Alternative Wheel: Other seasonal cycle stories

When this column started, it was all about exploring different ways of thinking about the wheel of the year, reflecting on aspects of the natural world to provide Pagans alternatives to the usual solar stories. It's still very much an alternative wheel, but there's a developing emphasis on what we can celebrate as the seasons turn. Faced with environmental crisis, and an uncertain future, celebration is a powerful soul restoring antidote that will help us all keep going, stay hopeful and dream up better ways of being.

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Celebrating Tree Flowers

Early spring brings the blossom – blackthorn, cherry, and other fruit trees. Suddenly, hedges and gardens erupt with scent and blossom, and it’s a sure sign that winter is behind and sunnier days are coming.

One of the great joys of seeing wild fruit trees in bloom is the promise of wild fruit later in the year. What you can see in the photos, are wild plum flowers. The photos in this blog are mine – I’ve recently become acquainted with a camera, so these are very much ‘learner shots’ but enough to give the idea... The flowers are on a wild plum tree that grows beside a cycle path. The cycle path in question used to be a railway line so I wonder if the plum trees (there are three) started life as stones thrown from a train.

The plums themselves are small, and tart, but entirely edible, and picking one when walking past is always a delight. Flowers, as well as being a joy in their own right, speak of the harvest to come, and it’s often helpful to be reminded of good things ahead.

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Of course the temptation can be to cut flower-bearing twigs to decorate the home, or the altar, or to take somewhere else as offerings. They’re so alive, so pretty, so joyful after the long gloom of winter. To cut the flowers now is to remove all hope of future fruit, and I think there’s an important lesson to be taken from that. We can’t have everything, and often the most effective way to enjoy something is by leaving it where it is. Take experiences, take photographs, take memories...

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Nimue Brown is the author of Druidry and Meditation, Druidry and the Ancestors. Pagan Dreaming, When a Pagan Prays and Spirituality without Structure. She also writes the graphic novel series Hopeless Maine, and other speculative fiction. OBOD trained, but a tad feral, she is particularly interested in Bardic Druidry and green living.

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