Author: admin
-
As I wander along the local lanes, my gaze is now constantly distracted by emerging flowers amongst the green. We’ve had snowdrops, and now crocus, daffodil, primrose… all bidding a welcome to the promise of spring days. But there is one unsung hero I want to sing about here. She can hang around all winter…
-
We find ourselves in this strange betwixt time. Not quite spring but no longer the huddle of winter. It’s a time when you can leave the house into a shock of sunshine, or an icy shower. You can throw the windows open and breathe in the fragrance of emergent blooms or shut them tight against…
-
By the turn of the last century, pine martens were as good as extinct in England. Loss of woodland habitat and hunting caused the dramatic decline in numbers until by the late 1800s they were no longer to be found in Gloucestershire. There were fewer than 20 individuals surviving in England’s depleting woodlands. The cousin…
-
Regular readers will know by now that I love winter. Winter skies are astonishingly beautiful and any BS9-ers will have been treated to some sensational morning/evening skies these past few days, including the wolf moon last night. One of the other things I appreciate this season for, however, is the way we sometimes get to…
-
As we approach Christmas; this season of joy – and obligations, demands, costs, hassle, pressure, tensions and potential conflict – I wonder how much we allow ourselves to ask for what we actually, authentically want? This one is for those of you on the unforgiving treadmill, those feeling oppressed or burnt out or simply unappreciated.…
-
Another autumn day, another trip down to the mouth of the Trym. Poor timing for spotting waders as the high tide was still incoming and the mud banks largely covered. Still, I walked slowly around the Trym, passed the surfing mallards under the bridge, and was rewarded by my first local sighting of two sandpipers,…
-
I’m a little behind with posting this one. Viruses and general life twists and turns have slowed me down! No bother. This ‘spell’/ incantation works for me just as well today as last month, especially as I write this under the thrumming of dense rain on the roof and the wild autumn wind pestering the…
-
Summer has gone, but no-one seems to have told September. It felt more like spring than autumn on this sunny equinox day, as I headed down to the banks of the Avon at low tide to see what the waders were up to. Too soon for many winter arrivals, or at least there were no…
-
The abundance of nature is intoxicating as we glide through the halfway point of the year. Wild and cultivated flowers sing from every patch of land and greenery triumphs towards the sky. Whether we look in the air, in the waterways, on the ground or bury our faces in the velvet kiss of a blooming…
-
Poetry is more than lines of text. It can give you deep satisfaction, offer a dwelling place for your secret fears, make you feel understood and less alone, increase your joy by naming it, and vicariously set your self soaring. Writing it is more than a creative outlet, although that is important enough in itself.…
