May day
Apple blossom on an espalier James Greive
In all of these conversations about cultural appropriation and annexation of indigenous expertise and knowledge, my first thought is how awful. My second is an anxious review of my thoughts and deeds in the spirit of doing better and acknowledging my internalised racism and my enmeshment in systemic nets of bigotry.
The third thought, and I don’t know what it means that I think it is, as a white British, rural dwelling individual, what are my inherited cultural practices? (Please please note, this is not the same as me claiming that I represent any form of indigenous community in the sense of the far right meaning of that. I acknowledge the inherent privilege of being white and generally normative within the society that I inhabit, and I very much benefit from the current social inequalities in terms of access to resources.)
If my kind stopped appropriating other people’s, what actually would be left? You only have to spend twenty minutes researching permaculture before that gets problematic (I think problematic might be one of the most useful words ever uttered; it says so much). Similarly, many of the names of flowers, their origin and journey to the UK show how seriously we need to make reparation to those who suffered for our, now abundant, horticultural choices.
Even biodynamics is not untouched by such wider political and social taints. I flinch whenever I read how Steiner was a racist, and learning that much of his philosophy was based on his absolute conviction of reincarnation makes me want to throw the whole lot up in the air. My attraction to biodynamics is a result of an inherent human need for a framework with which to understand ourselves, our environment, and the relationship between. Why am I trying to borrow a long-dead Austrian clairvoyant’s model of the world? Why don’t I have a model of my own? Why don’t we?
I don’t know the answer to this, I truly don’t. I wonder if it is because of how the Industrial Revolution exploded across the world from the cities of England. They were that epicentre of the big bang that rolled and rolled, leaving almost no place untouched or unaffected. Maybe that shattered our relationship with the land so decisively and comprehensively that we have been scrabbling around for that connection and that knowledge ever since. We appropriate methods and means from other cultures, like learning a second language, and it doesn’t quite fit. The language loses something in the borrowing, and the words do not express what we need it to.
An aside. I understand the absolute magic of Korean Natural Farming, and oh my goodness, do I buy into the need to support the microbiome of the soil and promote its diversity. But buying brown rice to ferment to them inoculate my very far from Korean ground just seems wrong. But if there is a way to create LAB (Lactic Acid Bacteria or Lacto Bacillus) using material that I have easily to hand and is indigenous to my Somerset growing environment, I do not know what it is, and no one else seems to know either.
This is so utterly ridiculous. This post was meant to be literally a gallery of what is out now. Why has it got so out of hand? Beltane. That’s why.
Beltane is 1 May, or when the Hawthorn (May) is out. The hawthorn is out and I wanted to tell you about it, but can I use the word Beltane? I am not a pagan, nor am I Celtic. The only clue I have to my roots at all is that my mother’s maiden name is Salkeld, meaning Salix on the Keld, or willow on the river. Salkelds come from the north east, and are likely to have been Viking in origin. I genuinely cannot work out if using the word is a recognition of the wider context of the UK and my own culture or just a cheap and dreadful affectation, like a celtic tattoo, that marks me out as having no sensitivity at all.
Problematic, in a word.
However, the hawthorn is finally out and that does mean the run of cold nights is over here. (Put away your bedsocks and winter coats, but not your waterproofs.) Every day there is something new and I am already planning next week’s post because there are so many things that are just on the cusp of flowering. The darkest lilac, ‘Charles Joly’, has been looking wonderful for a while and I think this will be its moment to unfurl. But that is next week. Here is what is out this week…
The fritallaria are Fritillaria Elwesii, although they are very pale and I do wonder if I was sent Fritillaria Acmopetala bulbs by mistake. The tulip is the glorious Belle Epoque. The bluebells are at their peak, and the pip fruit blossom (all the apples, plus crab apples) are now in full bloom.
