Susie, It was so wonderful to escape the mundane madness of not knowing where I am to be next and just tag along with you as you traversed your hill. Such a magical place and you brought two of my favorite poets along too. What a glorious jaunt and what beautiful photos you delighted us all with. Thank you, thank Susie, for giving me the chance to escape and be off on this hill with you. xoxo
Thank you lovely, we have had a week of high winds, now a weekend of rain - I already feel cabin feverish! March cannot be over fast enough for me… warm weekend hugs! xx
Another beautiful essay. I find March to be hard here, I feel it always disappoints. We barely have any blossoms yet at 625 meters, but I see down below on the N88 everything is more flowery.
Even up here at 485 meters I see the difference in the valley below Betty! I agree about the month of March, I think we hold such hope for an explosion of colour after the grimness of February don’t we? April is close though… there is no stopping it then! I notice yesterday the first spray of oak leaves opening on the old oaks, the rest are surely just days away now…
I hope the week is being good to you, is seulement ce vent d’autan pouvait cesser de hurler!
I adore how much you love the seasons and cycles and how you immerse yourself in the changing around you. And we need all the reminders we can get of what we can still remember, still pay attention to, still fall in love with and anticipate. Beautiful, as always, my friend.
Thank you Holly, as you know from your own wild living, when nature is close enough to touch every part of your day it becomes almost intrinsic, part of the very bones of you, falling in love and noticing the details a necessity.
No thanks needed for the mention, quite the reverse! Thank you with love x
I’ve started saving these for Monday mornings, Susie … a coffee, a warmed up pastry, and beautiful words that transport the reader to parts unknown … a nudge to this Gemini to notice more of the unfurling of Spring (not just the mole that is slowly working his way across what I laughingly call our ‘lawn’). Like you, we were beset by icy blasts … actual snow yesterday, and the layers are all back on for the cycling. Thank you for allowing us a glimpse between the trees through your eyes; such sparkling attention to details … makes me think of Mary Oliver - pay attention, be astonished.
Barrie, Im not sure you could have payed a higher compliment than to mention Mary Oliver in relation to anything I may have inspired in you or said... my most heartfelt and tearful thanks, excuse me for a second while I climb out from the clouds!
Nope, I think I just might stay up here a while longer... thank you so very much!
PS I have a mole, possibly several... they have tunnelled under the fence from the sheep field into my veggie patch... good for the slugs, not so good for the worms... or my root veggies!
I can't tell you how excited I am for you to be experiencing what you so beautifully describe (pasted below) of the incoming spring! That joy. That excitement. I know it so well. I look for it each year. As we here in the southern hemisphere slide into autumn, I am warmed by the knowledge you slide into spring.
(And beautiful words across all of your post, as always Susie.)
"We aren’t quite there yet, I know, I know… just feeling its tantalising proximity! The light is slipping into lengthening days, colour is painting hedgerows and meadows, the frenzied, fresh furore of knowing all that lives and breathes is in the throes of cyclic reproduction, everything journeying with a destination in mind, breathing, sighing, singing… an orchestral manoeuvre choreographed with a precision perfected over the millennia."
Thank you Nathan, someone has hit the pause button over the last few days... a strong Mistral has been blowing all signs of spring hither and thither... the air is filled with petals from the orchard - a temporary seasonal extra - I hope anyway - after five days it is easy to understand how the wind can drive a person mad!
Enjoy your autumn days, this too is a beautiful time of year.
I am grateful to share a hill with a friend I’ve never hugged hello, yet to know her hill, is to know her heart. Oh, and, me too! (as you already know) always grateful that any line from a Robert Frost poem chooses to make it’s home in my head. I wanted to tell you ,the photograph that is the companion for this beautiful quote;
“Wild plum in still sleepy oak tree embrace…“ is absolutely stunning . You have captured not only the motion, but the emotion. I believe they know you well, free to be themselves in your presence. Perhaps trees recognize human faces. Since no one has ever done any scientific research to prove otherwise, then I’m sticking with my own hypothesis. 🧐
Lor, I love 'Perhaps trees recognise human faces' it may be a fact an unproved by science but the thought is enough, it floats around my windswept head like falling petals! Also, it will make me feel just a little less ridiculous when I frequently stop for a chat, I will listen harder for their response!
Robert Frost has a few words to say on wind too... you know this im sure but Ill pop it up anyway - perhaps you've not read 'The Aim Was Song' for a while...
Before man to blow to right
The wind once blew itself untaught,
And did its loudest day and night
In any rough place where it caught.
Man came to tell it what was wrong:
It hadn't found the place to blow;
It blew too hard - the aim was song.
And listen - how it ought to go!
He took a little in his mouth,
And held it long enough for north
To be converted into south,
And then by measure blew it forth.
By measure. It was word and note,
The wind the wind had meant to be -
A little through the lips and throat.
The aim was song - the wind could see.
I send it with a hug hello in hope that one day I will arrive with it! If this wind continues that maybe be sooner than either of us think! xx
“And then by measure blew it forth. By measure. It was word and note,
The wind the wind had meant to be -
A little through the lips and throat.
The aim was song - the wind could see.”
Oh my🥹, I have not read this one. And for reasons you and I both know, it made me weld up. In a good way. So thank you and maybe someday , after hearing so much about yours, I will show you my hill. ( check your mail)
I need to start reading your letters with a Kleenex, both for tears of awe AND drool. Today, more drool. Your photography is bewitching, transcendent, heart-stopping.
The Wild plum in still sleepy oak tree embrace will usher me into sleep tonight, forever etched into my heartmind. 🙏
Kimberly, your kind words fill me with much needed joy this evening. My camera has lain untouched on my desk for days, a strong Mistral has been blowing anything and everything too fragile to cling on to its stays away to the North East... included, a few more slates from the barn roof!
I have been longing for a calming, everything is blossoming and bursting open, I am missing the opening chords!
So beautiful to daydream through the thickets of your lyrical meanderings. I hung on this... I simply want to feel the sigh of a day delivering nightfall. I'm far away, but feel as if the dimming sky here connects us through its ether...you've done well
Ellen, Thank you so much for your kind comment, the connection created through words feels not the distance between reader or writer, it is simply a magical binding of two souls understanding one another... I am glad you are there across this magical ether of words. 🙏🏼
I am intrigued by the discovery that you are reading my posting, while I'm reading yours, imagining each of us popping into each other's kitchens for a cup of something by the fire in the stove after dark...
Thank you for inspiring me with your images in photography and words:
"I simply want to feel the sigh of a day delivering nightfall, the tremble of the land just before obscurity tricks the eye, rifles with belief before summoning the dark demons of a playful imagination."
They say an image tells a thousand words. Your words paint whole picture books of images. 🔥🙏 💕
What a delight to share a few moments of time together in our respective kitchens Veronika, known or otherwise! I had a similar comment from someone else not a few days ago, such beautiful coincidences are not for ignoring.
I am truly happy to inspire you with my humble words and photos, they are the only gifts I can bring here and they are given with love. Thank you so much for taking the time to notice - Sending you wishes for a beautiful and gentle glide into your afternoon 🙏🏼💚
It is blowing a gale here, le vent d'autan - celui qui nous rend tous fous! 🌬xx
Oh those winds venting their galinn gales of laughter ~ howling uncomfortably around our house too... I better stick a match to the prepared pile in the salamandra (I thought you might enjoy this beautiful Portuguese word for wood stove) xx
We are braced for the worst to come tonight and then a slow calming - after this week, possibly the worst we’ve known,I can quite understand the craziness it carries.
Salamandra… that is so much more beautiful than plain old stove! I think I just might rename my own temperamental lump of cast iron - it may even inspire good behaviour! Thank you Veronika - I hope the wind has calmed already for you further south. xx
I think we have just had your night today... mercifully, the only damages were those made by the neighbours cows who took advantage of a small hole in my sheep fence - made larger by a fallen branch - rampaged through my meadow, smashed the gate and another fence, then, still not satisfied with the carnage left behind them, continued through my tiny patch of 'reclaimed' woodland, past the chickens, across the lane and up the hill. I called the owner, who eventually arrived to retrieve them. He has returned but alas, the cows were nowhere to be seen...
I hope you and you buildings survived unscathed too Veronika, Joshua's geodesic domes? 🙈xx
Oh Veronika, I know so well the calm in the knowledge of being wrapped safely within 200 year old thick stone walls, in parts, here even older. It is our much younger barn roof that takes the full force, the slates sing to us - or rattle depending on the tightness of the nail - through each and every storm!
We have survived five days of this Mistral now, tomorrow, so they say, rain will dampen the force, it will no doubt puff and pant a while longer but eventually skulk off... I hesitate to say good ridden's in case I am tempting fate, preferring to wish, safe journey onwards! 🤞🏽
Mistral sounds surprisingly gentle... here it's been named 'Depressão Martinho' (which means it was a hurricane) picking up a speed of 110 km/h in our area. 2 more days of heavy rain to look forward to.
Dear Susie, thank you for yet another poetic wandering. And thank you for being an awe struck ( I use this term rather than "flighty" 😊) Gemini girl! Just so beautiful. Have a wonderful week being gently "blown forward from behind". ❤️
Haha, thanks Jo, today I am definitely the flighty type, not so much emotionally but physically! The winds of change are blowing again - they arrive in 3/4 day bursts to drive us all insane with gusts of 80kmph, its a job to keep my feet grounded. Its not helping my gardening plans at all!
I hope you have a gentle glide into the weekend - thank you ♥️xx
So many distractions Susie, I know so well. I must take extra precautions when working from home else the long tailed tits hanging upside down from the silver birch branches and the blackbirds proudly singing on the fence would have me staring out of the window all day. In the office, I fare better, my desk looks out onto the second floor of a courtyard and I can see nothing more than windows and the sky and cladded building. I did one watch a butterfly flit gracefully in and out of the netting stretched over the top that keeps the birds out. It made my day. It has been a cold but beautifully bright weekend here, and I am remembering my blessings so that the thoughts of a week ahead of work do not loom too heavily. sending love xx
Weeks like this one remind me of school Emily, or rather the reports at the end of the year which always mentioned something about daydreaming and windows and clouds - and not in any complimentary way either! I never could resist... today I watched a magpie systematically stealing walnuts from the trays outside on the terrace, I was so absorbed I didn't notice I'd left the lid of the stove open until the room was filled with smoke! As if I don't have enough problems with stove!
We are what we are, and the weather too... here an icy wind has forced us back into cosy knits and scarves, tomorrow spring begins again! Mother Nature enjoying her seasonal jokes no doubt...
Love and hugs back to you - I hope the week ahead is a gentle one! xx
Another wonderful essay. Loved this beautiful line especially: “It seems somehow fitting, in its demise, that it should have fallen where those other loves are lain, to join their beautiful ruins.”
Stephanie, thank you so much, I am really happy you liked that line, my favourite dog ever is laying beneath, he loved walnuts even though they really weren’t good for him. 💛
Joys of spring are a little harder to muster up here with this snow coming down, right now is the season of Will It Ever End?!? The light is returning though, pathfinding for the better weather.
I loved this sentence - “I know already the spidery, pendulous cobwebs within, the giant oak cart-wheels abandoned by oxen whose bones are long turned to dust.”
Thanks you so much for the mention too, Susie. I always feel so honoured :)
This weekend I know exactly what you mean… An icy blast has swept us up and dumped us back into our woollen layers here too, and this trickery right after peeling them all off in a balmy few days of high teens! It is what it is.
You’re very welcome for the mention, I am eternally grateful to you and all others who make such a huge effort - and it is I know, I’ve tried - to record the audio to compliment their writing, I don’t know how you find the time? 🙏🏼
Susie, It was so wonderful to escape the mundane madness of not knowing where I am to be next and just tag along with you as you traversed your hill. Such a magical place and you brought two of my favorite poets along too. What a glorious jaunt and what beautiful photos you delighted us all with. Thank you, thank Susie, for giving me the chance to escape and be off on this hill with you. xoxo
Your photos of the birches and the wild plum are of exceptional beauty Susie! I saved them on my iPad.
What a huge compliment you pay lovely, especially as you are so very talented a photographer yourself! Thank you so much 💛
I hope you don't have these awful winds we are getting here..? xx
Well deserved sweetie!
We had a week of heavenly Spring weather, but today the wind came and tomorrow will bring rain. I hope you had your share of Spring too! ♡xx
Thank you lovely, we have had a week of high winds, now a weekend of rain - I already feel cabin feverish! March cannot be over fast enough for me… warm weekend hugs! xx
Another beautiful essay. I find March to be hard here, I feel it always disappoints. We barely have any blossoms yet at 625 meters, but I see down below on the N88 everything is more flowery.
Even up here at 485 meters I see the difference in the valley below Betty! I agree about the month of March, I think we hold such hope for an explosion of colour after the grimness of February don’t we? April is close though… there is no stopping it then! I notice yesterday the first spray of oak leaves opening on the old oaks, the rest are surely just days away now…
I hope the week is being good to you, is seulement ce vent d’autan pouvait cesser de hurler!
I adore how much you love the seasons and cycles and how you immerse yourself in the changing around you. And we need all the reminders we can get of what we can still remember, still pay attention to, still fall in love with and anticipate. Beautiful, as always, my friend.
And thank you for the mention. I’m honored.
Thank you Holly, as you know from your own wild living, when nature is close enough to touch every part of your day it becomes almost intrinsic, part of the very bones of you, falling in love and noticing the details a necessity.
No thanks needed for the mention, quite the reverse! Thank you with love x
I’ve started saving these for Monday mornings, Susie … a coffee, a warmed up pastry, and beautiful words that transport the reader to parts unknown … a nudge to this Gemini to notice more of the unfurling of Spring (not just the mole that is slowly working his way across what I laughingly call our ‘lawn’). Like you, we were beset by icy blasts … actual snow yesterday, and the layers are all back on for the cycling. Thank you for allowing us a glimpse between the trees through your eyes; such sparkling attention to details … makes me think of Mary Oliver - pay attention, be astonished.
Barrie, Im not sure you could have payed a higher compliment than to mention Mary Oliver in relation to anything I may have inspired in you or said... my most heartfelt and tearful thanks, excuse me for a second while I climb out from the clouds!
Nope, I think I just might stay up here a while longer... thank you so very much!
PS I have a mole, possibly several... they have tunnelled under the fence from the sheep field into my veggie patch... good for the slugs, not so good for the worms... or my root veggies!
We have no such treats for les taupes … but they’re welcome to the slugs!
Keep those beautiful words flowing.
I can't tell you how excited I am for you to be experiencing what you so beautifully describe (pasted below) of the incoming spring! That joy. That excitement. I know it so well. I look for it each year. As we here in the southern hemisphere slide into autumn, I am warmed by the knowledge you slide into spring.
(And beautiful words across all of your post, as always Susie.)
"We aren’t quite there yet, I know, I know… just feeling its tantalising proximity! The light is slipping into lengthening days, colour is painting hedgerows and meadows, the frenzied, fresh furore of knowing all that lives and breathes is in the throes of cyclic reproduction, everything journeying with a destination in mind, breathing, sighing, singing… an orchestral manoeuvre choreographed with a precision perfected over the millennia."
Thank you Nathan, someone has hit the pause button over the last few days... a strong Mistral has been blowing all signs of spring hither and thither... the air is filled with petals from the orchard - a temporary seasonal extra - I hope anyway - after five days it is easy to understand how the wind can drive a person mad!
Enjoy your autumn days, this too is a beautiful time of year.
I am grateful to share a hill with a friend I’ve never hugged hello, yet to know her hill, is to know her heart. Oh, and, me too! (as you already know) always grateful that any line from a Robert Frost poem chooses to make it’s home in my head. I wanted to tell you ,the photograph that is the companion for this beautiful quote;
“Wild plum in still sleepy oak tree embrace…“ is absolutely stunning . You have captured not only the motion, but the emotion. I believe they know you well, free to be themselves in your presence. Perhaps trees recognize human faces. Since no one has ever done any scientific research to prove otherwise, then I’m sticking with my own hypothesis. 🧐
Lor, I love 'Perhaps trees recognise human faces' it may be a fact an unproved by science but the thought is enough, it floats around my windswept head like falling petals! Also, it will make me feel just a little less ridiculous when I frequently stop for a chat, I will listen harder for their response!
Robert Frost has a few words to say on wind too... you know this im sure but Ill pop it up anyway - perhaps you've not read 'The Aim Was Song' for a while...
Before man to blow to right
The wind once blew itself untaught,
And did its loudest day and night
In any rough place where it caught.
Man came to tell it what was wrong:
It hadn't found the place to blow;
It blew too hard - the aim was song.
And listen - how it ought to go!
He took a little in his mouth,
And held it long enough for north
To be converted into south,
And then by measure blew it forth.
By measure. It was word and note,
The wind the wind had meant to be -
A little through the lips and throat.
The aim was song - the wind could see.
I send it with a hug hello in hope that one day I will arrive with it! If this wind continues that maybe be sooner than either of us think! xx
“And then by measure blew it forth. By measure. It was word and note,
The wind the wind had meant to be -
A little through the lips and throat.
The aim was song - the wind could see.”
Oh my🥹, I have not read this one. And for reasons you and I both know, it made me weld up. In a good way. So thank you and maybe someday , after hearing so much about yours, I will show you my hill. ( check your mail)
Busy as a Bee; Not this time of year you won’t .😊🐝🐑…and so on , and so on…
Lor, beautiful mail received - I doing a little jig of joy at seeing you on your hill - when I stop for breath I will reply xx
I need to start reading your letters with a Kleenex, both for tears of awe AND drool. Today, more drool. Your photography is bewitching, transcendent, heart-stopping.
The Wild plum in still sleepy oak tree embrace will usher me into sleep tonight, forever etched into my heartmind. 🙏
Kimberly, your kind words fill me with much needed joy this evening. My camera has lain untouched on my desk for days, a strong Mistral has been blowing anything and everything too fragile to cling on to its stays away to the North East... included, a few more slates from the barn roof!
I have been longing for a calming, everything is blossoming and bursting open, I am missing the opening chords!
Thank you always beautiful 🍃xx
So beautiful to daydream through the thickets of your lyrical meanderings. I hung on this... I simply want to feel the sigh of a day delivering nightfall. I'm far away, but feel as if the dimming sky here connects us through its ether...you've done well
Ellen, Thank you so much for your kind comment, the connection created through words feels not the distance between reader or writer, it is simply a magical binding of two souls understanding one another... I am glad you are there across this magical ether of words. 🙏🏼
I am intrigued by the discovery that you are reading my posting, while I'm reading yours, imagining each of us popping into each other's kitchens for a cup of something by the fire in the stove after dark...
Thank you for inspiring me with your images in photography and words:
"I simply want to feel the sigh of a day delivering nightfall, the tremble of the land just before obscurity tricks the eye, rifles with belief before summoning the dark demons of a playful imagination."
They say an image tells a thousand words. Your words paint whole picture books of images. 🔥🙏 💕
What a delight to share a few moments of time together in our respective kitchens Veronika, known or otherwise! I had a similar comment from someone else not a few days ago, such beautiful coincidences are not for ignoring.
I am truly happy to inspire you with my humble words and photos, they are the only gifts I can bring here and they are given with love. Thank you so much for taking the time to notice - Sending you wishes for a beautiful and gentle glide into your afternoon 🙏🏼💚
It is blowing a gale here, le vent d'autan - celui qui nous rend tous fous! 🌬xx
Oh those winds venting their galinn gales of laughter ~ howling uncomfortably around our house too... I better stick a match to the prepared pile in the salamandra (I thought you might enjoy this beautiful Portuguese word for wood stove) xx
We are braced for the worst to come tonight and then a slow calming - after this week, possibly the worst we’ve known,I can quite understand the craziness it carries.
Salamandra… that is so much more beautiful than plain old stove! I think I just might rename my own temperamental lump of cast iron - it may even inspire good behaviour! Thank you Veronika - I hope the wind has calmed already for you further south. xx
What a night it's been! Hope you and your family & le Paradis have survived without too much storm damage 💕
I think we have just had your night today... mercifully, the only damages were those made by the neighbours cows who took advantage of a small hole in my sheep fence - made larger by a fallen branch - rampaged through my meadow, smashed the gate and another fence, then, still not satisfied with the carnage left behind them, continued through my tiny patch of 'reclaimed' woodland, past the chickens, across the lane and up the hill. I called the owner, who eventually arrived to retrieve them. He has returned but alas, the cows were nowhere to be seen...
I hope you and you buildings survived unscathed too Veronika, Joshua's geodesic domes? 🙈xx
oh the geodesic domes can take any weather. Much better than a house.
Good luck to your neighbour and his cows.
No, it's pretty wild here too. It seems to be blasting through our 200 year old massive granite walls... Is that even possible??
The fact that our home has already withstood wild winds and weathers for a couple of centuries is currently the main source of calm I can draw on xx
Oh Veronika, I know so well the calm in the knowledge of being wrapped safely within 200 year old thick stone walls, in parts, here even older. It is our much younger barn roof that takes the full force, the slates sing to us - or rattle depending on the tightness of the nail - through each and every storm!
We have survived five days of this Mistral now, tomorrow, so they say, rain will dampen the force, it will no doubt puff and pant a while longer but eventually skulk off... I hesitate to say good ridden's in case I am tempting fate, preferring to wish, safe journey onwards! 🤞🏽
Mistral sounds surprisingly gentle... here it's been named 'Depressão Martinho' (which means it was a hurricane) picking up a speed of 110 km/h in our area. 2 more days of heavy rain to look forward to.
but 5 days of such winds? 😰 💨🍃⛈️ 🌧️
Dear Susie, thank you for yet another poetic wandering. And thank you for being an awe struck ( I use this term rather than "flighty" 😊) Gemini girl! Just so beautiful. Have a wonderful week being gently "blown forward from behind". ❤️
Haha, thanks Jo, today I am definitely the flighty type, not so much emotionally but physically! The winds of change are blowing again - they arrive in 3/4 day bursts to drive us all insane with gusts of 80kmph, its a job to keep my feet grounded. Its not helping my gardening plans at all!
I hope you have a gentle glide into the weekend - thank you ♥️xx
So many distractions Susie, I know so well. I must take extra precautions when working from home else the long tailed tits hanging upside down from the silver birch branches and the blackbirds proudly singing on the fence would have me staring out of the window all day. In the office, I fare better, my desk looks out onto the second floor of a courtyard and I can see nothing more than windows and the sky and cladded building. I did one watch a butterfly flit gracefully in and out of the netting stretched over the top that keeps the birds out. It made my day. It has been a cold but beautifully bright weekend here, and I am remembering my blessings so that the thoughts of a week ahead of work do not loom too heavily. sending love xx
Weeks like this one remind me of school Emily, or rather the reports at the end of the year which always mentioned something about daydreaming and windows and clouds - and not in any complimentary way either! I never could resist... today I watched a magpie systematically stealing walnuts from the trays outside on the terrace, I was so absorbed I didn't notice I'd left the lid of the stove open until the room was filled with smoke! As if I don't have enough problems with stove!
We are what we are, and the weather too... here an icy wind has forced us back into cosy knits and scarves, tomorrow spring begins again! Mother Nature enjoying her seasonal jokes no doubt...
Love and hugs back to you - I hope the week ahead is a gentle one! xx
beautiful flow, Susie 🌻
beautiful fotos
💛 thanks Darren, there is always beauty!
Beautiful essay, inspiring eloquent. Your words sing!
All my inspiration comes from people like you dear Mary… huge heart thanks to you for being here. xx
Another wonderful essay. Loved this beautiful line especially: “It seems somehow fitting, in its demise, that it should have fallen where those other loves are lain, to join their beautiful ruins.”
Stephanie, thank you so much, I am really happy you liked that line, my favourite dog ever is laying beneath, he loved walnuts even though they really weren’t good for him. 💛
💙
Joys of spring are a little harder to muster up here with this snow coming down, right now is the season of Will It Ever End?!? The light is returning though, pathfinding for the better weather.
I loved this sentence - “I know already the spidery, pendulous cobwebs within, the giant oak cart-wheels abandoned by oxen whose bones are long turned to dust.”
Thanks you so much for the mention too, Susie. I always feel so honoured :)
This weekend I know exactly what you mean… An icy blast has swept us up and dumped us back into our woollen layers here too, and this trickery right after peeling them all off in a balmy few days of high teens! It is what it is.
You’re very welcome for the mention, I am eternally grateful to you and all others who make such a huge effort - and it is I know, I’ve tried - to record the audio to compliment their writing, I don’t know how you find the time? 🙏🏼