Category: Simplicity

The View from Here: when life doesn’t quite go as planned

After all, I only get one crack at this next decade!

I’ve been in a dilemma.  I want to write a birthday blog yet why would anyone want to read it?  I remind myself that essentially one blogs for oneself.  But the purpose of publishing is that others should read what is published, and if there is an audience, then surely the audience deserves consideration.  And really – can I expect anyone to want to read about my birthday?  So with the subject matter made clear, feel free to move along if birthdays aren’t your thing.  Continue reading “The View from Here: when life doesn’t quite go as planned”

The View from Here: Of Winters Past …

To walk along a harbour wall is always to walk with history

WP_20170302_002While others talk of signs of spring, I’m still in the throes of winter.  I may be revelling in the birdsong and the sturdy, bright friendliness of the têtes a têtes; I may be delighted by the sight of scudding clouds in a bright blue sky and the clump of bashful purple crocus and the single bluebell I discovered this week (yes, really).  But I’m not yet ready to let winter go.   Shy pale primroses, shiny bright celandines and bold lemon and yellow daffodils have already burst upon the garden and the lanes here, and I welcome them.  But winter shall have her time in the spotlight too.  Continue reading “The View from Here: Of Winters Past …”

“You reading this, Be ready”

Turning away, I returned to the robins in the sunshine and pondered for a while on the lives playing out around me… We intersect, but how rarely we connect.

We parked away from the main car park on our last visit to Lanhydrock, opting instead for the smaller and nearer car park at Respryn.

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It was a sparkling bright winter’s day.  The holly was polished to perfection and there were robins in abundance.  This bold little fellow caught my eye. Continue reading ““You reading this, Be ready””

The View from Here: mist and morning moons

…the sky streaks with softest blush and ribboned strands flutter out across the heavens. The bright moon bathes in a sky-bath of pink roses.

Living just a few hundred miles further west than we were means the sun rises and sets about 15 minutes later than I’ve been used to.  I wouldn’t have expected this to make much of a difference but it does.  Already the mornings seem very much darker than I remember in autumns past.  And I like it.  I’m enjoying waking up in the dark; the bed warm and cosy; the bedroom chilly, making it that little bit easier to stay wrapped in the duvet.  If I’m lucky, Harri will be still sleeping quietly somewhere on the bed.    It’s a good time for letting my thoughts drift drowsily; a good time for gratitude.  The world is waking up; the whole day stretches before me: Continue reading “The View from Here: mist and morning moons”

The View from Here: new day, new month, new year

The view from here is wide open

It is the first day of September and I have climbed the stairs to a perfect, golden, early-autumn morning.  The cows are back; they’ve returned overnight and are strung lazily across the valley: sturdy calves quieter now: smaller forms of their placid mothers.  Their burnished hides glisten as the sun warms them; their shadows long across the pasture.  Continue reading “The View from Here: new day, new month, new year”

The View from Here: anticipating September

Fields have been cut and now lie quietly: yellow, dusky browns and soft ochres permeate the view

Title unashamedly stolen from Nicole at An Entertaining Mess.

August has not been great.  It’s had some wonderful highlights to be sure, but it’s also had some stress and energy dips and significant upsets.  Opportunities for posting have been few: either through other commitments or through lack of brain power.  Although I have a few posts published in August, as the month draws to a close I have others as yet unwritten from July.  I’m feeling muddled: on the blog; in family relationships; in the house, the garden, the car….  I’m just one massive befuddled muddle!

It will pass.  And meanwhile, September approaches.  I love September.  Continue reading “The View from Here: anticipating September”

Birds on the Balcony: babies, buzzards and soaring seagulls

When we were first talking about moving to Cornwall I made it quite clear that I didn’t want seagulls in my airspace

The balcony is awash with babies.  A plethora of fluffy fledglings, often with soft grey down still competing with new adult feathers.  They make me think of cuckoos, these innocent babes, for invariably they are larger than their industrious parents: puffed up by their motley mix of feathers, with their wings fluttering and their gapes wide and demanding.  Life is so precarious for these infants in their first few days of life in the big wide world.  Continue reading “Birds on the Balcony: babies, buzzards and soaring seagulls”

A Man on a Bicycle and Cornish Chocolate

I felt that my man on a bicycle deserved some seriously good chocolate

The rain continues unabated and my patience has begun to wear thin.  Perhaps I can cite that as my excuse for being somewhat impatient when I set off on the 3-mile trip to Pelynt one morning. All of the journey is along single-track roads, which is not a big problem as there is very little traffic.  But on this occasion I met a bicycle.  Continue reading “A Man on a Bicycle and Cornish Chocolate”

The view from Here: under the tree on a sunny afternoon

For a while a single buzzard owned the space between the earth below and the heavens above, framed by the branches over my head which arched so I felt like I was watching this scene from a silent, vaulted cathedral

I have a picture in our bedroom: Roses by Peder Kroyer, painted in 1893.  It’s of a woman wearing a long white dress and she is reading – sitting in a garden chair in the sunshine with a large floriferous white rose in the foreground.  Continue reading “The view from Here: under the tree on a sunny afternoon”