GEMINIDS - Meteor Shower

Every year, from the 12th-14th December (the peak on the 13th) it is possible, and very likely, that you will see meteors or shooting stars in the night sky. These meteors appear to come from the area of the constellation of Gemini but can actually be seen almost anywhere in the sky and are fairly easy to spot - especially in the absence of light pollution (street lights etc) or a bright moon. Unfortunately, there is a full moon on the 12th this year so this could make viewing more difficult. The peak viewing rate can be as much as 120 per hour at a dark site.
This meteor shower is caused by what is thought to be an extinct comet and were first observed only 150 years ago. Meteors are small fragments (not much bigger than a grain of sand) of cosmic debris which vapourise due to friction with the air when entering the earth's atmosphere. Fragments which do land on the earth's surface are called meteorites.

Compost happens!

I love composting - it has to be the ultimate in recycling. Everything that comes from the earth or is nurtured by it goes back, in the form of brown, crumbly, earthy-smelling compost. From the house - everything from vegetable and fruit peelings to teabags, toilet roll tubes, coffee grounds, cereal boxes and eggshells, hair and animal fur and the contents of your vacuum cleaner bag can go in the compost bin. However, these household leftovers need to be balanced by adding garden waste in the form of prunings and clippings, grass mowings, leaves and some weeds - preferably not the roots of perennials such as dandelion, ground elder, buttercup, bindweed etc. as these need a high temperature to destroy them which may not be reached in a domestic composter. Not too much in the way of twigs and brown prunings as these thake a long time to break down although this is a lot quicker if they are shredded first. Too many grass clippings will cause a slimy mixture due to a lack of air in the heap. A good balanced mixture is best that is stirred up from time to time (not compulsory but helps).
I find wood is a good material with which to make a composter or buy one ready to assemble. Wood breathes and insulates and looks good although will need replacing after a number of years. Cover the compost mixture with a layer of insulation - old potting compost bags with a few layers of bubble wrap inside are ideal.The compost bin should also be situated in the sun if possible to aid heating up.
Things to avoid in your compost bin are meat, fish, dairy and cooked foods - these are not a good idea as they can attract vermin. Other do nots are cat and dog faeces and disposable nappies.
When the compost is cooked, it can be used as a mulch throughout the garden, helping to keep down weeds, keep in moisture, enrich the soil and it looks good too. The whole process can take as little as 6 - 8 weeks or as much as a year. If all this seems like hard work then a pile of material in the corner of your garden will eventually rot down without you having to do anything to it - just leave it to nature.

Above picture shows my composting set-up.

LEVI STUBBS 1936 - 2008

I was very sad when I heard of the passing into spirit of Levi Stubbs of The Four Tops - one of my favourite groups. He had one of those amazing voices that could express any emotion. Do you remember "I Can't Help Myself (Sugar Pie Honey Bunch), "It's the Same Old Song", "Bernadette", "I'm In a Different World" ?
The Four Tops first got together in 1953 (then called the Four Aims) and were signed to Chess records in 1956. Berry Gordy saw one of their performances in 1963 and signed them up, arranging for Holland, Dozier, Holland to write songs for them. This happened a year later with "Baby, I need your loving", followed by "I can't help myself" and then "Reach out". They successfully toured the United States and the world but left Motown in 1971. The Four Tops continued to record and tour in the 1970s and '80s. By 1995, Levi Stubbs’s health had begun to fail, forcing him to curtail his performances. Lawrence Payton died in 1997, and Renaldo "Obie"Benson in 2005.
Levi died on 17th October at the age of 72 years in his Detroit home. He had been suffering from cancer and had to stop performing in 2000 after having a stroke. Abdul "Duke" Fakir is the only surviving member of The Four Tops.

Eco-friendly candles

I am very fond of burning candles and have recently started investigating candles which are more eco-friendly.
Most candles are made from paraffin wax which is a derivative of the petroleum industry. This is obviously non-renewable, unless you want to wait for several million years, and the global environmental impact on the world is well documented.
The Oil Palm is grown as a commercial crop in Malaysia and used to produce (for example) cooking oil, confectionery, margarines and creamers. It is therefore a renewable resource and a non-genetically modified crop.
Palm wax is much cleaner burning than paraffin wax and produces much less soot and potentially harmful emissions.The cancles also burn for longer with a whiter flame.

About 80% of palm oil is used for food applications - the rest being for non-food products such as candles, lotions, body oils, shampoos, skin care products, rubber and cleaning products.
I believe it is possible to make palm oil based bio-diesel.

LAMMAS & SILBURY HILL 1st August

Lammas marks the beginning of the early harvest - cereals, barley, wheat and oats. It was often celebrated with bonfires, once lit on hills and beacons all over Europe. This is also the festival of the Celtic God of the Sun Lugh, whose sacrifice in the harvest at Lughnasadh is made so that people may live.

Excavations at Silbury Hill, the largest manmade earthwork in England suggest that its contruction began in August, carbon dated to approx. 2660 BCE. Perhaps it was built to celebrate Lammas. The name Silbury Hill is derived from the ancient water Goddess Sul, whose spirit is said to dwell in the hill's surrounding moat. The shape of the hill is like a pregnant belly, suggesting strong associations with the Goddess, fertility and fruitfulness.

The Corn King gives his life for the land,

We toast his sacrifice with ale in our hand,

And eat the bread, from the harvest made,

As sheaves of corn to the eath are laid,
May our well-earned bounty reward our toil,

As we harvest the seed and the grain from the soil.

Local History

Very local to me are the remains of Waverley Abbey. The construction was started in 1128 by the first Cistercian monks to establish an order in Britain . The small colony that had emigrated from France consisted of only an abbot and 12 monks. By 1187 the community supported 70 monks and 120 laybrothers. By the time the abbey was fully dedicated in 1278 the buildings centred on an imposing church that was 300 feet (91 metres) long and 150 feet (45 metres) wide at its transepts. Such were the capabilities of the community that over 7,000 guests were reportedly invited to the dedication including abbots, knights and lords and ladies.

The Cistercians were at the forefront of agricultural development in the 12th century, and by 1300 Waverley had 14 farms (‘granges’) which included valuable stocks of sheep enabling the monks to undertake a lucrative trade in wool with merchants as far away as Flanders and Florence. The wool was shorn from sheep bred from the original flock brought over from France when the abbey was first established. Wool produced in England was considered to be the best quality in Europe at the time. Although much of the abbey’s income was earned from farming, much benefit was gleaned from the various properties gifted to them by the Bishop of Winchester.

The abbey fell to the wholesale destruction wreaked by Henry VIII’s Dissolution of the Monasteries from 1536, and despite the abbot’s protestations to the outside world the buildings were systematically stripped of their finery, and eventually even the fabric of the buildings were dismantled to be used as building materials elsewhere. It is thought that many of the great houses between the 16th and 18th centuries in Surrey took advantage of building materials from the ruined abbey including Loseley House near Guildford.
Today little remains of the splendour of the place, but the ruins are nevertheless still impressive and give a good idea as to exactly what this industrious community of brothers had achieved. Now in the care of English Heritage the site has been well preserved and is open to visitors for no charge all year round.

Stonehenge

I spent an amazing night at Stonehenge for the Summer Solstice despite the damp weather. It was very overcast so there was no sign of the sun rising at all but the atmosphere created by the people (30,000 apparently) and surroundings made it worth going.

Stonehenge is probably the most important prehistoric monument in the whole of Britain and has attracted visitors from earliest times. It stands as a timeless monument to the people who built it. The stonehenge that we see today is the final stage that was completed about 3500 years ago, but first let us look back 5000 years.
The first Stonehenge was a large earthwork or Henge, comprising a ditch, bank, and the Aubrey holes, all probably built around 3100 BC. The Aubrey holes are round pits in the chalk, about one metre wide and deep, with steep sides and flat bottoms. They form a circle about 284 feet in diameter. Excavations have revealed cremated human bones in some of the chalk filling, but the holes themselves were probably made, not for the purpose of graves, but as part of the religious ceremony. Shortly after this stage Stonehenge was abandoned, left untouched for over 1000 years.
The second and most dramatic stage of Stonehenge started around 2150 BC. Some 82 bluestones from the Preseli mountains, in south-west Wales were transported to the site. It is thought these stones, some weighing 4 tonnes each were dragged on rollers and sledges to the headwaters on Milford Haven and then loaded onto rafts. They were carried by water along the south coast of Wales and up the rivers Avon and Frome, before being dragged overland again to near Warminster in Wiltshire. The final stage of the journey was mainly by water, down the river Wylye to Salisbury, then the Salisbury Avon to west Amesbury.
This astonishing journey covers nearly 240 miles. Once at the site, these stones were set up in the centre to form an incomplete double circle. ( During the same period the original entrance of the circular earthwork was widened and a pair of Heel Stones were erected. Also the nearer part of the Avenue was built, aligned with the midsummer sunrise.)
The third stage of Stonehenge, about 2000 BC, saw the arrival of the Sarsen stones, which were almost certainly brought from the Marlborough Downs near Avebury, in north Wiltshire, about 25 miles north of Stonehenge. The largest of the Sarsen stones transported to Stonehenge weigh 50 tonnes and transportation by water would have been impossible, the stones could only have been moved using sledges and ropes. Modern calculations show that it would have taken 500 men using leather ropes to pull one stone, with an extra 100 men needed to lay the huge rollers in front of the sledge.
These were arranged in an outer circle with a continuous run of lintels. Inside the circle, five trilithons were placed in a horseshoe arrangement, whose remains we can still see today.
The final stage took place soon after 1500 BC when the bluestones were rearranged in the horseshoe and circle that we see today. The original number of stones in the bluestone circle was probably around 60, these have long since been removed or broken up. Some remain only as stumps below ground level
http://www.stonehenge.co.uk/history.htm

The last time in your lifetime!

On June 13, Pluto re-enters the sign of Sagittarius. Why this transit is so significant and what does it mean to you?
Pluto is a tiny, distant body, invisible to the naked eye. Yet, Pluto is incredibly powerful, a force for total transformation, regeneration and rebirth. Pluto asks us to go beyond what we know, redeem ourselves in the process and come out stronger as a result. Pluto represents how we direct our lives.
It takes Pluto a whopping 248 years to complete its orbit around the zodiac and, it takes between 12 and 31 years to pass through a zodiac sign. For the past 12 years Pluto had been stationed in the sign of Sagittarius. Then on January 25, for the very first time since 1778, Pluto moved into the sign of Capricorn!
Now that Pluto is retrograde, it returns to the sign of Sagittarius for about six months until it turns direct again on September 9, moving back into Capricorn in November -- where it settles down for the next 16 years! This six-month period is the last time in your lifetime that you will experience the energy of Pluto in Sagittarius!
Sagittarius is associated with foreign travel, foreign countries and cultures, religion, the law, higher education and all things that expand one's experience and freedom. The sojourn of Pluto in Sagittarius has seen significant events on a global level. On a personal level, the issues you may have had to deal with for the past few years would be very dependent on where Pluto is placed in your individual birth chart as well as where it has been transiting.

New arrival - latest grandchild!

Well, here she is. Arrived exactly on her due date 24th May.

She came into the world at 8.40 am, weighing in at 8lb 13oz - not bad at all. So far she has managed to keep her mother up most of every night but hopefully that will soon change for the better. It's amazing how such a little scrap of humanity can be so disruptive!

Oh well, it's worth it!

Spring has sprung!

What a difference a few weeks make - from the blanket of snow to the cherry tree in blossom. The daffodils have mostly finished now apart from a few late varieties.