Sunday 24th November - Stir up Sunday

 Next Sunday will be the First Sunday in Advent, and coincidentally the 1st December. One of those rare years when the beginning of Advent and the beginning of Advent calendars coincide. 

Traditionally called Stir up Sunday because of the prayer book collect for the day,

'Stir up, O Lord, we beseech you, the wills of thy people...'

But we didn't follow the tradition of making the Christmas pudding. After last night's blustery winds we were 'stirred up' into action to deal with the consequences in the garden.

The first casualty was a pot, planted with bulbs and primulas, now looking sad and dishevelled after a garden wasted bin fell across it. We've moved both to safer places.

But, why have we got a greenhouse in the kitchen?

We went round the side of the house and found the greenhouse tipped on its side, in spite of being weighted down with half a dozen bricks. We did our best to rescue the contents, and set about finding a more sheltered place for it. Meanwhile we dumped the greenhouse in the kitchen to stop it blowing  away.

The greenhouse sits on what's left of an old wooden table, and as you can see a bit of work was needed as the wood is now beyond rotten.

Everything is back now, and I've re-potted the plants and put them back. Fingers crossed it survives tonight. 

We've got off very lightly; Say a prayer for some friends in the next village; the flat roof has lifted off from their son's bedroom, and the forecast is rain and wind all night. I hope they've managed to get a tarpaulin of some kind over it until someone comes tomorrow lunchtime. 

Who remembers the Great Storm of 1987? The wind was battering ferociously at the bay window in our bedroom all night, We woke up to find all the glass from our neighbour's greenhouse had blown into our garden!

I love this Ted Hughes poem;

Wind

This house has been far out at sea all night,
The woods crashing through darkness, the booming hills,
Winds stampeding the fields under the window
Floundering black astride and blinding wet

Till day rose; then under an orange sky
The hills had new places, and wind wielded
Blade-light, luminous black and emerald,
Flexing like the lens of a mad eye.

At noon I scaled along the house-side as far as
The coal-house door. Once I looked up -
Through the brunt wind that dented the balls of my eyes
The tent of the hills drummed and strained its guyrope,

The fields quivering, the skyline a grimace,
At any second to bang and vanish with a flap;
The wind flung a magpie away and a black-
Back gull bent like an iron bar slowly. The house

Rang like some fine green goblet in the note
That any second would shatter it. Now deep
In chairs, in front of the great fire, we grip
Our hearts and cannot entertain book, thought,

Or each other. We watch the fire blazing,
And feel the roots of the house move, but sit on,
Seeing the window tremble to come in,
Hearing the stones cry out under the horizons.