Lockdown Project - Days 16-28
25th April 2020
Four weeks done. Feels like it could have been four days, or four years. Time is moving strangely these days. And space and place have felt similarly warped for me. Even though I've hardly strayed more than a mile from home for most of the past while I feel like my world has grown immensely. I'm reminded of a quote I half remember, along the lines of "the real voyage of discovery consists not in seeing new sights, but in looking with new eyes." A quick Google search reveals this to be more of a paraphrase of Marcel Proust's original lines, but the meaning is still much the same. I am in awe of the things I've missed in living here over the years. Things I've walked past and never noticed, and simple sights I know I've seen plenty of times but rarely felt the power of like I do now. The weather is helping. I can't recall as good a spring as this in my life, and I know the feelings of crisis would be far more prevalent if the weather was poor. So I'm feeling very thankful, both for where I am and for the daily doses of wonder from the natural world (and for the internet, for offering such ease of communication with friends and family). I went to Dingle for food a few days ago and was shocked to realise how I'd almost forgotten about the place. It felt like an adventure to be on the other side of the hill, seeing the town as if I hadn't been there for ten years instead of ten days. It made me realise how little space I need to occupy to be content. I know it might sound like total bull, but some limitations can be very freeing.
I'm sure there could be people reading all this and cursing my mentions of contentment and freedom. As I said in the first part of this blog I'm wary of using positive language around the affects of this pandemic. I am anything but pleased with the death and stress and anxiety that this situation is bringing to people's lives. I'm feeling the darkness of it at times too (such dread tends to be inevitable after checking the news, so I'm avoiding it even more than I usually do these days.) But what I'm trying to focus on and what I write about here are the surprising benefits of the situation I find myself in due to the efforts we all need to make to control the spread of the disease. I know I'm very lucky to be where I am at this time. And between living alone and being very restricted in my movements due to a knee injury for most of the winter the lockdown doesn't feel like as much of a shock as it might have otherwise. I know plenty of people are finding it very tough, and I wish it wasn't so. I can't offer much, but maybe this perspective and these photos might help somebody see a brighter side to their own situation, or just be five minutes of escapism if nothing else. I wish you all the best.
April 12th
After a rare dull day with rain and strong winds this month's norm of kind conditions returned with a shocking surprise sunset, as seen from the bottom of the garden. Mount Eagle on the left and Cruach Mhárthain on the right.
April 13th
An emerging specimen of the wonderfully named Sticky Mouse-ear, found on the lawn. When I get a place of my own I'll take great delight in leaving any grass grow wild. It pains me to have to cut the grass here, chopping down all that vigorous green life, and for what? Give me a life-rich meadow over a neat, dead lawn any day.
April 14th
The bright lights of Baile na nGall (Ballydavid) under the bright lights of a clear night sky. This particular week involved almost endless sunshine, so rare in West Kerry. I'm not usually good at sitting still, but for a few of these days I took great pleasure in sunning myself like a cat in bright corners of the garden, devouring books and enjoying the seemingly rare gift of not being under any pressure to do anything. Hence this late and somewhat lazy attempt at my daily photograph, taken, yet again, in the garden.
April 15th
More sun, more lazing in the garden. This is the last big tree left here, two others having been cut down since I moved in. I was gifted a few silver birch saplings recently and planted them in a wilder corner of the garden, where they'll hopefully escape the landlord's annual spraying of 'weeds.'
April 16th
The ruins of an old Christian monastery, with two artfully carved standing stones visible outside the main wall (I'll post a picture of them another day). This is less than 1km from where I live. I'm embarrassed to say that until this day I didn't even know it existed, despite having walked within a stone's throw of it countless times. It's a lovely spot, and should be knee deep in flowering irises in May.
April 17th
Always great to see ferns unfurling in the spring time, and it was especially lovely to find this shapely arrangement of two Hart's Tongues.
April 18th
Beautiful evening light on some hillside boulders in Cathair Deargáin. If there are any rock climbers reading; there are five excellent, high boulder problems to be done here. I can see these distantly from home, and spied them with binoculars within a few days of moving in. Somehow, I wrote them off for bouldering, and I regret it now. I'm not sure I'll ever get back to bouldering again after knee surgery, but I'd be happy to show these to somebody else when the time comes that we're allowed move more freely again.
April 19th
A block of sandstone on the hill behind home. Any geologists out there fancy explaining the pattern? I can understand how one colour change in sedimentary rocks could be a huge flooding event where different deposits were laid down. But the regularity here seems like something less random to my baffled brain. Or are big floods less random over huge timescales? I wonder what span of time separates the two ends of this piece of stone?
April 20th
Great tit blending in well on a freshly greened sycamore in the garden. The sun clears the hill behind home around twenty to nine this time of year and for an hour or so all the trees are backlit in fiery green against the dark shadow of the western slopes. It's something I look forward to every sunny morning in spring.
April 21st
Another lazy one, after a long day painting the house. A ripening sundown from the road.
April 22nd
An extravagant section of border along a green road between this and the next townland. In eleven days of a gap since last walking here the place had burst into life. The dark sea of bluebells and pink-tinged white of St. Patrick's cabbage colour the edges in great swathes, foxgloves' dusty leaves hold their tall flowers in readying for summer, dog violet and wood anemones and all sorts of greenery are growing at a pace you could nearly watch, and animal tracks hint at the furry lives that slink across the dried earth path at night.
April 23rd
The warm, dry weather continues, and so does the painting. Too tired to go far after three days of up and down ladders, but luckily I don't have to leave the garden at all to enjoy yet another spectacular sunset. Looking towards Sybil Head (left) and the Three Sisters.
April 24th
A misty, still morning. If I wasn't at this paint job I'd have gone up the hill to see the sunrise, but again, at least I can enjoy the slow burning away of the fog from home. This is a long lens view of the peak of Cruach Mhárthain from later in the morning, reduced to its elegant outline by the mist.
Click here for the next entry in the series.
I'm sure there could be people reading all this and cursing my mentions of contentment and freedom. As I said in the first part of this blog I'm wary of using positive language around the affects of this pandemic. I am anything but pleased with the death and stress and anxiety that this situation is bringing to people's lives. I'm feeling the darkness of it at times too (such dread tends to be inevitable after checking the news, so I'm avoiding it even more than I usually do these days.) But what I'm trying to focus on and what I write about here are the surprising benefits of the situation I find myself in due to the efforts we all need to make to control the spread of the disease. I know I'm very lucky to be where I am at this time. And between living alone and being very restricted in my movements due to a knee injury for most of the winter the lockdown doesn't feel like as much of a shock as it might have otherwise. I know plenty of people are finding it very tough, and I wish it wasn't so. I can't offer much, but maybe this perspective and these photos might help somebody see a brighter side to their own situation, or just be five minutes of escapism if nothing else. I wish you all the best.
April 12th
After a rare dull day with rain and strong winds this month's norm of kind conditions returned with a shocking surprise sunset, as seen from the bottom of the garden. Mount Eagle on the left and Cruach Mhárthain on the right.
April 13th
An emerging specimen of the wonderfully named Sticky Mouse-ear, found on the lawn. When I get a place of my own I'll take great delight in leaving any grass grow wild. It pains me to have to cut the grass here, chopping down all that vigorous green life, and for what? Give me a life-rich meadow over a neat, dead lawn any day.
April 14th
The bright lights of Baile na nGall (Ballydavid) under the bright lights of a clear night sky. This particular week involved almost endless sunshine, so rare in West Kerry. I'm not usually good at sitting still, but for a few of these days I took great pleasure in sunning myself like a cat in bright corners of the garden, devouring books and enjoying the seemingly rare gift of not being under any pressure to do anything. Hence this late and somewhat lazy attempt at my daily photograph, taken, yet again, in the garden.
April 15th
More sun, more lazing in the garden. This is the last big tree left here, two others having been cut down since I moved in. I was gifted a few silver birch saplings recently and planted them in a wilder corner of the garden, where they'll hopefully escape the landlord's annual spraying of 'weeds.'
April 16th
The ruins of an old Christian monastery, with two artfully carved standing stones visible outside the main wall (I'll post a picture of them another day). This is less than 1km from where I live. I'm embarrassed to say that until this day I didn't even know it existed, despite having walked within a stone's throw of it countless times. It's a lovely spot, and should be knee deep in flowering irises in May.
April 17th
Always great to see ferns unfurling in the spring time, and it was especially lovely to find this shapely arrangement of two Hart's Tongues.
April 18th
Beautiful evening light on some hillside boulders in Cathair Deargáin. If there are any rock climbers reading; there are five excellent, high boulder problems to be done here. I can see these distantly from home, and spied them with binoculars within a few days of moving in. Somehow, I wrote them off for bouldering, and I regret it now. I'm not sure I'll ever get back to bouldering again after knee surgery, but I'd be happy to show these to somebody else when the time comes that we're allowed move more freely again.
April 19th
A block of sandstone on the hill behind home. Any geologists out there fancy explaining the pattern? I can understand how one colour change in sedimentary rocks could be a huge flooding event where different deposits were laid down. But the regularity here seems like something less random to my baffled brain. Or are big floods less random over huge timescales? I wonder what span of time separates the two ends of this piece of stone?
April 20th
Great tit blending in well on a freshly greened sycamore in the garden. The sun clears the hill behind home around twenty to nine this time of year and for an hour or so all the trees are backlit in fiery green against the dark shadow of the western slopes. It's something I look forward to every sunny morning in spring.
April 21st
Another lazy one, after a long day painting the house. A ripening sundown from the road.
April 22nd
An extravagant section of border along a green road between this and the next townland. In eleven days of a gap since last walking here the place had burst into life. The dark sea of bluebells and pink-tinged white of St. Patrick's cabbage colour the edges in great swathes, foxgloves' dusty leaves hold their tall flowers in readying for summer, dog violet and wood anemones and all sorts of greenery are growing at a pace you could nearly watch, and animal tracks hint at the furry lives that slink across the dried earth path at night.
April 23rd
The warm, dry weather continues, and so does the painting. Too tired to go far after three days of up and down ladders, but luckily I don't have to leave the garden at all to enjoy yet another spectacular sunset. Looking towards Sybil Head (left) and the Three Sisters.
April 24th
A misty, still morning. If I wasn't at this paint job I'd have gone up the hill to see the sunrise, but again, at least I can enjoy the slow burning away of the fog from home. This is a long lens view of the peak of Cruach Mhárthain from later in the morning, reduced to its elegant outline by the mist.
Click here for the next entry in the series.
Comments
By Betty Rogers: Yes! By Susanne Magee: What a joy! Go raibh maith agat.