When Fashion and Nature Collide

Plants and Beyond

Nature is deeply healing to our soul. Fresh air, flowers, and trees has a direct link to our wellbeing. Stress and anxiety seem to melt away under the sun, by the water, and amongst the trees. It increases a positive mood, emotionally and physically, reducing blood pressure, heart rate, muscle tension, and the production of […]

via When Fashion and Nature Collide – LOVE — LISMORE PAPER

Love this collaboration between blogging friends. Their talent has no bounds and especially the recognition for nature’s gifts

Have a wonderful, colorful and full of joy weekend, my dear friends.

Luda@PlantsandBeyond.com🌿

The images here do not belong to Luda @PlantsandBeyond.com, but to Lisa at Lismorepaper

©PlantsandBeyond.com 🌱

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Druidry for the 21st Century: Druidry in the Anthropocene

The Druid's Garden

Druidry is rooted in relationship and connection with the living earth: the physical landscape and all her plants and creatures, the spirits of nature, the allies of hoof and claw, fin and feather. The land and her spirits are our primary allies and energies with which we work as druids. The question I keep coming back to is this: how do I practice a nature-centered path in a time when nature–those of the hooves, fins, feathers, and claws–are going extinct and dying all around me? How do I practice druidry when everything that I hold sacred and love  is under severe threat, and when it is likely that in my lifetime, I will witness severe ecological collapse in multiple ecosystems.  How do I practice druidry with my « eyes open » to all of this, and honor nature in this great extinction event, and still say sane? How do I do this…

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Fashioned by Nature, the love of trees.

The Arty Plantsman

It is that time of year again.

Valentine’s day : The day when no man can do the right thing.

As a Northern male I am expected to have a somewhat palaeolithic approach to romance. This caveman reputation is probably because of those glum buggers across the Pennines in Yorkshire.

In fact, as pointed out by Charles Nevin in his book ‘Lancashire, where women die of love’, we Lancashire men are whimsical and incurable romantics. Lancashire women, on the other hand, consider it their duty to suppress such whimsy in their men at every opportunity. This has been the premise of many a situation comedy.

I shall not comment upon the accuracy of this as my wife sometimes reads my blog and I prefer to keep my genitalia in their current configuration.

Anyway. One consequence of having female friends and collaborators at this time of year is that the…

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The Lost Week

The Arty Plantsman

Well, my pledge to regularly do at least the Friday geeky plant post soon fell by the wayside did it not?

My excuse? Well Tuesday 29th I felt very tired and head-achy all day. This was way more than my usual degree of « I’m too old for this sh*t » tiredness but I thought nothing of it until the next morning when I discovered that I had a sickness bug. The good news was that by midday I had stoped feeling too queasy and was just wiped out. So I pretty much stayed in bed for two days with my wife watching me carefully for signs of being able to claim on the life insurance deterioration.

Friday I was still off work but the last thing I felt like doing was blogging. So I indulged my inner geek by watching an old Dr Who story that I had not seen since…

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The Process of Tapping Trees and Making Maple Syrup – A Blessing from the Maple Trees

The Druid's Garden

Sap in buckets on trees!

This time of year, something magical happens to the maple trees. When the temperatures drop below freezing at night and then goes above freezing during the day, the maple sap runs.  In South-East Michigan, this usually occurs in late February and throughout March. Maple sap, of course, becomes Maple syrup or Maple sugar depending on how far down you want to boil it.  A group of us, including some grove members, are tapping trees and learning about this process this year.

Maple is a sacred tree, and the Native Americans were the first to tap it and discover its incredible sap. The sap, and the syrup that results from the boiling of sap, is the lifeblood of the maple tree. In taking part of that lifeblood into ourselves, we receive the blessing of the maple tree. Partaking of such a sacred thing should be done…

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