Slim Pickings

There’s been snow on the ground for a month now and the birds are hanging round the house in growing numbers, hoping for help on the food front.

We’ve been more or less snowed in the last few days and the bird seed ran out at the beginning of the week. So I’ve been raiding the store cupboard in an attempt to keep the feathered ones afloat. But the stores are dwindling, too. My flying friends polished off the supply of pumpkin seeds a couple of days ago; and yesterday’s menu was the last of the sunflower seeds mixed with chopped apple and avocado.

So today I was really scraping the bottom of a near-empty barrel. Or so I thought. But it’s amazing what you can come up with when you put your mind to it.

I gathered everything I had left that I thought might possibly tempt winged creatures, and soon had a bowlful of chopped apple, kiwi, cranberries, goji berries and desiccated coconut. I scattered most of it along the snow-covered, ivy-covered wall in front of the cottage; then mixed the remainder with some coconut butter and ground almonds and pressed the mixture into a heart-shaped tin.

While it chilled in the freezer, I cast about for a second course (don’t like to skimp on hospitality). And I found a jar of tahini that needed using up. So I smeared the contents onto a twig ball, then rolled the whole thing in some Madeira cake left over from Christmas chocolate-making. Then studded it with goji berries, mostly for decorative purposes (though I have to say that the local avian population has a decided taste for the exotic - the goji berries always go first).

I hope they enjoyed their mini feast. ‘Cause tomorrow we’re down to cake crumbs. Except now I come to think of it, there are some apricots I could thread on strings. And maybe I could……

A Year of...

At the start of 2008 my friend, Emma, declared the coming twelve months a Year of Culture. She and a friend had decided that their lives were rather sorry in that area, so they planned to attend as many concerts, plays, ballets and operas as they had time and money for. Galleries, museums and historic houses all got a look in. Emma even managed a weekend in Rome.

I lighted on the idea with all the glee of a magpie finding the Crown Jewels. I love such schemes. And so I gaily concocted other ‘years’ that, in hindsight, would separate one twelve month period from another. ‘Ah,’ folk would say, ‘that happened during my Year of Tiddlywinks!’

Emma made up a scrapbook as the year wore on so that she would forever be able to leaf over memories of a year that stood out from the rest. The images above are taken from it.

So, whilst some of us are focusing on our word for the year and looking for meaningful progress or deep change in our lives, I’m offering a more frivolous adjunct or alternative. This is not so much about changing your life as enriching it. The permutations are endless and I could bore you for inches and inches with possibilities; but I’ll refrain and just give you four variations to kick you off. If the concept tickles your fancy, take your pick from these or come up with one of your own.

You don’t have to do everything in each list, of course. Just choose what appeals or what’s possible and add your own bright ideas into the mix. And let us know in the comments below what your ideal ‘year’ would be.



A Year of Food



Sample as many unfamiliar types of cuisine as you can during the year

Try out one new recipe each week

Take a cookery class of some kind

Make ‘foodie’ birthday presents for friends and family

Forage for wild food

Eat out once a week/month at a different restaurant each time

Shop at farmers’ markets or in small, local stores

Explore specialist foods available only by mail order

Go on a gourmet tasting holiday

Take out a food magazine subscription

Volunteer to deliver meals-on-wheels

Back a campaign for better quality food

Throw a food-tasting event for charity

Grow some of your own grub

A Local Year



Make frequent detours to drive down roads you’ve never driven down before

Read up on local history

Patronise local events

Shop in your own neighbourhood

Visit all the places strangers would visit if they came to your neck-of-the-woods

Eat locally-grown food

Set up or join a community group of some kind

Become an avid reader of the local newspaper

Take photographs and compile a record of a year in your village/town/city

Sign up to your local Freecycle group

A Year of Nature



Create a wild garden

Learn to identify birdsong

Go on a wildflower walk

Keep hens

Eat wild greens, pick berries, bottle elderflower cordial or sloe gin

Feed the birds

Keep a nature journal to record your patch of earth at different times of the year

Learn to recognise local animal tracks and dwellings

Let nature inspire your current creative expression

Create a nature table in a corner of your home

An English Year (substitute the country in which you live or have an English year regardless of where you live on the globe!)

Take weekend trips to parts of the country you don’t know

Throw a garden party

Read English novels and poetry

Visit Wimbledon, Ascot or Henley

Take afternoon tea each day

Listen to lots of Elgar and William Walton

Learn the rules of cricket (tee hee)

Celebrate not just Bonfire Night but lesser-known dates and traditions

Go to a Prom concert

Book to see a pantomime at Christmas

Visit well-known gardens or spend time tending your own

Investigate English folk music

Remember St. George’s Day

Talk incessantly about the weather

Drink lots of tea!

Faith

When I moved to America three years ago, leaving behind a life I loved, I understood that sometimes you have to let go of the good in order to experience the even better. Which can be hard when the even better isn’t immediately obvious. And you have to trust with blind faith that it’s there at all.

But if we’re willing to let go of the place we’re at and the things we’re holding onto, however good, then we create the space to move into blessing we've yet to imagine. Into the greater things that are meant for us and waiting for us if we simply choose to reach towards them and accept them.

God - the Universe - is always wanting to give us more. We choose what we settle for. For some people that means settling for the small and mundane and unsatisfactory. Other people push on until they reach a place that feels comfortable then settle there, assuming that’s as good as it gets, or afraid to rock the boat and risk losing the little they‘ve gained. But the truth is that it can always get better; there is always more. Abundance has no end. It flows lavishly and continuously.

We don’t have to settle for the dull; we can have the interesting, we can have the fabulous. We don’t have to be insignificant; we can be of consequence, we can be great. WE choose. And by continually being open to the possibility of there being more, and being prepared to release the good in order to receive the better, then we make way for the greatness, the fabulousness and the undreamt of excitement to occur.

This year join me in committing to being open to the possibility of greater things. Open to accepting wondrousness, the better yet, the unbelievable amazingness hiding around the corner. It’s there and it’s ours. All we need to do is ask; be prepared to relinquish our current experience; and move forward with open arms and open hearts, willing and ready to receive.

Out of the Wilderness

I hadn’t meant to send more music your way quite so soon; but I’ve been trying to find a way to sum up my experience of 2009, and nothing seems to say it quite so well as this piece. Despite having composed it back in early March, it still epitomises the year for me.

Again, it’s an old recording. At least, it was recorded when I first composed it. And I think if you heard me play it now, you’d get something quite different. But it is as it is. And for me, this piece and its title say it all.

Click to listen to Out of the Wilderness. And I wish you the happiest of New Years.

P.S.  New year, new look!  The blog will be getting a makeover in the next couple of days.  And changing its name!  Dixon Hill Doings will become Dixon Hill Diary.  I'd be grateful if those of you who link to this site from whatever source could make the alteration.  Thank you!

The Shepherds' Journey

So they came, dressed as shepherds. The children, held back by the weather last week, finally made it to the farm with their parents for The Shepherds’ Journey.

We began in the barn. One group of children made cranberry hearts; the other studded oranges with cloves. Then, gifts in hand, we stood in the softly lit space, surrounded by sheep and goats and rabbits and ferrets and guinea pigs, and heard welly-clad angels tell the beginning of the Christmas story.

Then it was out into the bitterly cold, clear, still night. Lanterns in hand, we crunched down the hillside in the snow, the path ahead marked out by a chain of glowing tea lights nestled in the ever-useful jam jars. Every so often we paused to hear poems about the Biblical shepherds or the next instalment of the story itself.

After trekking past a couple of fields and through a small copse, we finally came upon the stable, lit by a shining star. And there inside, very nearly frozen to death, Mary and Joseph and, in the manger, the baby.

The angel who writes this blog had planned on playing the harp in true angelic fashion, but that plan hadn’t worked out. So it was to the mellow strains of a flute that we all sang Away in a Manger; then hung our hearts and oranges on the tree outside the stable for the baby to see.

A quick peep through the window or, for the braver, a visit inside; then we were scrambling back up the snowy slope, through the sheep field and towards the barn, where hot soup and mince pies, hot chocolate and jam tarts awaited. Then presents, of course, for this was Christmas - hung on the tree in hessian bags adorned with hearts for the girls or stars for the boys.

Finally we tumbled back out into the wintry night, the lure of hot baths and warm fires calling us home. The Shepherds’ Journey complete.