Summer - And Nothing More....

Oh hello, there you are, or rather, here we are, in the midst of Summer! Do you see that capital S there at the beginning of the word Summer? Well, I have to tell you, this year it has to have a capital S, because that is what we are having, a proper, capital, long-awaited, hot, hot summer. And it just keeps going on and on and on, and we are not complaining, not one bit!

So, the floors have a permanent dusting of sand, the chores are done to a minimum, for as happens most other years, no matter what the weather, we have simply dropped everything and just taken ourselves off to one beach or another, and let me tell you there have been quite a few, with more to come.

Ahh, the joys of living on an island! I estimate we will have been to no fewer than ten different beaches by summer's end, with definite potential for others I haven't accounted for yet. With such a variety of beaches so close to home (and some further afield) it is impossible to not take advantage of it. Some are perfect for swimming, some for body boarding, some for rock pooling, and some for building epic sandcastles!
I am so very grateful to still have children young enough to have an excuse for spending countless hours, days, just Being At The Beach.

And for the days when other things take us elsewhere, the best part is, we can walk out the door in the evening, before or after dinner, and stroll down to the seafront for a dip, pausing to chat with friends or neighbours we meet along the way, maybe stopping for an icecream, or occasional bag of salty chips, watching the fairground rides against the dimming sky as we wander back up the hill to home.

Seventeen Days In Virginia.

 An Appalachian visit to my sister, her daughter, and their red dog.

Some days we drove,
my mother and sister and I,
skirting the Blue Ridges,
layers of smokey blue that rode away into the horizon like a tide.
Through rolling hills of green that fold back and forth onto themselves
as far as my eye could see.

Miles and miles of trees that thronged with birds,
red birds, blue birds, yellow, brown.
Birds as unfamiliar to me as the very air here.
And overhead, birds of prey wheel and cry like falling stars from some ancient tale we never knew.

On the way, we sang songs to our small travelling companion,
our little stalwart passenger whose bright presence was our totem, our lucky charm.

We delved into caves,
great endless milky caverns where we stood enthralled
listened to the rocks as they sang to us
a deep melancholy song,
a song we could not decipher,
a story as old as the earth itself.

And I could not help but dwell in my mind,
ponder, on what these lands were like
when smoke rose in the distance,
when the earth ran with blood
and your sons marched away over the mountains,
those boys of yours, tenderhearted, naive, awash with bravado and terror.
Marched away and did not come home.

Everything I saw was new, yet so familiar, like a memory, or a deep knowledge I had forgotten, that now stirs with something like hope.
The unfamiliar birdsong, 
the clamouring, legendary brood II cicadas, heard with disbelief in the place Jefferson heard them, 
fireflies in my bedroom, 
the scent of skunk that greets us on the doorstep in the morning, 
the kindness of strangers,
but most of all, those mountains.
I will hold on to those.

It is morning now, and today I will be returning to my home,
back to my dearlings and my sea, my heart sore and yearning for them now.
Though how I will say goodbye to my sister, and to this other tiny dearling who has a hold on my heart,
and to the red dog, I do not know. for they are leaving this place too,
beginning a new part of their story when they join her husband in Mexico.  

And it's true also, I find myself heartbroken to be leaving these mountains,
these blue endless, mysterious mountains that are not mine, yet somehow have a hold on me,
have burrowed under my skin a desire to come back.

And I thought my heart was already full.

Finding Our Feet.

We are settling in.

Some of us not quite settled yet. A whole new world to get used to.

Getting to know the light in this new place.

I love it very much.

Follow it from room to room.

Loving the hill behind our house.
Our new playground.

Loving this new urban life that allows us to not have to give up the sea.
Loving so many friends on our doorstep.
Loving walking everywhere!

Loving that spring is rushing towards summer.
Happiness runs.

A Brief Sojourn Before Uprooting Ourselves.

Not so long ago, we took the winding road south, down through the belly of this island of ours, through damp, mizzling hills that rolled under us and away to the glowering east. The rain ran down the foggy windows, the grey and the green flew past us in a rush as we sped towards the Atlantic coast on the southern rim of Ireland.

We spent the weekend with new friends, the warmest, loveliest of people, we took our time, we savoured every minute, we reminded ourselves of how much we love this place, memories returning of distant weekend visits to my sister when she lived here, so many years ago.

We passed through the wet, through the green, as though flying like ghosts, through virescent memories that clung to our hair, our skin, in the very drops of rain that hung in the air about us.
A heady combination of the newness of friendships lately found, and the deep hum of history stirring under our feet, all bound by the verdant magic of where we found ourselves.

A briefest of sojourns before we returned home, to the mammoth undertaking of uprooting our little family, of deconstructing all we had spent our parenting years building. Our Home.
An exciting, daunting endeavour, that caught us up in it's momentum and carried us onwards, of which there will be more, anon.

Returned to this, a most splendid of evenings that held a promise of spring. An evening that gave me perhaps my most favourite image of this view, in all my years photographing it.


A view that will always be there, behind my eyelids, when I close them against the sun.

Wordless Wednesday.