My last blogpost.....here.....

After 5 years of weekly blogging here on the Blogger platform I will be moving to my new Wordpress home next week!! As the next five years open up before me I am excited about the new possibilities.

I hope dear readers you will continue to enjoy the Foxglove Lane Blog On the new site, besides the usual blog,  you will find an archive of posts from the last five years, and there will be a new section of resources called "for rainy days." I will continue to run the Print Shop and will be adding a new section there called "Squarefullness," a collection of mini, square landscapes, 120mm x120mm (5x5 inches) signed, mounted and ready to frame.

Mostly it will be a space for sharing images and thoughts about life down a long winding lane in rural Ireland! More of the ordinary and the everyday small miracles that take place in the western sky and in the unruly hedgerows. No big plans, just more of those small moments we share.

As this will be my final blogpost from the Blogger platform, I want to remind you of a few changes so that you can be prepared. If you are following this blog via the Tuesday email, then none of this applies. Your email will continue to arrive (if it doesn't then let me know)

If you are following via the Blogger reader then the best thing to do is subscribe to the Tuesday list here and you will stay up to date.

I will keep the old blog archive at the blogspot address www.foxglovelane.blogspot.com (for the moment) and the new blog will have the old familiar address www.foxglovelane.com There will probably be a few little blips during the changeover, please let me know if you spot anything going awry.

For the bloggers amongst you I will outline in an upcoming blog (on the new site) how I made the move and why; what I found out in my research about site design and what I've learned from five years of weekly photography and writing. All in good time. "Ripening" my word for the year is dictating the organic pace of all of this.......

See you all on the other side. Yikes!!

The winter of listening

The Winter of Listening

No one but me by the fire,
my hands burning
red in the palms while
the night wind carries
everything away outside.

All this petty worry
while the great cloak
of the sky grows dark
and intense
round every living thing.

What is precious
inside us does not
care to be known
by the mind
in ways that diminish
its presence.

What we strive for
in perfection
is not what turns us
into the lit angel
we desire,

what disturbs
and then nourishes
has everything
we need.

What we hate
in ourselves
is what we cannot know
in ourselves but
what is true to the pattern
does not need
to be explained.

Inside everyone
is a great shout of joy
waiting to be born.

Even with the summer
so far off
I feel it grown in me
now and ready
to arrive in the world.

All those years
listening to those
who had
nothing to say.

All those years
forgetting
how everything
has its own voice
to make
itself heard.

All those years
forgetting
how easily
you can belong
to everything
simply by listening.

And the slow
difficulty
of remembering
how everything
is born from
an opposite
and miraculous
otherness.
Silence and winter
has led me to that
otherness.

So let this winter
of listening
be enough
for the new life
I must call my own.

~  David Whyte  ~

(The House of Belonging)

Best part of winter

There are struggles for territory going on a few feet from this desk.

Two blackbirds are dancing in and out of a boundary. On one side a large rock and a gravel drive way, on the other a couple of flower beds and a group of willow trees. The dancing, flying and hopping continue at the very edge of where the two territories meet, day in and out.

The boys are back in town and are making their presence felt all across this couple of acres.

Winter for all it's darkness is the best time for getting up close with birds. Every morsel and scrap is welcome as they build up their reserves for the mating season. Come Spring there will be even more frantic activity as they feed their families and then in the summer they will be reabsorbed into the leaves and branches of the bushier hedgerows.

For now they skid and flutter into my "all you can eat buffet" and dine out while we wait for Spring.

Pixelated friendship

Sometimes, here in the middle of nowhere,  I get the most precious correspondence. Mostly from people I don't know and have never met in the real world.

There's a tribe of ripening women who consistently show up and dazzle me with their shining wisdom. They are photographers, practitioners and bloggers of all kinds; sky watchers and lovers of sunsets everywhere, in Australia, Brazil, Alaska and on Horsecroft Farm in merry old England; sensitive types who love birds, and lanes and dogs; writers, creatives and friends of Ireland; sassy beach walkers and mid-winter sea dippers..... 

And lonely people, bedridden, who remind me of my Dad's last years and send me warm email messages. And men too, with foreign sounding names and fabulous websites of their own. People with all sorts of deep knowledge and technical skills in their own fields, or who live in big cities and pine for hedgerows. 

Even real old friends, who played in the back gardens of Ireland and beyond, send hand written notes with warm memories or mail me snippets from their lives. 

So thank you ALL. (Even if you never did send any love letters and just visit here occasionally, consider yourself included) We may never have met in person but through some twinternet alchemy we are developing a new kind of pixelated friendship. 

Soon Foxglove Lane will be moving lock stock and barrel to a new website. I have yet to learn how to fully make the transition, but things are falling into place and while parts of my brain are now fried, a few of those pesky old brain cells are leaping for joy.

Here's to you, me and continuing pixelated friendship!



By the way there's an interview with me here by nature lover and blogging legend Donna Abel Donnabella. Hands across the Atlantic!