Trees

There are two things that I adore. Trees and Chester-le-Street. I love them both but if you were to make me choose between them trees would always win. There is something mystical and transfixing about trees that I really love. They are massive. They are sensible enough to cut back on energy use in the winter and then when the warmer weather starts up they will then burst back into life.

I have two trees in my garden the first is a cherry tree that was planted in the year that I moved to my current house. It faithfully blossoms each year and provides rest and space for some of the visiting birds within the garden.

The other tree is a Victoria plum. I bought it years ago from a garden centre who were selling them off cheaply as the poor thing looked like it was on its last legs. It has thrived in my garden and each year displays the most beautiful of blossom. It provides me with satisfaction knowing that I could grow a plum tree well despite my parents telling me years ago that the north east climate was too cold to sustain a fruit baring tree.

It was this in mind I was intrigued to read in the Chester-le-Street Advertiser that land that once held the local voluntary bureau and other charitable organisations was being sold off and that a construction company was going to build houses. My concern is that the beautiful trees that grow there will be cut down or mauled as they have been previously in other areas that Durham County council have sold.

You can see here the trees that stand on this plot and some of them have been clearly marked by spray paint.

Here you can also see the outcome of the council decimating the trees that once stood on land that occupied a council run nursing home. I hope that the council will think clearly about the impact that this causes on the aesthetics and most importantly the environment in Chester-le-Street.

These trees could survive this mauling but I believe there future has already been earmarked. I would like my town to look like the trees that stand opposite the closed nursing home rather that a post-apocalyptic war zone.

Ostara

I had the misfortune of reading an article in The Sun ‘newspaper’ the other day that claimed that Easter eggs had been banned. They hadn’t. It was just another atrocious attempt by the right wing gutter press to get a reaction from the idiots that actually believe what is written in this so-called newspaper.

Christians have been bouncing up and down like demented Easter bunny’s today. At every moment I have looked on social media they are ready to implore that a preacher that lived two thousand years ago defied all laws of biology and science and came back to life after being brutality killed in an act of crucifixion. A version of a  Frankenstein’s monster is somehow seen as a way of getting rid of the worlds problems by delivering us from own thoughts and actions.

In my ‘christian’ days I would have been proclaiming this. I would have stood proudly in the middle of my town acting out some play or singing some songs thinking that I would be able to change the world and imploring others to join me. It was all a futile process.

I believe that looking at the changes of the world around us we should be thankful that plants are begging to waken from their winter sleep and animals will produce young at a time when in the northern hemisphere marks Vernal Equinox.

 

Ostara or Eostra is an Anglo-Saxon goddess who represents dawn. It is a new awakening. She oversees the fertility of the earth and watches over births. The egg is the perfect symbol of fertility and Christians and non-so believers will incorporate this into Easter celebrations without really realising it’s pagan origins.

I love the beginning of spring as you can see blossom on the trees and daffodils rising up from the cold ground to give us hope of the forthcoming of time when new life appears all around us.

First Christmas

I know a lot of the people who are my friends aren’t big fans of the Royal family (more Royle family). I always listen to the Queen’s Christmas Day broadcast. It was the Queen that did mention that it can be a difficult time for those people who’s first Christmas it is spending it without a loved one.

When you have spent every christmas, bar one, with your own mum it does become a little strange for her not to be here. She would have been falling asleep after dinner when I was tidying up. Except it was me that was falling asleep about 5pm after I had eaten and my food had settled. I think the mulled wine played it’s part wonderfully.

I spoken to a few people who have gone through the same. You expect them to walk through the door or someone to give you a phone call. Mum a few times used to set a place for dad at tea time ready for him coming in from work.

I think the worst bit has been waiting for my phone to ring to say I needed to go up early morning as they were having getting difficulty getting mum out of bed or the district nurse would call to say that the needed me to pick up something from the local pharmacy for mum.

The phone has stopped ringing and sometimes it was ring three or four times a day, some days even more. I didn’t mind it because that was I was there to do it. I was her carer and her son. But you don’t know really how you miss something now that it is now long there. You cannot miss something you have never had or experienced.

So I have the first christmas over. It was the same when dad died. After a few years you get into a difference routine and and different place. Your plans change. So what ever happens next year I will see. If I spend it on my own again that will be up to me. Or if I get invites like I did this year I might take one of the them up. Who knows? But I won’t forget those who have passed. You never really lose them entirely as you always have the memories you made with them.

Autumn

I love this time of the year. The whole of the landscape is changing. There are so many diverse colours about and the moving of the summer into autumn is certainly underway.

I was discussing this with some of my friends as we had tried to identify a tree that had shed its leaves. It was amazing to see that nature is such a powerful thing. We seem to miss the changing colour of the leaves. The way that the full green of the landscape is turning into an orange- brown-reddish mixture.