Last year’s tribute: a meadow orchard medley celebrating the festival of fire, fruit and the afterlife on the 31st of October…
In the Celtic tradition of Samhain, the fire festival marking the end of the summer and the conclusion of the harvest season,
… which began with Lammas and the grain harvest on the 1st of August,
was followed by the fruit harvest on and around the autumn equinox
and concludes with the livestock harvest at Samhain when livestock was brought back into the barns for the winter and excess animals slaughtered to provide winter provisions.
Also known as Halloween, the feast of Samhain marks the move from the light half of the year to the dark half when the link between the world of the living and that of the dead is said to be stronger.
With the earliest of Europe’s post-Roman orchards being monastery orchards where the trees’ natural rhythm was seen as an allegory for the Resurrection, orchards were initially also a place of remembrance as the monks’ graveyard.
