Local Abundance

I'm in the process of compiling an audio book of local recipes.

If you live in Bristol and have any recipes you would like to share I would love to hear from you.

Click on the image below to enlarge.

eve_houston@yahoo.co.uk

The theme for the recipe book is food made from ingredients grown by you, a friend or foraged from the wild within a 10 mile radius of your home.

Narroways, St Werburghs 11th June 2010

Walking with friend and artist Natasha Machin we stop to exchange breath with the other-than-human life around us.

Once upon a time the people resisted the proposal by a developer to build houses and roadways to a much loved and rare green space in the city.

Here today I breathe in the air infused with hedgerow trees, grasses, wild flowers, pee, cow parsley and memories that are not mine - of people who resisted schemes of road building.

The scent gives me a treat, one I could access everyday if I was disciplined or even create ways that I experience virile growth to be in my world. I see this action to breathe air that competes with the car culture of Bristol and the business flights, I see it has a privilege and I ask how can I pass this on? Simple not to those whose minds are occupied daily with the struggle to find a place to call home. And I am happy to acknowledge that I can access this because of the actions of the people from the past - a sure relationship between people and nature. I ask what is nature? Is it outside us or are we part of it?

Natasha Machin

Ants carry aphids their own size effortlessly up the red earth mound.

Translucent greenflies cling in a regular pattern on the underside of a sycamore leaf - the sun highlighting the print.

Grey brown old bramble stalks lay across one another in a scribble. A lizzard? A mouse? A shrew? A slow worm? Slithers through the gaps.

The hawthorn berries are hard green pellets, shiny in the light, the hope of pink around their edges.

Eve Houston

The Rhubarb I Fed

On a south facing slope

My head pointing down hill into the Rhubarb

Blood draining into my skull and the flesh in my cheeks

Taking a deep breath in through your pink and green stems - through my chest and my heart -

blowing on your vibrant green leaves that flap in the air

Breathing in your qualities - strength - nourishment - flexibilty

I breathe out - warmth and moisture - I breath in memories of taste - tart - the sensation of sharp prods to the cells on my tongue and gums - saliva seeping quickly into the wells below my teeth with each shot of acid

I breathe in the colour green - infused with light - the colour of vitality, life and living.

Quince and I

Our cool smooth skins touch

Our bark warming and softening in the sun

Our bodies breathe the stillness of the air

Our bodies call for nourishment

Feed me, feed me, feed me

We absorb the sun

Growing inside

Ideas will blossom

We will fruit

Creatively

Building our strength through stillness and contemplation

Storing our energy establishing ourselves in our sunny spot

before we flower and share in our abundance.

These words and photographs document a creative response to an invitational score given to me by Choreographer Itta Howie http://www.ittahowie.madasafish.com

Score:

Close your eyes

touch a plant stone tree soil

listen to what it says

about itself

about you

and what the two of you

have in common