You’d think that digging a trench all around your house in order to insulate the foundations would be a simple, self-contained task. All it needs is a bit of persistence and a spade. Well, as it turns out, it’s a bit more complicated.
Because, of course, once you get digging, you come across all sorts of things that cross the boundary of the building at about the level of the foundations. Like waste pipes, and drain pipes from the roof.
And then you realise that, far from being a self-contained task, you have to think about where all those pipes are going and what the final design for the whole network is going to be. Which is why you need to think about the design of your bathrooms, that aren’t going to be built for another year or so.
The original inspection chamber and waste pipe by the patio window.
The main waste pipe for the toilets in the house comes out of the foundations under the patio doors at an angle that isn’t quite 45 degrees. From there, it leads into a brick built inspection chamber. If we weren’t living in the house, we could just demolish that, forget about the old pipe, and just plan for the straight pipe that will come from further along the wall. But we are going to need that old waste pipe for a while.
So we are replacing the brick built inspection chamber with a new plastic one. They are compact, easy to deal with, and quick to install.
But of course that is not the end of the story. The waste pipe from the new downstairs toilet has already been installed. It goes to another inspection chamber, closer to the front of the house, where it joins with the waste pipe from beneath the patio window.
The pipe for the downstairs loo was never quite right. It always had too much of a drop to it, which waste pipes aren’t supposed to have. They need to be either close to horizontal, or completely vertical. Anything in between won’t quite work.
Alex is, therefore, digging out the second inspection chamber as well, so he can turn it slightly, which will make the run along the wall straighter and will give him the opportunity to improve the position of the pipe from the downstairs loo.
On top of that, of course, we need to also consider down pipes from the gutters, and where the soak-aways for those are going to go. Nothing is ever simple.
At long last, things are happening that feel like real progress in our renovation project. We are getting ready for the first stage of installing our insulation.
The insulation is everything. We are hoping that the insulation we intend to install is going to keep us warm for most of the year, with very little requirement for active heating. So we are trying to do it right.
After a lot of digging, we did find the lead water pipe and a plastic gas pipe.
The first stage is to dig down by the foundations and insulating them with a foam substance called Frothpak. It will provide the bottom edge of our air tight envelope, making a bridge between the sheets of external wall insulation and the polystyrene that is going underneath our concrete floors.
While we are digging, we are also levelling the ground for a path all around the house. This will make access easier, and keep plants away from the rather fragile external wall insulation.
In the meantime, we also have to think about installing waste pipes for the new bathrooms, finding the mains water pipe as it enters the house, and constructing foundations for our balcony.
So there is lots of digging to be done before we even think about playing with the Frothpak. But at last we’re laying the foundations of our project.
## In this issue
– Westacre’s latest
– Meditation of life arising
– The Pathway of Love
– What you can do
## Westacre’s latest
Beltane blessings to you all. May your Summer be filled with joy and abundance. And a decent amount of warm sunshine.
It’s certainly started well. I joined my spiritual family for a few intense days of journeying and celebration in the woods. The photos are now being shared on our Facebook group, and they are stunning. The world we make as a community is a completely different reality. It looks like we were lost in Fairy for a few days.
And yet those connections are so real. They sustain us through the trials of everyday reality. And they inspire me to change.
I have this tendency to moan inwardly. I came home from that Beltane celebration to this amazing life that I have chosen for myself. This adventure of living in harmony with the Earth and in service to the magic of connection. But I noticed that, in contrast to the blissful days spent in the woods, I was thinking unhappy thoughts.
We were putting the final touches on the raised vegetable bed. We’ve lined it with geotextile, which will let moisture through but not soil, and filled the edges of that with rubble. In order to get the rubble in the right place, I had to climb into the veg bed using a ladder and then manually move the bits of brick around. My mind was moaning incessantly about how I don’t like climbing ladders. About how I would rather be doing something else. About how I wasn’t going to have any time to do my spiritual practice, …
And then I realised that I could choose different thoughts. I could continue the spirit of celebration I had just come home from. I could just be in the moment and celebrate the fact that Alex and I are doing this amazing work together. We have chosen a life for ourselves and we are living it. What is there to moan about?
Thing is, I actually enjoy the physical work. It’s very fulfilling. Every day we can point at something and say: we did this. And as we do, our dream becomes manifest.
We’re now one huge raised vegetable bed richer. All we need to do is to gradually fill it with soil and then start planting things in it. And isn’t that a great achievement?
Wishing you a Summer full of great achievements and manifestations of dreams.
Hilde
## Meditation: Life Arising
The world is so very green right now. Everything is celebrating the longer, warmer days with rich abundance of leaf and flower. Every plant and animal is expressing its deepest self, reaching for the full potential of its life.
We can use the rising energy of the season to strengthen our own souls and manifest our dreams. This meditation will help.
Go to your favourite meditation spot and settle yourself. Pay attention to your breathing without trying to alter it in any way. Just be with how your breath is in this moment.
With your out breath, allow your body to relax into the ground beneath you. Do this until you feel settled and relaxed.
Now you find yourself standing by the entrance to a cave. There is warm sunshine on your back, but the air in the cave before you is cool and dark. Ask for permission to enter. When you feel that you are welcome, enter the cave and go into the darkness as far as you dare. There sit down and let yourself adjust to the darkness.
After your senses have adjusted, you may find that the dark isn’t so dark after all. Ask yourself if it would be OK to go a bit further, a bit deeper into the cave. If it feels OK, walk further in, as far as you dare. Sit down again and let yourself settle.
Ask yourself one more time if it would be OK to go further in. It’s fine if you’d rather not. But if the darkness calls you deeper, go as far as you dare.
Here, in the deep darkness, you are surrounded by the Earth. Let yourself deeply perceive the solid Earth and the darkness around you. Touch the rocks you are sitting on and the walls around, if you can reach. Feel their cool solidity. Breathe in the darkness. Let yourself become part of it. Smell the atmosphere of the cave. See what you can see when your eyes are bereft of light. Be with the darkness for as long as you like.
In that darkness, you begin to feel the great power of the Earth. You wrap yourself in its solid strength. Allow that great life-giving power to enter you. Let it fill you.
The power becomes to great for you to contain, and it begins to break open your edges. You realise that with the power of the Earth you can be much bigger than you usually allow yourself to be. Allow your edges to crack and let the power reach up through the Earth.
Soon, you feel the Earth warm as it is kissed by the Sun above. You reach for more of that warmth. The power inside you, the power of the Earth’s dark potential, reaches up further and further until you meet the light.
Let the power inside you gently unfurl to that light.
After a while, clouds cover the Sun and it begins to rain. Drink in the blessings of the water. Feel how the water combines with the Earth to feed and refresh you. You gain the strength to reach higher, to unfurl more fully.
You are now growing leaves. They reach into the Air and gain strength from there as well. You breathe in particles that help you grow, and breathe out fresh, clear oxygen. Stay with that cycle of breathing as it helps you to grow more.
When the Sun appears again, you notice that you have grown a bud. This bud holds the full potential of what you can be. Drink in the warm sunlight and surrender into its radiance. Soon, your bud opens and you flower.
You are now a flower growing in the green of May. You are open to Life and its abundance. Feel what it is like to be so truly alive. Stay there for as long as you like.
When you feel ready to return, feel that gorgeous flower one last time. Sense your leaves stretched to the sky. Feel the strength of your stem. And slowly allow your awareness to sink to your roots.
Follow your roots down into the Earth to the place where you are sitting in the dark of the cave. Fully enter your body and feel your usual edges. Breathe in the power you have received from the Elements and the Life force.
When you feel complete, stand up and turn around. There is a faint glow of light from the mouth of the cave. Carefully find your way back.
When you emerge into the light, remember how much strength is available to you. Give your thanks to all those how helped you and return to your own body, sitting in your meditation space.
Take your time to gently start moving. If you feel a little spaced, make sure you eat and drink something. Do something practical towards the realisation of your dreams.
And may the blessings of the Green Summer be with you.
## The Pathway of Love
Don’t you just love it? All this vibrant green? This time of year when everything is young and full of promise?
I would encourage you to go with that love. Act on it. Revel in it. You can even sing the praises of the green and the warming sunshine to your colleagues at the office this time of year, and nobody will think you’re crazy. Take the opportunity. Let the small animal of your body love what it loves, as Mary Oliver puts it.
That love for the natural world does so much for us. For starters, it makes us happy. Just being outside among green and living things is proven to lift anxiety and depression. All you have to do is spend a little time.
It’s good for our bodies, too. We tend to move around more when we’re outside. The fresh oxygen and other chemicals plants exude are actively good for us. They keep us healthy in general, and help our healing when we’re ill.
Our love for the natural world we belong to also heals our souls. The sheer joy of spending time outside with that vibrant green is great healing for the parts of ourselves that are wounded by living in this crazy society. We are all hurt by a culture that puts money before any other consideration. Celebrating the simple beauty of what is true and alive is a great antidote. It feeds us and makes us stronger.
And when we have loved that deeply, and celebrated that joyfully, we will naturally want to defend this miracle of life. Loving what we love is our deepest motivation.
Do please go outside and spend some time in that vibrant aliveness of the May. Do the meditation of Life Arising. And if you fancy, try the exercise from the link below. It’s a very simple way to find your connection with the natural world.
http://www.ecopsych.com/naturelov30thank.html The link is quite old, and I had to scroll down to find the exercise. But it is so worth it, especially if you click through to the second page.
## What you can do
You can keep in touch with all of Westacre’s news and progress on Facebook and Twitter.
We are about to start insulating the foundations of the house, which requires a lot of digging. Should you fancy getting stuck in, or doing some weeding or lawn mowing, we could always do with an extra pair of hands.
You can find all our contact details at http://www.westacre.org.uk/contact/
At long last, the construction of our raised vegetable bed is finished. It has been quite a process. It’s looking very smart, and we are confident that it will stand up to the pressure of the large volume of earth we are putting into it.
We built this bed for a number of reasons:
1. We needed a place to grow vegetables in the sunniest part of our property.
The finished bed
2. Delicate vegetables needed to be grown closer to the house, so we can keep an eye on them.
3. We need somewhere to put the earth that we’re digging out in order to insulate the foundations of the house.
The solution is a large, tall vegetable bed by the south wall of the house.
We started the process back in November, digging and concreting in the foundations. The wet winter turned those into a moat, and we had to wait for the dryer spring to continue with the breeze block and brick base.
Last week, we built the wooden superstructure out of 6×4 pieces of pine. They are held together with vertical dowels made out of steel reinforcement bars. This is how we did it:
1. Cut dowels out of rebar.
Sparks flying
We cut 10 cm pieces with a large angle grinder. This process stretches the metal and makes sharp flanges on the ends of the dowels. We filed those off with the small angle grinder. The sparks made this quite a fun job.
2. Cut the wood to size.
We cut the wood as we went along, layer by layer. Alex had a very detailed plan of how the bits of wood were going to fit together. We tried cutting them by hand, but that would have been too tiring and time consuming. The table saw is not really suited for the job, as that is designed to cut wood along its length. In the end the mitre saw did us quite nicely, though we had to turn the planks for a double cut.
3. Drill holes into the previous layer.
Getting taller
We drilled 5 cm holes into the brick for the dowels to fit into. A squirt of glue holds them in securely and prevents water from getting into the holes. When the dowels were inserted, we balanced the pieces of wood on top and gave them a good bash with a lump hammer. This marked the wood so we knew where to drill the holes. Sometimes, when we met a short dowel, we needed to mark the place with a sharpie.
4. Fit it together.
We dabbed each hole with a bit of wood preserving paint. Then we married up holes and dowels and hammered the planks down. When the dowels didn’t quite hit the right spot, a few taps with a hammer soon sorted that out. The pine is quite soft, so there is a bit of flexibility.
5. Corners.
The corners are, of course, quite crucial to the construction. We added a dowel in every corner, stretched some metal tape across them, and nailed them together with 6 in nails. In most places, a spiky metal crown sits around the dowels to give extra grip between the planks of wood.
6. Reinforcements.
As we are filling this construction with several cubic metres of soil, it needed some extra rigidity. Especially the wood on the long side flexed quite a a lot at first. We used some of our old floor joists and attached them to the inside along the length of the planks. A piece of OSB was then nailed to those. The gap in between is filled with rubble for drainage.
7. Drainage.
Rubble wrapped in geotextile
Such a big lump of soil also needs some good drainage. This is provided by rubble in a trench around the inside of the brick wall. We stapled geotextile to the inside of the wooden structure, running into the trench. This was then filled with rubble and wrapped around it. Geotextile lets through water but not soil. This should keep the rubble free from grit for a long time, and maintain good drainage. An added benefit is that the rubble helps spread the pressure of the soil inside the bed.
8. Fill it with soil.
As we dig out a path around the house and a trench for our insulation down to the foundations, we will have lots of soil to put in the veg bed. If we fill the smaller piers first, we may be able to plant something in those this year. I’m thinking a salad crop would be great.
Why are we insulating our foundations? Well, that’s another story. Watch this space!
## In this issue
– Westacre’s latest
– Interview with Barry Patterson
– Book review: Letting in the Wild Edge by Glennie Kindred
– What you can do to help Westacre
## Westacre’s latest
The last three weeks have been quite an adventure. I visited my mother in Belgium, and since I came back life has taken off big time. So much so that this Newsletter is a few days later than planned.
For a few days after I got back, we were working hard on the renovation project. We have been taking the downstairs rooms back to the bare bones, and in places those bare bones needed some extra support. We added some bricks and mortar in the holes where the floor joists used to be, and supported the chimneys.
A few days later, we took the caravan to Pengraig farm in South Wales, to help set up the very first Morrigan Encampment with The Warrior’s Call. Alex had an epic struggle with the Land Rover’s windscreen wipers, but he eventually managed to fix them. We got to Pengraig a day later than we would have hoped, and dived straight into the job of setting up facilities for the campers.
Alex helped with the practicalities, including many trips off site as he was the only one with a car. Hilde kept the crew fed and watered. And after just a couple of intense days, tents started to appear and the Morrigan Encampment had started.
It was a bit of an experiment. We were attempting to marry political activism with pagan spirituality. The Warrior’s Call team are members of White Horse Camps, a community of Druids with long experience of community building. We used White Horse Camp’s tried and tested ways to bring people together for a common course.
We had an amazing weekend. A few dozen people turned up to learn together how to face the threat of fracking in their own communities. They found new friendships and mutual support surprisingly easily in those three days. It seemed magical, and perhaps it was.
We came back to Westacre on Sunday, and then dove straight into an intense week of building work. The brick laying for the raised vegetable bed by our south facing wall is finally finished. It took several days of brick scrubbing, mortar mixing, tool cleaning and painstaking brick laying, which for a first-time brickie is pretty slow going.
But now it’s done, and only the wooden superstructure needs to go on. Then we will have a very handsome raised vegetable bed in the sunniest spot of our shady garden.
The land is burgeoning and green growth is speeding up. So is our productivity. And hopefully it will stay that way through the long days of Summer.
Blessings of vibrant life returning,
Hilde
## Interview with Barry Patterson, Buddhist, Druid, musician and professional Green Man
Barry Patterson and his wife Anne have been members of White Horse Camps for many years, and dear friends of mine for nearly as long. At those Camps, Barry is a respected voice of wisdom and spiritual insight. This respect is very much due to his dedicated practice of meditation and practical work with the spirits of nature. In this interview, he tells us more about his life, his spiritual practice, and his work.
What does a typical day in the life of Barry Patterson look like?
I’m self employed, but I don’t get very much work at this time of year & most of my paid work is at weekends anyway. So weekdays are about being creative & domestic.
Grounding myself in routine has become an important part of my practice. Establishing routine has allowed me the freedom to do everything without having to push too hard. My routine has developed organically through experiment & is flexible.
Anne & I get up, together – first ready goes down & does the cat’s breakfast & his various pills (he’s 20). We do 30-40 minutes meditation practice together, usually mantra practice which we’ve found works well for us in the morning.
I usually aim to go down the allotment by 10.00 am. The benefit of going to the allotment every day (well, every week day) even if only for half an hour is twofold: I see day to day changes & become more deeply attuned to the land & the season, plus it gets me out of the house.
Instead of saying I’m a house-husband I call myself an urban peasant. The allotments are literally just at the end of our street. I unlock the gate & I’m in a different world, full of hedges, birdsong & conversations about apples & onions. There’s an old Irish guy called Larry who’s full of knowledge & stories.
I always include some kind of spiritual practice in the garden. Even if you’re really busy, that 10 minutes makes a difference in many ways! I also always do some music practice, usually bagpipe, because it is my newest & most difficult instrument. I met some local druids last year & they said: “Oh wow, you’re the guy we hear playing the bagpipes when we walk over the railway bridge.”
My afternoon is more variable depending on what kind of jobs need doing. I know very well that as a creative practitioner I have to write, check emails, think about business & so on. I tend to alternate a bit of housework with time in the office.
I also often do more meditation practice or music practice late in the afternoon, depending upon the circumstances & this is often integrated with bread making. I make all our bread, about twice a week. I set alarms on my phone for the next stage: rising, proving, 15 mins gas mark 8, 20 mins gas mark 6.
I usually cook dinner for 7.30 – 8.00 pm. Anne and I watch one TV show, then read, internet, listen to music etc later on.
I usually go to bed about 10 when I’m at home. I may do some sitting meditation before bed, but I always see turning the light out as the beginning of a new adventure. What is consciousness? Is unconsciousness possible? I’m not so good at what is known in Tibet as “The Practice of the Night,” but I always observe the process very carefully & sometimes get to play with it.
You mention spiritual practice a lot in your daily routine, down to falling asleep at night. Can you tell us more about your practice?
For the sake of simplicity, I call myself a Buddhist & a Druid, but to be quite frank it’s my path, not someone else’s; the labels are just sometimes convenient. I could also say that I am animist & nature mystic if you like, so I will briefly comment on these four terms, as approaches to something beyond words, which I find complement one another well.
Buddhist. The bottom line: what is the nature of reality? What is my own deepest nature? I’ve been entertaining these questions as welcome guests since I was a little kid. It’s not about someone providing you with answers on which you base some kind of belief. It’s about the questions themselves demanding that you take them very seriously & very, very personally. Ever since I encountered the Dharma in my teens I have loved it’s emphasis on open hearted meditation practice – your own body, mind & sense of self become a laboratory.
I follow a Tibetan Buddhist practice called Dzogchen. We have primary & secondary practices. The primary practice is to descend to your deepest nature & live there; all the patterns that arise, arise naturally & freely. That’s liberation. Secondary practices include sounding, singing & visualisation – they are supports; only provisional, but sometimes very useful.
Druid. This is about my spiritual practice being rooted in the living presence of the land, honouring our heritage; natural, cultural, ancestral. I grew up loving the old tales & mythology & I still find them inspiring, but for me today my Paganism is more about working with the spirit of the place & the natural energies of the elements all around us.
I always say to non-druids: “We druids are very proud of our 300 year history of spiritual enquiry & experiment, mutual aid, creativity & political radicalism.” I take a folklorist stance: folk tradition always changes according to the times & the things people say about it also change according to the times. We’re still stuck with romantic fantasies about Merrye Englande which were out of date as soon as they were conceived a hundred years ago. Meanwhile back stage, there is a secret. A mysterious… Presence. That doesn’t change with the times.
Nature Mystic. What really inspires & moves me is what we modern folk call Nature. Life in all it’s glorious, messy, tangled sometimes horrific profusion. Geological layers; trees; bird-song; the ever changing weather; the sea, my own body; all have some kind of profound meaning. Not that they are just symbols, but rather each one can lead us on a merry dance, deeper & deeper into the mystery of our own experience of the Earth & the Cosmos. Beyond concepts, beyond clever ideas, beyond words; our own deepest nature, the wellspring of the world is alive & aware.
Animism. By animism I mean that we are members of a living community of persons, human & non-human. That what we are told are inanimate objects, forces of nature or lower life forms are animated subjects in their own right with their own dimension of existence; alive, aware & responsive to us. That we are held together by honour & kinship. It implies the re-enchantment of the world.
Some people are becoming propriatorial about this now; telling me that you can’t be an Animist & Buddhist for instance. Or that I am playing mix & match. I’m not practising any kind of syncretism, putting together a bit of this with a bit of that to suit. They’re just different ways of imagining the same indescribable things.
For me polytheism, monotheism, atheism, pantheism, panentheism & so on are all views. They are ways of looking at a question or a category of experience. Like software. I use them all according to the circumstances. Great Mystery doesn’t mind what kind of ideas you have about it, but it loves you when you turn to truly face its depth, wildness & vast openness, however you conceive of it.
You are also a performer. How does your work relate to your spirituality?
My performances as the Wild Man of the Woods have been going since 1991 & I have travelled all over the country to do my shows. I paint myself green & wear leaves on my head; I play music & sing songs; tell stories; talk about natural history & our heritage.
In many ways this kind of bardic work is directly inspired by my spiritual outlook & practice, but these have no explicit place in the performance as such. Mostly my audience consists of the general public at an event somewhere or the members of a school, library or club.
One of my keynotes is a quote from Keats: “Fair things pass by unheeded as the threshold brook.” I want to encourage my audience to appreciate the natural world more & as a result of that think about more ecologically sustainable behaviour. How can you get people to care about things which they don’t even know exist? So I try to be entertaining & memorable in the hope that whatever their level of engagement (which varies widely, I can tell you) they might become more attuned to the beauty, power & complexity of the natural world in their day to day lives.
I don’t promote the modern myth that what we call “The Green Man” is a coherent figure from our heritage or an ancient deity. I am happy to tell them that folk customs constantly evolve & mutate. He’s our Green Man, a sign of our times & our society.
This is part of what I tell people & that his origins are a mystery. In fact I see that as part of my brief, to invoke if nothing else, a sense of mystery & wonder rather than some kind of narrative of certainty.
I tell them: “You call me a storty teller, but let me tell you something. Some day the people of the future will tell stories about us! They will sing songs & write essays & plays about you & I, & what we did & what we didn’t do. I wonder what they will say about us?”
I wonder indeed. You can find Barry’s poetry and links to his other activities on his web site: http://www.redsandstonehill.net/
## Book Review: Letting in the Wild Edge by Glennie Kindred
The move to Westacre was always going to be a complete lifestyle change. From our postage stamp suburban back garden, we moved onto three quarters of an acre of old fruit trees, ornamental garden and vegetable patch. I knew my knowledge of growing things (both of the things that grow here and of how to encourage them) would have to expand massively.
Glennie Kindred’s book is doing a lot to help me with this. It has given me the confidence to start foraging the wild plants that are growing all around the garden and adding them to salads. After all, they are growing here for free and they contain nutritious minerals that we shouldn’t let go to waste.
The book is full of practical advice, but woven through this is a spiritual thread of kinship with and celebration of the natural world that resonates with me strongly. This is the way I’d love to live. So in the midst of our busy house renovation, I’m looking at our patch of land in a new way, with Glennie’s written encouragement.
The first part of the book has four chapters, each laying out a basis for working with nature in different contexts:
1. Out on the Land: ways of getting in touch with the land around us and the things that live there. There are suggestions for pilgrimage, spiritual practice, and foraging.
2. The Wild Gardener: how to bring wild plants into your garden space and manage them so they don’t get out of hand.
3. Kitchen Medicine: what to do with those wild plants, both for food and healing.
4. Seasonal Celebrations: how to celebrate the Wheel of the Year with your neighbours and community.
In the second part of the book, Glennie takes us through the yearly cycle, using the time around each of the eight seasonal festivals to guide us through our landscape and our garden with seasonal activities and recipes. She repeats the four themes of the first part of the book and applies them to each season.
Right now, we are On the Edge of Summer: April into May. It is the time when everything grows profusely and bursts into flower. The book explains clearly how to, for example, make flower essences from native trees, start growing wild native edibles, make flower wines and cordials, and create a temporary labyrinth for your Beltain celebrations.
This joyful book gets my fingers itching and has inspires me to learn to identify and use the wild plants in the garden. I look forward to doing much more as the seasons turn.
## What you can do
We are celebrating the gorgeous Spring weather and smiling as our fruit trees burst into flower. The damsons have already snowed down their petals onto the grass, but the pear trees are in full froth and the apples and hawthorn are about to burst into flower. What is flowering in your vicinity? Go and visit the flowers. Breathe in their scent. And smile.
You can keep in touch with all of Westacre’s news and progress on Facebook and Twitter. And should you ever fancy some weeding or lawn mowing, we could always do with an extra pair of hands.
You can find all our contact details at http://www.westacre.org.uk/contact/