Ponderings and thoughts

CATCHING UP – TAKING STOCK

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It is time for a bit of stock taking, and for catching up with many friends and followers of my blog.  Personally the year 2024 has brought many changes, some challenges, some sad, and some good.  Worldwide it’s been a sad and chaotic year too I think.  Many of us have asked ourselves serious questions about our general humanity, our deeds towards our fellow human beings.  A lot of good has been happening too during this past year, a lot of compassion has been shown, and brave and good people have shown to be always around. 

I visit Ian, my husband, in the nursing home every week, something we both look forward to very much.

And now January is almost over and I’m still organizing my activities inside the house and out in the garden, and in society.  Lots to do, all good things.  During the winter I’ve availed of webinars and zoom meetings a lot.  Webinars about grasses and rushes, and other natural subjects.  Regular zoom meetings of a lace making group.  And an introductory course in tree identification.  Collage making or painting with my grandchildren is very rewarding too. Locally there have been meetings of the Early Retirement Group which has fabulous and interesting (mainly) other women as members and a good program, one of the things we do is a weekly chair yoga session which keeps us all quite flexible.  Then the monthly book club and the poetry circle are such a joy, as are the very regular and hugely interesting art exhibitions.  Skibbereen has it all.  There is simply not enough time to do it all.

And then there is the weather which during winter can be quite challenging, storms, heavy rain, frost, the type of weather that makes you want to crawl behind the stove with a good book.  Christmas and New Year celebrations seem to have come and went in a flash this past year.  The dark days are now getting a little lighter and soon it will be the first of February, for Ireland that heralds the beginning of spring, it is also the feast of St.Bridgid and has now become a public holiday.  And so…. I’m chitting my potatoes to have them ready for planting in March.  My garden is still my focus a lot of the time.

This coming season my main big plan for the garden is to plough up half my little grass field so I can plant more vegetables.  For the past five years I have added more and more shrubs because I had much less time to garden and thought it was the better way.  This meant that I now have less and less space for vegetables.  So space will have to be made.  My grandson Ruben who is now a strong teenager and very willing to help me has already cleared one plot in the back of the garden, he wants to do more.  We are great mates and I love him coming over and working alongside me, and afterwards we have pizza and watch a movie.

Luckily during the last storm none of our trees suffered, we have seven trees in a small garden.  We live in a terraced house and the garden is relatively small.  Ours are a birch, oak, chestnut, hawthorn and elderberry, and in the front garden, a currant tree and an acer.  Our hawthorn tree was affected by blight last summer and lost all of its leaves, we’ll see what happens this year.  The chestnut had been trimmed five years ago and has some rot in an outshoot and that will need looking after. 

Gardening and planning a garden, as many people know very well, is a great joy, and keeps us fit, it’s also hard work at times, but that can be done in part, an hour here and an hour there on a daily basis, weather allowing of course (I’m a fair weather gardener).  To be out in nature is such a joy, the fresh air, the scents, sounds, and seeing the growth is all delightful and will keep me going for ever.  The observation possibilities of seeing insects, birds, wild plants and herbs growing, as well as tasty vegetables and trying out new types.  And then there is the digging up of potatoes and the harvesting of edible produce, how much better can it get  I think it satisfies one of our most basic instincts as humans, that of survival. 

Not being sure what 2025 will bring for us all, I wish many blessing for each and everyone.

Loving thought to all.

BLESSINGS FOR 2025

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Wishing all my dear family and friends a joyful and happy New Year

“May the nourishment of the earth be yours,

May the clarity of light be yours,

May the fluency of the ocean be yours,

May the protection of the ancestors be yours”

John O’Donohue, taken from Benedictus

And most of all may peace descent on those countries which are hit by war or by genocide. My dearest wish for 2025

WINTER CELEBRATIONS

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I heard the bells on Christmas day, their old, familiar, carols play, And wild and sweet the words repeat of peace on earth, good will to all mankind. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Wishing all my dear friends, family and followers a very happy and joyful Christmas, and a healthy and blessed New Year!

And a winter time filled with pleasurable winter celebrations.

WINTER LIGHT AND COLOURS

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Travelling through the Caha mountains during winter I find that there is plenty of interest to see and get excited about even just along the way. While some of my drives are taken in bad weather conditions, heavy mist, rain and or wind, most of the time I’ve experienced dry and also regularly sunny weather.

Most of all, this winter I find the skies fascinating. The colours, subtle, in pastel pink, light blue, ashen grey or radiant white, and even as if with a magic brush, diffused streaks of periwinkle purple. I’ve seen it all in skies over the Bantry Bay, over the Caha mountains and over the Glengarriff valeys. Ever changing skies with light of a beautiful quality. It certainly holds the attention of the traveller. These days I drive home when the sun is setting, adding another marvel of light, the setting sun, often spectacular!

Looking down into the valley there is a whole palette of different browns, beiges and forest greens. A true feast for the eyes. As can be seen in the photo below Glengarriff National Forest has a lot of birch trees growing, and apart from their stark white trunks, their branches are particularly beautiful at the moment. Every time I pass clusters of them I try to think how to name their colour, a type of maroon, or a vintage wine, or does it look more like an English lavender, burgundy, gothic mulberry or umbral umber. It is hard to pinpoint exactly the colour of those branches, and it also depends how the light shines on them and how the rain brightens them.

Birch trees in the distance

A variety of other branches, among them the deep red of the dogwoods is always very nice in a landscape, and so is the drama of the bleached grasses, rushes and sedges covering whole stretches of hillsides with cream blonde colours or even rusty browns.

Darkness falls early these days, painting the landscape mainly in moss green, dark brown or black, though the mountains in the distance do give us some mauve. The landscape changes constantly, it is very noticeably when driving higher up, clouds throwing huge shadows over the valleys interspersed with stretches of sunlight. As I said there is a lot of interest even in winter on my journey. Probably much more to discover yet and that leaves me with a feeling of ever more excitement.

I came across two photos of winter foliage recently, these are paintings of the Danish painter Peder Mork Monsted, (1859-1941) from his ‘Winter’ series. I thought it shows the colouring of the birch trees beautifully and rather well. I think his work very nice. (Referenced from Gallery of Art) with thanks.

JOURNEY THOUGH THE CAHA MOUNTAINS

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These days I enjoy a weekly journey through the Caha mountains on my way to see my husband Ian in Kenmare. It is a most beautiful journey, not only along the Bantry Bay towards sub-tropic Glengarriff where at the moment the rhododendrons are still in full flower, but following the N71 up to and through the tunnel separating county Cork and county Kerry.

Looking into a most beautiful glacial valley.
Sugarloaf Mountain in the distance.
Rododendrons alongside the road.
Looking back towards the bay.
Bonane which I come to once through the tunnels. This is in Co Kerry now.
The interesting rock formations along the road.
The Glenn valley.

It is such a lovely journey.  I do it once a week. My dear husband Ian is now resident in a nursing home in Kenmare.  It’s about 74km from here.  It’s a different way of life for us both, but we are adjusting and making the best of what life offers.

WHEN EVERYTHING IS SHADES OF GREEN, an update

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In our wild garden, and wild it is at the moment, I’m finding that everything is green, beautiful shades of green, but yet there are some colours to be seen too. I haven’t had much time, and less inclination to garden in the past few months and now everything has overgrown. But it’s beautiful, and there has been a lovely crop of very yellow buttercups in what is now a small meadow rather than a small lawn, I’ve really enjoyed that sight. The Californian lilac has also flowered in a pale blue. And the wild foxgloves that self-seed every year are in full bloom, a beautiful shade of pink.

I like the garden to be lush, and to have secluded spaces where I can sit on the old bench, or totally in the back under the oak tree and surrounded by nettles and foliage of montbretia foliage not yet flowering, protected by the sheds from the cooling wind. I often pick this spot for breakfast on fine days, the sun is only just hitting that spot then and it’s a lovely light. The old bench under the hawthorn tree is another one of my favourites, but I have to watch it as it is the domain of the sparrows and there are often droppings from above, not so nice in my tea.

I am not seeing many pollinators in the garden this year yet, probably because the weather has been rather unpredictable, I’m hoping they’ll come soon. I’ve seldom seen the garden so lush, or else my memory is failing me (which I doubt}. The month of May is of course the most beautiful month in Ireland, and often one of the warmest, not so this May, in fact I’ve had to light the stove today. Probably June will be better.

I’ll let you have a stroll through our garden for now. Enjoy!

Bright beauty of buttercups (Ranunculus)

Foxgloves (digitalis purpurea)

Californian lilac (Ceanonthus)

I hope to be back to my regular blog contributions, there is a lot of material which I can develop and plenty of photos to go with it. As I get used to the changes in my life I’ll get inspired again to share some of the beauty of Ireland, and of my past and future travels. And I look forward to interacting again with the blogs of all my friends and followers.

Nature on CHRISTMAS EVE

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All is calm in our little town on this Christmas Eve, the only sounds in our street are the wind howling and the odd car passing.  It seems that people are all heading towards home, the shops are slowly closing and town is emptying.  There is always a nice buzz in Skibbereen around this time of year.  Traditionally young people who would have emigrated to America or the UK would try and get home for the festivities, these days it is students and those that made it overseas that return, it’s always a great time for rejoicing and that is palpable in the streets and shops as old friends and families gather.  People seem cheerful.  Nice!

But I did not mean to write about this.  For me Christmas or Solstice time is special too but in other ways.  I feel myself pulled deeper into nature, my wish is to go for a long walk and take note of all that is happening, and so much is happening underneath all the rest that nature is supposed to be taking at this time.  Around me I not only see daffodils shooting up, but all sort of buds are getting bigger by the day. A myriad of small young plants are covering the ground where there are patches not covered by fallen leaves. 

 A fine Irish mist is making everything wet and glistening, as a result the colours of the tree trunks in our garden are not dull, they are bright and beautiful.  This time of year is special, I read the old stories of animals being able to converse with each other in language on Christmas Eve, that somehow always stuck with me!  These are the darkest days, midwinter, we celebrate the solstice and look forward to the light returning, the brighter and longer days, new life and renewed energy in nature and in humans.  Christmas too is about new life, the birth of Christus, bringing light into the world.  It is a beautiful time, hopefully a time of peace for all.

Here in our little house, Ian is working on writing his book, we just had lunch and some real Flemish marzipan that my sister Josephine sent us from Lier.  Everything is peaceful, I’m listening to baroque music on rtbf Musiq3.  Work is done, our garden birds are fed, and I’m enjoying writing my blog post and wondering how all my WordPress friends and followers are celebrating this time of year.  Soon it will be 2024 and I hope that it will be a year full of blessing for you all. 

Sending love and wishing peace to everyone.