The Joy of Coat Hooks

I have waited a very long time to have coat hooks in our house. There were some when we moved in, but as soon as building work started they had to be removed. That was over 15 years ago. Fifteen years with nowhere to hang a coat!

Okay that isn’t strictly true. I hang my coat from one of two door handles downstairs, and leave fleece jackets in a pile. Since we bought the pushchair it has been an excellent place to drape outer layers – and that is all it has done for the past six months, M considering herself too tall or too grown up to ride in it. But certainly it has proved less than ideal when we have visitors!

Eventually I identified a place where we could put some coat hooks, behind the door in the front room. I bought hooks – I would have bought them ready mounted but that was voted down, given we usually have plenty of odd bits of timber. The timber we had proved either unsuitable or too small, and the coat hooks went into storage for several months.

Then at a local Woodland Festival in September, we managed at last to buy a piece of wood we both liked to mount the coat hooks on. That timber was then allowed to acclimatise to the house for a month before being planed and scraped and sealed.

Finally, last weekend the coat hooks were put on the wall. A simple thing, giving much pleasure. Even better, what had been behind the door for the past 15 years was all my glass – each piece wrapped in newspaper and stacked against the wall with a piece of wood across the front to protect them from the door, and sufficiently unattractive and inaccessible that M managed not to investigate – but it took me longer to find the right colours of glass than to cut it when making last week’s project! So the glass had to move for the coat hooks, and to my great delight is now stored in such a way that it can be accessed much more easily for future projects. So by solving one problem, another has also found a satisfying solution.

This story may on the surface seem to have little to do with Paganism, or with crafting, since I only did the design work and not the making. However, the wood we eventually found is Elm. This is a timber which, thanks to Dutch Elm disease in the 1970s, filled my childhood home – our dining table was a huge slab of Elm, we had bookcases of Elm, a bed carved from Elm, a meat carving board … it was part of the background to my life. This rack of coat hooks is now the first thing to be made of Elm in my own home, and moreover is used every single day. So I have a sense of completeness, of my relationship with trees forming a protective circle around me, and continuing to develop that relationship in a loving and harmonious way.

Coat hooks mounted on Elm

Tree Stories 7 – Larch

Autumn larch at woodland edge
(Shotover Estate, Oxfordshire)

Larch story is now published on its own page, please follow the links above.

Larch is one of those trees which goes unnoticed by me for much of the year, and then, thanks to its deciduous nature, suddenly announces its presence in Spring or Autumn when it is a completely different colour to all the trees around it. Its needles are some of the softest to stroke of all conifers, and the most cheerful bright green that I always love seeing them. They do grow in Derbyshire, although not locally to me, but the place where I will always remember them in in Glen Nevis. I had two days to myself in the area one April about ten years ago, and spent the first walking up Ben Nevis. It was a hot sunny day, views were spectacular, and the last thousand feet had deep snow underfoot. The next day I was feeling a little tired and stiff, so I planned a shorter walk in the opposite direction, over Cow hill to drop down into Fort William and then back along the river Nevis. Struggling up the hill I came to a group of larches with their first leaves of Spring just opening, and felt the most wonderful, uplifting freshness that carried me onwards and through the rest of my walk.

Introduced to Britain in the seventeenth century for its knot free, virtually waterproof timber, larch is commonly used for yachts, buildings, roof shingles and interior panelling, fences and posts, and also coffins. Venice was built almost exclusively of larch wood. They often grow on the south side of a plantation as they like much more open sunny conditions than most pine trees. They also act as a firebreak, thanks to their thick bark and very hard wood. However their natural home is in the mountains, where they are also likely to find the clear air they prefer being fairly intolerant of pollutants such as sulphur dioxide.

Larch was traditionally worn or burned to protect against enchantments or evil spirits. It was used to help with fertility issues, childless women believing that spending the night under a Larch would help them conceive a baby, and the timber was used for babies cradles. With this in mind, the story given to me to write by larch was somewhat unexpected, but it does tie in surprisingly well with the Bach remedy of using larch for people who feel that they are not as competent as others, lack confidence in their ability to do things well, or even assume they will fail so don’t bother to try.

As I write this, larch trees are leaving Britain. Along with several other tree species, the time has come that they are no longer able to grow healthily in the climate and conditions we have created for them. In this particular case, it is the fungal disease Phytophthora ramorum providing the symptoms of their “dis-ease”, which is that it has become too wet and earthy for what is essentially an airy sort of tree. Also known as sudden oak death, P. ramorum spreads rapidly through weakened trees and has in the past few years invaded many of the plantations in the south west of England, Wales and Scotland. The “cure” is apparently to remove all the trees, not just the infected ones, so millions have been cut down in the last few years, with many more facing the same fate, destroying the work already done and leaving the land and the watercourses in a poor state for at least another generation. This is supposedly to save the infection from spreading, and getting into oak trees.

I like to try and find something positive in a situation, no matter how bleak it might at first appear, so here is how I see it. The Earth will survive whatever happens. Spirit is timeless and endless and will not be destroyed by us, but take new forms. As humans however, we have an opportunity to become more aware of how we are treating our planet and the other living beings which inhabit it, and to make the necessary changes. On a personal level, I see it as an opportunity to learn how to connect with trees and the earth closer. I am starting to find where or how I can help, and to develop the skills needed with the guidance and encouragement of my spirit friends. Like my work with weather, the first step is to create balance in my local area, and then expand outwards when I am ready. I would love to hear from others doing this type of work in their area.

Autumn larch tree, 4-sailed windmill in background.
(Shotover Estate, Oxfordshire)