Month: May 2024
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Sometimes, only work will do . . .
The garden is beginning to burst forth with blossom on every bush. The sun is shining, and the days are long. Perhaps I should be taking pleasure in this delightful ambience, but the truth is that just now I only feel like working. There have been only a few periods in my life when work…
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Waiting for the rain
After a prolonged wet spell, when we yearned for the simple protection of a veranda over our heads, so that we could enjoy the outdoors in relative comfort, May turned dry and the friendly builders installed both frame and glass panels of the Simplicity 6 system. Plants in their outdoor pots began to wither before…
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A walk in the bluebell woods is like a dip in a tranquil sea
It’s been a long time since we took ourselves out for a walk in the woods just two doors down from us. Blame health issues and renovation challenges, or just inertia, but we finally shook off these vicissitudes and ambled forth. Just in time to catch the dwindling bluebell display, to hear the birdsong deep…
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Almost unfeasible delights
The incredible floribundance of the mallow in the front garden, pruned last autumn with what felt like devastating ruthlessness, has given way in our amazement to the solitary, somehow unfeasible blossom of a giant decorative onion in the back. How can it possibly sustain itself? I feel that way about life, sometimes. How has this…
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Exuberance
Oh! The peonies are out in full floral abundance, this morning. Acquired as tightly wrapped buds from the grocery store, as one does, they sat in water along with the luscious-smelling stocks, and gradually began to unveil themselves. When I came down this morning, all I could think of was: exuberance! Behold, world, this is…
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Intensity, and passion
I’ve been doing a small, daily gesture for our neighbour, which involves opening a dodgy greenhouse door in the morning as the sun begins to heat the air inside, and then closing it again, with gentle care, as the cool of late afternoon returns. One plant in full blossom, must be an azalea, has been…
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Serendipity, and the restless search for creativity
I’m a great fan of serendipity, of synchronicity less so. Serendipity, it seems to me, implies a grasp of something that can be used creatively, while synchronicity is more of a retrospective observation of a chance encounter. So when we remark on something that has happened that seems so, well, remarkable, in fact what we’re…
Roads to Joy 