This morning the frost was there again and remained all day, I left my footprints in the Glen, missed the little bug in his birch scroll, found a third Birch on the football pitch with witches broom and a feather in it, played hide and seek with our elusive, playful, and sometime resident Egret – one day I will sneak up close enough to capture an image ….
There were many frozen puddles on the path, I found one with a giant footprint that had a hole smashed in it, another with something that had formations which looked like codes and letters or architecture, another had a screaming face trapped inside and I took it upon myself to break the spell… there was a snaky shape too with eddies in it – so many different and interesting ice formations and then there were the lovely frost patterns on a lone green leaf…
Today was another frost morning with a deep red awakening sky. I took an early walk through the Birch portal, checked in on the shield beetle – the birch shieldbug [Elasmostethus interstinctus – also known as stink bug because it protects itself by secreting a foul smelling mucus] he was still sheltering in one if its scrolls, under the silver maiden’s watchful eyes, I left a footprint in the frost and admired the resilience of a yarrow and the etched forms of some lovely frost dusted leaves
I revisited the Birches in the Glen today, I greet the young tree at the gate, aptly placed, as in Welsh legend the Birch is said to mark the Gateway to the Otherworld.
I found some jackets from last nights Demons and Ninjas.
I saw the fabulous firework display last night over the rooftops of the park, as the doggies trembled in their houses.
I have been delving into legends of the Birch, and find that the Yakut, a nomadic people of Siberia, have a legend about Ai Toyon, the Creator of Light, whose children lived in nests on the 8 branches of the Birch, this is easy to imagine when I see the Winter silhouette.. this picture is from a neighbouring housing estate….are they real nests I wonder…?
nests of the children of Ai Toyon, Creator of Light
and I find out that they are Witches’ Broom!
Witches’ Broom are a type of gall created by micro organisms, which create a kind of twiggy tangle. Witches’ brooms on birch trees, according to the UK Woodland Trust , are ‘likely caused by a fungus called Taphrina betulina‘. Having stimulated this sudden growth, the fungus then feeds on the new shoots without inflicting too much harm on the tree itself.
“In a witches’ broom, the growth of a lateral bud – the buds that make twigs and side shoots – loses control and causes multiple stems to form in a tangled, disorganised manner. Multiple years of growth is required to create big brooms.”
The term ‘witches’ broom’ relates to the deformity in trees. In herbaceous plants this deformity is known by the scientific names of phyllanthies, phyllodies or chloranthies. Collectively, these are known as virescences. A virescence is a growth consisting of distorted and multiplied parts of a plant, either green and leafy or woody and twiggy. It comes from the Latin virescens which means ‘becoming green’, and is not the same root as the word ‘virus’, although some viruses do cause virescences!
Birch switches were used for clearing the hearth on New Years Eve, sweeping out the negativity and letting in the light, even the bark is peeling back for new exposure, revealing a kind of semaphore in the scarring that is beyond skin deep…
Beith (Birch) ᚁ is the first letter of the Ogham alphabet and it is the tree given to the first month – from 24 December – 20 January on the Celtic Tree Calendar
The birch is known as a ‘Pioneer Tree’ – meaning that it can restart the colonisation of woodlands after long term natural disasters. It is believed to be the first tree to recolonize the land after the last Ice Age and is often the first to move in to damaged terrains, paving the way for others. It isn’t the most long lived of trees (40 – 60 years). The Birch has many folk names is The Lady of the Woods, The White Goddess, The Ribbon Tree and The Silver Maiden
The word ‘birch’ is believed to stem from the word ‘bhurga’ – a Sanskrit word meaning ‘a tree whose bark is used for writing upon’, or from ‘bher’ – meaning ‘shining white’ and its lovely papery bark rolls back from its trunk in scrolls exposing fresh scarring marks like texts, written in the skin.
The Birch tree has been associated with light, the silvery colour of it’s bark lighting up the dark woods and glowing in moonlight. Birch branches were used to ‘drive out’ the Old Year on 31st December to clear negative energies for the year ahead, and Birch twigs are used to make ‘besom’ brooms for sweeping the garden and are said to make the best witches’ broomsticks – the magical light that the twigs contain are imagined to make the broomsticks fly well, perhaps this magic also comes from the red and white toadstool, the Amanita muscara, also know as the Fly agaric, which grows at her roots.
So nearly at the end of a year and here’s a thing I’ve wondered about – the PROSTO bench!
PROSTO(Polish) adverb
fullexactly // directly plainly // simply // in a simple manner //smack //directly and with force //square // firmly and directly // squarely // directly and firmly // straight // in a straight, not curved, line // directly
…. so it is the Straight Bench! And it’s just taken me, in a roundabout curved and not a direct or firm way at all, a whole year to look that one up…. but maybe lost in translation …. and not Polish at all?
One of the Glen Walkers had this to say: “I like to think it it means that when you sit on the bench, you come directly to a conclusion about a complicated problem you have. A la “Prosto“.
Tonight was a night of a beautiful golden moon rising in the North East again, resisting casual capturing on camera, here looking the other way – westwards and the mist rising off the Glen River casting reflections into the night
A late walk home through the Glen under a cold clear sky, a full moon rising in the North East and trees throwing shapes, dancing with the streetlights against the deepening blue.
I have been thinking about the winter rhythms, the pauses we celebrate in Cork, from the quickening and sharpening in the air of Samhain, crossing over from the last day of October to the first of November, one kind of new year, the days declining still to Solstice and the shortest day on 21st December, and then the big stillness, often with a similar quietness in the weather, the low cloud, white sky days of December, the settling in of Christmas & Stephen’s day on the 25th & 26th, harbouring a week long resting space till New Year on the first of January with a wake up call that rolls into the Epiphany and Women’s Little Christmas on the sixth. These stepping stones guide us through mid winter as the days shrink and the dark gathers and settles over us, deepening the cold even as the days are beginning to open up again for Spring.
One streetlight and one moon cresting the man made Northern ridge of the Glen River Park
Yesterday it was a ball that echoed the rounding of the moon a kind of globe exchange from earth to sky
Cardamine hirsuta // Searbh-bhiolar giobach is sprouting out of the ground already. It is a native plant and member of the Brassica family. Like many of the plants in the Glen it is self seeded, and like many Glen plants it is widely considered a pest by gardeners. It claims its place, taking hold by growing a tap root deep into the earth and then, when mature, by propagating very efficiently, popping its prominent pods and launching its projectile seeds into the wider world beyond its reach.
Hairy Bittercress likes the cool early rains of Spring and will bloom from March, tiny 4 petalled white flowers on tall stems, the seed pods grow taller than the flower and will pop open and eject seeds far and wide in warmer weather to come.
In summer 2020 I made some ink from the fallen galls of the large oak on ‘the ridge’ and since then I’ve been watching and waiting to see the arrival of new ones, hoping to catch a glimpse of their formation – there is no evidence of galls on the branches there yet, but on the scrubby ditch of the Northern edge I spotted this tree still sporting the now hollow galls of yesteryear 🙂
