Imbolc 2024
Spring arrived on the 22nd of January. From one day to the next there was a noticeable change in the light and over night the air suddenly felt warmer. With the lengthening days and a long spell of warm weather, the birds are singing, butterflies are emerging, and the bees are out foraging on the wild mustard and chamomile that carpet the land - spring’s first flush of flowers. In sheltered spots the ash and elder trees are already putting out tender new leaves. Everything feels full of promise and new life.
The starlings that live in my roof are busy building nests, if the scuffling and furious pecking at the insulation all hours of the day and night is anything to go on, never mind the early morning squawking and chattering. They're noisy tenants and I'd honestly rather they weren't up there, but every time I've thought about evicting them and sealing the hole where they get in, they've had babies in the nest and I can't bring myself to do it. So I just continue to sweep up the pieces of foam, insulation, beetles, and bits of straw that occasionally fall through the gap in the plasterboard at the apex of the ceiling and hope their nests don't increase the fire risk too much in the summer.
The mice that tried to move in during the recent cold snap seem to have stopped their efforts, too, which is a relief. All creatures are lovely in their rightful place but as far as I’m concerned mice, flies, spiders and mosquitoes have no business trying to live in my house .
Imbolc comes on the 1st of February, Saint Brigid's day in Ireland. It's a festival to honour the start of the spring, celebrating the lengthening days, fertility and the promise of new life, marking the changing seasons and the midway point between the Winter Solstice and the Spring Equinox.
It feels good to celebrate the return of life to the world, the rising spring tide as it begins to wash over the land. I picture it like a green mantle embroidered with white and yellow flowers being drawn slowly across the landscape. In Ireland people used to make crosses out of rushes to hang around their homes and over their doorways to bring luck and protection and they’d visit holy wells and sacred springs on this day, leaving ribbons or offerings there to honour the waters.
When you live in nature and rely upon a good water source for the health and wellbeing of yourself, your family, your livestock and your land it’s easy to see why these practices came into being. This feels like a good time to give the water source on the land some much-needed attention. I have a water mine that provides for everyone and everything on the land all year round. Even in the driest years when many of the neighbours' wells, springs, and mines have dried up the water here keeps on flowing.
The water mine sits on the first terrace, halfway up the land below the area of forest and opposite the tiny house. It's a place where a section of the hillside was dug out and a small passage made into the ground to capture and direct the flowing water. The entrance to the mine is made of three stones - two uprights and a lintel; a few metres in front of this, is a wall of large stones that runs between the high earth banks to contain the water like a pond. In the past, people would have irrigated the terraces below by directing water from the pond along a series of hand dug channels. Over the years the water has found ways to get through and below these stones so the pond is now more of a shallow puddle. One day I will fill in all the holes and hold the water; it would be nice to have a pond here for the wildlife.
I step over the wall and splash my way across the boggy patch to the mine entrance, water seeping in through small cracks in my wellies and soaking my feet. I clear away the weeds that have grown over the mine entrance, cut back the gorse and broom sprouting in the bank, and pull at the trailing honeysuckle vines and brambles that snake down into the damp soil at the bottom of the water catchment area. Everywhere that bramble touches the earth long white roots work their way down into the soil. She’s a tenacious plant, a survivor. Left to her own devices she would take over the world. I can’t help but admire her ability to thrive and grow, yet all the while cursing every time one of her sharp thorns works its way through my gloves and burrows into my skin.
I clear the buildup of silt from the passageway that runs into the earth to the water source, clear the metal pipe that catches its flow, and clean out the silt deposit pot that holds the water before it flows into a tube and down to the horses' water bucket, the taps, the toilet, and finally the big tank where it's held for irrigating the garden in the summer months. Dimitri has fallen asleep by now, nestled into my back. I can feel the rhythm of his breathing as his belly expands and contracts; every now and then he’ll draw in two short, sharp breaths before letting out a little sigh. My heart melts.
I think back to this time last year. The tiny house was just a shell, nowhere near complete; I was pregnant and in a state of numb shock and denial that in a few short months I would be having a baby. And although I had no bump to show yet, I was exhausted as the little life growing inside me sapped all my energy. Back then I was filled with so much uncertainty about what life with a baby would look like, unwilling to picture it or see myself in the role of ‘mother’ to a fragile little human, unable to catch a glimpse of the future I had long ago decided was not for me, and anxious about everything yet to come. And now here we are, Dimitri and I, a whole year on, he larger than life, me a mother, living in the tiny house, going about our day together like it’s the most natural thing in the world. He brings so much joy, this delightful little being,my constant companion, who only last year was little more than an idea, an unknown quantity.
Marking the passing seasons is a good time to look back, remember where we’ve been and see how far we’ve come. So much can change in one short year.
In the garden this season is all about readying the beds for planting later in the spring. I'm still clearing weeds, adding manure, digging it in and covering it all with a thick layer of mulch. These are jobs I really should have done in the late autumn/early winter but, because I have a young baby, everything takes ten times longer than it used to. And you try weeding and digging garden beds with a baby strapped to your back!
Dimitri spends a lot of time in his carrier on my back these days, looking over my shoulder as I fill and hang hay nets, pick up manure from the paddock to put in the garden, build new compost heaps, clear brambles, prune trees, muck out the chickens, and walk the dogs. He delights in seeing the animals, giggling and squealing as he reaches out to touch them. None of them, not even the mule, seem to mind when he grabs handfuls of their fur and pulls hard, trying to bring it to his mouth. Carrying him around like this makes my back and shoulders ache but it's the only way of getting anything done. Sometimes my lovely neighbours come by and whisk him away for an hour or two and I’m left with the dilemma of whether to take one of the horses out for a ride or make the most of my time to do some serious weeding. Most often the garden wins.
In January I tentatively start sowing some cool season crops in the hope that they'll survive any more cold spells. I sow two varieties of peas, along with some cauliflower, broccoli, lettuces, chard, spinach, coriander, hyssop, parsley, and some carrots, beetroots, and turnips. The broad beans I sowed back in November are already flowering, as are the self-seeded lupini beans, and the onions and garlic planted in the autumn are growing steadily. My Portuguese neighbours say that now is the time to start off tomatoes, peppers, aubergines and courgettes, too, but they need to be covered and protected until the risk of frost has passed. These crops need a long growing season and most years my peppers and aubergines don't yield much because I've started them too late. The cold, wet autumn weather usually kills them off before they've had a chance to really get going, so this year I'm making sure I'm ahead of the game.
At this time of year there’s not a lot to harvest fresh, save for cabbages and the odd bit of lettuce that survived the frosts. Oranges, tangerines, lemons, and kiwis are in season though, and the orange tree I planted back in 2021 has three oranges on it, it’s first offerings. The lemon tree I planted in the same year has 23 fruits, some already ripe for the picking. Last year it produced three. My neighbours bring me crate loads of kiwis and citrus fruits from their gardens. I could make marmalade and jam, but the store room is full of jam as it is so Dimitri and I enjoy the fresh fruit and I save some of the peels for making candied peel and freeze some for baking.
On a flower day, when the moon is in Libra, I harvest chamomile for tea and put it in the dehydrator; the room immediately smells like honey. I also prune my thyme. The bushes that I grew from cuttings and planted out last spring have exploded and are now as big as their parent plants, thriving in the suntrap under the east-facing terrace wall, watered in the summer by the drip lines. Some of the cuttings I take have sprouted roots so I plant them in the garden to grow. I like to feed thyme to the horses to support their respiratory systems in the winter months when the hay is at its dustiest so it’s hard to have enough of it, never mind too much! I tie my cuttings into small bunches and hang it under the tiles in the porch to dry while the weather is nice and feed some fresh to the horses with their dinner. They gobble it up.
Now is also a good time to prune the fruit and olive trees as well as get more trees, fruit bushes, and vines in the ground. I went to the local market and bought three more almonds, two more pistachio trees and three more kiwi vines. These are more trees than I really know what to do with and they cost more money than I could actually afford, but I see it as an investment in my, and Dimitri's, future. I don't think you can have too many trees, but the trouble is I'm running out of space on the land.
I plant the kiwis by the pond next to the toilet. I planted four kiwi vines here two years ago but one female vine died, and I thought my male pollinator vine had, too, so I bought a replacement - only to discover new shoots emerging from the still living root. I’ll let them grow this year and next year I can graft them with female shoots, as one pollinator vine is plenty. My plan is to trellis these kiwis over to the toilet roof, creating a nice covered area, possibly for a wood-fired outdoor bath.
The almonds and pistachios I plant in the vegetable garden. I'm hoping that they'll provide some welcome shade in the summer but will lose their leaves in the winter and thus won't impact my winter vegetables. That's the theory anyway. I may come to regret this decision, but agro-forestry is a thing, right?
I also plant some rowan trees. Rowans are one of my all-time favourite trees but I've only ever seen them growing in the mountains here in Portugal. In Celtic tradition, a rowan should be planted by your front door to bring protection to your home. Back in October some of my lovely neighbours gifted me a rowan for my birthday, which I planted at the bottom of the drive, and on a recent trip into the mountains I pulled a few root suckers from some rowans which I plant around the boundary of the land. Rowan is closely associated with Imbolc and the goddess Brigid so it feels rather apt to be planting them now.
Each day there are new flowers emerging on the land, new blossoms appearing, and new leaves unfurling. Vibrant new life is everywhere, bird song fills the air, warmth and light are returning. I’m excited for the year ahead and what it will bring. A new season has begun. Spring is here.