what can only be described as a canteen with lots of people. People were coming and going - lots and lots of them. They were of all races and creeds. Of all ages. I then ended up in a cloth area where cloth was sold. I was looking for some material. Then i felt i needed to go back to the canteen. As i headed there, i saw people i had b...

My V&A watering can with William Morris Design... wildflowers and honeysuckles and clematis... that watering can is so well designed... i bought it at TK Mexx for £12 Have nothing you believe to be not beautiful or useful in your house :-) Gardening is great. It makes me think about nothing and and everything. I also have discovered that i am beginning to understand plants. I mean understand what they need. Not always right, but it is like through practise, i have discovered what is good and what is not so good for them. Like yesterday i planted the strawberries in a patch and then i looked at the lemon verbana. It really wanted to be there. So i replaced the strawberries with the lemon verbana and planted them somewhere else. In a much sunnier position. My garden now has at least forty different plant species. All native and herb. Well, sixty if you count those that were there before i planted the one which i have. I have also left areas where the creeping buttercup, dandelion...

I don't know what i would do if i did not learn little bits of these things. In Northern Ireland we are really super lucky to have people who want to teach this and this weekend it was looking at using green wood to make things with. Green woodworking. Splitting wood I often saw these craftmen - or women - but really mostly men - at fairs doing their thing. And i often did think, wow, they are really awesome. Just like i did with blacksmiths. So now i know how to do some of it. And i have to say i do love it. Reading the wood and how it will split Froe and axes Welcome to the iron age... it is really interesting that when man discovered iron, we were then able to do some many things so much faster. There is nothing like actually discovering how much quicker this is for yourself. The discovery of iron meant that the lathe could be invented. Using a variety of chisels then, wood turning to take place. Thanks to wood turning we can now make a useful item in under f...

Wukong destroys the Manfruit Tree by Chen Huiguan Yesterday i tried to think about the next three months. There is an awful lot to get through with the school and the class. I am going to just do what we can. Which will be the Building Main Lesson and then Volume - and of course the Farming stay. And some music. And of course the times tables carry on apace. And revision on long division and multiplication and more reading. And we will continue telling the Old Testament. Been reading more about Moses last night. When i read stuff usually two things are going on in my head. One, i am taking in what is being written. The other is a sort of seeing the writing in a social context. If what is being written is boring or nonsensical i usually stop, and long after that try and work out why such an appalling piece of writing was done. (The reason is usually money.) If what is being written is interesting i continue reading - and then if i have worked out the context, i just enjoy th...

Beautiful drawing of Loki - off the web, no idea who did it OK, so i have spent the last few days recovering from a tummy bug. I have some idea where it came from, but the upshot is i am now very careful about what i put in my mouth. I have this habit of picking veg from where it is growing and eating it and really, i picked up veg from a very silly place and ate it and i felt ill immediately. And now i am just very careful. The tummy thing only lasted a day really. but i get tired very easily now. I also found myself getting quite miserable, for no particular reason. This was not helped by watching lots of stupid TV. Most stupid was The Inbetweeners and Siblings . These two shows are supposed to be comedy about young adults. I actually did not find it funny at all. I found it so depressing that people could be portrayed as so self unaware. But not self unaware like John Cleese in Fawlty Towers or cynical like Blackadder or even lazy like Men Behaving Badly or narcissism in A...

Love me, love flowers We had a super chilled day today although i did manage to clean the living room, the kitchen, dig a bed and plant out the lettuces, all the sweet briers and also go to the Asian market. As well as cook a meal from scratch, and cuddle the children. I also listened to lots of music while gardening and while cleaning the house... and Ghin danced around with me as we found coins and cleared surfaces and folded stuff. It was raining but it was ok. It shone later on and i managed to get out for a couple of hours. I now want to redo my compost pile, having been inspired by Benno Otto. I was watching my garden after i had a bath. In it were a pair of blackbirds, three starlings and a pair of coal tits. They were hoking about for food and i think that is why i do not appear to have slugs in my garden. Either that or my slugs have not discovered the lettuces which have gone unmolested for the past five days. Who knows when they will strike the slugs? Pond with...

Table decorations for dinner My Come Dine with Me effort Peter hides the  sake Satay and asian salad mix Lighted candles... all flowers from our garden Egg painted More eggs painted Rabbit oragami from Lara and Cash

A little night reading I borrowed the Agriculture lectures from the Biodynamic Association of Ireland's Library. I was then told, ah i see you went for some light reading. I have to say i am not a fan of light reading. I think life is too short for light reading. Light reading is boring and a waste of my time. I might as well say that. If it is fiction, then it better be something which eddfied me. Passing the time just does not do it. I know i am turning into a Steiner nerd. I think it is a little bit like the way people get into hobbies, like birdwatching, or knitting, or shopping. Although shopping does not really qualify as a hobby... but i think that is where i am right now with my life. It is also because, and this was very clearly recognised in the conference, that the new science is now meeting Anthroposophy. What was proferred by Steiner as possibility is being now slowly verified by science. Such as there is no such thing as a neutral observer. By looking at somethi...

Compost manure Buzzing after my first of hopefully many many biodynamic conferences... the topic was composting... So first, the COMPANY was awesome. I drove down with someone working in the school. I love the way things happen spontaneously and simply. I was asked, would i go for the conference on Wednesday.. and on Friday we were driving down... the weather was fantastic, the scenery amazing and the destination perfect. It was not like working, it was a holiday. We eventually ended up at the Ballybay Wetlands Centre and not for the first time, i just thought, this is the life... Horn silica prep There is a lot of buzz in the biodynamic circles now about the new physics. For years and years and years biodynamic practioners have seen the results of biodynamic prep. We were very lucky to have so many experienced farmers at the conference. I felt really quite small beside them. It kinda reminded me of the first time i ever went to an RSPB thing where there were all these fore...