“To know fully even one field or one land is a lifetime’s experience.” Patrick Kavanagh Today we began our second lockdown. It will be another challenge especially as the light fades into winter time. But we are well and the weather is kind. Most of all we are lucky to have space and to be warm . . .
Making a home for birds
I know pheasants are mostly bred in captivity and therefore can almost be regarded as predators in our wildlife sanctuaries. But somehow, I can't discriminate and here they are, still living in our patch. Charlie is the big fella and he arrived last year. His offspring, a young cock, has long gone or may even be . . .
The grace of the world
Amidst the bizarreness of the current world, I went off as happy as you like to replace my ten year driving licence which had finally expired. It's a funny experience, the Driving Licence Centre, like a cross between going to the doctor and being in custody . You sit in a small booth with a curtain between yourself and the rest of the . . .
Mystery
Today some portraits, illuminating the mystery of endings. Leaves, lives, moments. Mysteries, Yes Truly, we live with mysteries too marvellous to be understood. How grass can be nourishing in the mouths of the lambs. How rivers and stone are forever in allegiance with gravity while we ourselves dream of . . .
Late bloomer
There's an exquisite late blooming iris outside my window. It catches the precious dewey light and as everything around it is dying back, grabs the spotlight at any time of day. It's a quiet reminder that not only is it never too late, but later might even be better. It is food for the soul of any late . . .
Autumn walk
"There is human time and there is wild time" Clarissa Pinkola Estes This year as part of the Waterford Imagine Festival I will be hosting a Sunday morning walk on the wild side at Carrickavantry Lake. The numbers are very limited and you can book here. The walk will be a real life, real world sharing of contemplative . . .
Wild honeysuckle is the thing
"If you don't love things in particular, you cannot love the world, because the world doesn't exist except in individual things" Thomas Moore The ditches are a jumble of briars, a tangle of weeds, a mess of curling browning leaves. They cascade onto the lane, in the subdued light of early autumn. A heady scent draws you into the . . .
Those dark elements
You are on your knees in a lavender patch, following the music of bees. In the distance a harvester is droning, and the evening sun highlights wings and petals. You are obsessing about the need for a soft bed and a warm hearth as the autumn sets in; for a safe place to pause, for a warm . . .
You can’t use up creativity the more you use, the more you have
It was Maya Angelou who said" You can't use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have." When I began on this path coming up to four years ago, it didn't seem so. Perhaps I would over share my precious resource? Maybe I would bore myself and everyone else with my excitement at the beauty I was finding the ordinariness of my . . .
Enveloped in the purest of pure gold
It's been three and a half years now since I finally made the decision to live again the artist's life that I had dreamt of as a teenager. Even though for 20 years I kept the Artist's Way beside the bed, it was only recently that like a bolt of lightening it hit me, it was now or never! The voice in my head that said you are not . . .
