This week has been a little surreal. Unplanned endings and unprepared new beginnings colliding in a time that felt disorientated. Or discombobulated, as I heard someone say. I’ve also missed my usual routine of a pause among the trees during the morning alpaca round. This is because Steve and I have been synchronising our arrival …
If we pick every flower, what is left for passers-by to savour? And if harvesting fields, orchards, vineyards, and woods takes everything, what about the next generation of growth? Where will it come from? Our cycles for judging fruitfulness and success have become catastrophically short-term, and the consequences are all around. We think we have …
How do you pick your plums, apples, or any fruit you eat? You likely take them off the supermarket shelf, ready selected and potentially wrapped. And because most of our fruit is grown in highly engineered monoculture, picking will be a uniform, mechanically assisted process. But at what cost? There’s an obvious cost to the …
These are delicious Victoria plums from my home county of Kent, the ‘Garden of England’. Their fragrant smell and juicy, sweet taste remind me of the fruit farm where I grew up. They are extraordinarily evocative. For the last few weeks, we’ve been able to buy tree-ripened plums. Yet these last few are verging on …
You might see a mushroom in less than its prime. And wish for what might have been. I smile. Because I see a feast enjoyed and a living demonstration of interdependence. That also means picking up a dead mole further along the path and tossing them into the undergrowth to continue their part in the …
While today marks the end of an era, it is also a day like all others. Where we make a multitude of small choices that tilt our lives in one direction or another. And as I write, I am looking at John O’Donohue’s words from his blessing for Matins May I live this day Compassionate …
The colours caught my eye as I walked through the gate at lake level. So I looked up, expecting to see the source of the reflection in the sky. No rainbow. How could there be, with no cloud or rain falling? Yet here it was on the lake’s surface, shifting location as I walked by. …
It doesn’t seem to matter where I go in our little valley; moss is at home here. Not just one kind of moss, but a delightful plethora of shapes, colours and textures. The nature of the terrain and the fact that alpacas don’t treat moss as a delicacy probably help. So does our leaving fallen …
Just walking bya leafin early autumnsunlight,more gloriousthan acrown. Extravagantbeauty inplain sight,patientlywaitingto benoticed Who are we,and whatare we bearinghiddenbeneaththe layersof love?
Beauty is not in a hurry. It doesn’t shout before it is ready, until it is formed in the secret place. Then it emerges, responding to light and love, and sings its transcendent song. ‘What is real is almost always, to begin with, hidden, and does not want to be understood by the part of …