~ Wild, free and wearing pink high heels~

I certainly know what it means to be cold to the bone, yet today I know sun on my skin again. Summer flowers have just sprung into life, my own patch is wildly self seeding, even lavender is appearing everywhere on the gravel.

So what's the news?

While work begins to blossom again in new ways I now have one foot firmly back in the meadow. 

Ireland goes green and the wild hedgerows so threatened by recent progress (like myself) survive another year. 

Big re-vamp going on in the day job and in my own head. 

More travel on the cards before the summer is out. 

Work, home and light........ bleeding into one.

These lane walks teach about imperfection, about the simplicity of real beauty, about how all the best things grow wild and free. Glancing at the high heels lined up to wear to a wedding tomorrow I wonder how vanity suddenly won out over comfort? Flat sandals would be grand (that voice said) but when I saw the high-heeled pink ones, the teenager in me succumbed! (I have happy feet btw as I never ever squish them into "foot-binding" shoes! But once would be OK?)

So now I'm telling myself it's just like gardening. A bit of preening, weeding, watering, and a few days staring up into the sun will do wonders? And while we're at it a wee bit of toe-nail painting wouldn't go astray either!

~Tending to a nest amongst the pinkest fritillaries~

While meditating on dewy daffodils and the pinkest fritillaries underfoot, I see her swooping in. Even with a dozen or so humans chatting beneath her nest, she carries on incessantly. Over and back, a short stop on the fence post and one final dive under a window ledge.

Carrying more than she can easily manage (enthusiasm and necessity) she keeps going until there is more than enough material. She will have to select and hone later.

The writers with me scribble notes and I crawl through the wet grass doting on spring flowers. Still in the distance I see her labouring on. Those precision flights with the sharpest focus on her destination.

Today uploading these photos, sifting and selecting from spring treasures, tending my own nest with all the deft skill and patience it takes, she still fills me with inspiration.

A rare sighting of our only surviving newt species the Common Newt

The Common Newt (protected in Ireland and in Europe) is rarely seen. It's a small creature very like a lizard and lives partially in and around waterways. This little guy was the worse for wear having climbed up some tall grass and fallen into a rain barrel in the garden. We rescued him, rested him on the rock and as he recovered I took these photographs.  Soon enough he slithered away into the long grass again, almost immediately he was impossible to spot.

I know he's not the cuddliest of creatures, in fact he has a pre-historic air about him, but luckily I am getting over that kind of squeemishness and enjoying more and more wildlife in my world. Does that include the large spider living beside my central heating switch? Late last night there he was right on it, just when I went to turn it on! Next thing another large one walks casually down the hall. What can I do? I feel I no longer can discriminate against the less attractive ones in our midst. If that was the case where would any of us be in a beauty contest?

However, I draw the line for the moment at featuring large spiders here! OK, it just might be that I would find it too hard to look down the macro lens and right into his eyes, but I hope both you and I will get there some day.....

There is so much rain, it's everywhere, on everything

It's yet another rainy Sunday and it seems as if the rain delays until I'm free from work and looking forward to a swim or a few hours in the garden with the sun on my skin, and then the deluge happens. Right now it is pounding on the roof and bending the last flowers of summer to the ground. But last night I got a lovely message from a someone in a drier climate, in the mid-west of the US, admiring the green and lush landscape that we in Ireland live in.

I suppose (grudgingly) that the rain is our friend and results in a soft and always green environment summer and winter. We turn on the tap and out it comes, clean and chemical free, always flowing. The little drops of moisture on every surface reflecting the thin light co-operate with nature to create our food and our future.

Today I am appreciating the beauty of rainy days and thinking of my friends around the world where water is a lot more scarce....The sun may be a bit lacking here in our so called summer but we are never thirsty .....

Some Wood Mouse babes interrupt the weeding..............

We were weeding the small patch of chard which Paddy is growing, in amongst the Rosemary bushes, when three infant Woodmice emerged from their small earthen burrow. All blind they stumbled out and ran amock in the damp earth. We had obviously disturbed them prematurely. As usual I ran to get the camera and managed to capture the little babes before the rain really started to pelt down. Luckily the mother came to their rescue later and they were all duly returned to base.

I am not a great weeder at the best of times and will always cry off if one of the "neighbours" puts in an appearance. I think I am happiest when taking the pictures rather than doing the real work.............

.