ASYNCHRONOUS PROCESS

Life just keeps happening :0)

Days become weeks and weeks become lambs, huh?

No that is not a typo or me being even more mind numbingly dense than usual; one of the things that happened, whilst I was away from this place for almost a year, was small matter of five ewes and ownership, well part ownership being mine.

It could have been one of those drunken conversations when the world is cured of all ills and you find yourself next morning in bed with someone whose name you don’t even begin to know.

As someone who gave up alcohol when she was around 17 that wouldn’t be me, I could still have those conversations and still wake up next to someone whose name had never been part of the conversation but never was I drunk except maybe on life itself:0)

So, all the jokes about sheep and living in Wales could be alluded to but that would be geographically incorrect and any way these sheep started as a throw away thought which became an idea and evolved in to five mowing machines.

I have a friend who has a small acreage attached to her home, nothing fancy save for the setting and the three ponds interlinked that traverse the two large fields on the side of a valley in Northumberland. Nothing fancy but very special to the person who calls it home and to the many people who have the good fortune to spend time in the tranquillity of the place plus the abundant wild bird beast and butterfly populations that through planting and caring have been encouraged to call it their home too.

All this has been done on a shoestring or probably to be more accurate half a shoestring so keeping the fields mowed regularly so that meadow flowers etc could flourish became something the purse was having to stretch towards more meaningfully than needed so idea for mowing machine that not only cut but fertilised as it went seemed like a good idea one late night.

Eventually after research and lots of petting fleeces:0) five ladies of breeding and integrity were found and offered the job in return for plentiful hay when the grass stopped growing with handfuls of special nuts thrown in for delight. They moved in and the fun began.

Of trenches and transformation

 

The neglected but still much loved garden here, is enjoyed by all who live in and around the cottage.

Wild birds love the large shrubs and mature trees, butterflies and bees love the apple and blueberries blossom, bats love the clouds of midges at dusk, Flo loves the warmth of the afternoon bench, Rhys and Banon love everything and I love watching the breeze play with the trees, spying the Wren waiting for its turn at the bird tables, watching listening and responding to the garden with spade secateurs and much thought.

Now there is slow, very slow, change being wrought in our garden serious pruning has been and continues to happen. I have had a few days of help from someone more able to dig a trench then fill it with stone chippings, than I, in hope of solution for rain created stream which appears over night and sweeps down the garden with wet intent that pushes all before it.

Round bed has been cleared of plants and weeds completely, then dug and levelled out. Weed suppressant fabric laid then round pavers with gravel put on top. Area in the middle is not about to become a swimming pool but is destined to be home for a small polytunnel.

Rhys and Banon have been highly entertained by each twig or branch chopped, each shovel of soil dug but are really happy with the new path.

No sheet music but definiely a tune

And so the story continues…

Not sure where the blog will take me this time but I know from past experience talking to myself in this way has given me surprise and understanding along with friendships and sharing that I had neither expected or to be honest even considered as being part of the process.

The process for me is to sit down in front of a blank screen and just write, so, if you are new to this blog let me just warn you that I ramble, go off at tangents unimaginable in degree and possibility for soft landing but am told that I rarely completely lose my way and there is logic and reason to the trajectory which makes it back to the path before the end of a post.

I don’t always see that myself but what I write makes sense to me, helps me clarify thoughts, often discover as I write what I already know and hadn’t realised and oft time makes me smile in recognition of a thought found in the web of tangled connections which is my brain.

So, on the first day of May I begin as tentatively as I did some years ago now at this blogging ‘thing’.

I have not danced around any Maypoles today but I’ve watched the Hawthorn and its blossom dance in the blustery breeze chasing up and down the valley, have listened to the wild birds busy building nests and preparing for their offspring to arrive in the near future, have sniffed the heady perfume of the lilac bushes in the lane that have done extraordinarily well after the hard winter plus some rather enthusiastic pruning and been glad to find myself alive on this first day of May in a rather neglected garden outside a stone cottage that has undergone major building work over the last year which still has one or two major things to ‘enjoy before the autumn arrives.

Life begins each morning as the sun rises on a whole new clean page of a day. Something beautiful is offered to over night clawed hands, that makes them stretch out with as open a palm as is possible even if pain reminds me that each moment may include a colour I might not have chosen for my personal palette but I understand it does not come in any hue that can really overwhelm the others just depends on my skill to mix them up in to the rainbow of my making, understanding, exploring being.

I have found that skill is not given but needs to be worked at, practiced and practiced again until the skill is to practice. No need for production, presenting something complete as for me the production is life and its living which, like the May blossom, might seem to be transient even a little ephemeral but the blossom comes from roots planted deep and the passage of the sun through the seasons of a trees life, so, why not the same for my life.

I am found in a portion of time I call a life. It can only ever be a moment not a lifetime that I am found in. That a moment, today has been gauged in blossom bird song and beauty carried on the wind to my nose can only be a gift and the beginning of the year of inactively finding myself actively in the present.

The skill is to practice and let the outcome surprise and enthral in a moment. No measure of day, month or year just a moment that stretches to infinity and dances beyond grasp or gain; offered without guarantee or returns policy but nothing less than perfect no matter what I do with life and its living.

The perfect is not me or anything I have can or will be, the perfect will never be found or bought but it can be glimpsed not as tease or snare but as reason to know that each day is another practice session