Gardening as art and natural environments

 As we move into the darkest day of the year this week, I am thinking of the wild animals who must make their living in difficult winter conditions...

Creating beautiful gardens is a tradition here, & it is an enchanting place...

People visit from all over the world because it is so unique. However, the art of gardening is not something that sits well with the delicate environment of an ancient temperate rainforest...




I wonder how to have as little impact upon natural habitat as possible....

I wonder how to find the balance between wildness & domesticity...intellect & instinct...

Is this the distinction between gardening as art & gardening as agriculture?

Reflections

A sunny morning this week provided an opportunity to catch some pretty reflections for you between bouts of wild weather....

I was thinking about the ways in which an earnest heart seeking the truth will often find it,

but that it is the way in which a question is asked that influences the way in which an answer manifests...

Sometimes, it's impossible to know exactly what motivates the question, because the reflective waters are stirred up & muddied by emotion.....

But the truth often flies straight as an arrow to pierce heart of the matter, & what the querant thought

they were seeking is revealed as illusion .....

This is sometimes the way of reflection....

Slainte!

Winter announced itself with a flash and a flood this week, as a month's worth of rain fell in a night, and a spectacular show of lightning lit the sky accompanied by crashing thunder that rolled and rolled around the summit of the Mountain for hours...

Last month's glorious copper beech shed its leaves to reveal its supple silver skin, whilst the rough and ancient wattle giant opposite dropped a few brittle old limbs, and struggled to remain upright throughout the violent storm...

Tucking into my lunch today, I thought about light, & heat, and the way the human animal instinctively seeks warmth in the cold weather for comfort and survival. As I considered my steaming bowl of fragrant soup, I was reminded that all of these vegetables had absorbed the sun's warmth in order to grow, & now it was my turn to absorb this stored heat, by consuming them so my body can convert light into energy...
...... And then I remembered warm sun on my skin, & the light of a sunny day... of how I loved the sunshine so much one day that I took a photo of the sun directly with my phone, just to see what it would look like... And here is the result...

....I think it looks like the iris of an eye...

A Druid summer solstice ceremony I love, says:"as I stand in the eye of the sun"... it is about making vows, & being open to scrutiny... the sun burns away dross as well as giving life...

Our ancestors held a great & simple wisdom: without the sun, without its light, without its eye of fire, even now, in 2013, with technological sophistication the ancients may not have believed possible, we would still cease to be. How did they know it looks like an eye?

The wheel of the year turns, & winter solstice will soon be here, on June 21st,.

I shall be giving thanks this year, for the light stored inside food..........

Seems rather magical to me to eat light....

Slainte!

leaf carpets

 This week the deciduous trees here shed their foliage, so I've been raking & composting, enjoying the crisp, clean air & welcome sunshine that defines autumn on this Mountain.
 
The simple beauty of leaf carpets has so impressed me this season... 

I thought you might appreciate my sharing some with you before I rake them all up!

 colours so rich yet subtle....

shapes so diverse yet harmonious....


A camera is a wonderful invention... I can explore these images in paint when the weather is too cold to work outside

From the window

Last week, I was admiring the coppery beauty that clothes the trees outside my window. I was preparing the garden ready for a winter snooze...

This is the same view exactly a week later! Still lovely, but now a near naked tree, viewed through mist, instead of sunshine... how quickly things can change....

Today, I sit within in a cloud, feeling that winter has really arrived... the seasons just don't fit neatly into 4 sets of 3 months here, but judging by what I saw on the news last night of English snow in May, perhaps even that is a thing of the past, falling away, like autumn leaves....

The future is obscured as in a mist, & the past clings like the leaves on this Maple, but soon, it will also be gone... making way for a new season of growth, with new experiences and challenges...
an old cliche, but one I understand well...

In Earth's South, may you be wrapped comfortably in winter's mist, to drift & dream of good things to come.... & may you be cloaked in summer's golden light to grow & manifest such wonders if you're in the North.

Back in the Autumn Garden

Greetings!

Almost a year since I last posted on this blog...the wheel of the year turns fast... once again it is glorious Autumn, & I am very pleased to be here.

See how Holly waits to get my attention as I gaze up to admire the golden light?

I flirted with another blog for a while... I even tried having a business selling fibre arts supplies.... but when I come back to myself, it is always the trees & the garden that hold my heart & health...

So, here are a few images of how the enchanted Misty Mountain garden presents itself today...

I sat under this huge spreading Copper Beech this afternoon with Mr Treadwell on my lap, soaking warm sunshine into my skin...the tree dipped its branches & brushed my upturned face ever so gently... leathery leaves like old weathered palms caressing my cheeks....

And here is the guardian of Weeping Birch, ever watchful, still hiding under a mantle of gold...

My vegetable garden is enjoying a bumper crop of silky green Italian parsley this year. It loves the coffee grounds I have been fortunate enough to glean over the past few months. In the background, are shoots of new Broad Beans. I planted a red flowering variety this year, just to see what they're like. Naturally, there are self-sown Marigolds everywhere, & plastic bottles I cut down to protect seedlings are long outgrown... I really must tidy up a bit!

So there you are... and here I am..... back again...

Oh! & here is Mr Treadwell! The finest assistant a Marigold could ever find........

Misty Winter Dreaming

Winter's a good time to dream...... especially when the mist settles in for the day........

It's so quiet, but for the occasional drip, drip, drip on the roof...shhhh...listen.....


What is there?


.....a chilly breeze rattles empty branches & sends droplets of moisture flying in all directions over leathery brown leaves .....





...........underneath this fine carpet, the earth is bone-chillingly cold...... wet.........dense....heavy.......


........shhhh...

.....be still....it's nearly Mid-Winter....




What do you dream of for when the light returns?

What do you hope for?

What do you love?




Come, my friend, make yourself comfortable, join me at the fireside.......

wrap yourself in a well-loved blanket and dream with me.....

Let us dream of approaching sunshine & abundance, love & laughter, comfort & ease......


let us dream of every noble thing.......


.....and every thing that makes hearts sing........



Blessings upon all beautiful dreams, for they create the world.......

.............believe in them .........

...............remember them.......

............always.......