Guerilla Gardener - This is so inspiring!!!

As the light changes

 "Who is this coming up from the wilderness leaning on her beloved?"

Every day I am in wonder and awe that we are here. As I write this, I sit with the window open a jar and I can hear the birds. Many different birds. Pigeons cooing, blue tits twittering, robins bobbing from branch to branch. The sky is blue and the trees sigh and rustle gently.
Across the green a stone cottage and a village pub, soak up the first of the sunlight. The daffodils are peeping out of their winter slumber. The grass is emerald. There are faint glimmers of Spring everywhere.

And one thing we have taken so much joy in since being here? Our little dog Sylvie. It is such a joy to walk our favourite walks with her and introduce her to special places that we have grown to love.

 

 

 

For the Lord comforts Zion;
    he comforts all her waste places
and makes her wilderness like Eden,
    her desert like the garden of the Lord;
joy and gladness will be found in her,
    thanksgiving and the voice of song.

Isaiah 51

Winter Scraps

Sylvie Puppy

Yarn Along

Joining Ginny @ Small Things for Yarn Along and Frontier Dreams for Keep Calm, Craft On  today!

Knittingwise

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It's been so very long since I joined up with yarn along. So many projects cast on and off my needles since November! Here is a small selection from last month's photo archives :)

" Little Dorrit"

 Little Dorrit was Nola's Christmas present. Her tunic was knitted up with a ball of wool that I spun on my drop spindle a couple of years ago. It was so much fun watching how the colours worked their random way into the pattern.

Autumnal Vest finished for Tilly and another one to match for Fina, photos to come next week fingers crossed!

Reading wise 
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I have been so enjoying Sister Wendy's latest book on Prayer.
 It was given to me as a birthday present on my kindle and I'm finding myself going back over different parts of the book again and again. 
The book draws me into a lovely meditative state. 
I can almost see the gentle morning sunlight illuminating the stark bare stone Carmelite convent walls as I read. 
It is a book that offers the mind a wonderful still, space to dwell and wonder in. 
I can also hear Sister Wendy's voice clearly in the writing after watching her series of art both on TV years ago and now on DVD with my girls, and that only adds to the charm, as you'll know if you've ever had the pleasure of hearing her yourself :). 
Here is a brief excerpt about "Christ and the Samaritan Woman" 13 - 1311 by Duccio de Buoninsegna ...

 

 "The apostles have gone into the city to satisfy their hunger. They emerge in a compact bunch, supporting one another, protected from the clear light of His presence by the fortress of the world, their own self sufficiency.
Their hands are full, they clasp them to themselves, satisfied hands with the food of this world in their grasp. But the woman stands alone and exposed before Jesus. Her emptiness is seen not only in her hands, but in the most noticeable detail about her, which is the large empty pot on her head.
She does not hide her poor human emptiness: she exposes it, but the exposing is to Jesus. She is a living symbol of our need for Him. She stands still, an image of the stillness we choose at prayer. But Jesus does not reach out His hand to fill hers. He does not come to her. Jesus sits by the well and asks her to give to Him: her need is met with demand - again, a moving symbol of prayer. God gives Himself, not obviously, not in terms tangible or visible, but in holy contradiction. It is in giving that we receive: we, us. Our prayer may seem all nothingness, all giving, giving of time, of energy, of struggle to be present. Jesus may seem to have only asked, not given. But that is how He does give. The woman went away, wholly changed, fed and renewed to her innermost depths. Yet she was given no water, no food. Jesus told her to draw her own water, and He revealed to her the shameful inner truth she carried. Yet this apparently merciless treatment was living water, was life, was communication of God at such intensity that there were no human terms in which the woman could see or judge what had happened to her. But she believed, and the whole city of her personality her whole self, all she was and could become believed with her."

A String of Pearls

"The details make life holy. If you want a little happiness in life don’t forget to look at the little things. It is a poet’s work to see the incidental, pluck it, place an appropriate silence around both sides and see the profound in what passes for a passing moment. It is an artist’s job to as much discover art as create it. Prayer is a way of making the common profound by pausing, tying knots around a moment, turning our life into a string of pearls."

Noah Ben Shea

 

Simple Christmas

We moved in on the Winter Soltice, good vibes! And got the tree up on the evening of the 24th!

Here is someone we waited a long time for. Her name is Sylvie.

At last a real fire!