Lammas.....at last!!

Trying to Catch the Sun
 at Herne Bay

Belated Lammas greetings to all you lovely people! 

My blog is indeed the proverbial bus of the publishing world, still better late than never. 
A million and one excuses for the delay, the blog site did go down for a bit, but me and IT have never been the best of bed fellows and most of the reasons lay entirely at my feet so apologies  to all and thanks for waiting with patience, unless you are Emma, who you will pleased to know has been gently nagging me at work for a while , reminding me that I hadn't 'published' for a while and that I needed to get on with it! In which case thank you for your encouragement and belief x
Not that I've been quietly sleeping away my summer or hiding out anywhere, I've been rather busy! Late July we had the pleasure of having our little house guest James again for a weekend, he always helps me find my inner maiden, however well she tucks herself away, reevaluating

Sunset Over the Sea

the world through more youthful eyes and shaking off the detritus that has immersed us but we no longer need, like stress and routine, even if just for one weekend. On this last particular occasion we took in the seaside, sunsets, animals, arcades, chips and lots of photography - hence the photo of me almost holding the sun, as well as completing a small project taking photos of his and my old schools, places of interest in our village to send to a friend who hasn't lived here for several decades. A weekend of simple wonders and gems of delighted discoveries. I think he went home for a rest!
Lammas itself is always a time of celebration in our family as it's around my lovely Dad's birthday, plenty of reasons for family get togethers and cake! 
In between this year's festivities and the realisation that Lammas would be on the evening I was working, I decided to celebrate on the Sunday before, which didn't seem to coincide with anything that my like minded friends were doing, undeterred, I knew I would wake up and Goddess would have inspired me to celebrate the perfect way for me...... flowers, ancient woodland and Motherline as it turned out, who would have guessed?

I woke up feeling the need to honour my Motherline as my way of marking and celebrating Lammas, honouring the continuous line of fertility that we have been blessed to be part of. As I've mentioned before a lot of my Mum's family are in the beautiful churchyard at Aylesford and I always leave a couple of flowers on all the graves I know are 'ours'. Feeling humble and blessed at the same time, I headed off and bought a variety of bunches of flowers in yellows, peaches and oranges, all the colours of Lammas, deciding that I would take my Mum some too when I saw her later in the day, as well buying enough for me and some to surprise my daughter when she got in from work. 
Whilst I was happily

Lammas Flowers for Lily

falling over graves, kneeling on pine cones and chatting to my long departed Nan and Great Grandmothers, explaining what I was doing and  thanking them for the gifts and genes they passed down to me, I remembered my Nan telling me that her Grandmother was there too and had shown me a rough area, the headstone long gone, even when she had told me roughly 30 years ago. There's a bench in the vicinity, so I sat there and thought of her too, I knew she'd had a very difficult life, but had been a strong and determined woman, I left a few flowers for her too, chuckling to myself that this line of women were oddly all from a variety of non conformists chapels and churches and instead of rolling their eyes in horror, were probably proudly saying yep, here's another one, merrily doing her own thing! Very comforting and emotional all in the same instant.

I had also decided to take some time out to meditate and explore some new ground, well when I say new, of course I mean the exact opposite. I had recently read about the earthworks of an Iron Age Hill Fort nearby in ancient woodland that could once have been the stomping ground of any ancient ancestors who may have been alive then, which is how I found myself confronted with this unusual tree in a quiet clearing at Oldbury Hill Fort - very interesting name isn't it? Quite how a tree grew like that I don't know but it most definitely spoke of the Goddess to me, of fertility, of wombs, of birth and after I explored the tracks in the woodland, listening for ancients voices and whispers amongst the trees, I returned for some much needed quiet contemplation and musings. It felt like the perfect place to lean back and listen to the sounds of the woodland, feeling the roots of the trees reaching down to the belly of the earth beneath me and the branches stretching up to the heavens above me, conscious as always of the

The Curious Womb Like Centre

echoes and reflections of the Motherline in everything around me. Not for the first time I didn't feel entirely alone, safe but curiously watched by unseen eyes. What I did find is that after a while I could sense movement in the trees, in the air and in the energy around me, sure enough dog walkers and ramblers would come into sight or hearing just after that, as though my silent stillness had enhanced my senses. That explained some of the feeling. It was also a very special place, no doubt about it. I do have to admit to slightly freaking myself out when I heard snatched intermittent strains of a strange language whilst sitting leaning against the tree. My eyes snapped open on a couple of occasions expecting to see fur and hide clad Iron Age people surrounding me as though I'd travelled back in time, but was relieved to finally make out a family on the ridge who as they came nearer waved and greeted me with a cheery 'Guten Tag'! Merely some happy German visitors, but it made me stop and think about how our ancient ancestors might have spoken, their dialects and their in my case probable European origins....

All in all a very happy Lammas, Mum and Sophie loved their Lammas Motherline flowers, in total 6 generations of our line were honoured with flowers that day and many, many more were thought about.

Have  a Blessed Week and I promise to not be away for so long this time.

Blessed Be xx