And so it starts again

Welcome to 2023

I think I have written this newsletter about three or four times over. Sometimes it was written in the night when I couldn’t sleep (does anyone these days?). Other times when I was in the garden. Thoughts it seemed came and went. Some have stuck and will become plans perhaps or not. I endeavor to start the year as I ended it - relaxed and in the garden. The challenge of course is to figure out how to maintain the relaxed vibe as your day starts to fill with stuff. I realised that time is the problem. The enventable having to be somewhere or do something at a certain time always changes the nature of the day. I want to hold tight to that feeling of floating through a day without time.

---

Virginia Woolf’s abridged new years wish list - well the ones I want to do

“To have none. Not to be tied.

…..

Sometimes to read, sometimes not read”

---

The Christmas break saw me achieve a goal I am weirdly proud of. I became invisible in the garden. Most days I was outside under the olive tree with my basket that is currently known as the basket of words. It’s a basket filled with books, pen and paper, all I needed for an afternoons entertainment. Between reading sentences and writing words, I would just sit and observe what was going on around me. Bee wise the garden is like a super highway at the moment as bees zoom in one direction or another. It is a busy place this garden of mine. A number of fruit bushes are full of berries at the moment and aside from the cherry tree which did actually manage to get covered this year, everything is free for whomever wishes to eat it. The birds have been feasting on gooseberries and currents and I could sit and watch them potter around me as they snuck under branches and overgrown flower beds to grab a tasty morsel without being noticed ignoring me completely. Being ignored had become a truly humble honour.

---

Other things that made up the Christmas break:

• Christmas lunch just the two of us that started at 11am and finished some many hours later with a contended smile and a full belly

• Dogs rooming about the garden, doing as they wished

• The weather - I have a slight tan and many many freckles

• The rare day when you where your wear jeans and tell yourself that they are freshly washed and that is why they feel snug not because you ate too much over the break

• Feet that have tan lines and feel weird when they are encased in shoes

• Washing being left on the line for days cause you know it isn’t going to rain

• So many books were read, photos were taken and words were written

• Waking to bird song at 5am and ending the day with a scattered chorus at 10pm

• The smell of honey drifting into the house from the hive in the garden

---

And the garden….. The garden gave me so much this break. It gave me the peace that I cherish and needed. It was a space I could retreat to when it became too hot inside the house. The garden became another room to the house with doors and windows only closed when we left the property and even then we often come home to find the back door as been left open. The roses are recovering from the rain we had before Christmas. The foxgloves have finished with dahlias about to start. I love their tightly buds ready to burst. Cosmos, dara, cornflowers sway in the gentle breeze. We are eating raspberries that I planted in flower beds - a favouirte thing and in the evening the scents of the garden drift into the open windows and make you sink into sleep. It has been the haven that I love and for once the weather acutally played ball and we could enjoy it endlessly.