Desire compels me to push patience to the wayside

Forcing my way to make paths that lead nowhere good

Lost in dark woods and waiting for the sunrise to show me the way out

Days become weeks and weeks become months

Time continues to tick away

The darkness is overwhelming

Memories become lost and dreams become nightmares

The disguises melt away and the monsters show their faces

What was once beautiful is now ugly

All that was is no more

The darkness seems endless

Waiting and wanting for the sun to rise

Waiting and wanting to find a way

Waiting and wanting for a new day

There will be some ring work
But most importantly, Plenty of work with sand bags.
Sit-ups
lunges.
Over head squats.
Running

Don’t you just love me as your coach/motivator?

We were out pretty early that morning.

You know how landscape photographers always go out in the mornings to shoot and leave when the sun gets a bit higher. If you haven’t done it you should. You would get the most amazing lighting imaginable.

This one is shot at Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park. As you can see it is the famous Uluru or as many people know it, Ayers Rock. We beat the sunrise driving to this place, quickly setup our tripods and wait for the sun to appear. We made it.

Also, this is the result, again, of HDR photography. I was getting a lot into HDR photography and liked these sort of colours back then. Talk about your bad taste huh? But I quite like the composition with the grass and red soil at the foreground, the rock and the sun there and the colourful shade of clouds even reflecting the yellow sun  giving the clouds some much needed colour, in this case, orange-ish red.

As a general fyi, this park closes at 6PM. The night before we were shooting as well and a ranger (for real) came up to us and said the park is now closed and we should go back. So we did. Our accommodation at that time was a backpackers which get pretty lively every night because they have barbecues and live music. That’s every night. I remember other hotels were pretty quiet. There was only one shower cubicle that had hot water though and if you know your deserts, they get cold at night even in spring time.

And there was no Asian food. Only barbecues, chips, pizza or burgers. But that was then, not sure if it has changed or not. Maybe you can tell me when you go visit.

“Dude, I’m downstairs. Let’s go.”

I forgot I needed to go to Costco today, and I forgot that my friend was coming over to pick me up. I looked at the clock and I shuddered when I saw that it read just after nine. I went to bed a little before six, just as the sun started to crawl over the freeway. My friend was two hours early but it didn’t matter – I was now up.

Time to go.

I threw my shoes on and grabbed the little post card the mailman had left me yesterday on the way out the door; apparently I had a package I needed to sign for and the post office was on the way. So in an attempt to squeeze one more errand out of the trip, we stopped by the post office annex over on Townsend before we hit the insanity of Costco.

I walked up to the door and tried to open it but it remained locked. I looked at my phone and saw that it was five minutes past when their posted hours said they would be open. I shook my head as a small crowd started milling around the door, wondering why they weren’t open yet – and Congress wonders why UPS is kicking the post office’s ass.

Eventually a confused women appeared from behind the door and let us in and after a couple of minutes, she handed me a big box and I returned to the car.

My parents had already sent a gift earlier in the week, but it was my Mom’s handwriting. What could be so important that I needed to sign for it?

Back in the car, we drove off towards Costco and I opened it. Out popped a big green folded blanket, the last thing I expected to see.

A year ago, I had flown back to see my parents, my baby blanket in tow. It was a messy soft green affair, still big enough for me to comfortably nap under as an adult, but it had started to wear so thing the stuffing was showing. I presented it to my Mom, who was still blown away that I was using it.

“Of course I am. Every time I make my bed, it goes on top,” I said matter-of-factly.

I asked her, could she please fix it? She said she’d try, tucked it in a closet and I immediately forgot about it.

Now here it was, a year later, and I was holding my blanket again, totally remade into something new. She had taken a few parts of the old one and sewed them together with new fabric of exactly the same colors and patterns, making it a little bigger, even. There was a really sweet note and I found myself completely floored by a gift I hadn’t expected in the least. The thought of my mother going to the store and finding exact matches of fabric and then sewing a blanket from scratch for the first time in decades was so touching, I’m still searching for the words to describe it. Nothing I’m writing here will do.

I slept underneath that blanket as a child, as an adolescent, as a college kid. I’ve cried into it, kept myself warm by wrapping it around me, learned to read while it kept me from the cold – I even kicked dope underneath it, shivering to stay warm.

And now it’s back on my bed.

After me and my friend finished up at the store, I found myself back at home at eleven, some six hours before I needed to get up for work. Given the night of work ahead and the festivities tomorrow, I needed a few more hours of sleep, so I climbed onto my bed, and curled myself up underneath my old green friend.

I slept like a baby.

Thanks Mom. You’re the best.

High above the fields surrounding my cottage, a skylark produces a melody so fluid and harmonious that it flows through my body like liquid gold, making my spirits rise almost as high as the bird itself, barely a distant dot in the still golden sky, way up high. I look up, squinting to see it. Yet despite the distance between us, the song reaches me, in more ways than one.

A melanistic cock pheasant shimmers. His shades of metallic emerald and deep forest green almost sparkle in the morning light. He flaps out of the hedgerow, panicking when he catches sight of me.  His cackling call “korr kok,  korr kok ” fills the air as he flies away.

I absorb the scents, sights and sounds around me. Reluctant to go back inside. I store them in my mind to be recalled another day.

I think our senses become keener when we choose to live closer to nature. We tend to notice the faintest sounds. The smallest rustle in the hedgerow. The merest hint of red in the sky. We grow to ‘know’ the wild creatures that visit us. We are able to identify each thrush, moorhen, squirrel or badger. Inside our minds we have nicknames for them all.  Or at least I do.

Egromond is a pale olive-green toad that lives here. He shelters under an old  metal feed trough, now used as a planter, and he overwinters in the log shed’s dark, damp corners until Spring.  

Mildred is a moorhen, that currently sits patiently on her clutch of  six pale speckled eggs , set in a nest made of bent flag iris stems, on my wildlife pond. She is skittish and aloof. Her partner, Mervin, resides on the river here but visits her often. He is brave enough to feed under the bird table in full view of me. Mildred never feeds in front of me.  If I happen to get too close to her she shrieks and swears and flits off into the hedgerow, still telling me off at full volume for getting too close, even when she is out of sight.. but she  swiftly returns to her nest as soon I am a safe distance away.

Horace is the hedgehog  that once rolled down the steep slope that leads up to the river bank and surprisingly ( for us both) landed at my feet as I walked up to lock in my hens in one evening.

He is a hardworking hero here..eating all manner of garden pests. I  always make sure there are plenty of leafy and twiggy corners here for him and his family to nest in each winter.

Spirit is the barn owl that silently hunts the banks of the river  and perches on one of the vegetable garden’s fence posts, to eat his catch.  He once did so whilst I was milking Tansy.  His  razor-sharp beak tearing at a flaccid mouse’s body, whilst holding it with talons, curved and deadly, as I was a mere three feet behind him, sitting in the milking shed, as he perched with his soft amber  and grey speckled back facing me. He is INCREDIBLY handsome and I have a feeling he knows it!

……there are many more….and so it goes on. I feel as though I ‘know’ them all.

Signs of spring are welcomed, rejoiced even, as buds appear, at last!….and then they burst open to reveal blossom, so perfect,  that we pray the rain holds off, at least until the butterflies, bees and other pollinators like the furry little bee flies have a chance to visit and do the most important job of all.

I have a life full to overflowing with so many ‘treasures’ that I never feel the need to escape or have a holiday. In this day and age, a time of materialism and consumerism, that is a pretty remarkable thing to achieve I think and I have Riverside and ALL the creatures who reside here with me to thank for it  xx

Blessings xxx