Archive - 2009

Christmas Day.  The church bells are ringing, a plane is still flying overhead and the birds sing and soar as normal.  The sky isn’t closed and grey today, it is open with delight, brightness shining from the still hidden sun.  What a thing it is to think about God becoming man.  A folly or impossibility to some, and a matter of common knowledge that fails to thrill for others.  read more »

Oh, it’s wonderful down here in my own little world.  If I switch this light off I’m in a cloak of dark velvet, pierced by the porch lights.  The moon is leaning towards her crescent, tipping southwards but still so bright in the indigo sky.  Hanging over the garden is a faint mist which disappears as you walk into it for the sky is clear and we are open to the breaths of heaven.  read more »

How fitting – the first really cold day on the first of December.  There is a frost on the ground and the air is sharp and still; I was even cold in bed.  The sky, though, the sky is bright against the black outlines of the trees, bright enough to find my way but not to read words.  The birds are singing as ever and I can see the passage of a plane, its white trail the only cloud  read more »

Hallo birdsong, hallo dark blue of unlit morning, and cool air, and gently dripping leaves.  I have lights to shine my way here, sitting under the bare hawthorn with my feet floored by its leaves mingled with oak.  It has been so wet but in between the sky opens and we can journey forth again with ease. 
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I am tired, every cell is on standby, my mind resting in a nest of cotton wool.  Yet how lovely it is to come into the garden and feel its peace, to see the brown leaves glowing on the green grass, to smell their spicy earthiness where they lie in number under the oak tree.  What do people do who don’t have gardens to sojourn in, or neighbouring fields or woods to wander through?   read more »

Mid-November Sunday and the crows are cawing overhead; I wonder what has disturbed them.  Not the gently floating clouds moving steadily from the west, or the pale blue sky beyond.  Not the sun just rising in a silver halo, further south than in summer, caught in the valley between two houses looking like a delicious cocktail.  So many other birdsongs fill the air making trills or tunes,  read more »

Fairest of fair, a blue sky soaring, circling, winging, singing overhead with just a few light touches of white, spun out and stretched wide, and planes silently leaving their spun trails.  The sun is surprising the houses just beyond and tickling their roofs, and soon it must tumble over and find me waiting here in shadow.  It is so still when yesterday the wind was so fervent.  read more »

September is such a full month, it holds summer flowers and autumn berries and winter leaves.  Everywhere you look there is a feast waiting to be tasted, a full palette of colour, and change rippling through the trees like the wash left behind by summer’s boat.  The horse chestnuts are first to succumb to the pull of Fall, brown crinkling and crumpling the leaves while the conkers tumble  read more »

Journeys take you out of yourself, out of your normal landscape and its often-heard music.  Today I saw poppies, bright splashes of red to surprise the green, growing in patches on verges and here and there, oh joy, in swathes on country fields.  Here and there, too, a cluster of white, elderflowers like large lace buttonholes of clotted cream and swaying wildflowers waving above the grass  read more »