Bringing in the Harvest and Painful Paradox

The first thing I see on my walk this morning. I hope the baby bird that pecked its way out is still alive and well.

The second thing I see is that the gate to the first barley field near my house is open. So I guess it has been cut. And it has - in long prickly rows following the curve of the land.

That is why there was so much tractor and trailer activity in the lane last night clanking past the house till late. 

And it's the same in the top field. I have followed the footpath beside this crop all year and in these last months I've watched it change from

green to

gold.

 So on the hottest day of the year,

the farmers chose to begin threshing,

and all day the baling has been going on,

the usual peace and quiet all around me,

disturbed by the sound of the

farm machines, bringing in the harvest,

ignored by all close neighbours

in other fields.

 I can see these neat bales from my bedroom window this evening . 

Every morning I walk the boundary of my garden in bare feet following the tracks of  bumpy mole tunnels,

which I have decided to leave alone. I'd rather  have moles than a neat lawn. The small white buddleia is struggling for light in the shade of a large conifer,

and the horse chestnut on the bank of the stream has its first fruit but also a disease...

leaf miner blight ...it was the same last year but I think it only affects the leaves and does't kill the tree. I couldn't bear to lose a tree.

I'm not sure what this pretty flower is ...maybe a kind of clover....it has spread everywhere in the lawns....and just springs back when I tread on it during  my slow mindful boundary walk...heel toe...heel toe.

 It has been cooler with a cloud blanket over the sun all day. I've lost that aliveness-in-the-heat feeling from yesterday.

 I have been in the kitchen most of the day - cooking. Making carrot and coconut soup, mixing up a rice salad, roasting mediterranean vegetables, whizzing up  dressings -  garlicky, lemon chermoula and creamy tahini with chilli. And baking -  Nigella's chocolate  olive oil cake. 

For my nephew's birthday party. He'll be 42.

I hope he'll be able to manage his celebration tomorrow with all that chemo swirling in his body. 

He calls it healing poison.

I long for it to work its magic -  such a  painful paradox.

The Tawny Owl ...and finding a way into my own skin.

Breakfast after my walk this morning. 

The gift of a honey mango - nectar sweet - from a dear friend, and raspberries from a local allotment. I eat it crossed legged on the teak bench outside the kitchen. It's already hot at 8am. I'm in heaven. This is the kind of African temperature that wakes me up in my skin.

7am

Cobnut shells discarded by the squirrels scattered in the middle of the road. 

This narrow road that runs past my house is the old stage coach route to Tiverton. I always walk it imagining the horses and the coach and its passengers lurching up the hill - probably rutted mud in those days. 

Me and my shadow in the bars of the field gate.

Another field in sunlight and lone cow parsley bordering the steepest part of the hill.

I always have my camera ready along this stretch of the lane now. 

 A few days ago a large brown shape floated down from this tree canopy, utterly silent, swooping towards me -  the arch of its eyebrows, the round black beads of its eyes, unmistakable  - as it disappeared over my head, over a gap in the hedge and into the field beyond. 

A tawny owl. 

My first sight ever of an owl in the wild. It felt like being touched by an angel feather.

I saw it again the next day, in the same place but flying from behind me, high over my head and it landed on the branch of  an oak tree directly in front of me.  Its soft curved pyramid shape was camouflaged by the leaves, and by the time I'd focused the camera on it, it was gone on silent brown wings into the sky.

Today I scanned the deep leaf and branch canopy above me for ages but it wasn't there.

Maybe you can't repeat the joy... the surprise.... of the unexpected. I don't have a photo, which of course I want desperately, but I have an indelible print in my memory of that iconic round face sweeping out of the sky on wide specked brown wings, oblivious to the gift of wonder it was giving to  a woman on the path below.

Lone white cloud.

 The view of the village stretched out below me.

This evening the church bells ring across the village and land in my house with all its windows and doors wide open to any passing sounds - the rooks,  the doves, the bees, the flies, the tractors on their way home.

Summer sheep pastures.

Every few steps along the farm track leading into the village are wonderful arching old oaks.

This is the one on my land.

 Only 40 years old. Planted into the bank on the far side of the stream. 

Since my session with the lovely Shaman on Dartmoor, who said I must choose a tree and talk to it, every morning when I return from my walk I cut a flower and take it as an offering to the tree, tucking it under the ivy leaves creeping up its bark. 

 I sit on the damp earth under the shelter of its branches, dropping like a green umbrella to the grass, the stream running below my feet, and say my thanks, offer my prayers.

This morning I add a nasturtium to the lavender spear and spiky yellow succulent that I took yesterday and the day before.

Sometimes I forget to pray and  I let all the worries in my mind distract me, or I think about what lies ahead in my day, or I watch the scurrying of the blackbird, picking out worms in the lawn. Or sometimes the tears just flow, my sadness leaks out of me and I lay my hand onto the rough mossy bark of the tree beside me and imagine I'm as steadfast, rooted and wise as an oak.

Then I get up and enter the forever unfinished tapestry of things to do, threading into the day in front of me.

Tomorrow I  will start taking a homeopathic remedy for the long deep roots of my grief and the restlessness which haunts my days and my nights. 

But I'm also trusting that walking by the fields of corn ....and along the tangled green paths, touched by this nature, this beauty around me ....sitting with the oak tree...will start to ground me into the fabric of my life as it is now....help me to find a way into my own skin, my own nature, without Robin's presence, his love, to give me identity and purpose.

PS  Thanks for your lovely comments B. I find I can't even write a reply on my own blog. So there is something wrong at my end not yours. Sorry. 

All that damp green earth beauty...and Cobwebs and Mist

It's been ages since I last wrote a blog and I don't know where to start - all the things, the thoughts, the feelings that occurred and didn't occur during those days and hours have passed now. So I will start with today. And I'll post a few extra photo blogs of the last weeks as well.

The storm last night - the thunder and a long display of flashing sheet lightning disturbed my sleep. As  well as the awfulness of Boris being elected as PM.

 But I'm still on my early morning walk by 7am. Since I stopped blogging late at night I now walk the circle of ancient lane and field footpath, farm track and village tarmac. It takes me about an hour if I stop to take photos and stand still in wonder  - breathing in the view, the silence, the tiny changes around me since yesterday. 

I rarely encounter another soul. It's nearly always just me alone with the sky and the hedgerows and all that green damp earth beauty.

 I know it's restoring me somehow. From the inside out. 

A  camouflaged meadow brown butterfly at my feet....

and so delicate in the bearded barley, flashing her hint of inside wing orange. 

I see very  little litter on my way - except  this beer bottle today.   Every so often I take a bag with me and collect bottles and sweet wrappers and bits of old plastic rope and cigarette packets and bring them back to put in my re-cycling bin.

  

A recent hoard.

Cows, cud-chewing,  on the other side of the hedge. I always hear them before I see them, snuffling, rubbing up against a panel of corrugated iron.

One morning recently I was followed the whole way by the mournful calling from cows inside a barn across the valley. Mothers calling for their babies taken away.

And the baaa-ing sound of  the sheep calling across the field to each other - young ones,  lost, mother-calling - accompanies me as I walk back down into the village....

I always stop to wave to the three horses on the farm...who just look at me curiously. I love them.

I usually see a pussy cat in the fishing lake field....they usually run away.... but today this one was in some sort of territory stand off with 

this one on the other side of the gate, so he didn't move a whisker.

Back home I cut  a small bouquet of flowers and herbs from the garden and leave them on the doorstop of one of my neighbours. It is the first anniversary of her  husband's death.

She calls round later, while I'm watering the front flower bed, to say thank you but that his date is in a few days time. But it doesn't matter -  as I know and she knows -  that the weeks and days leading up to the anniversary are much worse than the actual day. It's 2 years and nine months to the day since Robin died and my heart is still aching sore.

Yesterday my walk was all about the gossamer cradles of cobwebs in field and hedge and the soft mist hiding the early sun.

And my first wee wren - I heard it before I saw it...never been able to capture it on camera before  - wrens are so darting swift - so I 'm thrilled.

A cloud of sparrows always swoop into the hedge lining the footpath into the village when I approach and its the first time one has stayed still enough for a few seconds for me to get a photo....thrilled again.

He's sleeping ....the click of my camera doesn't disturb him.

 More filigree cobwebs adorning this  calla lily in the newly planted flower bed in the front garden. I  wanted to bring some colour to the approach to the front door. Even temporarily ...as the bed will disappear next year in my plans to widen the drive.  But it brings me joy in the moment.

PS. A message for B in case you read this.

I've tried to comment on your blog many times and sorry I can't get it to work. I so enjoyed the last 2 chapters of your novel - and totally understand why you are carrying on off-blog. Good luck with it all - it is a gem.