May 2025: Forest Farm Peace Garden, Hainault
I got accepted and did my first shift chopping beans as a kitchen volunteer at the Felix Project (keeping healthy and nutritious food out of landfill and getting it to London’s most vulnerable), at their Poplar depot in East London. Also, I was approved to teach music online and offline on the Tutor Mate platform, then a local lady expressed interest in having me teach her jazz piano from my studio at home: learning jazz licks, more complicated scales on piano, and listening to Erroll Garner playing, ignited my whole being. Music is saving me again; saving my sanity.
I met Liza who used to be a researcher with the BBC at a Business Gateway webinar who thought that my Incest Survivor’s Roar project is brave and that it will help lots of people: generally, sexual abuse is talked about only when it occurs outside the family, and Incest Survivor’s Roar will give voice and acknowledgement to those whose lives and families are shattered by this type of abuse. Liza would like to do a community podcast through which people tell their stories. We’ve appreciated each others’ backing and have kept in touch. Her family are from Aberdeen, Scotland, where I’m working on moving to.
The Work That Reconnects Network’s mission is to promote a thriving, regenerative world by supporting, connecting and inspiring a worldwide community focused on the Work That Reconnects. I suggest reading Joanna Macy’s book, World As Lover, World As Self - 30th Anniversary Edition if you’d like to find out more. During one of their webinars I connected with women in Asia and asked the question, “Is it worth trying to work with dark truths if there is a culture of resistance to it?” Shayontoni (who has done work surrounding childhood sexual abuse), said that if I don’t try I won’t know. Another said that as facilitator, make sure that I’m ready to bring the subject of healing from incest into the circle and to do so with preparation and care. Truth is felt, sensed and experienced.
I walked from Hainault to Ilford in the early hours of the morning when there were no pedestrians around, excited to embark on the safeguarding part of my training to become an Ecotherapy Buddy Volunteer at Forest Farm Peace Garden in Hainault. This was to be the first time since the pandemic that I’d have to function in a crowded indoor area while experiencing contamination OCD - so to ground myself I decided to visit and absorb the strength of a lovely Scots pine tree in Valentines Park, Ilford. Here, many of the creatures of the park came out to greet me as if in support (though they probably just wanted my food)! It helped whatever, and I made it through the training unmasked!
When I was having a very bad day in Arrochar, Scotland, a couple of months ago, I asked out loud why I should go on living and received the answer, “To help others”: Forest Farm Peace Garden is run on permaculture principles and has a cob oven! I already love it and can tell it’s a very special place for both nature and people. The logo of the place is oak leaves, which ties in snuggly with the enchanted, calming hours I’m spending with the senior oak tree at Claybury Park. More about this oak tree sit-spot project later on in the blog…
Finding out about the Seven Stages of Healing from Patrice Bouchardon’s inspiring book, The Healing Energies of Trees was life-changing in how it’s facilitated an understanding of my own behaviour and how to regulate it in relation to my partner’s dementia diagnosis.
I learnt more about Green Social Prescribing and earned worldwide certification via Alma Oasis as a Natural Builder: timber framing, bamboo construction, using pine needles for tensile strength in cob, straw bale and Earthship construcion… they all make perfect sense to be exploring as we face climate catastrophe.
Orange California poppy showed up in my garden plant pots after a two-year absence, and we had deep pink jasmine in great abundance.
Oak tree sit-spot - May 2025
Please see my May 2025 oak tree videos here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLk99iJ6gY68gjbstO3S-q67eN605h7oga.
The surprising sketches I produced have given me more insight into the world that the oak tree, myself and the tree community inhabit.
The oak tree is like a planet I orbit as a natural satellite (moon).
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8.19 am. I'm glad I said hello to the tree before setting up on the grassland near its hushed, commanding presence. The traffic noise was louder than normal. A magpie in front of me walked / hopped among clumps of dewy grass, inspecting the scene. The aroma of fresh grass and sunscreen. Harsh sun burnt the right side of my face. A great tit fed beneath twigs of a tender oak. Sitting apart from the tree, I no longer felt a part of its community. My oak tree is the shape of a large broccoli floret. Feeling too hot, I moved. It was comforting having the oak where I could see it from the grove in which I dozed in my hammock.
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1.33 pm. Too hot for me. A lot less birdsong. Dried out catkins, twiglets, dust, seeds and shells rained down from the oak continuously; harder with each wind flurry, and lodged in my hair. I was tired after a stressful tent camp and needed to get home. Three quarters of the tree canopy shiny with sun. Great tit nest still very much in use. The stalk of a dead catkin with a spongy green ball speckled with red on the end of it, like an apple embryo.
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8.33 am. Wind blowing the burner flame from underneath my kettle. Cold. Shaggy trees and bushes. A great tit flies into its hole with a beakful of something white. Reflections on my left glasses lens and brown frames I mistake for the woman who collects litter here come to tell me off. Patches of sunlight, patches of cloud. No debris raining down from the tree like there was four days ago, at all. Flapping of wings overhead. Are the great tits bothered by my presence? Twisted trunk as if it was rotating when it germinated. A great tit touches down on branches surrounding its nest. A nuthatch only lives two years. Two great tits calling reciprocally maybe because they can't see each other among the leaf clusters. Twigs at the ends of branches the shape of a Lady's antique hand fan. Bird poo splats onto my table and magic carpet. A squirrel stomps at lightening speed towards the tree from behind me. Large sticks and string at the base of the trunk. Investigating further, I notice splinters of wood from the sticks stuck in the bark as if someone had been hitting it. I lay my hand there and the trunk felt warm.
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7.49 am. Still. Bright. Chilly. Facing the trunk from a new position. The oak tree has five main limbs. I'm facing one that's formed a large arch with its leaf tips not far from touching the natural fence that surrounds us. Everything looks as if it's wilting a little. The tree next to this on the other side of the fence has only just leafed. Do younger oak trees take longer to leaf, or does it depend on the amount of sunlight an oak gets in early spring? Laying on my back under a duvet of greens. Holes within holes in branches. Parakeets. I could stay a lot longer than the almost two hours I've already been here. The tree community to the north, south, east and west of me. I recognise the humans and birds I encounter. Itchy. Feeling drawn to draw.
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7.06 am. Cold. Breezy. Sunless. I'm not in the mood for deep thinking; profound observations - only that I find connecting to humans very, very hard. It messes up my insides. MOTHER HUNGER. There's not as much birdsong, but soloists like the robin I saw earlier near the bramble bushes stand out. Seeding grass stems. Warming sunlight. Just being here; just being here. The oak tree's trunk is short and podgy; the wrist of a hand reaching.
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7.16 am. Cold, but facing the blinding sun which is warming me and has the quality of candlelight on this white page. There is no longer any activity in and around the great tit nest (an ovalish hole in the scabby elbow of a branch way above me). Wild grass all around. My fingers fit into the crevices of trunk bark. What can the oak tree teach me today? To breathe, like Parminder suggested? To savour the quiet? Seated in a green swimming pool of light. As the sun gets higher the trunk becomes more visible. A cuckoo calling.
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Pale green grass flower head (called a spike), comprises many individual flowers (spikelets), newly emerged from its glume (outer part of the spikelet), and conical like a pine tree. Bumblebee. A quarter of the circle surrounding the oak tree has become a shield where leafy saplings, grass and bramble have risen up to meet the lengthening terminal buds of the tree where leaf-bowing is occurring. Now nobody can see me from the grassland. Twigs at the end of thin branches are tree roots. Gigantean scaly limbs suspended. Where I'm sat in my camping chair cooking breakfast bannock, the grass dwarfs me, making me feel sunken; embedded within the private world of this tree community. A bird I hear singing here every time I come, as well as at Forest Farm Peace Garden I wish I could identify. The head of a magpie walking, its body obscured by grass blades. Earthy smells because there's rain in the air. I've developed hay fever in middle age. What determines the shape an oak tree will take? Oak trees in the UK can host up to 2000 species. A rumbling far off.
