Sunday 22 November 2015

The joy of flowers and herbs

It has been and it always is a great joy to photograph plants, which I’ve been doing for many years. With an interest in, and love for wild and cultivated flowers since I was a young girl in the Dutch countryside, I now have a large photo-archive full of flowers and plants, made in the areas I lived in or on my travels around the world.
“The wonders of nature are like new every year” author Wendel Berry* writes.   I love gardening and see the daily changes in plants, from seed to bud to blossoming to the releasing of seed again at the end of the cycle. Such a great example of life! The flowers in our gardens are grown in a natural way, without chemicals, just organic compost, manure, love and lots of appreciation. I loved living with them in my own garden at home, at the studio, and in other gardens.
With every herbal greeting card, with every little bag of herbs or seed in it we give you:
The promise of life enfolding
The joy of growing and releasing, all in perfect timing
The blessings of good health
The abundance of colour, form and fragrance
The encouragement to express your love for the Earth
The miracle of Life


   You are also all that!

Herbal cards:  greeting cards with a herbal gift: seeds or herbs for tea or bath.
The new herbal greeting card series with inside a present from the Findhorn Gardens: Six different herbal greeting cards, (15x15cm/6x6” with coloured envelop) with a cute bag of seed and herbs to grow in your garden or in pot (like nasturtium, calendula and papaver), to make yourself a tea (fennel, lady’s mantle) or to use in the bath (lavender). Wonderfully illustrated with photos and explaining story about the herb. Hand harvested in the Findhorn Gardens. With instructions.  For sale in my online shop http://www.findhornimages.webs.com

·       Life is a miracle, Wendel Berry  (2000)
© text and photo Adriana Sjan Bijman, 2015  blog 41


Friday 28 August 2015

Rain and more rain



We write the end of August. There were other deadlines to catch, health to attend to and balance to gain, so that I forgot to write a blog-story, to choose a photograph, one way or the other. Finally here it is, simple this time. But no good news, sorry.

I liked to photograph the rain, as that did not seem to stop here. From a drizzle to pouring waves. We are in a part of the world  (northern Scotland) where there is a bounty of water coming down, actually like in some parts of India and South America, where rivers are flooding this August.  I have not seen it on the news, but learned about it during my studies (world) Spanish. Like the flooding of the immense river-basin which is said to be the most polluted in the world, the Riachuelo-Matanza, situated in a densely populated and industrious region, north of the Río de la Plata in Argentina. It worries me.  In other parts of the world they suffer from drought. I think until now we have underestimated climate changes.

As Climate Central reports: “Even if the world manages to limit global warming to 2C — the target number for current climate negotiations — sea levels may still rise at least 6 meters (20 ft) above their current heights, radically reshaping the world’s coastline and affecting millions in the process.”* This is no good news.  And will we manage? The reality might even be worse than all predictions, especially for the ‘underdeveloped’ and poor areas on our planet.

And it continues to rain outside.

Blog 40, text & phtoo ©: Adriana Sjan Bijman


*Brian Kahn, 2015, Guardian Environmental Network, www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/july  

Saturday 1 August 2015

Beauty and ugliness


Hello everybody
Here some thoughts about health, both in the garden and in my body, and the congruence I see happening between these two. Although my houseplants are thriving, healthy and growing fabulously, so I‘d like to take them as my example.

‘Fear of the unknown is an essential part of the human program', Joseph Dispenza,The Way of the Traveller,(2002)

Beauty and ugliness in the garden
More than 50 strawberry plants, there are black-and redcurrant shrubs, abundant roses, lettuces, calendula, lemon balm for my tea, and many kind of herbs for the picking. I defend my food and plants against the pests who are looking for their next meal. In essence we are all doing the same thing, looking for food to live on. The snails and slugs are enjoying an abundant wet summer in my garden.  They’ve eaten all my zucchini plants (including the yellow flowers); half my beautiful lettuces; they’ve totally destroyed an immense green striped hosta plant, and all of the dahlias; they’re doing their best with my cabbages and broccoli and now the snails are heading for my strawberries.
“No!” I told them. ”You can have the cabbages, but not the strawberries. That’s my limit.” We’re not on speaking terms anymore. So I tried to stop them, using crumbled eggshells, prickly comfrey leaves, with copper anti-slug tape and I even bought them beer. (As a coeliac, I don’t drink beer). I think they’re ugly. I wouldn’t mind seeing them drown themselves drunk in the cans with beer I placed at several strategic places. 
I still have quite some processing to do before I can be at peace with them, before I can see their beauty.

Challenges of beauty and ugliness in the human body
Like my garden, my beautiful, slim, 51 kg, flexible, strong body has its own ugly side to face, invisible to others. For years I’ve been struggling with the untreated consequences of coeliac disease. I now have it quite well under control and am at peace with it, but two months ago the right side of my body went numb. Although it still functioned normally, it is as if it was only partly present. At the same time red spots started to appear on my chest. Neither I, the doctors and nor the hospitals have any idea what is going on. I’m a guinea pig, receiving one cream and test after the other, even antibiotics, all without result; a biopsy, a lumbar puncture, an MRI brain scan; bioresonance sessions, homeopathic and Bach remedies, a thorough clean of my new house after the discovery of the fungus Aspergillus. After two month my illness is still a mystery, as both the spots and the numbness are not only not improving, but getting worse, with severe dizziness, causing me to faint in the street last week.
During good moments I am in peace with it. During other moments, the worry and the fear set in. Then I start imagining, like Don Quixote, my own dragons where there might only just be windmills. Time to face the dragons and maintain the windmills. 

No beauty without learning about ugliness, no love without getting to tackle fear.

Blog 39, July 2015, © text and photos: Adriana Sjan Bijman

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Friday 19 June 2015

Signs of Summer

Peonies in my garden, June 2015



Signs of summer. Well, it is June and I still have the heating on, so that’s not such a good sign. But in my garden! The daily changes in the plants are the signs of summer for me. Take the strawberry plants: from a delicate white flower to a little ball in its centre, to slowly growing into a real recognisable strawberry fruit, although still yellowish. Is that not a little miracle in itself?  To see the bright yellow flowers appear on the zucchini, the swelling of the blackberries, the pink and lilac roses… and as a highlight to see the many peonies open and be present in all their majesty. I love it! 

Signs of summer

Slowly appearing in the garden
Sensual
Radiant red
Ravishing Titian red
Rebellious red
Beetroot, blood and radishes,
Nevertheless sweet, as strawberries
Slowly appearing in the garden
With generosity, like the smile of a lover.
And a longing heart
Heated, redder than red, helpless suddenly
When She appeared in my garden.
Signs of summer
Bewildering peonies: the Paeoniaceae
Gorgeous poppies: the Papaverus orientalis and rhoeas
Zinging zestful zinnias: the Zinnea peruviana
To name but a few of them.

Blog 38, text and photo © Adriana Sjan Bijman, June 2015



Sunday 24 May 2015

"How far is’t called to Forres?” "


“How far is’t called to Forres?” was Shakespeare’s Macbeth’s famous question to the three Weird Sisters, or witches. Later, like many, the women probably were tried for witchcraft in Cluny Hills Hollow or burned at the stake. Macbeth is now the name of the local prize-winning game and venison butcher. 

Seen from The Park, the nearest town, Forres, always looked quite far away to me, emotionally at least. But actually, now that I have moved to Forres, and commute everyday by bike or bus between my studio in the Park and my new home, I realise this is not true. Forres is home to Cluny Hill, to Newbold, to Transition Town and other familiar Findhorn Foundation Community organisations, businesses and people I know.

Spring, while the soil puts forth new beginnings, is a good time to move house. Blossoms smile along the streets, and in the many parks that enrich this little town and now enrich me. At Castehill Park, I feel feasted under the arch of pastel pink, ivory white and rose red Japanese cherry trees. Forres has more green to discover in depth. Grant Park, Sanquhar Woodlands, Bogton Park, Rose Garden, and Cluny Hills, with its winding paths around the four or five hills filled with woods of Scots pine and larch. 
Despite its surroundings being clothed with trees since early times, probably the name Forres neither derives from forest, as I always thought, nor from the gaelic Far-uís (near the water) but is a heritage from the time of the Roman Invasion. (My goodness, did they come this far north? What were they looking for in this rough climate and remote land, when they could indulge in sunny palaces with Roman baths with bronzed gladiators were queuing up to massage them?) Anyway, one of those Romans marked this place on the map as Varis, from which Forres derived. As said, probably. Earlier it was also probably, the Picts who erected the esteemed but mysterious Sueno’s Stone, which still stands as guardian to the north entrance of the town. More than 500 years ago, Forres was granted a charter by the king to become a Royal Burgh, although another king, oops, was murdered in its castle. Once the whole town of wooden buildings was completely destroyed by fire, once half flooded.  Alongside all this drama, there also is the glorious history of once being a chief town in Moray. I like to fantasize about all that happened here in the past, but I did not invent most of this information.  I found it in a delicate little book, written in 1894. The local library let me take it home to read. We’ll never know what was really true and what not…..

After living a decade at the seaside, with carpets of yellow gorse, broom and purple heather, with the sounds of yelling seagulls, I notice the differences in my new residence. So many other bird songs, a dawn chorus! Such different vegetation, and even different water. The Mosset Burn meanders through town before joining ‘our’ river Findhorn towards Findhorn Bay; there we are on familiar ground. As new I walk through streets with ancient buildings on soil that remembers the passions of the past. 

It is not very far, that’s for sure. Aye!

Blog 37, text and photo © Adriana Sjan Bijman, May 2015



Thursday 23 April 2015

A massive fire


Thinking of the Paasvuren, the bonfires they still make in spring in the fields in Drente, the east part of the Netherlands, I decided to make my own Paasvuur and, with the upcoming house move in mind, to burn my diaries. it's a great thing to do! So  at the edge of the sea and dunes of Findhorn, with a friend together we sang, shouted it out and danced around the fire. I did a ritual to bless our past with all its experiences of joy and pain and release it together with the old books while we threw them and threw them in the fire. Our memories will stay with us, they are enough.

Deep down inside me, an even bigger fire is burning. A huge fire of anger, outrage, grief, and also of compassion for the suffering. Its flames, spitting out tentacles, trying to claw at my energy, feed on me and overwhelm me.
It has been said that you can only mourn if you can love.
Once, during the preparation for a ritual at Findhorn to shed our tears for the suffering of the Earth, environmental activist Joanna Macy said: “It takes courage to fully live in a fear-phobic culture. The dominant system cannot tolerate the raw feelings of grief and anger about what has been done to our Earth”.  I’m sure it means the anger and fire in me, in you, cannot be seen as only our private pain − to deal with in hidden one to one therapeutic sessions − but as part of the collective (un)consciousness.  The fire in me is for the ancient forests they’ve put to the flame to clear soil for cattle grazing. The fire in me is for the memory of being burned at the stake for the knowledge we had as women about the healing properties of plants, trees and stones; for the rituals we held to honour Mother Earth.
The fire in me is not a cosy barbecue or gas-lit fake wood-burning stove. I want to make a real fire to release my useless old, walk over the hot ashes, and burn away the skin, become raw alive again, renewed.
My fire is huge and it needs attention and to be tended by a real fire-woman.

Blog 36 Photo & text: © Adriana Bijman, April  2015 

Wednesday 25 March 2015

Living and Longing — at the waterfront


 Waves at Findhorn beach

Not far from my flat, the sea and the endless sandy beach with its pebbles perform an ever-changing seascape. There is my home. It is the water, a home that will stay, even if I am soon to leave the flat here.
You ask me why I so often go to the beach, why I always long for the water. I have lived my whole life close to the water. The lake at Dorregeest, its reed mace waterfront touching our North-Holland polder land, where my nephew drowned. I remember. The canals of the old Dutch town Haarlem, and the long straight canal between old moorland at Kiel-Windeweer in the north. The Italian harbours, expecting the ships to come home with damask from distant foreign shores. The Adriatic sea, in which one hot summer I myself almost drowned, struggling for life while Cyndi Lauper’s ‘Girls just wanna have fun’ resounded over the entire beach camping. 

Nowadays, for almost two decades, my coastline is Scotland’s Moray Firth on the northern Atlantic edge of Europe, where the Vikings once fought with the Picts.  Our seawater is warmed by the North Atlantic Drift, which we call here the Warm Gulf Stream, maybe just to make it sound warmer. We need that!
I had a free day yesterday, a non-working day. I treated myself to a spa outing with a friend in Nairn, where the air still breathes the traditional seaside resort it was in the 1950s.  I loved it! Each in our own way, we enjoyed the water. As steam in the Hamman, as hot bubbles in the Jacuzzi, in the outdoor hot tub, or flowing free in the pool. Even dipping our feet into the still ice-cold sea.

There it was again; the smell of salt, the taste of water, the touch of cold waves around the feet creeping up the calves, changing the body into a vessel of goose bumps. Standing, looking out over the waves. How often do I ‘see‘ the picture of a woman, standing at the waterside, her eyes longing over the horizon to that unknown not lived life, which could have been?

Water is so emotional.

Blog 35 photo & text: © Adriana Sjan Bijman, March 2015

Wednesday 25 February 2015

AIR: I believe in Angels

After the grounding ‘earth’ story of my last blog my attention was drawn to some lines of a Spanish poem; in my translation it says: “Roots and wings. That the wings may take root and the roots may fly.”*

The first music I danced to, on my visit to an Experience Week at Findhorn more than 20 years ago, was the song ‘I believe in angels’ and from that moment on, I actually did. Or rather I started to believe, but it was about believing in a different kind of angel to the Roman Catholic guardian angels I had grown up with; now I opened up to the idea of intelligent beings existing in nature - the kind that Dorothy MacLean* calls ‘Devas’.  They over-light the flora, the fauna, landscapes, cities and even to us, people. They are not like faeries or other existing ‘little people’ in the natural realm.

This was all new to me then, but it made so much sense! I can now see angels as part of the metaphysical realm, being present in the air and of vital, integral importance to all life.  It helps me to know that there are higher beings or universal forces out there, beings that see me, love me, know me and give support, inspiration and encouragement. We are not alone! I repeat this every morning and thank them. It makes a difference and I can recommend it to you.

Dorothy says that every place has its own ‘Landscape Angel’. So I imagine Findhorn beach has  one too. And on a beautiful day during a walk along the beach of sand and pebbles at Moray Firth, I suddenly looked up into the bright blue sky. There I saw this shape or figure appear, in between the clouds; like a heart, like an angel…. Do you see it in the photo? 

Here at Findhorn we knew Frances Ripley as a remarkable woman and community member. She made many subtle drawings of the Nature Spirits. In her book ‘Visions Unseen’* she writes how “they have the capacity to show themselves in a variety of forms, or else as formless swirls of colour and light”.  Wow. Well, yes… that’s what I saw…..!  So I sat a bit more on that beach enjoying ‘my’ angel. Until the wind took her away….

It is all in the air, all around us, to give us life — with every breath. The Breath of Life.

Text and photo: © Adriana Bijman, February 2015. Blog 34 
 * "Raices y alas.Pero que las alas arraiguen y las raíces vuelen.” by Spanish poet Juan Ramón Jiménez,  ‘Diario de un poeta recién casado’, Madrid 1916

Saturday 31 January 2015

Moving I- We belong to the Earth



Let me start with the Earth. The song ‘I feel the earth move under my feet’ comes to my mind.  Although Carol King sang it as a love song to another human being, I sing my love to the earth-being, Gaia, and today specifically to this part of the earth at Findhorn village where I live. The ‘castle’ of Culbin Sands Apartments has hosted me for more than eight years. I love the views over the wide dune landscape filled with yellow gorse or purple heather. In bloom they are a colourful tapestry, drawing you in, to be at home in it. And I am. And I have been.

Being touched by the Earth.
I feel touched while I touch the soft sand, the undulations of Gaia’s skin on the beach, and I see I am build like Her, in Her image. I am soft rough uneven broken tough delicate. This soil is calling me again and again. I am hers. In all weather. How the very soil of a place binds us! First it calls us, the next thing it anchors us.

Earth does not seem to go together with ‘change
Everything connected with the element earth seems to change very, very slowly, like the movement within a rock or a mountain, that seems nothing, doesn’t it? Until it expresses itself in an earthquake, that’s big, overwhelming. But everything is changing continuously. We know that, in theory. Small daily changes are easy to ignore, but they are signs we better keep an eye on to prepare ourselves for the big chances in our life.

Moving house can be such a big change…..
— I do not know yet for this time! — even after I have moved house and country many times. The idea I have to leave my wonderful flat and maybe from here is disturbing and not convenient. I’ll have to un-root, I will be uprooted and maybe even become unsettled for a while, until I find a new home.

Through the process of moving I hope to learn some things,
like about homecoming in myself and improving my adjustment to the changes life gives. To  stay in balance easier, whatever is happening out there. Spiritual teacher William Bloom, a regular visitor to Findhorn, once said: “Some people are not that sensitive to all the stimulus of the world around them, they are very earth-bound and calm.” But like William I am not one of those people! So I’d like to listen more to the Goddess of the Earth, Tellus, Gaia or  call her Terra Mater. To become her daughter. ‘We belong to the Earth’ and even if I might be a wandering daughter, having lived in many places on this planet and travelling for experience and gaining inner wisdom, I belong to this soil, to this part of the earth called Findhorn.

Blog 33 Photo and text © Adriana Sjan Bijman, 31 January 2015