Last weekend as usual there were young lads playing in the forest beside the lake. I can see this spot from the house. So like all my neighbours, I tend to keep an close eye on these boys. I wonder who they are? The years pass and still they come. Anonymous teenagers with all kinds of excitement on their minds. Bitter experience reminds me where . . .
Blossoming in the bad years
"Buy flowers – or if you are poor, steal one from someone’s garden; the world owes you that much at least: blossom – and put them at the end of the bed. When you wake, look at it, and tell yourself you are the kind of person who wakes up and sees flowers. This stops your first . . .
Unfurling in their own time
I hear myself saying- I don't know what I'm doing. And there's a freedom in that. I say it, often in the most inappropriate places, only to discover that I'm talking to myself. This phrase soothes me, puts me back on the ground, drags up my humility. Humility which is sometimes in the clutches of . . .
New life, a calf, and a pheasant’s nest
She began to bellow just before 3.30 AM. There's a hill of blazing gorse to the east and she had gotten herself up on the top of that hill to give birth. My son came running downstairs, "Is she dying?" Quite the opposite, it was another new life. The awful sound of pain had dramatically increased and then suddenly . . .
Following the edge
We had just arrived in Northern Brittany. Our first stop was to be a field on the edge of the Ile Callot. You get there by crossing a causeway at low tide. When the tide returns and the day trippers go home, there are only a few occupied houses and the wilderness left. And ourselves of course, camping out under the stars. We woke on . . .
Ripening
Six weeks have passed and I am still fairly house bound. At this stage I am crawling the four walls, that common form of cabin fever, but I think I am finally on the mend. Over the last few months I have had a stash of ripening seeds under my desk. They are not for planting but for . . .
After the crash
Up until “the crash” I used to work in an office in the centre of Waterford. I loved the sense of community around the city centre and throughout the boom years there was a bit of a buzz developing. At lunchtime every day the local offices would empty out into the streets. All the women in our office would take a hike across town and a twirl . . .
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 . . .
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 . . .
Unfurling
Everything is lush; the lane is coming into the best part of the year. I am besotted with green, tiny buds coming into flower, light as it illuminates petals and unfurling leaves. I wonder sometimes how nature can survive our bleak winters and the onslaught of chemicals and factory farming? Today I realised that I needn't worry too much. . . .
