July and August 2025: Focusing on what’s working
I played my double bass for the first time in an age and was instantly filled with life and light.
Presents from our organic garden: wild strawberries; a pink/red creamy streaked single poppy; healthy rhubard; a self-seeded green stripey turned tiger squash; delicate spidery white flowers on spider plants; hoverflies on Leucanthemum Banana Cream oxeye daisies; the first crimson carnation; my favourite pink rose bush 2.0 flourishing again; two baby nasturtium leaves which was the highlight of the summer because I thought we’d killed them through forgetting to water them; a glut of fat blackberries; my first squishy fig from one of my fig branch cuttings; a stunning rain-soaked lilac gladiolus; deeply lobed squash leaves in a variety of shapes; small orange tomatoes, and delicious mint, plum and apple saft.
Check out Andrea Gibson’s poem, WHEN DEATH CAME TO VISIT - her personification of death as an innocent child.
Every time I buddy volunteer at Forest Farm Peace Garden in Hainault I learn something new; about Common Blue butterflies, willow charcoal, Yorkshire Fog grass, that cardamom pods grow on the ground, and about simultaneously harvesting and pruning lavender as well as making apricot leather and jostaberry with basil cham. Witnessing volunteers coming out of their shells and participating in their sense of achievement and happiness is very rewarding, too.
I prayed that a home would come up for me in Scotland - and it did - in Torry, Aberdeen, but the timing was off because I will need to be living in England at the start of my MSc so as to qualify for a postgraduate student loan: the YouTube video, Once You Let Go Nothing Can Control You Anymore by Solace Mind was destined for my viewing, and the motivational speeches of my heroine, Maya Angelou have been helping a lot.
I’d like to dedicate this blog to my black (with a little bit of white) cat, Buddy - the truest friend I ever had, and I like how he shares his name with Buddy Bolden, who started jazz. I’m drawn to jazz and blues because it’s real and have felt so thrilled to be spreading my love of music through teaching jazz piano and being paid for it again… all my professional worries melt away when I’m doing this. I’m also attempting to come up with my own teaching method.
In September I begin my MSc in Green Building at the Centre for Alternative Technology in Wales, which I’ve been excited about… and then my partner, Jan, collapsed twice from stroke-type symptoms caused by an irregular heartbeat. She’s still in hospital and they’re prepared to send her home to an uninhabitable house without a care package in place to support her and I as her dementia worsens. I now know that you can scream out to all and sundry that you’re not coping, but they willingly won’t here you, and if they do, there’s no help anyway unless you’re rich and have family and friends.
Oak tree sit-spot - July and August 2025
Please see my July and August 2025 oak tree videos here: Oak Tree Sit-spot Playlist by Gemma Boyd - YouTube.
Watching back these videos reassures me and gives me confidence that everything will be okay.
Now I own an acorn that contains the essence of the oak tree, I can keep it with me wherever I go.
Is the oak tree male or female?
Why couldn’t I identify the tumbled stone lodged in the bark of the oak tree?
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7.41 am. July 2025. A bald old man trod down the natural fence and strode over to the oak tree's trunk and remained behind it for about three minutes. I couldn't see what he was doing. We didn't acknowledge each other. He then rejoined the blonde woman and a dog he was with on the grassland, leaving behind a lingering scent of aftershave. They went away. I was bitten under my left eye as soon as I arrived: there were many insects in the air. I envied the freedom of birds; their being unburdened by possessions and the directness of their soaring. They have somewhere to go. It became overcast and cool, though I doubted there would be any rain. Where had my Thermarest pillow got to? How do people get up the courage to exit? Slightly nodding grass spikes. This oak tree has lime green leaves, while the smaller, more conical one next to it has dark green ones. More tree tourists took notice of the oak and looked up at its canopy. I felt calmer for having focused on what was around me. Here I'm not trapped by people, systems, expectations. Scorched ground and charcoal chunks from others' wood burning. A dog barked. Knowing that I must contain myself; stay put long enough so that I can leave. I shall miss the tree. I told it my fears and desires. Maybe it will help.
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7.15 am. August 2025. The oak's grey arms reaching out towards me. A black feather and a small tumbled stone (piebald white and dark blue like a cloudy sky), wedged at eye level in the bark of the trunk, and two cigarette butts on the ground. So still and calm. Virtually no birdsong. The surrounding bramble bushes are shrinking away from tree tips, leaving me less protected; the world of the oak tree extending to include more green beings. Knopper galls crash down from the tree. The unmistakable squawk of a parakeets landing on top of the canopy in their usual area one by one. Leaves bunched, wilting, and partly dead in patches. Planes taking off constantly. I want mothering. The twittering of a robin in the understorey. Warming sun opposite me appeared only momentarily. Rustling of a bough of leaves caused by a grey squirrel. An old man with white hair jogging, shouted, "Morning!" and a dog burst into the circle as my veggie sausages were cooking.
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11.10 am. August 2025. Eerie quiet and the feeling that someone was right behind me as I walked through the woods where small, round yellow leaves had fallen and got stuck among the waxy deep green leaves of holly trees (autumn earlier than I've ever known it). Only a distant chiffchaff at the oak tree... then pigeon song. As soon as I sat down a stiff breeze got up which caused knopper galls to pelt down: I asked the tree to spare me from getting hit as I ate my dinner... and it did. A roll-up butt was on parched ground. The tumbled stone had disappeared from its hole in the trunk. Farm smells and the din of chainsaws all around. It felt so good, though, to be able to reset for an hour here: this oak tree has me covered. Should I plant the acorn I'd just collected from here? The wind eased. Soaring magpies. Overcast and still: nothing special on this, my 50th visit. Shrivelled blackberries on the bushes that have formed an arc around half of the tree. Imagine what it must be like to be rooted to the spot like this oak tree for up to a thousand years. I felt like I was at the tilted bottom of a huge pinball machine cabinet; the oak's branches and leaves its flippers and bumpers, determining the courses of ball-like knopper galls on their way out of the canopy. Aggressive vehicle sounds.
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“We build the road, and the road builds us.”
“Sometimes a tree tells you more than can be read in books.”
“That which you most need to find will be found where you least want to look.”
Angels, 2016 by Gemma Boyd