Moon: waning crescent
Venus: morning star low on the horizon, in the constellation Hydra
Hazelnuts all over the ground in the hedges
Lindenberries on the drive, they crunch underfoot
Tawny owl husband & his tawny owl wife start talking at around 8 pm nightly in the horse-chestnuts
1. A New Series I want to make a house for her here, the Year’s Wife. I want to follow her, listen for her, sit over my paper with my inky pen at daybreak scratching lines for her, being quiet enough for her scent and her falling horse-chestnut voices to find me. It's been a while since I did this with true focus, but it's my way of falling in step with a place, making my nest— to go out listening and waiting for the Year's Wife, the one who opens doors into trees and hills and stones. The one who walks me into love with somewhere. Opens her palms, reveals glossy rosehips, small and tart. Venus is the morning star again. We've come out of one set of nineteen of her months into another, close to the start of autumn. I can see the biggest tor from the hill where I walk the dog, the tor where I saw the newborn foals in May. I like that I can see it. The wild foals up there are growing now. I think about them sometimes in the dark when I'm falling asleep. Every little heart glowing up there on the moor, quietly, speckling the night. Their mothers will be pregnant again soon. All of them know her, the Year's Wife. She tells me of them. She stands among the apple trees, counting, smiling, knowing them all. So: for the next moons, I’m not sure as yet how many but at least until Christmas, I will be sharing a series of almanacs under the title of The Year's Wife. This is the first, already begun with the falling horse-chestnuts and the foals that grow.
2.
Who is she, the Year's Wife?