A time for blogging

“He who plants kindness, grows love…”

How do you start a blog entry when it’s been so long….it feels odd to just be writing words as they come out of my head. Instead of writing for an essay, an assessment at work, a Christmas card…something planned. 2016 has been a busy year with its ups and downs, trials and tribulations, times for sadness and times for celebration.

It seemed fitting to spend the first free hours that we’d had in a long time, on the meadow. So that’s where we found ourselves on Boxing Day, surveying the many trees that my Dad had spent the Autumn and Winter planting.

The meadow is a place where you can renew. Your energy, yourself, your memories. It’s a place that never changes in many ways, and yet advances and matures in many others. It’s a place that you can rely on. It is by far one of my most favourite places. This year I stored up memories and moments to recapture and recall when I felt that I may need them most.

One of those memories and moments was when we were speeding across the Gulf of Mexico in a boat with dolphins chasing us. I thought, ‘When life gets tough, remember this moment when everything was okay, and the bad bits were forgotten.’ The meadow is full of scenes prepared and stored, ready for conjuring up when most needed. Boxing Day’s time down there was no exception.

This is what happens when you ask two dogs to smile….

So the tree planting is almost complete. Only another few hundred to go…the meadow is looking full already and some of the photos show the contrast between the trees that were first planted when my parents got the meadow, to the ones that are just being put in now. A lot has changed in the years since the meadow was acquired…

The next project is nesting boxes – owls, bats, birds…all the best creatures! I can’t wait to ‘borrow’ my Dad’s extra awesome telephoto lens and sit and wait for the Kingfisher to come by again. He/She makes a regular appearance already but with some patience, fantastic shots can be caught. Just ask my Mum who snapped away with her point and shoot camera a few weeks ago and put me to shame!

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Breeze on By

“And rain will make the flowers grow…”

We hoped to find some Bluebell Woods this evening, but it didn’t quite happen. Instead we had a bit of an adventure with sheep, sunsets, hail stones and pretty fields! There were also some (very shy) Deer but sometimes moments like that are best for the eye and not the camera.

We did find some Bluebells (eventually) but they weren’t really camera ready and the light was fading fast. We’ve pin-pointed some spots to return to in the future when the weather decides to co-operate!

Today would be Grandad’s 88th Birthday – he almost made it that far. It seemed fitting that today I grabbed a few photos and did what I absolutely used to love doing – wandered. Grandad was one of my biggest fans and an avid follower of this blog until he became too unwell to keep track of it. I still showed him my photos, everytime I saw him, even when he was at the Nursing Home. Photography was something we loved talking about and he never forgot to ask what I had captured lately. So these photos are in honour of him and the importance of the 16th April, which was nearly always spent celebrating ‘our’ Birthdays as mine is in four days time!

<3

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