Times are strange for sure. While Spring is trying it's best to break through we are also struggling with what Covid -19 has brought us. Anxiety and isolation mostly. Saint Patrick's Day has been cancelled. We all have to have private parades and parties. We wash our hands and cross our fingers. I've developed a nasty habit of . . .
The death of winter
Death or the long sleep, is a subject that I am endlessly interested in. There is such beautiful decay around us in everyday winter fading. Maybe we are divided into those who yearn for Spring and those who are slower to leave Winter? Confinement has shrunk my world for now, and yet I'm closer to the small and the . . .
On another threshold
"Well, I think that the threshold — if you go back to the etymology of the word “threshold,” it comes from “threshing,” which is to separate the grain from the husk. So the threshold, in a way, is a place where you move into more critical and challenging and worthy fullness. And I think there are huge thresholds . . .
The good life in rural Ireland
"I see myself on the underworld side of that water, the darkness coming in fast, saying all the names I know for a lost land:" From The Lost Land by Eavan Boland While we all complain about our pet hates, those of us living in Ireland have an incredibly good life. We are lucky or blessed . . .
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 . . .
Full on summer in the garden
And somehow, yet again, everything came into bloom. Everything at once, so here I am celebrating the cultivated and the pristine. Sometimes the owners of land, property and gardens allow access, but Colclough Garden in Tintern Abbey County Wexford, is owned by us. This walled garden was planted by volunteers and reclaimed from a ruin by . . .
Something precious to belong to; home.
Today it is the stillest, sunniest spring morning. To the east the hill of gorse is in full flower and the exotic aroma of sweet coconut brushes against my jacket. Birdsong fills the fields as nest making and nest guarding goes on. In the distant sky the Coastguard helicopter is rumbling it's way out over the Copper . . .
Heavenly anenomes
Can I just go totally over the top here for 5 minutes? Can I share with you the exuberant joy of lying in these woodland anenomes at Zwartbles farm in Kilkenny on a spring afternoon in dappled shade? Can you soak up the colour and the light and the magic of it with me? If contemplative photography is about anything it is . . .
Welcome little Zwartbles lamb!
We met on Twitter. Many people find it hard to understand how Twitter even functions, but in our beginning, a short few years ago, a small group of bloggers in Ireland discovered each other there. All with individual interests and reasons for blogging, eventually, here in the South East we . . .
Just before they fall apart
Just before they die off for the winter they have their most spectacular show. Faded edges, crinkled old flowers, their faces a little worse for wear. The October sun catches them in their last glory. Having been down this path before, I know there will be one more beautiful phase as the papery petals . . .
