Hiatus

For the time being, dear friends, I will not be flying my kite in the great blogging sky. Health issues are keeping me from doing some stuff and sadly, for now, blogging is one of the things I have to temporarily wave goodbye to. I will be back soon though and as I will be concentrating all my efforts on regaining good health, I hope my return will be sooner rather than later. Thank you to anyone who recently posted a comment and sorry I have not been able to reply. I really appreciate the little visits you made and thank you warmly and very sincerely. For now, I send you all much love and look forward to once more flying my little kite up into the big blue beyond, very very soon. Love, AKR.

Happy

It's Friday. The sun found it's way out from the forest of clouds and took a stroll across the blue laneway above. Breakfast was late Summer strawberries tumbled onto toasted bread, splattered with natural yogurt and honey and sprinkled liberally with cinnamon...all washed down with coffee...delicious. I felt well. I walked. I saw gardens I had not seen in a while. A small lady in a big hat was kneeling in amongst her flowers at the front of her home, I smiled and said Hello and she smiled and said Hello back. I breathed deep. Back home, the washing blew on the line and I could hear my neighbour's grand-daughter babbling in her lovely baby voice. I can feel energy bubbling inside me, a familiar but almost forgotten feeling. The poplars across the road are like upturned green broomsticks, lazily sweeping the pale mauve clouds across the sky. I am happy.

A wedding, a storm and Shiva?

Dear blogging friends, it's been a while since I blogged and I am wondering as I type how you all have been. I will no doubt visit you in the next few days and look forward to seeing what you all have been up to in the intervening weeks. 

Here, things are still a bit peculiar health wise but I hope (please God) to have some 'closure' at the end of this month, thus more on that later.....

Separately, a family member is getting married in 6 weeks. Well, I say family member, what I really mean is my sister. I guess she feels pretty distant from me as she and I have been estranged for a really long time. Without going into the gorey details (and they are pretty gruesome, believe me!), suffice to say we have been invited to the wedding.......the invitation, sadly, was only forthcoming when the proverbial gun was placed to said siblings forehead that lest she ask me/and mine, there would be no wedding (this from my father). So.....it's weird to be asked to a wedding of somebody you no longer know, but once knew better than you knew yourself, knowing in your heart that you have only been asked on sufferance, and not really wanting to go, but having to for the sake of ..... well, for the sake of your parents happiness, for truly there is no other reason that I really want to get all dolled up and attend the shindig, among the guests of which I neither know nor want to know, as I believe "our side" are not really represented that well and the entire guest list consists of work colleagues and various other connections and acquaintances of the happy couple....heavy sigh. Help! Anyhoo, dear blogging friends, above, and looking at the first photograph of the garden statue, (isn't she a beauty!) - behold the wedding gift. For verily I laid aside my sadness and hurt feelings (actually they are sitting in a jar labelled "forget this if you want to survive" on a shelf alongside the tin containing other tragic fragments labelled "Je ne regrette rien...but sometimes..."). If it is not entirely clear from the photograph, it is a bird bath. We could not identify the goddess at the garden centre where we purchased her and have not been able to identify her on various internet searches since (anyone got any ideas?) - except that, as per the garden centre owner, she is from Bangkok Thailand and is a Hindu goddess. I have a bit of a thing about the birds (and the bees, hee hee) as many of you will know, and I love the thought of giving a gift that not only gives pleasure to the garden owners (herself and himself) but will give pleasure, not to mention clean fluffy wings to the birds who visit them. We had an exhaustive search for a pleasing bird bath, let me tell you and it was on the 5th garden centre visit that we eventually found our goddess. Worryingly, when I did search for Hindu goddesses online, among a list of dozens, the goddess Shiva that seemed a close match for our statue, apparently is the goddess of war and destruction? Surely not. It's too late to take her back now anyway so if that turns out to be true I shall have to tell a white lie as to her true nature! I don't honestly think that's who she is though and am sure that somebody out there will enlighten me as to her identity. The weirdness of the upcoming event in terms of the astonishing "Hello" magazine level of secrecy is making me feel slightly queasy. I hope I can survive it all. I am not very good at plastering a smile on my face and playing the social butterfly! I am more of a .... hmm....let me see..... I guess I am more of a wedding in the back garden/fairy lights in the trees/homemade food washed down with a cold beer or a nice glass of wine/kind of gal.....No doubt I will be posting again on this between now and then......incidentally, the other photos were taken after a particularly heavy downpour of rain and the loudest clap of thunder I have ever heard in my life, which exploded right above the roof of our home. Jeepers, if she really is the goddess Shiva/goddess of war and destruction, what have I unleashed? Another wedding installment on another day.....

(by the way, if you are wondering what the wedding pressie is doing sitting in my back garden, she is there till I deliver her, closer to 'the day'. I'm sure that she is getting pleasantly weathered while she awaits her fate. For now, much love from AKR).

Perovskia Blue Spire.

I awake and the sky is a soft grey lid above. I get up, shuffle on my butterfly embroidered slippers and descend the stairs, making coffee and French toast for me and J, quicker than before. Spooning over a mixture of berries and trying to trickle some maple syrup on top of the toast from the bottle with no spout, from which a small flood of the amber fluid gushes forming a sugary puddle on the plate, I pass over the heaped plate to J and cock my hip up onto the stool. The window is open nearby and the air is soft as it sneaks in and caresses my arm. I can see the Perovskia which has recently bloomed. It is electric blue, an astonishing blueness that I can hardly take my eyes off. I love this blue. There is another blue I am enchanted by, the blue of the kingfisher....and the pale sky-blue of the cloak on the statue of Holy Mary, that stood atop the old electric heater in the bedroom of my childhood..Blue Gentians too, nestling in the cracks and crevices of the Burren, that our guide told us was the exact shade of blue in the eyes of the Goddess Athena...looking outside at the tangled tapering blue spires of the Perovskia plant, I can just make out some honeybees hovering, then landing, before taking off and encircling the flowers lazily, watched from the garden wall by a tattered young magpie, who looks on the scene with a glassy eye before jumping from the wall and flying off.

Summer garden moments

Seal of approval

He came in with a small fishing boat, moving silently through the water. Seemingly well used to being fed tit-bits from daytrippers, he was unperturbed by the human activity and dogs barking on shore. At one point, a lone diver appeared from nowhere, bobbing peacefully with the small waves, pushed in by the tide around the quay wall. The seal paid him no mind, as if he were just another sea creature. Underneath us as we peered into the sandy shallows, his speckled body shimmied easily through the water. Placid and graceful he came and went. Sometimes, nearing the barking dogs on the moss covered rocks, and hanging idly about in the water, he seemed to be engaging in a staring contest with them. He was in his own world, patiently waiting for some tasty fish treats. Dipping below the water's surface, he would disappear from sight only to reappear close by, his long snout breaking the water with a series of small ripples. His long whiskers gave him an air of wisdom and his chocolate eyes seemed knowing, and sad.

(from an outing to the sea, Sunday 13th July, feeling better.)

Hello

Just wanted to pop in and say hello to you all! I am doing a little better friends, and thank you for the lovely comments and kind and encouraging things you have said. Weather here is a right old mixed bag, sunshine and marshmallow clouds one minute, monsoon conditions the next. Still, the garden is happy! Everything is growing wild and lush. Today I discovered a wild pink rose bush trailing itself through the hedge in our front garden, a small strand of which I have plucked and popped into a wineglass and which now is prettying up the living room. I watched an old video favourite yesterday "Out of Africa". Oh my, oh my, I cried a monsoon of tears! Also keeping me company, the beautifully written "Dreams from my Father" by Barack Obama: insightful, fascinating, at times poetic, admirably honest and sparkling with radiant intelligence and integrity - I highly recommend it! For now, farewell everyone, I'll pop in again soon. Wishing you all a wonderfully relaxing weekend. Love, AKR. 

Everybody hurts, sometimes....

Reluctant as I am (in the extreme) to bring a little black rain cloud to my corner of blogland, I fear I must. I have to report a return to ill health and more medical appointments and pills and potions than I am really comfortable with. I hate reading back over the above and am not sure I will post this but I can foresee an enforced period (hopefully not too long) of 'patchy' blogging and it is really with this in mind that I felt I should just be upfront and say what's what, so that you all will not be left wondering what has become of me in the days/weeks ahead. I am feeling so utterly down and depressed and frustrated to be going back into a state of un-wellness but am seeing the consultant again on Monday and hoping for help and, if not resolution, answers and a new plan, as I have worsened over the weekend since first seeing him last Thursday. Oh friends, it is with such a heavy heart and with such dismay and tear streaked cheeks that I write to you tonight. With apologies for such a miserable little post and for any slowness in replies to comments in the coming weeks...your own true blogging pal, AKR.