News From the Hill

Posts Tagged ‘Hedgerows’

Today was just magical outdoors. It was a cold and frosty start to the day with strong sunshine at first which quickly gave way to freezing fog. I had planned a walk today however the fog put me off a bit and I took the easy option of staying in by the stove – after all it had been a very busy week and I was happy to do very little.

In the early afternoon I decided to take a trip into town to get some groceries and get some more peat briquettes for the stove – the weather forecast is for more cold weather. I was glad to be out and about and was enjoying the fresh air with the window open, hat and gloves on.

Everything looked very pretty as I drove downhill and I was surprised to find that the hedges and fields were more heavily frosted the further downhill I went. It was so beautiful that I had to often stop the van to admire the view – unfortunately I didn’t have my camera with me so you will have to take my word for it!

Every now and then I would come around a corner and just gasp at the beauty of the frost rimmed trees standing so white against the backdrop of pale green fields or hedges of startling white with the strong green of ivy spotted throughout.

I really wished that I had my camera with me so that I could share the images. The advantage of not having the camera is that I will remember these sights better myself. I know this from previous occasions on which I wished I had a camera, looking at the scene as though planning a shot, wondering about the best angle, breathing it in. Somehow I find that I can be more present without the camera and I do remember the scene better.

The snow is softly falling now and tomorrow is another day filled with beauty to be discovered just around the corner…

I copied these question from another blog so long ago that I cannot remember where I got them – apologies to the blogger who should be getting the credit for them. Thanks to the blogger who gave me the bones for this post.

I imagine that it must have a simple living blog of some sort and I am sure that it was a very good blog if I was reading it

QUESTIONS:
1.Why are you simplifying?
Keep it simple is a piece of good advice that I heard many years ago, you can choose to apply that advice to any aspect of living, I try to apply it to most. Complicated living becomes stressssssfull living – who needs to bring added stress into their lives? I certainly don’t, so I try to keep life as simple as possible, it’s not always easy but it is worth it.
I have never thought of what I am doing as “simplifying”, I am just attempting to keep it simple.

2.What convinced you that you should change how you live?
I am not aware of any sudden change in attitude, I have always had high regard for the environment and was brought up with great respect for nature. My parents both grew up in a time where things were reused whenever possible, recycling had not been invented, it didn’t need to be, people were not well off and made the utmost use of everything, nothing was thrown away. They passed this on to my siblings and myself.

3.What was the first thing major thing you changed?
Moving to a green field site in the countryside gave us the opportunity to live off-grid and learn to build a wind turbine and our own house (on-going project)

4.How do you see yourself changing in the future?
We want to become much more self-sufficient with regard to food and transport. Transport will probably be our biggest challenge living where we do. It is the one major disadvantage to living in an isolated place in Ireland, public transport is very poor still in most parts of rural Ireland.
As we become more independent with regard to food then that will already mean less journeys to town for basic shopping so increasing our food independence may help reduce our reliance on private transport.
I also want to learn more about making use of the woodlands and hedgerows around here and perhaps learn to make rudimentary furniture for our garden.
I would love to have a horse in the future however that would require more land than we have at present so it is not likely to happen anytime soon.
As to more personal changes – I guess that is another post…

Isn’t it wonderful when you look around you and see beauty?

Early purple orchid

I have put up some mileage over the last ten days and seen blackthorns in all their beauty. Blackthorns and whitethorns, known as hawthorns in other countries, abound in our hedges and brighten up this time of year so much.

The blackthorn flowers before it comes into leaf and the whitethorn comes into leaf before it flowers, so the whitethorn flowers later in the spring. Every year I look forward to seeing the thorny dark hedge bushes of the blackthorn brighten with a foamy creamy blush.

A few weeks ago I saw them flower in the west of Ireland and in Wicklow and slowly the foamy tide has moved northwards. Last week the thorn bushes were flowering at the bottom of the hill and and over the last few days the flowers have opened up along the hill road, still they haven’t reached our track yet.

It’s lovely to drive along the road into town every few days and see the difference that those few days have made to the colour in the hedges. The whitethorns have been coming into leaf as the blackthorn has come into flower, up on our hilltop the whitethorn leaves have opened from gentle green buds to beautiful fresh green leaves. We are still waiting for the balckthorns to flower up here and I think that it won’t be long now.

Meanwhile we have the birdsong and the green opening buds of the whitethorns to distract while we wait…