The road ahead.

Monuments.

We don't see beautiful monuments like this anymore.

Old Cemeteries...

Are a haven for wildlife....

Highgate Cemetery provides  a safe environment for this young wallaby.

Rich colors of Autumn.

Fungi, it's that time of year:)

Awesome Vision and Talent.

Ashes and Snow photographer.....

I wish I could see the world through his eyes.
Gregory Colbert..Legend.

A very shy Ladybird.

Rosa Rugosa

The Best Welsh Detective.

Hinterland-awesome television!

Fruits....

and berries....

Autumn in the air.

Lilies.

and more......

I love the garden....

....after the rain.

Wild spaces.

We should all love bees!

My first Peacock Butterfly of the Year.

Little beauties.

Love of gardening.

"The Love of Gardening is a Seed Once Sown, that Never Dies"~ Gertrude Jekyll

Recipe

For Irish Brown Bread.

In the land of words.

In the land

of words,

I stand as still

as a tree

and let the words

rain down on me.

Come, rain, bring

your knowledge and your

music. Sing

while I grow green

and full.

I’ll stand as still

as a tree,

and let your blessings

fall on me.

-Eloise Greenfield.

Periwinkle

Reply to the question.

take the leaf of a tree

trace its exact shape

the outside edges

and inner lines

memorize the way it is fastened to the twig

(and how the twig arches from the branch)

how it springs forth in April

how it is panoplied in July

by late August

crumple it in your hand

so that you smell its end-of-summer sadness

chew its woody stem

listen to its autumn rattle

watch it as it atomizes in the November air

then in winter

when there is no leaf left

  invent one.

-Eve Merriam.

It's not a garden.....

.......without  a Robin.

The Color Purple.

The life that I have.

The life that I have

Is all that I have

And the life that I have

Is yours.

The love that I have

Of the life that I have 

Is yours and yours and yours

A sleep I shall have

A rest I shall have

Yet death will be but a pause

For the peace of my years

In the long green grass

Will be yours and yours

And Yours.

Poem by Leo Marks British Cryptographer,

from his amazing book, Between Silk and Cyanide.

Dwarf Iris after the rain.

The first Bee of the year.

I just don't read enough...

At last....

Blue skies and white clouds....Yes!

The fact that I can....

Vision.

Today there have been lovely things

I never saw before;

sunlight through a jar of marmalade;

a blue gate;

a rainbow

in soapsuds on dishwater;

candlelight on butter;

the crinkled smile of a little girl

who had new shoes with tassels;

a chickadee on a thorn-apple;

empurpled mud under a willow,

where white geese slept;

white ruffled curtains sifting moonlight

on the scrubbed kitchen floow;

the under-side  of a white-oak leaf;

ruts in the road at sunset;

an egg yolk in a blue bowl.

My love kissed my eyes last night.

-May Thielgaard Watts.

She stood in the storm.

She stood in the Storm.

And when the wind did not blow her away.

She adjusted her sails.

-Elizabeth Edwards.

Too often....

Memories of Summer.

Illumination 'Pink' Foxglove.

'Chocolate' Cosmos.

A Plan.

The calm before the storm

Blue skies, sunshine and white clouds this morning before more bad weather arrives.

At Last!

A dry day under blue skies.

On a Grey February Day....

....Primroses make me smile!

The day begins.

Paper Magic.

The child alone.

The child alone a poet is:

Spring and Fairyland are his.

Truth and Reason show but dim

And all's poetry with him.

-Robert Graves.

The greatest things in life.

We do not fight.

"We cannot win this battle to save species and environment,

Without forging an emotional bond between ourselves and nature as well....

For we do not fight to save what we do not love." Steven Jay Gould.

Ordinary Life.

This was a day when nothing happened,
the children went off to school
without a murmur, remembering
their books, lunches, gloves.
All morning, the baby and I built block stacks
in the squares of light on the floor.
And lunch blended into naptime,
I cleaned out kitchen cupboards,
one of those jobs that never gets done,
then sat in a circle of sunlight
and drank ginger tea,
watched the birds at the feeder
jostle over lunch's little scraps.
A pheasant strutted from the hedgerow,
preened and flashed his jeweled head.
Now a chicken roasts in the pan,
and the children return,
the murmur of their stories dappling the air.
I peel carrots and potatoes without paring my thumb.
We listen together for your wheels on the drive.
Grace before bread.
And at the table, actual conversation,
no bickering or pokes.
And then, the drift into homework.
The baby goes to his cars, drives them
along the sofa's ridges and hills.
Leaning by the counter, we steal a long slow kiss,
tasting of coffee and cream.
The chicken's diminished to skin & skeleton,
the moon to a comma, a sliver of white,
but this has been a day of grace
in the dead of winter,
the hard cold knuckle of the year,
a day that unwrapped itself
like an unexpected gift,
and the stars turn on,
order themselves
into the winter night.
-Barbara Crooker.

Memories of Summer.

Almost everyday we wake to grey skies and endless  rain. In the gloom the damp hangs in the air, and clings to everything. The lawn is absolutely sodden as are the pots I left out on the patio containing my precious lilly bulbs to rest over the Winter months. Summer is a long forgotten memory, so here are some pictures to lift my spirits and remind me of warm sunny days and blue skies!

A walk by the lake......

or the Abbey ruins......

...or just smelling the roses!