On This Bench ...something magical happens.

Every now and again I go and sit on the rickety old bench perched on the bank of the stream...

in the shelter of the two silver birch trees one side, and the dense protection of the weeping willow on the other. My favourite tree of all.

When it was hot hot hot at the beginning of August  I carried my salad lunch out there

or sat with a cup of tea.....letting the garden wrap itself around me...instead of my usual habit of  jumping up after 5 minutes to pull up the weeds in the border round the pool, or to pull on my wellies and start clearing the debris from the stream.

 When I sit still out there something magical happens.

Once a robin flitted in and sat on the summer house roof for ages...

and this pussy cat appeared from behind the fir tree and the hazel hedge bordering the field beyond. 

But mostly I just sit and look.... and listen to the trees.... and the air ....and the birds.... not  really mediating but as close to it as I can get..... still thinking but not making plans or imagining how I could chop down bushes or re-build and re-consturct my surroundings.

 And then something imperceptible shifts....not sure what ....but  somehow a still, small space opens up  inside me and I feel utterly protected and supported and safe and loved......just for this moment... on this bench.... in this timeless and beautiful place.... on this day.

And because I remember that magical feeling it keeps calling me out...like it did this morning.

 I woke earlier than usual, pulled on my old paint splattered clothes, took the pussy cat blanket( the one Flapjack used to sleep on in the big chair in the sitting room) and a cup of hot lemon, my pen and notebook and a musty cushion from the summer house and just sat for ages on the bench.... wrapped up against the cool air but letting every sound, every bird song, every beautiful thing enter my being as if for the first time. And let it rest there. Healing me.

This is what I see in front of me...a young apple tree with only a few small apples on it and sadly with some disease in the branches...

the nasturtiums crawling up the steps of the ride-on mower garage.... one of Robin's first ceramics keeping watch by the summer house...

the pool and garage and the end of the house - my bedroom window overlooking it all.

The weeping willow to my left , the ride-on mower garage, which also houses all the pool equipment which I won't need, its ugliness  

screened in parts by huge dahlia bushes which I'm thrilled to have uncovered from choking trails of morning glory, especially 

as we were never very successful at growing dahlias in Sylvan Road.

And behind me the constant sound of trickling water from the stream...I still find it hard to take in that I really really have a brook on my land...that I don't have to get in the car to go in search of water

or beautiful trees to calm my soul. I can walk right out into them whenever I want.

And I won't have to walk to an allotment to grow vegetables...

I can pick warm tomatoes from my own greenhouse next summer...and eat them for lunch sitting on my bench.

I watched this squirrel sitting on the telegraph pole which runs along the road at the front of the house, and listened to the antics of the crows and the gulls for a long time. 

Then I started to get cold and went inside to make a smoothie of goat's milk kefir - which I ordered online from The Chuckling Goat Co -  which I've been drinking for the last week and which has been soothing my inflamed and unsettled gut. I can rely on my body to always reflect my emotional state... not surprisingly, insecure and unsettled and indecisive  is how I have been since I moved.

And then to have a glorious feast of breakfast from the bounty of my sister's garden...

before I take up my paint brush again and return to Duluxing the hall stairs and landing ....and some unlucky spiders... in my whiter and cleaner house.