Category: Perseverance
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The joy of clearing
Today I shall extract the remaining bits and pieces from the loft room that you enter as you climb the steps. Our hedgerow wine bottles will be slowly consumed, or divested, thereafter. Although I don’t really have any idea where the last of this first stuff will go, when it all comes down, I can…
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The spider’s tale
Spiders are perhaps most often associated with perseverance; the story of Robert the Bruce’s eventual victory over the English king at Bannockburn is probably apocryphal, but salutary all the same. If the Scottish laird was indeed holed up in a cave on the Isle of Arran, watching a spider trying, over and over again, to…
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Indolence, indulgence and/or perseverance
Sometimes Kali cat is happy to rest on our laps, of an evening, when she’s fully fed and replete, warm and cosy with the fire blazing, and we’re quiet ourselves. She still hunts for small creatures, and gobbles them whole, all except the guts. But mostly she perseveres with her importunings: feed me; feed me…
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Camaraderie in commiseration
It’s not often, we find, that we meet someone who’s had a similar catering experience to the years in the hospitality sector that we’ve had. But yesterday we were privileged to chat with the owner of a local cake shop which had become what she called ‘a destination tea room’ to which people from a…
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Half-way joys . . .
It was a challenging day, but this morning, with any luck, will see the final finessing of the cluttered office into a place to display with pride. Imagine a home office with such a view of the valley beyond! Well, the reflection plays havoc with the view, and the internal bounce-backs are interfering with the…
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Joys of clearance
Our task today, since it’s damp and dreich outside, probably too wet for hedge trimming, will be to clear out the little porch. This porch has been my own domain, for my DIY tools, my writing space, and my LEGO studio, for the past decade anyway. But now we’re more interested in revealing the glorious…
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Drudgery is a fact of life . . .
I remember so well, back in the day, thinking about why I loved research. In so many ways it was the physical experience of planning, and then setting the experiment up, so that the waiting could begin. Anticipation and wonder were all very lovely, but it was actually the joy of asking the question that…
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Checking out the willows . . .
Really, it’s anybody’s guess whether my willow plantings will be a grove someday or not. There’s definitely signs of growth in numerous whips, much more than last year evinced, but still. It’s such a harsh environment up here, until the trees create their own shelter and the succession of plants accumulates behind them. Some willow…
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Opportunism: not such a nasty word
Any biologist will tell you that without opportunism, few plant species would survive. Their entire reproductive strategy seems to be built on the chance that a wandering seed, among many that are lost, might find a suitable place to germinate and grow. Whether the distribution is by wind, by animal, or by bird, eventually the…
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Learning new things . . .
Embarrassed as I am to have been writing earnestly for the past three years and only now discovering a wonderful editing tool, I’m delighted at the same time. I’ve been fortunate to join a specialist writing group: five would-be novelists working in the science fiction genre, who have begun to share their work together. As…
Roads to Joy 