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.
‘Every gardener know that under the cloak of winter lies a miracle, a seed waiting to sprout, a bulb opening to the light, a bud straining to unfurl. And the anticipation nurtures our dream’ B.Winkler
‘What good is the warmth of summer, without the cold of winter to give it sweetness’ John Steinbeck
‘Don’t think the garden loses its ecstasy in winter. It’s quiet, but the roots are down there riotous’ RUMI
Lacework of the hydrangea flowers.
‘In seed time learn, in harvest teach, in winter enjoy’ WILLIAN BLAKE
Totally enjoying a beautiful winter, the sky, the plants, seedheads, and all the little miracles that manifest during this time of year are a joy to behold. Winter is a time for reflection and restoration in nature and in ourselves.
Wishing everyone a peaceful and beautiful Christmas and mid-winter time, may peaceful blessings be upon you all.
This summer is moving along nicely, after a rather cold spring with lots of icy eastern winds. Today I’m sitting under our hawthorn tree thinking of writing another blog post which I feel is long overdue. I want to write about where I am at this moment, what is inspiring me and how I’m filling my days.
Right at the beginning of spring I felt the desire to work with a greenhouse in order to grow more and better plants in this unpredictable climate, and soon after longing for it I started looking at different designs, and ordered our present tunnel, Ian treated me to it. It is a small tunnel but then we have a small garden. I’ve never looked back.
I’m growing more vegetables this year, I’m not leaving things up to my intuition like I usually do or did, this year I’m actually reading up in gardening books and on the web what are the best ways to grow certain crops, and most important, how can I improve my soil, or at least help it to keep fertile. Up to now I’ve always collected my garden waste and thrown it into a corner at the end of the garden, but not anymore. I realise that I need to put nutrients back into the soil. Ok if there are some wild plants among them that I don’t want to regrow necessarily, if they are in seed, then they go into the compost barrel, but all other green waste stays on the soil where it grew, it’s a good mulch and it kept the soil moist during the driest weeks earlier in the summer. I’m also keeping a good garden journal this year, noting everything I sow and grow and how it is doing and other notes on how I can improve their growth in future years. It’s useful!
My interest in gardening lies not alone in beautifying my surroundings, or in growing vegetables, I also like to experiment, not only with growth but also with the soil, with the sort of pollinators that are visiting, and with the changes to our trees and other long standing growth, such as what type of wild plants keep germinating and growing to maturity, as that changes over time. For a few years I had Evening Primrose and Mullein growing and self-seeding, now they are gone. But the pale Hedge Woundwort has been a loyal wild flower all over the garden for decades, as has the Herb Robin. I practise polyculture.
Now and then I take test of the soil to see if there is anything lacking and usually there is. I have tried to rectify this over the years with seaweed fertilizer. I garden totally organic! I find this testing immensely interesting and am learning more every day. Listening to podcasts or webinars that discuss the important of soil building and organic growing and so on keeps me fired up.
At this time there is also the produce collecting, the use or storing of same. Delicious dishes are being produced in my kitchen, I enjoy all the cooking of the fresh produce. There is the herb collecting and drying, I grow a huge collection of different herbs, many of which I dry for winter use. Teas also, like Hawthorn, Lemon Balm and Lemon Vervain, Mint etc… Collecting seeds for future use or for swapping and sharing will be the next step as the summer moves along.
The big experiment this season is growing my own potatoes. Early in the year I bought Mirabella seed potato in one of our local garden centres. These seeds are blight resistant and organic. So I dug up all the grasses from a patch at the back of the garden and after chitting the seed potatoes, planted them out. They grew fantastically well. I had 22 plants! Only to discover that they were early potatoes that do not store well, my idea was to have potatoes over the winter as we are not big potato eaters. I’ve dug up some to date and they are nice, but they will probably be gone by the winter time. Note so self: Next year… check that out better. To lift up a crop of potatoes from the soil is like witnessing a miracle over and over again, I find it both fascinating and exciting and I love it.
I’m aware of the decline in biodiversity and as much as possible I attend and take part in local groups that are concerned about this and try to enlighten the public about all the various aspects of avoiding and helping to minimize this current worldwide problem. The environment and biodiversity is high priority on my agenda, and while I can only attend a certain amount of activity or meetings, I like to give priority to this important current problem. I take photos of pollinators and share them, we need them more than we know. Knowing which plants attract pollinators and cultivating those also is of importance.
All in all nature in general, in all its beauty and interest is enhancing and making my life fascinating. Every day I learn and discover more, it lights up my days and keeps my brain sharp with doing more and more research. What a blessing. There is today a huge amount of information online and in up to date books both about the beauty, the interest, and the problems currently present in the environment, with biodiversity, with the ecology, in farming practises, and in nature connectedness. It is a never ending nature study!
Fortunately many people are very well aware of all this and much is being done, but much more needs doing worldwide.
This Sunday afternoon I had a look through my recent photos of some of the lichens that I find growing in the area here, some of them in our own garden, others are found in the local forests of West Cork, growing on trees but also on rocks, on stone buildings, on roofs. Our own roof has some orange lichen (I read that this is a sign that we live in a clean environment… no pollution). I love lichen and find them fascinating but so far I have not had much luck with identifying them, for proper identification you need more than the naked eye, a microscope or at least a hand lens. So I’m not going to attempt to put identification with my photos as yet. Lichens are a combination of a fungus and one or more algae in a mutually symbiotic relationship. I read that the algae do the photosynthesis, providing the fungi with energy for reproduction, the fungi in turn provide structural form and protect the lichen from bright light . I find lichen beautiful and in fact would love a workshop on their identification, it would be very interesting especially as there are so many types of them growing here.
On the prompt of my brother-in-law I looked up this wonderful educational website: of the British Lichen Society ~ https://britishlichensociety.org.uk/learning/about-lichens: I’m sure it will be very useful for yours truly and for anyone else interested in lichen. Thanks Colin!
Yesterday was a lovely spring day, full sunshine and only a little breeze, dry. My grandson Ruben was visiting and after cooking lunch together we decided to go and see which flowers and plants we would find in the hedgerow along our favourite walk. We took off in a gallop as Ruben is a very fit twelve and a half year old, he leads an active outdoor life and loves his gymnastics. During this walk he wanted to take photos and so, as you do, I handed him over my phone. Following are some of the pictures he took. I think he did very well and he concentrated on what was to be found hidden away, and finding he did; some water plants and fresh grasses. He also took a couple of photos while half climbing a tree. And in his pocket he carried a bag in case he came across other people’s rubbish! He is a good citizen in the making who cares about his environment. We both had an interesting time and we also had a good laugh and fun as he pushed me or pulled me and called me an old granny if I lagged behind because I was looking at some specimen of plants I wanted to have a closer look at, but all in good spirit of give and take. I felt very refreshed after our walk.
Above are five of Rubens photos, taken on our walk. He came across a ladybird, and was fascinated by a little brook and of what was growing in there.
Searching, observing and finding that spring has started and that lots of signs are to be seen all over the place.
It is lovely to see buds enlarging on the trees. This walk is safe as not many cars drive here, it eventually connects to the Castletown road at Rusha Mill. With the town of Skibbereen becoming more built up, this is a very valuable piece of rural beauty and long may it be that way.
“Nature gives to every time and season some beauties of its own” Charles Dickens
“Frost grows on the window glass, forming whorl patterns of lovely translucent geometry.” Vera Nazarian
“It is the life of the crystal, the architect of the flake, the fire of the frost, the soul of the sunbeam. This crisp winter air is full of it.” John Burroughs
“You find high art in the mysterious beauty of nature! In high art, you find high genius! In high genius, you find endless glows!” Mehmet Murat ildan
“Humankind demonstrates an unerring ability to witness beauty. By observing nature’s beauty and striving to create beautiful things, humankind brokers its own salvation.” Kilroy J. Oldster
“In the middle of winter, I, at last, discovered that there was in me an invincible summer.” Albert Camus
We did not get snow, but one of the mornings we woke up to our Juneberry tree’s ( Amelanchier lamarckii) branches as white as snow, it was the frost that did it, and it was very beautiful.
“Our mind is a limitless sky, and we can only be an albatross flying in the vast expanse to occasionally discover the joys of sublimity!” – Avijeet Das
“Bursts of gold on lavender melting into saffron. It’s the time of day when the sky looks like it has been spray-painted by a graffiti artist.” – Mia Kirshner
“The sky is the daily bread of the eyes.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
“We shall find peace. We shall hear angels, we shall see the sky sparkling with diamonds.” – Anton Chekhov
Summer has been long, warm and dry, how lovely it has been this year and still it continues though it is almost the end of September. The beautiful warm sunshine illuminates the now autumn colours. Day by day the leaves are turning red, yellow and all shades of brown. Pungent scents fill our lungs, it is a delight to our minds and souls.
My sister and I were discussing food for the soul the other day and while giving it deep thought I know what it is that often feeds my soul; it is what I find and observe in nature, meditation on it and thankfulness for it.
Last weekend my daughter took me to Killarney in Co. Kerry and one of our plans was to walk in the national forest which is one of the remaining ancient forests in Ireland with many native trees. The two days we spent there were very restorative. The beauty of the trees laden with their seeds at this time was what inspired us, we talked about it, it made us cheerful and light-hearted. We rested for coffee and cake at a thatched roof cottage and sat out in the sunshine with leaves lightly twirling around us, our conversation deep and yet full of excitement at being in a place where we felt not a care in the world.
This delightful cottage where lovely coffee and cakes are servedMy daughter
Though this was the first time I had a break since before covid time, I have gathered quite a collection of photos over the summer that are now waiting to be used and written about in my blog. So watch this space! (I will as well 🙂 )
A windless morning in the garden. A lone robin is singing in the birch tree. Some sounds are travelling up from the town in the valley. I’m having my morning coffee outside on the patio and enjoying this beautiful and peaceful scene. Our foxgloves are almost totally in seed now, only the tops of their long stems are still a beautiful pink, they have been very good for the pollinators. This morning only a few bumblebees have visited. Seagulls and crows are flying over our airspace shouting confident cries. Sparrows are chirping in the hawthorn tree, many of them. How I love all those sounds.
Of the usual two dozen that years ago were, there are now only four swifts visiting in our area, I so miss their summery sounds above our houses and gardens.
How I enjoy all this activity in nature, and this morning is a rare break in my own daily activities, a solace to the soul, a much desired rest for the body. And yet it is there for the taking – whenever and free. A true blessing.
agoyvaerts 