a May morning

I wake to an almost clear sky except for feathered vapour trails veiling the sun.

a friend sends a Rumi verse as a birthday gift:

Birdsong

Birdsong brings relief
to my longing
I'm just as ecstatic as they are,
but with nothing to say!
Please universal soul, practice
some song or something through me!

Mewlana Jalaluddin Rumi

Birds sing through necessity and in doing so create something very beautiful. Is that like "doing everything as if for god"? How to live doing the things that need to be done, being what needs to be. It's good to have some very long term goals....



many messages and thoughtful gifts from friends & family. shall I bake a cake?

listen at the blackbird sing.
Some days I am so tired I can hardly think [there is usually one of two reasons - occasionally combined - for this] yet I try to think to do - perhaps I shouldn't. It does make me wonder how I can survive in the Real World, even if I can get through this piece of studying. What happened to the fit, healthy young girl? [ok not entirely fit and healthy, but at least mostly it seemed that way].

All green expansion outside, cow parsley frothing high, just the ash to fully expand. The dawn chorus is no longer the dense wall that it was - a change in just a few days. Still no swifts. I have heard of sightings of swifts and have seen them in Somerset and Brittany. But not here. To hear the scream to see the soaring freedom, just briefly the possibility.

Sun shines between cumulous clouds. Sky sky sky to fly in. Brisk breeze to lift the feathers of the wings. Breath.

blue green freshness

skin spring

blossom time again, unfolding, veined so like skin, so brief, heaping up like snow on branches tumbling down.
Thinking of skin, perfect imperfect thinking that when April is done and dusted perhaps I can fold up some more grief to put aside. But every day waking to renegotiate life and loss. When will it not feel like loss or does that just keep going on til one is lost gone dead? shedding shedding skin adding to the blanket of dust that surrounds us - the urge to be horizontal to muffle all the living. Wonder where the edges of the body are - they seem never to be as clear as one might like to image even in a concrete phisiological way.
So many small wonders float away on the wind, are never recorded, three swallows scuffle in the air then almost seem to hang there. The scent of apple blossom late at night, petals luminous on the ground



Wonder why on earth I embarked on a losing weight diet some 12/13 days before Easter....

not true beauty, a fantasy skin

needing a touch

blossom

The joy of the sun coming out. And of seeing an apple tree thickly covered...but as I scampered to smell the blossom and take some photos my heart did a plummet...in moments like this I want to be someone there to share it with me. The wild, wild wind rushing a sand storm over the beach, the raw exhilerating wind from the rough white waves. The sharp blue sky. Oh and the sparkle, sparkle of the water on the sand rippling in the breeze, patterning in the sun. The new spring grass, waving all glossy, below sleek shiny rooks facing the wind out, taking turns at hanging in the turbulent air.

swifts

this morning at 09:32 I heard them then two minutes later saw a pair. Now it rains thickly. the apple blossoms are smelling sweet and the early opened petals fly in the breeze.

may day morning

hawthorn blossom, may blossom...for magical may day morning

cuckoo

milk maid, cuckoo flower, (Our) Lady's smock.

and there are cuckoos here, I just haven't heard one yet

blackthorn

the blackthorn is perhaps a little late - it has been coming out in dribs and drabs though has been at it's most the last week. But not like drifts of snow across the countryside as it has been some years.

2 years ago

always the earliest

down by the estuary the lichen covered apple tree is always the earliest to blossom, by now it is probably covered, nd will have faced frost, perhaps sleet and snow.

thinking of japan

cherry plum blossom

blossom mania occurs...early cherry plums and now the blackthorn, and away from the wild the ornamental cherries.

the whiteness of spring

pink cherry

on 28th february

gorse/furze blue sky blue fence

this spring

How differently the hawthorn is behaving in this area, compared to previous years. Like the blackthorn has done the past 3 or so years it is coming out unevenly, some here some there - sometimes two neighbouring trees don't even come out together!

So there isn't that feeling of May, bridal adorned, reclining over the hedgerows, with cow parsley ruffles around her ankles.

Last evening as I walked up to get my lift to yoga I was moving through May Flies haning in the air with their double tails. I notice inmy paper diary that I saw an elderflower in full blossom at the Severn Bridge on May 3rd, they are just comig into flower here now. I do wonder if motorways make warmer microclimates than the surrounding countryside.

"There is a part of us which from childhood is absolutely alone. When we fall in love we imagine we have found an ultimate assuagement of lonliness. This is not so. In a true marriage or near friendship what in fact is found is a companion in loneliness."

Damaris Parker-Rhodes 1977 22.05 in Quaker Faith & Practice

I found this only recently and it puts into words the experience that I had in meeting someone, being with them. Not always comfortable. Never before had I experienced that, not so fully. But now, although I thought we were committed to working through the difficult times, I find that he cannot. I ache for him in his despair, but I too am sad, and feel rejected, that I am not enough.

In close relationships we may risk pain as well as finding joy. When experiencing great happiness or great hurt we may be more open to the working of the spirit.

1.02/21 in Quaker Faith & Practice

poppy

Poppies - big red orangey ones, always remind me of my Nan, she had so many in her garden and we would look at them together. She died quite some years ago, but currently the memory is very poignant, perhaps grief filled, as the garden is about to be destroyed and the house demolished. Perhaps an example of justice being mainly for the rich (and devious), and consequently powerful, in our society. It is very difficult to be poor and powerful; not that I have any particular want to wield power, but I would have liked to have prevented the loss of a unique tin house and garden.

Yesterday I heard Gordon Brown saying that he was campaigning to be leader of his party and therefore prime minister of the UK of GB because he wanted to help people, not for power, wealth etc. The trouble is it is his idea of what people need, his judgement. Have I really mentioned politics/current affairs alongside this gorgeous poppy? The wages for MP's, A.M's etc would not be so high, and would not go up by huge percentages if they were truly involved in politics to help people.

The sun is shining briefly, there are the every day things to be done - such as washing clothes..and making tea.....

blue egg, pink blossom

is it a broken egg or a potential opened into the world? am I a broken egg, or can I still emerge?

thick rain

Yesterday I walked with two others in the rain. Through several filds and a path down to a valley, then deeper into the green soaked valeey via steps. A vast surround of luminous dripping green: the fresh new leaves and ferns, but for the temperature we could have been in a tropical forest. May blossom was just scenting the air. We continued through to the sea. There was up on the cliffs beside a traditional foxglove a paler version. Walking back up through the fields of long grass was hard going for me. The lush greeness was also from thick clumps of chickweed; and the dandilions having lost their clocks were like a galaxy of stars, pale in a wet green sky.

Sometimes I do wish my body was less painful!! Especially when walking with others and in the rain!

Britany slide show

a twinning trip to Plouguin & Treouergat: food, drink, holy wells, magical coastline.