Tag: winter aconites

God’s Pockets!

So, the other day, I rounded up all the dirty washing to go in the machine with care and began the long walk to the kitchen, head full of a million jobs needing done and a million things I’d rather be doing. As I turned into the kitchen, a sock and a hankie fell to the floor. So what? Just that doing chores while encased in what I grumpily call leg-irons to heal a busted knee takes five times as long as it should, and any unsought-for bending and lifting caused by careless dropping of items is somewhat unwelcome.

“God’s…..” I began to bellow, but instead of one of my usual mildly blasphemous oaths such as Godstrewth! or God Almighty! or even Ye Gods it doth amaze me! – out of my mouth came the word ”pockets!”

Crisis over, washing in, I began to ponder where in heaven or earth “pockets” had come from. I wasn’t thinking about pockets. I’m not aware of any alliterative alternative which I might have been intending to cuss with. But, somehow, I liked the sound of God’s Pockets, and fancied that if there were such a thing, they would be something quite nice.

Several nicknames for places and things have their ownership attributed to God. God’s Acre, for the churchyard. God’s own County, for Yorkshire (in England) or Perthshire (in Scotland), much squabbled over. Rather more are named for the Devil. What could God’s Pockets be a nickname for? And then again, which god? I mithered on, through the morning chores.

Pockets, to begin with, contain things that are useful, important, or maybe precious. The word implies a fairly enclosed, secret place, so sometimes, but not necessarily, the pockets of a garment. A source of riches, perhaps? Gold?

 “What has it got in its pocketses?” asked Gollum of Bilbo Baggins. A cursed golden ring of power?

Human gods have been many, and varied, and presumably, their pockets would also have very varied things in them….. If it were the wandering Norse god Woden, the pockets might be literal, and contain a water bottle, a tinder box, spare pants… the things essential to survival as a tramp with an ashen staff.  If it were one of the deified Roman emperors, God’s pockets could contain anything from vials of poison (Nero) to a tablet of half inscribed meditations (Marcus Aurelius). If the god in question was non-human – the sun perhaps – God’s Pockets would surely be all the secret and calculated places where rays of sunlight lit up the secrets of the seasons. Maes Howe in Orkney would be the archetypal God’s Pocket to the human sun-worshipper.

But wasn’t this getting a bit too human-centric? What about the gods of other species? For my kittens, God’s Pockets would be those irresistible-to-cats snacks which hide intoxicating and addictive catnip inside a crunchy coat. The god in question would be me, dishing them out frugally.  For the goldfinches in my garden, they would be the outer casings of seed heads that had to be penetrated to find the golden seeds. The image of something golden and of great worth kept repeating in my head, and led me to honey, which led me to bees…..

And then I had it. What was precious to bees? What was usually (if not always) golden? Pollen, the baby bees’ protein source, found in flowers. What flowers are like pockets, golden themselves, and a radiant blessing from the god of the bees in January and February, when the queen bee starts to lay eggs, young larvae need to be fed, and sources of pollen are thin on the ground?

I wandered out into the garden. It was a mild day, and the sun was shining. The sun is the measure and compass of the life of a bee. It rules their time of waking, by caressing the hive entrance with light. It spurs them to life and flight, by warming their thoracic muscles. The sun guides them to sources of food. Bees communicate the distance and direction of a good pollen or nectar source to the rest of the colony by a dance which reveals an accurate angle from the sun along which to head when leaving the hive. All their foraging time they will be engaged with where the sun is. Fly this way, says the sun, for that many metres, and you will be rewarded with gold from my pockets!

On this day, some of the overwintered bees in my hive were flying, tentatively. And sure enough, I found Winter Aconites – Eranthus hyemalis – coming up above ground and uncurling their flower stalks, powered by and dependent on energy from that same sun. Bright golden balls of flowers, opening shyly to reveal the treasure inside – yellow pollen, a magnet for the early bees and their growing sisters, hungry in the comb and waiting for spring.

For surely, if I were a honeybee, the sun would be an omnipotent god, whose greatest gifts would be the nurturing flowers of late winter, and which I’d be pleased to call God’s Pockets.

Here comes the Sun

The mute swans stand in the middle of Stare Dam loch, looking at their feet in puzzlement, as meltwater sluices over them. They bend round to look beseechingly at me as I stand by the wooden jetty, as if to ask why this strange divinity has been bestowed on them, and why they cannot swim in water as usual. Then with determination they undertake a rather slippery swan take-off from whatever the surface of the loch is, and wheel around the trees in the reassuring sky.

The sun roars through into the morning like a rocket. Speed of light. It burnishes the bare trees and their wavering reflections in the loch, shrieks and shatters the shards of once indomitable ice. Water trickles unseen, seeps from frozen ground, sings in quiet rivulets.

An old song burrows its way into my head, and will not leave. The ice is slowly melting. I stand, eyes closed to the sun, and feel the breeze that no longer lacerates with coldness. I hear the whirring of the bemused swans, the first territorial song-stakes of the woodland birds. It seems like years since it’s been here.

Back at the house, the speculating rooks are at home, sitting in their parliament in the sycamore and debating which of last year’s nests have foundations sufficiently stable to re-use. Twigs start dropping.  I think there are more rook members than last year.

Not all of the calamities and sorrows of the winter will disappear with the snow. But some will diminish, I think, and some will be easier to face. The snow has retreated from bits of lawn. The winter aconites open, and dazzle.