Goodness knows where the impulse for today’s adventure came from! If you’ve been following my adventures, you’ll know that I don’t plan ahead, I just wait for an impulse to arise every day. When the impulses arises, I follow it. The impulse to learn some Welsh took me by surprise, but I followed the impulse and thoroughly enjoyed the experience.
In my attempt to learn some basic phrases, I stumbled across a guy called Jingle Jeff on YouTube. I thought he was fabulous – even though his show is obviously meant for toddlers, it was perfect for me!
I’ll tell you something : I was actually looking forward to an elderberry wine-making adventure. I’d found a recipe and done all the research about equipment. I was hearing reports of bumper crops in Scotland and in Northern Ireland too. I was all set.
Only thing is though, the elders on the farm are in really exposed spots and didn’t even yield enough to make a sherry-glass of wine, let alone a bottle or two.
So, for today’s adventure, I decided to make an investment for future generations, should they wish to make their own wine 🙂 . Today, I learned how to prepare elder seeds for sowing at the end of Winter. This way, my grandchildren may be able to produce something lovely from the “wine trees” that I planted for them today!
Using my “Tree Bible”, Tree Planting And Aftercare, I learned that the flesh of an elderberry is filled with chemicals which inhibit germination. So stage one of the preparation is to either let the flesh rot off (by keeping the berries in a plastic bag) or to use a blender to help the natural separation process along.
The blender method was surprisingly straight-forward. I placed the blended mix in water and this helped to separate the flesh from the seed : the seeds floated to the top and the flesh sank to the bottom. Once I had cleaned the seeds, I was ready to mix the seeds with moist sand and place them in a stone-lined pot. I covered the pot with protective mesh, as I did for the oak, beech and horse chestnut seeds. This mixing of seed with sand and then leaving outside is called “stratification”.
As Winter progresses, I’ll keep my eye on the seeds. As soon as I observe chitting or splitting of the seeds, I’ll knowing they’re ready for sowing!
Yesterday, I received an Ezine that contained a very eye-catching world cloud, and I wondered if I could create something similar! A little bit of light Googling yielded an array of free web resources, and today I tried my hand at creating a word cloud using Tagul. *
The first word cloud is me just saying “a word or two” about what I’ve gained from my 365 Days Of Adventure project so far 😛 . I enjoyed using Tagul because it was easy to use: you can change fonts, you can modify text and background colour, and you can even change the shape in which the words are contained!
I tried feeding one of my haiku poems into a fitting shape too : it’s wonderful how the essence of the thing I am describing is captured. Honey fungus is the master of proliferation – and that is really conveyed by the word cloud!
I am just going outside and may be some time.
* All images on today’s post were created at Tagul.com
Yesterday I took my dog for a walk in Breen Wood, near Ballycastle. It’s one of the few surviving ancient woodlands in Northern Ireland ; oak trees have been on this site for more than 200o years.
Many local forests (such as Portglenone) were plundered in the seventeenth century but not this one. People think that it wasn’t touched because of its association with fairies (its name means fairy palace in Irish) : if the forest was harmed, whoever cut the wood would have expected bad luck (or worse!)
The feel of Breen Wood is very special – and completely different to the feel of Portglenone Forest. It feels as old as it looks. It is dense, lush and holds a “far-away” quality to it.. almost like you just stepped behind a curtain. I also think it has its own micro climate. Autumn is not as advanced in this place – but it’s definitely creeping in.
As you’d expect, there are a lot of oak trees. In fact, I don’t think I’ve seen so many oak trees in my life! But what I didn’t expect was the proliferation of holly – it was everywhere. Not many of the holly trees were in berry, but I did find one.
Reading a bit about the holly tree, I discovered that only female trees bear fruit, and the green berries will turn red as we move closer towards Winter. I also discovered, when researching the lore of the oak tree, that the holly and the oak are locked in an eternal symbolic battle cycle. The “Oak King” symbolises the waxing year, and the “Holly King” symbolises the waning year. As the holly berries begin to turn red, heralding the arrival of the darkest months of the year, the oak sheds its acorns and prepares to sleep before the Battle Of Mid-Winter. The Oak King always wins the battle for lengthening days – and he always loses the Battle Of Mid-Summer, sacrificing himself so that life can be renewed.
Today’s haiku is about the holly tree, and you can read it here. I also read it out loud in today’s video blog.
Yesterday’s seed collection and planting adventure inspired me to write a haiku about the horse chestnut tree. As I stood underneath the tree, I noticed how its leaves look like large hands and how the casings of the conkers looked like medieval battle flails . Flails are spiky metal balls on chains, used to wield heavy blows and cleave into armour.
Because a knight could swing a flail, it could deliver a much more powerful blow than it’s cousin, the mace (and it could also reach over, and around, armour and shields).
I have tried to include the idea of the tree having hands, and being loaded with weapons, in today’s haiku. Having read that the conkers are ready for planting when the casings are just splitting open – I squeezed that information in too!
You can read today’s haiku called “Horse Chestnut” here. I also read it out loud on today’s video blog.
Wow! What a fabulous adventure I’ve had today 🙂 . I managed to collect some beech nuts, acorns and conkers; I used the sink-float viability test* for my beech seeds (with surprising results!); and I learned how to plant these seeds too.
I used Tree Planting And Aftercare as my reference source : it taught me how to plant directly into pots. I used a traditional deep sowing technique for the acorns (to protect them from mice and birds) and regular sowing techniques for beech seeds and horse chestnut fruit. I forgot to mention in my video that the protective top layer of compost and “hidden” gauze marker get removed in Spring for the acorns.
The germination rate for beech is about 60%. It’s about 80% for oak and chestnut. With my seeds offered optimal conditions, I’m hoping for an exciting Spring!
*After I planted the seeds, I also learned that this viability test can be used with acorns and conkers.
After mastering the art of the merge tag yesterday (which allowed me to create the illusion of an embedded video in my newsletter), I was on a bit of a high! However, things soon changed when I actually started to write my newsletter and discovered the limitations of the merge tag (I couldn’t format the newsletter in a way that looked neat and tidy).
In the past, this would definitely been the point at which I would have bailed out, exclaiming things like “I knew it was too good to be true” and “Is it too early for wine?” 😛 It was very different today though. With my new “This feels like play” vibe going on, I just played my way right out of the “problem”.
I worked out that I could copy the image generated by the merge tag (which looks like a real live YouTube screen – it’s the image I’m using for this blog post), re-size it and then insert with a link instead. Now everything looks neat and tidy AND the illusion is maintained (it still looks like an embedded video).
The conclusion I’m coming to is this : my creative adventures are bearing fruits in the most unexpected fields. It seems like it’s a lot easier for me to generate options, alternatives and new ideas. If one idea doesn’t work, I just generate a new one. How cool is that? (Even cooler, I’m beginning to trust in an inexhaustible supply of alternative options!)
Oh – and if you want to see the product of my endeavours (I’m rather proud of my wee video illusion, as you can probably tell), you can check out my newsletter here (just scroll down to the bottom to check out the tech 😛 ).
Sorry. I know. Hard to believe that I’m tangoing with The Tech again, but success can be seductive 😛 .
Tomorrow, I’d like to send out a newsletter to my mailing list : I’ve got a new 7-part webinar series coming up and I want to tell people about it. I thought it would be lovely to bring a bit of life to the newsletter by including a video. So, for today’s adventure I set about learning about the mysterious world of “merge tags” (these tags are used for populating things like newsletters with personalised or dynamic content. So, if I get a newsletter from someone saying Hi Jane , for example, a merge tag will have been used to make sure that my name appears after Hi!)
A little detective work, a dollop of experimentation and a generous portion of play got me a very long way with something I would have been afraid of trying in the past.
Tomorrow’s newsletter will include a video that looks like its embedded (but isn’t) – and that makes me smile 🙂 .
Sad though it may seem, I can barely contain my excitement about today’s adventure!
As you may know, I’m hosting a storytelling webinar tomorrow evening. I’ve created a series of slides to support the presentation, and I thought it would be lovely if those who came along could download a copy of the slides. But I didn’t know how to create a downloadable PDF file …. UNTIL TODAY!
So for today’s adventure, I used the WordPress help files to learn how to create a download link. And I’ve done it!
I’m absolutely certain that my technological adventures have helped me to overcome my fear of “The Tech”. Now when I’m learning about techy stuff (and trying it out), it really feels like I’m just playing. With the absence of fear, I feel ready to try out new stuff. For me, this is definitely a very good thing indeed 🙂 .
I’m super busy with work at the moment, so today’s adventure was just a “quickie” : taking the next step towards publishing my poetry collection. Today, I created an account with CreateSpace, the self-publishing arm of Amazon – my book even has its own Title ID!
Whilst this adventure might appear very small on the outside, it feels very big on the inside. In spite of some of the formatting challenges that are probably ahead of me, I’m feeling really excited!
I only have 5 more poems to write, and then I’m ready to pull everything together 🙂 .
Goodness knows where the impulse for today’s adventure came from! If you’ve been following my adventures, you’ll know that I don’t plan ahead, I just wait for an impulse to arise every day. When the impulses arises, I follow it. The impulse to learn some Welsh took me by surprise, but I followed the impulse and thoroughly enjoyed the experience.
Humans Resourced 