Early Morning Walk and Show Your Love

7.30am

Within minutes I'm t totally soaked - up to my elbows -  from all the plants and weeds crowding 

over the narrow footpath which runs along the edge of  the wheat field,

and I have to hold my camera above my head to stop it getting wet.

It's wonderful to be out in the  early morning coolness  - although it's pretty damp - even before the village wakes up.

It's early for me anyway ...but I have a lot to do and my days have a habit of running away with me....  sometimes my walk gets lost or forgotten in my busyness.

A sleepy bumble bee  resting on my doormat this morning when I come home from my walk. I''m so happy to see it and so glad I didn't step on it.

And now my busy busy day is done .

I was going to use this quote from Robert Holden that I read this morning, to inform my day, but I forgot about it. 

Wherever you go today,

Whoever you are with,

Whatever you do,

do this - 

Show your love.

I forgot to do it but I like it as a mantra...as a practice.  For me it means being willing to be vulnerable first.

Something else I forget to do is to breathe properly -  especially when I'm stressed.  Which I am at the moment....my cortisol levels are raised, my adrenals in overdrive. So today my  lovely kinesiologist reminds me of the yoga breathing practise of breathing in to the count of 4 or 5 and breathing out more slowly to the count of 8 or 10. It is this out breath that does the calming down.

Breathing out the fear.

Breathing in the love.

The Listening Garden

My own roses.

Today I spend time with a very wise and lovely Shamanic healer who takes me on a journey to retrieve some lost parts of myself ...the parts I sent away to  help me survive my masculine emphasised conditioning...and the part I sent away that knew something was wrong with Robin 10 years ago but it was too hard to live with.

And what is restored to me is my knowing, my intuition of what is right for me, my child like innocence, my capacity and power to know my own life. ...powered by the knowledge of Robin's gratitude for me when he was alive. And mine for him now.

So what is restored to me is the part of me that knows the way, that can see and locate my direction and purpose.

 Which is somehow rooted in this garden, in the trees, in this land to which I am caretaker and where in time I will create a community of living things, where all living things thrive because I'm listening to them....a place to come to take tea and cake and listening ...me to you... and you to the garden....

 The Listening Garden.

 Sadly I don't think this poor little siskin with fat finch disease will thrive much longer in the garden.  Although she can fly she is very slow, dazed and dull and this afternoon she was nearly caught by the black and white pussy cat who has been coming closer and closer to the house in the last few days.

I find it so heart wrenchingly painful  to see her ...knowing she is dying. But now I can feel it ....and know it... and grieve for her. ...like I couldn't for Robin...wouldn't let myself know he was dying.

But maybe now I can. Now that I know my way.

Oh yes, and lovely shamanic healer also said I must talk to the trees in my garden  - one in particular ....and use their help and wisdom...

and she recommended that I follow the  Blood Type Diet - I'm an "O" -   and give up wheat and dairy for a month which she said would help with my gut and the pain in my fingers.  I've known they don't really suit me but I haven't been listening to my body...bread and cheese are just so delicious.... 

 PS -  thanks for your comments B....Google won't let me publish my replies at the moment.

Faith in Nature...and Vodaphone

Just a few things in my whole long day ...

I buy big bunches of heavenly scented sweet peas and sweet williams from  the man who sells his vegetables and flowers from the back of  a trailer outside the village shop every Friday .

Their perfume .....and memories of my mother.... fill every room in the  house.

These are the colours I want to bring my new bedroom to life.

When I ring Vodaphone, the woman  I speak to is endlessly patient and persistent and even rings me back on the landline when we are cut off...mobile reception in this house in the country is dreadful...and I  know she won't give up till she has helped me understand what I need to do regarding how I use my data.

When I thank her for being so helpful she says I have made her day...and I reply that she has made mine. A kind voice representing a giant faceless company....restoring my faith in service.

Hanging upside down.....cute 

baby blue tit.

Juveniles  - starling, thrush, blackbird.

My favourite of the three...

This bee has some sort of red bundles on his legs...I couldn't get close enough to see what they were before he moved on to the next nectar trap.

An experiment - half a coconut filled with suet and seeds - I wasn't sure the birds would go for it - but they do and clean in out in a day.

Lovely to see the nuthatch...

Weeding in the border this afternoon...this campanula reminds me of my mother as well.

She is alway with me when I garden - I learnt so much from her about plants and about planting.

So good to see the little birds on the feeders - so often colonised by the starlings now

Later I set up a Direct Debit to a company who campaigns to save the bees...I want to halt the bee decline but I frequently feel utterly helpless and hopeless in the face of the world's problems.... 

So I feed the birds and water my garden pots.... and love my small patch of green beauty...  take care of it as best I can without using sprays and pesticides.....and hope that is enough.I have a deep faith in  nature...
 its constant growth and regeneration is certainly restoring my soul... especially if I don't let the weeds overwhelm me..... or the lupins. 

Not Rosemoor ...But Still Beautiful

We planned a day at RHS Rosemoor Gardens  - a dear friend and I - but we never got there.

We stopped on the way for coffee at the wonderful middle eastern  Baobab cafe in Crediton....ended up staying there for fabulous crunchy salad/aubergine/tahina lunch... and walking round the town later where we found roses growing

 

 in other people's gardens, 

in the park,

in the playground,

and in the church ( which was originally the first cathedral in Devon built in the ninth century) where 

the ladies of the church were setting up for a flower festival at the weekend.

The  floor of the church was strewn with buckets of flowers in water - some of them sent down from 

Covent Garden - like these chrysanthemums - their heads covered in white net bonnets to make them last till Saturday,

and some like these rattle grasses cut from their own gardens to add to the elaborate arrangements all around the church.

  Not Rosemoor but all still beautiful.

  Back home in my garden another poppy has opened in 

burnt orange

  fragile splendour.

And I get a brief glimpse of the bullfinch...and no photo of it, but this morning I catch sight of the  pink/ blue/white markings of a jay as is swoops out of the elm tree at the bottom of the garden beyond the stream ...can't believe my luck...hope it will come to the bird feeder one day...but maybe only when the starling family have departed ...if they ever do.

And now I'm too tired to write any more...and need to sleep like this pussy cat which was dozing on the giant oak stump in my neighbour's garden this morning when I pulled the curtains....imagining my  day would be one particular way and it turned out to be another....different but still beautiful.