It is blowing again. It feels like it has been a summer of wind and heat. We meet friends for gin the other night and we comment to each other how this summer is that kind of summer that you remember from when you were a kid. Endless sunny days of being outside and just doing stuff. It does however feel like it has been a bit of an odd summer. It was odd that my home town was warmer than parts of Australia when we were travelling recently. It feels odd that we have numerous days of sunny weather instead of our token couple of days before it rains again. It feels odd that on some days the rest of the country is battered by unimaginable weather and we just have another sunny day. Of the course the reason is climate change and it feels like it just rolls off the tongue, that we say “It’s climate change” and carry on our merry way but I think if this summer has taught me anything it is yes it is climate change but we need to be increasing our awareness of how our actions add to it. As we drank our gins and wistfully liken this summer to summers of childhood past we forget to note that for most us around the table the summers we so fondly remember were not summers spent where we currently live. The summers we were thinking of where summers of a different climate and that is the change we failed to acknowledge.
“Flowers are what they are to be attractive to pollinators. However, we share with them an ancestry and a quest for the desirable capable of shaping the bodies of others. And although their quest was played out on an evolutionary path so different from ours, we can still access their alien beauty. Every flower we find beautiful is an echo of the beings that precede us on this earth, the ancestors of the pollinators and us, and what each of them found desirably……. Experiencing the beauty of a flower thus means experiencing the manifest and mysterious aspects of an indestructible link between ourselves and every wild bee. A link that we activate without knowing it when we want flowers on out tables, clothes and wallpaper. When we want to linger a little longer in front of Van Gogh’s irises and O’Keeffe’s poppies. The beauty of a flower, its singularity of existence, brings us a little more closely to life”
Botanical Observing Beauty page 246
I’ve collected my first lot of seeds from the garden. Some Larkspur which I grew from seeds myself. Collecting seeds to grow for the next season is new to me and I think that this is what I love about gardening there is always something new to learn and embrace. As Autumn starts to whispher in the mornings I’m start to think of seeds and autumn plantings.
We went for a walk down an old shingle road the other night. It was warm and the evening light was spectacular. While the family walked the ahead, I slowly wandered behind trying to capture with my iphone the beauty that was around me. There was the smell of tall pines that formed an avenue to walk down. I loved the colours of the burnt clover, the dried grass and fever few on the verge we walked past. It was a magical combination of crimson, white and gold. Nature always knows her colours. Cows ignored us one way and then followed us along the fence line on the way back. Just as curious about us as Eos was about them. I looked at my feet when we arrived back at the car and my sandals are dusty, almost white from the shingle road. The parting shot was this photo, the last stretches of light. We return home and a grey cloud bank sits over the valley. A different day almost and of course we hanker to return.
This newsletter space is slowly evolving. I hope in the coming weeks to starting adding some new additional content to what I send out related either to the garden, photography and of course the bees. I will keep sending this newsletter out each Friday, I like to think it is what sets you up for the weekend but look out for new material which I will send out earlier in the week related to photography (Haven newsletter) and bees (Bee Friendly newsletter). The more personal content will be exclusively available to paid subscribers so do upgrade if you are want to be part of this or simply want to support me and my work.