I’m trying to unfurl from lockdown. It seems to be a slow process. Like how coming out of hibernation might be for a chubby lazy bear. One of my childhood pets was a tortoise. I think they were popular in those days. It was supposed to go to sleep for the . . .
Such a wonderful Spring!
Spring has been a difficult time. It's not just the social isolating, or the threat the pandemic poses. Our family lost our beloved Step Mother to the Covid 19 virus on April 18th. I've written 4 pieces for the Waterford News and Star since the lockdown. They meander through . . .
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 . . .
This we have now……but are we already in the decline?
This we have now is not imagination. This is not grief or joy. Nor a judging state, or an elation, or sadness. Those come and go. This is the presence that doesn't. Rumi It's not that I didn't already know. I had been aware of the decline in wild things for the last few . . .
Nice exhibition on the car door this morning
Dripping with morning dew, these silken webs are at their most luminous. Later they fade into dry vegetation, invisible again. Damp and dark they shimmer on the branches, woven art works hanging between the gorse and the brambles. Sometimes they are stretched . . .
The staycation; land, sea and me.
I've taken a break from this blog for a staycation; interwoven with salt water, forest bathing and butterfly spotting. It was hot in Ireland. I often sat under an umbrella, unable to put even one toe onto the baking sand. All the windows and doors had to be open wide, day and night. . . .
Getting to know birds better
“We need the tonic of wildness...At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be indefinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathomable. We can never have enough of . . .
Primitive man in all his glory
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 . . .
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 . . .
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 . . .
