Slow-Small Media for the Weekend #9

(Above: low winter sun through some crops gone to seed at the Awapuni Community Garden.)

Hi lovelies,

Jeez, another week of scary news in a world gone mad. I hope you are faring okay and doing plenty of sensory, nature-based things off screens to give your nervous systems a chance to recover.

Winter calls for an encounter with ‘a Wild God’

Long a favourite poem of mine, I went looking for a shareable version of ‘Sometimes a Wild God‘ by Tom Hirons and saw, to my delight, that you can both read it and listen to it being read by the author here. There’s something about listening to poems read by their authors which is really special.

This poem speaks to that longing inside us to connect with nature’s raw wildness…how that raw wildness is no joke…and it also has such a great ending. A modern classic, I think.

Song for the week

This week’s song is gentle, evocative and sounds a bit like Nick Drake. It’s ‘Crow’ by English ‘folktronica’ band, Tuung.

As a poet, I can’t fall 100% in love with a song unless the lyrics are thoughtful and interesting. The chorus for this song are so good:

‘And we bide our time
And we shed our skins
And we shake our bones
And we sink like stone
And we crawl through mud
Til we reach the sky
And we bide our time.’

(Listen the full playlist of Slow-Small Media songs here on Youtube.)

Sally Wise’s ‘Apple Day‘

Nothing warms my heart like friends and communities getting together to work on food harvests and processing together. (If you didn’t catch it already, here’s an article about some friends and I doing just this with green tomatoes.)

Australian food writer Sally Wise just wrote about her annual ‘apple day’ here.

I especially like the photographs. What great seasonal fun.

Make a liver-cleansing, iron-boosting tonic from a much-maligned weed

Most people I talk to are unaware that yellow dock, a plant loathed by many, is a powerful medicinal plant.

When I did a live-cooking event at the Womad Festival last year, one of the things I made was some wild seedy crackers which had yellow dock seed in them which I foraged.

Dock root is rich in iron, minerals and vitamins. Check out this recipe for an Iron Rich Liver-Cleansing Support Oxymel from one of my favourite New Zealand food writers, Anna Valentine.

Lot’s of weeds are a bit of a pain, it’s true (hello, tradescantia, hello, convolvulus) …but so many weeds are edible or medicinal. I feel like re-learning all of the offerings of local weeds will be an important passtime for the coming years.

Here’s to the humble dock plant: mineral-retriever with it’s deep taproot, generous-seed-offerer, cleanser of livers and booster of blood.

This week’s affordable art: Whakangā

This week’s affordable art is not wall art, but an artful object, a meditation tool, a little something perfect for the wintery months. This would make a beautiful gift.

(Above: photo borrowed from the Creative Hive NZ website.)

It’s a little beeswax candle set from the Creative Hive NZ. Whakangā means in Māori to take a breath, catch your breath, rest, relax or inhale.

From their website: ‘This beautiful Whakangā set is the perfect addition to your wellbeing with 21 small beeswax candles and an exquisite artisan ceramic kawakawa leaf holder.’

I think it qualifies as ‘art’ and is very reasonable at just $35.00 for the set.

This is such a thoughtful product. The tiny candles are made to burn for twenty minutes; just long enough to take a break or meditate. A friend of mine has a set and the candles are so very small and sweet.

How to make a Wild Food Map of your neighbourhood

This is a great article from Milkwood Permaculture on how to make a wild food map of your neighbourhood. I haven’t done this but I’d love to. If you have younger kids, it could be a fun activity to get them involved in over the school holidays?

As well as great instructions on this project, this article has a handy list of links for online community food maps at the end, like Falling Fruit a global map of crowd-sourced information about public fruit trees. It’s very fun to type your address into it and see what’s within walking distance of your house. You can add your local knowledge to it, too.

Something chill to watch: a Brixton folk artist’s beautiful house and studio

This short (9min) clip featuring folk artist Abe Odedina on the World of Interiors YT channel is a good time.

He’s a vibe, and I loved seeing his house and studio. His house is beautiful as is his art. I also appreciated how much he talks about loving being at home. I think since the pandemic, many of us feel the same way, hey?

(I lived in Brixton a zillion years ago when I was on my travels. I found it such a vibrant, exciting suburb of London.)

A Manifesto for Stubborn Optimists

From the Montague Workshop (Brad and Kristi Montague), a Manifesto for Stubborn Optimists:

‘We believe that care is courageous.

Joy is rebellious.

Wonder is defiance.

We believe in the builders,

teachers, growers, healers,

quiet ones making room at the table,

the messy middle, the long haul, and

in the overlooked beauty of a slow repair.’

This manifesto gave me some solace this week. I love manifestos. I think most things I write end up being thinly disguised manifestos; I can’t help it.

I’m going to print it out and stick it on my fridge.

This weekend my oldest ‘baby’ turns 25. Quarter of a century!

(Above: the oldest baby when he was 4. A favourite pic.)

I spent my 25th birthday dancing at Duckie London – a queer club night that’s still going! But I started off the night straddled across one of the bronze lions of Trafalger Square in London, drinking straight from a 1.5 litre bottle of Absolut vodka. Classy, aye? (I wasn’t always the quiet homebody I am now.)

It’s funny, because I remember clearly thinking back then ‘I’m going to climb up here and get on one of the lions…because then I will always remember what I did on my 25th birthday’ …and it worked, I do!

Anyway, there will be birthday celebrations this weekend and no doubt F and I will have a tipple of whisky and contemplate the bizarre passage of time.

Hope there are sweet, calm things in your weekend, too. x