Wabi-sabi and the beauty of imperfection

Every year at least once I remember the lines of this poem. Usually it's during Autumn in the dazzling russets of dying leaves. This year it was while walking in Mount Congreve during Magnolia time. Magnolias were flowering on dark branches and there are some ancient specimens there, but it was the dying petals strewn underfoot that brought the poem to mind again. 

I wish I understood the beauty 

in leaves falling.

To whom are we beautiful 

as we go? 

~David Ignatow

If there is such a thing as a Wabi-sabi poem, maybe this is it. Wabi-sabi is a Japanese way of seeing which honours the beauty of transience, imperfection and the incomplete. Think about your favourite old chair, a cracked cup you have stuck back together, an old silk scarf? I saw it in my elderly Grandmother, the most beautiful wrinkly woman, oozing love and elegance. I find it now in ragged hedgerows and vilified dandelions, and here in trampled petals. 

How freeing it can be to strive for imperfection! Being 60 now I hope it includes ageing gracefully, fading softly, avoiding at all costs the lethal stuff on offer from the botox pushers and their like? Do you have a place in your heart for Wabi-sabi? 

Here are some other reflections on this poem

A black cat, another road trip and a resounding YES!

Farmyard black cat in the ditch is a sign of luck

Around here these border collies are all known as Shep

The Cat Shepherd's apprentice says hello

Time to fly away for the Chaffinch too

One of these days we will be leaving this sleepy patch for a bit of a road trip so I'm taking this black cat as a sign of good luck.....

Myself and himself will be heading for France with no agenda and only half an inkling of where we are going. We have always camped out since we hitch hiked from Dublin as far as Greece and Turkey. We pitched our tent on a Mediterranean beach, were fed by local people and didn't even have Google to warn us about scorpions......

We once drove a vintage VW around Germany and Scandinavia busking and creating street art along the way. Later we piled the three kids, a dog, a cat, a budgie and a box of gerbils into a Fiat Ducato and headed off around Ireland. After a few years wet Irish summers, we ended up returning year after year to Carnac in Brittany.  Last time we slept under the stars in a balmy St. Malo. We had intended to drive to the south but ended up spending 3 weeks in the same spot so beautiful was that town on the sea.

Leaving Ireland by ferry  you realise what a tiny island far off the edge of Europe we live on. This time we will be in another VW van taking the ferry from Rosslare to Cherbourg and watching the South East corner of Ireland disappear over the horizon once more....

The resident artist who lives upstairs will feed the birds while we are gone. Until then we are both campaigning for a YES vote in the upcoming Marriage Equality Referendum. Seasoned campers, campaigners and now in our 40th year of it, at this stage we have fingers and toes crossed that we are going to hear a big resounding YES echoing across the Irish Sea in our wake........




PS I've just made my photography portfolio "mobile friendly" check out the Rural Life Gallery here should be easy peasy even on your phone! 

Just do it!

Imagine it's a beautiful spring day and you spot a fresh water pool glinting in the sunlight? Imagine wanting to dive right in and feel the water splashing around you, clearing your head and lightening the load? 

Then just do it!! 

Something precious to belong to; home.

Today it is the stillest, sunniest spring morning. 

To the east the hill of gorse is in full flower and the exotic aroma of sweet coconut brushes against my jacket. Birdsong fills the fields as nest making and nest guarding goes on. In the distant sky the Coastguard helicopter is rumbling it's way out over the Copper Coast. 

The golden light smothers everything in streams.  Later the wind will probably pick up from the southern Atlantic, a front might approach from the Comeragh Mountains to the west or from the plains to the north.

For now Waterford on a still spring day, in the golden light of this spring flowering, is something precious to belong to. 

And it's home.

Check out a new gallery called Up close in the Hedgrows here

Things that go bump in the night.

Lovely old window in the Farncroft Mill

The restoration of the mill wheel and the buildings took 10 years

In Memory Antiques in Birr

The 6 acre garden designed and built from a green field by Angela Jupe at Farncroft Mill 

Angela Jupe's design makes use of recycled doors and windows

The entrance gateway to Birr Castle

Leap Castle County Offaly 

In some parts of Ireland, you can still step back in history. From the small neat streets and village shops to the grand castles and gardens, this is exactly what happens in the midlands.

We are on the second leg of our blogger tour (sponsored by Mid Ireland Tourism) and it's dungeons and dragons all the way. In the most haunted of them all Leap Castle, the owner sits in on top of the fire casually recounting yarns about the spirits and beings which he says are living all around him. In the old Farncroft Mill,the water wheel eerily churns into action because of the enthusiasm of the two conservationists who restored it for ten years.

When I ask Irene Sweeney why herself and Marcus took on this project in their retirement, (when they could be putting their feet up) she says that as long as they are able to they will keep working on their passion. She continued that it's not a matter of IF but WHEN they will no longer be able to manage it "then we will stop." Passionate and pragmatic.

Birr Castle and Demesne has been an occupied Castle for hundreds of years. The Parsons family who live here share their home with the public. While we were lucky enough to get a guided tour of the house we couldn't take photos in there. Somehow this made the place feel very much like a family sanctuary. The peace of the library room lined with books including a set of Dervla Murphy's travel tales, the painting of Anne Boleyn a family ancestor in the drawing room, and an enormous dining room with a table set for dinner was understated and peaceful.

This Castle and Garden Trail through North Tipperary and Offaly provided no shortage of photography opportunities. At times I was so busy gazing, chatting or eating that I missed too many of them. 

I'm already planning to go back with himself in tow and take more time to get into the photographic zone.  Light is returning and it feels like it must be time to to hitch up the wagon and head out on the road again........

Thanks to everyone who made this Midland Blogger Tour so delightful! Special mention to Emmet House, Birr Theatre and Arts Centre, Memory Antiques, Oldfarm, Silver Line Shannon Cruises, Lough Boola Discovery Park, Townsend House Tapas, and there were so many more.......