I checked the sea temperature today. Not much more than 13/14 degrees centigrade anywhere in Ireland. This year the cold sea water was harder to bear. By the time we arrive in Kerry our friends are already a couple of weeks into the rhythm of twice daily swims. They glow from endorphins, icy water and warm wine. . . .
A way of life
Clarissa Pinkola Estes posted a letter for her many fans last week. Her book Women who run with the wolves took 20 years and 42 rejection letters to find publication and become one of my all time inspirational books. In the letter she said.... "Stories are medicine. Medicine for the world. Heavy medicine carried . . .
Drifting and dreaming
The world blurs slightly and the living planet intensifies it's presence. Something draws the light and the focus. It enters the ear first, a buzzing maybe or a beating of wings. A scattering of dragonflies flutter across my closed eyelids. One of them, so self absorbed, hitches a ride on a floating leaf, and both of us . . .
The wildest thing
"Ten times a day something happens to me like this - some strengthening throb of amazement - some good sweet empathic ping and swell. This is the first, the wildest and the wisest thing I know: that the soul exists and is built entirely out of attentiveness." Mary Oliver See more images from my wild garden and from Ireland's lush . . .
Strawberries and the object of his desire
He is not a popular visitor for most soft fruit growers. As always the debt of gratitude I owe to my only photographic models outweighs the loss of any blackcurrants or strawberries that may have taken place during this shoot. I adore working with him, and surely he knows it. Sometimes he just lands on this rock to show . . .
The new arrivals
It's always a strange one returning to your real home after travelling for a while. There are so many mixed emotions. So when our resident hare family turned up with two babes it eased the transition. Irish Hares have lived in our couple of acres as long as we have been here. Since the land around us was cleared, this wild patch may be . . .
Endings
This crop's life in the field, glowing in the evening sun. In the cycle of farming, beginning anew, harvesting seeds, some endings are also beginnings. . . .
Pride
Maybe some day, some one will be able to articulate what it meant to be part of a YES Equality canvass team in the Marriage Equality referendum? Some have said it was the best experience of their lives, that it lifted them out of hopelessness about political change, that it gave them back a sense of pride in their true . . .
Poppies, Monet and Moi
Photography is fraught with cliches. You couldn't get through a day without re-creating most of them. Even so, I'm in France, in a field of poppies and I stand awe struck and think, why not? I'm guilty as charged when it comes to romanticising the natural world. Even though I don't enhance or photoshop at all. (I'm . . .
Meandering from river to river in France
This inland path is meandering from river to river, through the Loire, Vienne, Creuse, Dronne, and Charente valleys. While there hasn't been a plan or even a guide book, we have a basic map of snaking blue rivers with their most beautiful banks highlighted in green. The simplicity of this and the element of surprise around every . . .
