Update

I'm sorry I've been so absent. Not only has my hand surgery held me back, but my computer hasn't been working properly for most of the year. Hubby has checked everything, renewed all sorts of bits, reinstalled, deep cleaned, scanned and rebooted (should be as in booted out a window!) without finding the source of the problems. :( and this last week it went really crazy and was freezing up for about 5 minutes, then working for about a minute... freezing up again. 

WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH

My dad suggested it might be the cable connections and re-crimped all the wiring/cables. So far... it seems to be working.

Each time this has happened, each time I've "lost" a drive, I've also permanently lost things like emails, documents, photos/art I was working on. So it has been a very slow frustrating time, but hopefully I'll be back more often now. 

Blog Blast for Peace - Reminder

It's less than a month to BLOGBLAST FOR PEACE, on Nov 4. Mimi has created some smashing new templates you can use, alter or post as-is on your blog or Facebook page for the big event. :-)

You can find them HERE 

Soul

"We live in succession, in division, in parts, in particles. Meantime within man is the soul of the whole; the wise silence; the universal beauty, to which every part and particle is equally related, the eternal ONE. And this deep power in which we exist and whose beatitude is all accessible to us, is not only self-sufficing and perfect in every hour, but the act of seeing and the thing seen, the seer and the spectacle, the subject and the object, are one. We see the world piece by piece, as the sun, the moon, the animal, the tree; but the whole, of which these are shining parts, is the soul."

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Photo of the Highland Wildlife Park by me :-)

Beata Femeros Mundi - by Matthew Yrigoyen

A while back I came across a lovely poem and recently I managed to make contact with the poet, Matthew Yrigoyen, who most graciously gave me permission to post his work here on this blog.

Watching her move through these golden moments,
the stride of Athena quivering in her limbs,
the whisper of Quan Yin trailing in her song,
the amber light of Beata Beatrix illuminating the
pace of her thought and the Grace of her gesture -
Shining through it all, a Crystal Spring,
glistening under fallen sacrificial leaves,
the Celestial Virgin shimmers,
raising up her Woman's flesh,
clarifying her Galactic Sight.
The greater her surrender in Carnal Wisdom,
the Priestess penetrating the mystery of elevated passion,
the more she assumes her Woman's power;
the more iridescent the snow of her heaving slopes;
the more gleaming is the foaming wave
caressing the edge of her ever widening shore -
The more we meet the Radiance of her Soul,
as she borrows even our Breath and spins it into Light.

'beata femeros mundi'
copyright of, the author, matthew yrigoyen

I recently posted cave paintings to illustrate the similarities between ancient animals and the endangered species at the Highland Wildlife Park. I thought it was apt to keep that theme going here, by posting a carved cave goddess - an ancient Venus to remind us of how ancient man saw the beauty of woman as mother goddess.... just as Matthew sees the beauty of the goddess in the woman.  

 The Venus of Laussel

Heather

A friend in America recently asked me to describe heather and Irealised how much we start to take for granted the things on our own doorsteps. When I first arrived here everything was a wonder and amazement, but now, after ten years, I'm starting to forget the times when I too had not a clue what heather or thistles actually looked like.  I've taken a selection of photos of heather, from those I took the day we went off to the Highland Wildlife Park.

The thing about heather is that it is very subtle. It grows on hills and even in forests, but for most of the year it's a very low scrubby plant with dull green leaves that you barely notice. On hillsides it just looks dirty green-brown. Then late summer arrives and it flowers and... it's still incredibly subtle. The flowers are tiny and naturally coloured soft smoky purples and pinkish-mauve. As a result flowering heather comes across as low bursts of smoky colour you notice through trees, or it's an equally misty haze of colour on mountains in the distance. 

Can you see the heather flowering on these mountains? (click on photos to enlarge)

 

How about now, as I zoom in a bit closer... ?

Unless the sun is right, you can hardly notice that those mountainsides are tinted purple. Let's get even closer and look at it flowering amongst the trees by the roadside...

 

Now can you see it? Can you see the heather going up the hill all the way to the top? I love this next photo because of the striking different colours of that shocking pink willow weed in the front and those cute blue bobbly flowers that I have no name for. They looked just amazingly bright against the heather. :)

I'll go closer, so you can see just how tiny those heather flowers are. No wonder they look like coloured mist on the mountains!

Up really close you can see that each flower is a perfect little bell...

Just beautiful. :-)