nature

It’s Saturday in the countryside and I’m feeling lucky.

| Mairead

We finally arrived. The boat stopped and we were amazingly lucky to be in the line that moved out first. Not that it really matters who gets off first but it feels like being allowed out to play from school, so we were very excited. This is the time when it’s easy to forget that you have to drive on the other side of the road… And I forgot! Luckily I wasn’t driving 🙂 It was 11.15am by then and we decided it might be nice to travel on the small roads and give the motorways a miss until later. Within an hour we were sitting at a picnic spot beside a stream eating egg salad and apples and feeling very, very lucky.

Sep07

(The bridge over the Loire)

We did get back on the big roads just before Nantes in order to cross the river Loire and we arrived at out destination in the Vendee at 6.30pm. Just ten minutes away from our home for a month a black cat ran across the road in front of the car. We didn’t hit it. Lucky for us and the cat.

Sep0713

(The door into the garden)

We found our accommodation on Airbnb again and it’s very pretty with a flower garden mixed in with a vegetable garden, some fruit trees and hens! You may remember my love affair with Liam and Kate’s hens in Ireland. I’m trying to find a way to tell our host about my previous experience in this area… maybe I’ll ask Kate for a written reference? Although, there seem  to be even bigger predicators here – wild boar – I’m not sure if they eat hens or if I’d be willing to get in their way…..

Sep0713a

(A busy bee)

We went to the supermarket (Super U) earlier and now I’m sitting typing in the garden surrounded by rose bushes, hydrangeas and lettuces. I’m under the shade of a big tree and I can hear a bird chirping and some bees buzzing. Tomorrow morning I’ll sit here with coffee and a croissant. I am completely lucky.

Sep0713b

(The French girls)

Thing is…. as we’re out in the country there’s no boulangaire (I think that’s the spelling for a bakery) so I bought the croissants in the Super U and tomorrow I’ll reheat them in the little oven. That means… It’s possible to be this lucky anywhere. So if you are reading this on Sunday morning you can join me for coffee and croissants or tea and toast or whatever you have in the cupboard.

Sep0713c

(The neighbours – a field of sunflowers ready for harvest)

Together we can notice how lucky we are, Mairead.

We arrived here in Austria.

| Mairead

We’re staying in a little town in the Austrian mountains called Gries Im Sellrain. And true to its name there was rain. With my new-found appreciation for rain, you can imagine I was very happy.

03 07d

(Near Florence, notice how flat the land is)

So… we left Florence yesterday morning at 8.45am and we arrived here at about 5pm and it’ wasn’t such a bad day. We did have a high of 30 degrees but we had a low of 17 degrees also. It was a bit of a shock to the system when I realised I might be cold. Hadn’t felt that for a while. The reality was that it wasn’t too hot and it wasn’t too cold and it wasn’t too tiring. And… it seems my body has got used to travelling for long periods in one position and it wasn’t complaining.

03 07e

(Now you can see some hills in the distance)

I saved myself a lot of worrying and imagining scary things for nothing. Instead I spent my time noticing what was exactly in front of me and appreciating the stuff I liked. Scenery and nature were in front of me. Although Florence is very beautiful, we didn’t see a lot of nature. Not that there weren’t gardens, there were, but we didn’t go to them. We spent time in the streets and the museums and art galleries. So even though we were on a six lane highway now, there was plenty of nature all around us. And it was changing all the time.

03 07f

(The hills and mountains are getting closer)

We stopped every hour (ish) at motorway services and we have it down to a fine art by now. First one, breakfast. Second one fruit and water. Third one, lunch. Fourth one, ice cream or coffee and pastry.Last one shower! That makes five hours of driving and three hours of stops.

03 07g

(And closer)

Yesterday I promised to write a gratitude list and that has made me realise that I appreciate being able to go on this journey. To be able to take the time to do something so different. To have the health, the means and the will. To be able to visit places I have only read about or seen in documentaries. We live in privileged times and we don’t know it.

03 07a

(And finally we arrive in Austria)

While on this road I have been remembering my Dad tell us stories as children about his trip with friends to Rome. The story goes that they drove all the way from Baltinglass in Co. Wicklow, Ireland to Roma, Italy, more than fifty years ago. Before air conditioning, before motorways, before wi-fi! I would love to ask him about it now, but it’s too late, I didn’t know when it was possible to ask that I would want to know. And I would love to see photos of his journey but I don’t know if any exist.

03 07b

(In a little town with a funny church steeple)

So here’s my gratitude list….. Nature, the landscape of northern Italy and Austria from flat lands to huge craggy mountains. Motorway services – really! The journey. Rain… And finally I am grateful that I have the opportunity to write, to take photos and to make you all listen!!!

03 07c

(This is just one of that many signs to tell us… we are welcome :))

 Until Germany, Mairead.

My dark January.

| Mairead

14 1a

(From winter in Cashel 2010)

It’s January. For me that’s the time of year when my energy is at its lowest. When the winter has been long enough and I want some spring….. now! I want it now like my two-year old self wanted chocolate…. but Spring’s not ready yet. So I have to practice patience.

14 1b

(Spider art)

I thought this year it would be different. I am occupied and preoccupied by my course and I thought that would help me forget it was still winter. It hasn’t. Instead it’s shown up further “issues”. When I’m lacking patience with winter I also lack patience with everything else I meet. I am lacking patience with the accounts (my old foe), with my latest assignments, with housework, with bills, with Denis, with myself.

14 1d

(The lovely side of winter)

I had forgotten it all started with January and I was thinking, “these blasted accounts again”, “how can I ever get this history of art done?”, “when does housework finish?”….. but these are not the problem. In fact there is no problem, I just miss the light. I miss getting up after sunrise and having dinner before sunset, I want more time with the light. So I must choose… between making problems out of normal life and accepting the season called winter.

I want to choose to accept winter…. how hard can it be? Mairead.

Christmas Eve, the seagull.

| Mairead

24 12b

(The doubly recycled Christmas Tree from Paris, last year)

It’s Christmas Eve! Just saw a huge seagull flying over our house. Even though we live near the sea they don’t fly over our house very often. I think it means “storms ahead” when they do. Anyway, I was thinking, the seagull doesn’t know it’s Christmas Eve. She doesn’t know today is any different to any other day, except maybe for her internal storm warning…. She’s not worrying about tomorrow’s dinner, about the table decorations, about the perfect gift or the perfectly thoughtful email she forgot to write… She has no worries about the future.

24 12a

(… and a real Christmas Tree)

The seagull flying over our house is called Eve. Well to be exact she’s not flying over our house now, now she’s getting closer to her safe place… and her full name is Christmas Eve but she likes Eve better. She flies off to her safe place whenever she gets the message there’s going to be a storm. Then she stays there until she gets the message the storm is over. At every other time she fishes with her friends off the rocks in Greystones. There’s always enough fish for today so Eve has always been very content to carry on as if there will always be enough fish every day.

24 12d

(Santa Clause getting ready to round-up the little reindeer…)

She has almost arrived at her safe place, it’s miles inland by the side of a lake. Years ago when she was a small seagull she got a message to follow the other, older gulls. She was so young she thought it might be a little holiday and she was very happy to follow them. But it wasn’t a holiday, there were lots of other seagulls jostling for a place near the lake and Eve got shouted at a few times. She couldn’t wait to get back to the rocks by the sea. Nevertheless, after that whenever she got the message there was going to be a storm she flew to the lake.

24 12f

(Candle in the window… Happy Christmas everyone!)

As she got older and bigger Eve didn’t get jostled so much and when she found a spot near the lake no one tried to move her along. Nowadays she’s one of the strongest seagulls by the lake and she sometimes wonders if she really needs to leave the rocks in a storm. Maybe someday she won’t leave but today she’s on her way to the lake heeding the message. What if humans had an internal message system? What if they learned how to hear it?

What if they began listened to it? Mairead.

What’s your story?

| Mairead

3 12a

(Mount Usher in Ashford, Co. Wicklow)

The story of our lives is not the story of what happened… It’s the story of what we are. The story that starts “I am….” The story we think we became because of our behaviour or our actions. The story that says this is the type of person I am. This story is probably built up from lots and lots of small experiences and things other people told us…  From the moment we learned the story of us everything that happened after that had to fit into that particular story. It had to make sense in our story. If it didn’t then it got deleted… We become very attached to our story.

3 12c

(Strong, beautiful tree even with all its flaws…)

Like a film maker producing a movie about a famous politician – only stories that agree with the filmmaker’s belief about the politician will be included…. if he believes the politician is a wonderful honest statesman then the stories from his life that show him as an honest and a wonderful statesman will be included. If the filmmaker believes that the politician is a dishonest scoundrel then the film maker will depict stories from the politician’s life where he is dishonest and a scoundrel. The filmmaker may be completely honest in his choices, i.e. he truly believes the politician is honest or he truly believes the politician is dishonest.

03 12d

(At the boundary of Mount Usher there’s a fence. Beyond the fence there’s a field with very old trees. You can either see the fence or shift your focus a bit and see the trees…..)

Same with our choice of what fits into our story – the movie of us. If the story we truly believe about ourselves says we are flawed then we will only include the times we have been flawed into our movie. Even if we have been a good friend at some point in our life we will delete or distort that memory and remember instead the time we were a bad friend. This is in order that our flawed friend story remains intact. If the story of you says you are flawed then fortunately, you can start again with a new story.

Choose something in your story you don’t like and start to notice the opposite. Mairead.

The Botanic Gardens in the rain.

| Mairead

27 9a

(The Botanic Gardens in Dublin)

I went to visit the Botanic Gardens in Dublin last Monday. Although it’s less than an hour away I’d never been before. Not for the first time I’ve contemplated going on holidays to my own house and discovering what the area holds…. but that’s for another time. Monday’s visit was in connection with a course I’m attending.

27 9f

(Beautiful shapes in the glasshouses)

It was a cold, wet day but because of the huge glasshouses there’s plenty of inside space. Also, I had my umbrella for the sprints between glasshouses. Unlike my usual tours this one wasn’t about the place. I don’t know who created this beautiful place. I don’t know how old it is. I don’t know how many acres it spans. This tour was about noticing what’s here…. now.

27 9g

(More beautiful shapes)

There was an art exhibition in a big room over the restaurant (there was lovely sweet potato soup in the restaurant). There were huge plants in the Palm house. There were fly-catching plants in another glasshouse… and there was lots of soft rain.

27 9c

(Unusual plant attached to tree bark hanging from a post)

My assignment for my coursework was to take pictures of, and to sketch…. the things that attracted me. Taking pictures was easy, sketching not so… but half the work is taking out the pen and paper and starting…. and quarter of the work is getting over the shame when your sketch looks nothing like the object you’re sketching……

Start… now, Mairead.