Archive - Words of Keeping

I can immerse myself in the bowl of summer, feel its edges around me and sink down, down into its unfettered abandon.  The sun is loose and free, it soaks through the air, through the ground, through my skin like caramel.  The clouds are friends scattering the sky with white or bringing the rain we need to maintain the green and to open up the earth.   read more »

The sun has hidden away behind the swelling clouds that have covered the sky like a new landmass.  The air has lost its bright shine and rain has returned to dampen our gardens and our spirits.  The light is dull and life feels dull as I had got used to soaking in the sunshine and enjoying each flower and leaf and tree as it blazed against the blue.  But it will be back.   read more »

The summer is sizzling the lawn.  The short grass has bled its green into the dry earth and has taken on its colour, brown with yellow highlights in its hair from the steady sun.  The longer blades are still green so the lawn is mottled with tufts of grass and suckers of trees, and with the green of wildflowers that have now come into their own.  Clover predominates, trefoil leaves like lace  read more »

Last night was the solstice but this year I stayed inside, living my life, attending to ordinary matters.  I am going to enjoy it as the official beginning of summer not the start of the longer nights, and sure enough the sun has chosen this week to warm us whereas the day before it was cold enough for autumn.  Summer is our holiday season  read more »

The summer has come in now, rolled in with the start of June in sunshine banners of bright and blue and heat and golden air, filling the green fields with sparkling wine and the tight spot in my chest with smiles of arriving.
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I love maps.  I love the colour and shape of them, and the codes that make brown lines into mountains and black boxes into stations.  I love looking at the whole of an area laid out before me as if I was in space, as if it was my domain and I had secret information about every part of it.  I love the feeling of order they give me, and the excitement of understanding the land,  read more »

I love May.  Everything is here, new-born after winter’s absence, fresh-green and glowing.  The newly hatched leaves are translucent and are as perfect as a baby’s toes, eliciting the same surge of awe.  The trees swell to their full size and you can just catch them in their playdays, unfurling fingers, learning the lure of the sun before they settle into the majesty of their maturity.   read more »

The garden is a magic place this morning, hung with sun-spun scents and sounds, blossom lazily spilling to the ground, birds interpreting the silence.  There are bees humming among the flowers and planes humming far overhead but it is early on a Saturday and not many sounds of people intrude.  The space belongs to the garden and I feel privileged to be allowed in.  read more »

The sun shines, I come.  I sit in the gentle air, in the waiting warmth, in the bowl of blue and am welcomed into spring.  Spring, and holiday.  It is still and timeless like memories of summer.  The birdsong is all encompassing, no longer in the background it fills centre stage with murmuring, cooing, and sharp, sweet trilling.  The trees are opening their arms to the sun  read more »

I’m in my garden in the spring sun, warm in the cool air like Irish coffee.  There are bees humming in the mahonia flowers that spill their perfume in eruptions of yellow.  Some tulips are tasting the cool air like morning tea, proper and erect; others have no discretion and have peeled back their petals to reveal all.
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