We had a wonderful day tending our sapling trees in our Children's Forest adjacent to Sawpit Woods this February.
Together we mulched around the bottoms of the trees, removing grasses, covering with cardboard and then tree chippings. There was lots of digging and transporting chippings, as well as sliding down the pile at the top of the hill!
We unearthed, rejuvenated and restored our Children's Forest fire place, finding the local sandstones we found a few years ago on the land, and placing them to signal the compass bearing points and orientation of the Earth. We discovered our Children's Forest site is 60m above sea level.
We sang a blessing to the trees:
We send a blessing to the trees,
With golden sunshine through your leaves,
May rain fall down and fair winds blow,
That ancient forests here may grow.
A bumble bee emerged from its underground wintering, so we sang a song of spring and created some bumble bees of our own from the alder cones in the woodland.
Hearts were created and woven with lime whips and other creative sculptures emerged. Fresh alder was peeled and whittled and the hammock was swung in as we cooked tiny fairy sized pancakes. As the rain fell we played a game of 1,2,3, change tree and enjoyed the freedom to play, laugh, talk, climb and explore together.
With a moment of quiet reflection and imagining , connecting to the seasonal time of Ibolc, people shared a thought or a line which we collated and read as a poem at the end of our day together.
A massive thanks to all the brilliant people of all ages who came and shared their time to connect with and nurture the space. May we see you all again sometime soon in the wonderful woods!