Same oak, same root, same muddy patch on the seat of my waterproof trousers. Forty weeks now of sitting here every Sunday for twenty minutes, counting birdsong.
Today: robin, wren, two jackdaws arguing, a buzzard mewing far off, and a thin high song I didn't know until the app named it a goldcrest, which made me unreasonably happy.
At the end I intone the awen three times, quietly, because there's a dog walker who already thinks I'm odd. I don't sit to get anything. I sit so the wood gets used to me. I think it's starting to.
Asking the hedge first
Hedge-laying season has started, which means three months of mud, hazel stakes and the good kind of sore shoulders.
Before the first cut on any new stretch, I do the same small thing: hand flat on the oldest stem, three slow Awens, and a plain request out loud to lay it well and let it grow back thicker. A splash of water from my flask at the roots and a "diolch" to the hawthorn. No robes, no audience, just me and a nosy robin.
A laid hedge isn't killed, it's renewed. The cut stems keep living and send up new growth all along the line. Every winter I'm reminded that most of the good things in my life came from something being bent, not broken.