Planting, prose and photography: creative field notes from the garden and beyond.
I sit at the end of the garden and bask in the early hours of the day, alive with a frenetic energy, yet simultaneously calming. The cool breeze is respite for the soul, as well as the body, and I embrace and enjoy the cool sensation of the early morning air across my arms and… Continue reading Falling twigs and golden light: field notes from the garden, 20-22.04.18
The April dusk is heavy with air, thick with atmosphere, and laden with thoughts. A storm is most certainly brewing, but that heady brew is charged with an electricity that lends magic both to the evening, and the soul. The changing of the clocks has bequeathed the gift of encroaching light to the evenings once… Continue reading A charged dusk and beating bat’s wings: field notes from the garden 06.04.18
There’s a new sense of life in the garden today; discernibly so. I had toyed with writing ‘perceptibly so’ but thought that ‘perception’ implied somewhat of an effort, or a concerted focus – and that would betray the ease in which nature is making itself visible, heard and felt on this February Sunday morning. Before… Continue reading A dancing starling and buds of promise: field notes from the garden 18.02.18
Early morning hours at the weekend have the capacity to be both beguiling and bewitching. I have stood outside at 8am and experienced an entire hour accelerate in the blink of an eye; I have stood outside at 8am and felt the pulse of existence slowed to a state of stasis, where an entire world… Continue reading Radiant sky and long-tailed tits: field notes from the garden 04.02.18
Five days have now elapsed since Christmas, and we seem to have reached peak ‘in-between-ness’. The rhythm and pulse of life has become distorted; erratic, much like the swirling torrents of water beneath me in the stream. A day of rain, sleet and snow, in addition to the continuing meltwater from the moors, has turned… Continue reading Brown torrents and shooting bulbs: field notes from the garden 30.12.17
Cold, damp, dark and defeated: if autumn is a slow exhale, then the depths of December days like this are the death rattle. And yet, whilst the garden matter sinks ever deeper into a natural stasis, birdlife continues. The abundance of tits, finches, blackbirds, pigeons and sparrows in the garden only highlights their increasing reliance… Continue reading A lone woodpecker and horizontal rain: field notes from the garden 17.12.17
A day filled with snow and the unadulterated joy of a 3-year-old has postponed my garden solitude to the evening, but a nocturnal reverie provides the joy of new experience and perspective. The snow sits static all around me, lending an increased luminescence to life outside in these evening hours. The sky above me is… Continue reading Nocturnal silhouettes and glinting ice: field notes from the garden, 09.12.17
The first Saturday in December dawns warmer than the snow, frost and ice of last week’s cold assault. The flagstones in the garden are damp, yet this feels triggered neither by rainfall or frost. It’s almost as if the earth has exhaled, and cold breath has hit a floor of blotting paper, where moisture has… Continue reading A merle of blackbirds and sprouting bulbs: field notes from the garden 02.12.17
A light dusting of overnight snow dresses the garden in half-hearted fashion: enough to be labelled as snowfall, but too little to silence the world in the way that a serious deluge manages so wonderfully to do. Some parts of the garden are dusted with white; others appear just as normal. The flowerpots are all… Continue reading A dusting of snow and a skein of geese: field notes from the garden 25.11.17
The welcome sound of birdsong demonstrates nature’s continual commitment to rail against the hard onset of true winter. And yet in other places, frond-like fingers of stasis are slowly taking hold. I poke about in some of flowerpots atop the garden table. Leaves are no longer moved through the garden with the skeletal skitter of… Continue reading Defiant birdsong and settled leaves: field notes from the garden 18.11.17
A Seasoned Soul. 