Hello everyone, it’s me again – Sydney! Happy New Year and all that jazz! I hope everyone managed to feel festive over Christmas time, ate lots of lovely things and enjoyed yourselves. For the first Creative Wellbeing Pack of 2021 we were treated to an amazing selection of activities from Tessa Wingate, a singer, musician and community art practitioner with a specialism in Folk-style music.
Tessa has sent us over some links of videos to watch which will give a little more background to ‘Wassailing!’
Wassail! Singing to trees: a Pagan tradition
When I was growing up, I lived on a road called Orchard Close in St Albans. Historically, it was a huge apple orchard! All the gardens on the street had huge apple trees in them and once a year on ‘Apple Day’ dancers and celebrations were held to wish the trees good health! To me, this is similar to the tradition of Wassailing.
To fit in with this, I thought I would share one of my favourite apple-based recipes… Sweet Apple Cake!
Ingredients
Method
I love this cake served with custard or clotted cream!
Roz who receives our packs has sent us her beautiful lyrics for Tessa’s ‘English Country Garden’ activity. Here they are below – Aren’t they lovely!
How many butterflies flit to and fro
In an English country garden,
We’ll tell you some of them that we know,
Those we miss you’ll surely pardon,
Orange Tip, Red Admiral
Cabbage White, and Peacock too,
Painted Lady, Tortoiseshell, Fritillary,
There is nectar in the flowers, all the Summer long,
In an English Country Garden.
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And here’s to the robin, looking for worms,
He’s a regular visitor, sings a good turn.
The chaffinch & goldfinch sing different tunes,
The blackbird & thrush sing ‘till they see the moon
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And here’s to the postie who calls when he can.
He drives around happily in his bright red van.
He brings lots of goodies whenever he can,
Don’t know much about him; I think his name’s Dan
If you have anything to share, such as your pictures of your cake or your response to the music you can email them to me at sydney@creativeartseast.co.uk, post them on our Facebook page or send them back to us using the Freepost envelope! If you need any help sharing, you can give us a call and we will try our best to walk through it together.
Ta-ra for now and lots of love,
Sydney x
It’s all so enjoyable and lots of fun
One fine day we all will be one.