Birthday

For a Daddy who left his family and his broken land when just 16 to find a better life. Who takes his girls to ballet early every Saturday morning so Mummy can rest and read and write. Who makes up impromptu songs on his guitar for the dancing feet of five. Who takes me for coffee every Sunday afternoon and generally puts up with being outnumbered by women 7 to 1 (because even the dog and cat are girls)
We love you much.

Grassy Verges

I'll light a candle and the children will fill bowls with flowers picked from fields and verges.

 

Summer Adventures

 

August

Saint Francis and the Sow

Saint Francis and the Sow Galway Kinnel The bud stands for all things, even for those things that don’t flower, for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing;    though sometimes it is necessary to reteach a thing its loveliness, to put a hand on its brow of the flower and retell it in words and in touch it is lovely until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing;    as Saint Francis put his hand on the creased forehead of the sow, and told her in words and in touch    blessings of earth on the sow, and the sow    began remembering all down her thick length,    from the earthen snout all the way through the fodder and slops to the spiritual curl of the tail,    from the hard spininess spiked out from the spine    down through the great broken heart to the sheer blue milken dreaminess spurting and shuddering    from the fourteen teats into the fourteen mouths sucking and blowing beneath them: the long, perfect loveliness of sow.

Water it

Every act of beauty is life giving.

A counter to all that is dark.

It pulls back the curtain saying 

This is not the only room.

There is a garden too.

Clothed in green shoots and tender leaves.

Water it.