Silversprite
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silversprite.bsky.social
Silversprite
@silversprite.bsky.social
📖Research: planetary boundaries, biodiversity, apple orchards
🌍Interests: climate change, European heatwaves, deep ecology, GCR and ER, impacts of novel chemicals, OA publishing
🚶‍♂️Outside: Stockholm, hiking, archipelagos, glaciers
🍰Food: lussekatter, tack
reminder that locals have been making their own amusements (breeding, drinking, eating, burning things, sacrifices, singing) for an unknown number of millennia, and the apple remains the True King.

Happy Old Twelvey, and good health and quiet prosperity for your year ahead, if you've read this far.
January 17, 2026 at 10:22 AM
Wassailing was one of a loose variety of traditions and rituals which constantly changed, fragmented, died out, reappeared, and so on. Jabez Allies had a decent stab at documenting some in the 19th century. And the recently dug up bone box, two miles away, was a...

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
'Extraordinary' Roman era bone box found in Worcestershire town
The excavation at Milestone Ground in Broadway uncovered 8,000 years of human activity.
www.bbc.co.uk
January 17, 2026 at 9:49 AM
Growing up in orchard country (Vale of Evesham, Worcestershire) in a village with some unusual history (pictured: family house between apple trees) there were several local variations on Wassailing.

We also made and sold scrumpy (strong cider), some of which was drunk on the night of old twelvey.
January 17, 2026 at 9:42 AM
Wassailing is fun. Similar to some druid, pagan, wiccan and other events and rituals, it's a chance to arse around outside at night with others, illuminated by fire, candles, burning torches, or whatever else is at hand.

Which can occasionally be a bit risky...

www.youtube.com/watch?v=FAaf...
Wassailing goes horribly wrong, January 7, 2012
YouTube video by SWinstonCooper
www.youtube.com
January 17, 2026 at 9:28 AM
The earplugs are essential if I go to one of the Wassails where, as tradition, shotguns are fired over the apple trees to ward off evil spirits (not Morris Dancers).

philipstrange.wordpress.com/2016/01/22/k...
Kings, Queens, apple trees and shotguns – a Wassail Tale
Last weekend, to the accompaniment of the setting sun, we made the short journey along narrow Devon lanes to the village of Stoke Gabriel. It was the evening of their annual Apple Wassail, a tradit…
philipstrange.wordpress.com
January 17, 2026 at 9:21 AM
Some notes on Wassail (includes reference to figgy pudding menaces).

Contemplating which Wassailing to go to this evening; there's several around rural Worcestershire and Herefordshire within a stroll of a train station. Will need layers, earplugs and a flask.

www.historic-uk.com/CultureUK/Wa...
Wassailing
The wassailing, or blessing of the fruit trees, involves drinking and singing to the health of the trees in the hope that they will provide a bountiful harvest in the autumn. This ancient custom is st...
www.historic-uk.com
January 17, 2026 at 9:16 AM
At the same time, day on day, the sun is a fraction of an inch higher in the sky, the shadows a fraction of an inch shorter.
January 16, 2026 at 6:22 PM
If it's the same organisation whose website I was looking at earlier, I flinched at the membership costs. That's surely only value for people who love attending conferences and have the time and other resources to do so.

I'm in three professional organisations in other fields; all *much* cheaper.
January 16, 2026 at 4:34 PM
There was a cat.

But the cat took exception to being photographed, and left.

Hashtag #cat
January 16, 2026 at 2:59 PM
"Walk underneath a blue sky, when you can, while you can" - Lucy, 2014.
January 16, 2026 at 2:47 PM
Yes, I take pictures of trees containing mistletoe. This is partially as I'm thinking two courses ahead, and potential projects within the parameters of a long term theme.

#MistletoeNerd
January 16, 2026 at 2:23 PM
Reposted by Silversprite
I think you already know that you should join. In fact, I suspect it was you who screamed.
January 16, 2026 at 1:33 PM
(3/3) Back at base and working from bed. Where there is no mud, and no trees, but there is a hot mug of coffee spiralling tiny steam whisps, and a grey British shorthair cat who snores while I attempt to read academic research papers.

This will do for a while.
January 15, 2026 at 11:29 AM
(2/3) Bare trees, excepting the ivy or the mistletoe. Trees which appear to be shrieking, or making a stand, or shirking away, or grieving.

Clearances, the scouring of wood and plant; stumps and piles of trunk, branch and twig. Brooks and streams, clear through to brown. Always the mud. January.
January 15, 2026 at 10:59 AM