Writing Down the Weeds- July
Meadowsweet folklore, a cake recipe and two pieces of flash fiction
It’s mid-July and the thunderstorms have continued to roll through steadily, flashing late in the evening and clouding our days. I’ve been finding it difficult to write, the storms make my energy scattered and I’m feeling jumpy with so many of them passing overhead. This is not normal. I cannot remember so many so close this far North. If I dwell on it too long my anxiety for my son’s future, and that of his peers, grows unbearable. So, I do what we all do; look away. I distract myself with stacks of books and continued micro adjustments. A new to me pen so I never again buy a plastic one, reusable stretchy silicon lids to replace the cling film my mother insists on using daily. Picking our own strawberries before the slugs get to them, and the blackbirds. Scattering wildflower seeds. Tending the bees in the garden, teaching my boy of their importance, so well he dances with them barefoot, on the mossy wet grass. Letting him have a “rain shower” because he’s three and it’s late summer in Ireland. Tiny gestures against the dark. But when the storms come again, so fierce they shake the house I sense the cliff edge at our toes, and I ache for it all.
And yet some things, some ancient things, do not change. Tomorrow evening brings July’s New Moon and in just over two weeks, by the Old Ways, it will be autumn. If you look to the hedgerows and meadows here in Ireland, they’ll tell you the truth of it; meadowsweet is in abundance, the heather is in bloom, rose-hips are reddening, as are the hawthorns. Mushrooms are suddenly everywhere, and the leaves on the trees are on the turn if you look closely enough.
In the Celtic tradition our days begin at dusk, our days as with life, in soil or the womb, begin in darkness. The festival of Lughnasadh is no different; it will begin on the evening of July 31st and continue until sundown on the first of August. It’s the beginning of harvest season and we feast, giving thanks for the abundance of Summer whilst rolling up our sleeves and preparing for the hard work of Autumn before the dreamtime of Winter.
To celebrate this, a little early (there will be a full moon post all about it), to root us down and to mark tomorrow’s (Monday 17th) New Moon below is all the Meadowsweet lore, a delicious recipe for one of my favourite wild flavoured cakes and two pieces of folklore infused flash fiction for this month’s Writing Down the Weeds.
Meadowsweet
Irish: Airgead luachra (Silver rush)
Latin: Filipendula ulmaria
Folk names: Queen-of-the-Meadow, Bridewort, Silver rush, Crois Conchulainn - Cú Chulainn’s Belt, Courtship and Matrimony, Summers’ Farewell.
Meadowsweet, which smells like spicy vanilla, is currently a pretty sight and heady scent along our hedgerows and across our wild meadows.
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