No Place Like Home

Sometimes I need help to appreciate my own backyard.  Like Dorothy, it takes a journey over the rainbow and a few adventures before I remember ‘there’s no place like home’.

It’s good to be still after 4000 miles in the campervan.



I'm not the only one who's come home.Wading through bluebells at Coed y Felin I hear a pied fly-catcher.  I’m always startled at how they find their way from Africa to this small patch of Flintshire woodland.  A dapper male sings, 'tree-tree, once more I come to thee.' 
www.northwaleswildlifetrust.org.uk







While shopping for plants in Mold market, I hear swifts screaming overhead. Young swifts spend their first two or three years in constant flight.  I grin at them charging up and down the high street sky like a gang of teenagers. 
www.swift-conservation.org





I visit Moel Famau where
the call of a cuckoo fills the spaces between the clouds. People stop on the hill,tilt their heads to one side and smile. Skylarks sing high over acid green bilberry shrubs that promise a tongue-staining bounty in late summer. 








Drinking tea at the welcoming Shepherd's Hut, I watch small children tumble down the heathery hill as a willow warbler tumbles down the scales. 
www.shepherds-hut.com

 

At my Yoga class we do an invigorating sequence that involves firing an arrow and hurling a thunderbolt. It’s about aiming for goals and achieving them.

Right now my goal is to simply ‘BE’ and there’s no better place to be than at home in Flintshire.
Dru Yoga  www.druworldwide.com

The Slow Arrival of Spring

I search for signs of Spring from the first of January.  But it can’t be hurried.  And because it arrives slowly, it’s all the more reviving.

 

The light glinting off a crowd of snowdrops under the hawthorn hedge flashes a signal of hope, like kids bouncing sun light off a shard of mirror and on top of the hedge a blue-grey dunnock throws back its head and pours out its sweet scratchy song.  I take my tea and go into the garden, bending low to the soil to look for more signs.  Little spears of crocus flowers thrust up through soggy soil, tiny primrose petals are ready to ping open, celandine leaves are glossy and polished ready for the Spring Show.  

 

As February blows in, my sparrows get fidgety too.   Via the nest box camera, I watch the male spring-cleaning, dragging out beak-fulls of old nesting material.  He struggles with a huge tangle of straw, heaving the lot up to the entrance hole but it won’t go through and he only manages to pull out a few strands.  But he’s determined and finally the box, which the female has roosted in all winter, is empty.  We fixed a camera next to ‘Sparrow Heights,’ the three roomed apartment block on the side of the house.  On the monitor, I watch the birds flitting in and out, choosing their apartments, chirping loudly when they’ve selected the one they want.

Now it’s March and daffodils wave as I tread the earth lightly on my way home from Dru Yoga at Theatre Clwyd.  The rhubarb’s showing tantalizing glimpses of ruby red stalks. I’ve seen skinny lambs, acid yellow primroses,
heard my blackbird sing under the darkening sky and a song thrush in his usual tree belt out his aria as I pass each morning.

I’ve done some great ‘slow’ things whilst waiting for spring.  I spent a Saturday with North East Wales Wildlife in Rhydymwyn, furtling about in mouldy barn owl pellets looking for the remains of harvest mice.  I learned how to recognise a vole's skull from a shrew's and became adept at telling species apart by removing their molars. Soon I was calling out, ‘field vole, bank vole, common shrew,’ like I’d been doing it for years!  No harvest mice but it certainly beat doing the weekly shop. 

At Theatre Clwyd, I watched a spell-binding production of Dylan Thomas’ Under Milk Wood, where I heard ‘the dew falling,’ and ‘the sleep of birds.’

Last week, back at the Theatre, I experienced a ‘Picnic Play.’  In the Clwyd Room we watched the cast of Under Milk Wood read Tom Stoppard’s ‘Inspector Hound,’ whilst we munched sandwiches and slurped tea.  We could’ve sat at the feet of the cast on the cushions and blankets provided.  A few did, but most laid their food out on tables, jars of mustard and sandwiches wrapped in rustling tin foil. It was great fun. Their next picnic play is on March 21^st. 

www.newwildlife.org.uk    www.newwildlife.wordpress.com

www.clwyd-theatr-cymru.co.uk

www.druworldwide.com

www.mammal.org.uk  

 

 

Have a Happy and Slow New Year

January can be a difficult month.  The Christmas decorations are back in their box and rooms are no longer filled with twinkling lights and glistening glitter.  The sky’s the colour of under-the-bed-fluff and the ground squelches beneath my yellow wellies.  Spring seems a long way off.

There must be something good about January... 

Well, it’s an ideal time to be ‘slow’. 

 

Snuggle up and read, read, read. Try a bit of poetry, I love Billy Collins.

Empty your veggie draw,open those tins of butter beans and chick peas you’ve had at the back of your cupboard for ages and make vats of nourishing soup to freeze - whilst listening to warming and passionate opera arias,(try Anna Netrebko and Rolando  Villazon singing ‘O Soave Fanciulla’ – bliss, you’ll find them on YouTube).

Keep some strings of fairy lights up throughout January and February.

Light lots of candles and sit and enjoy the sound of the rain beating hard against your windows.

Get cosy in your Christmas pyjamas and listen to a talking book.  I can download them for free from my library via One Click Digital and the Flintshire.gov web page.  For some extra warmth, choose a story set in a warm climate.

Visit a spa.  My nearest one at Deeside Leisure Centre offers two people, two hours in the spa for £15. Laying on my towel in the muscle warming sauna, I could be anywhere I choose.

Write letters to friends you haven’t seen for ages, send silly things, stickers, leaves, doodles on post-it notes in the envelope.  It’s great to receive a hand written letter through the post.

Plan an adventure.  I love to unfold my maps and spread them on the living room floor. I lay down beside them and trace routes with my finger.  This year I'm looking at cycling along The Loire, walking the Welsh Coastal Path - and then there's Rannoch Moor. Have you seen the O.S.map for that area? It's well worth lying on with your magnifying glass, wow!

Watch the birds.  This morning we had 6 black birds in the garden, eating chopped apples and having minor skirmishes.  I spied a plump, pink bullfinch pecking at buds in the tree opposite my window. A circus troupe of blue-tits came swinging and leaping from feeder to fat balls and a squabble of sparrows bullied for seed space.  January 25-26 is the time to join in the RSPB’s Big Garden Birdwatch.

 

Join an exercise class.  I love my local spinning class where we all perch on fixed bikes and pedal like the wind to disco music.  Clare's Dru Yoga class at Theatre Clwyd is wonderful on a dark and soggy January afternoon.  And there’s coffee and cake to be enjoyed afterwards in the cafe and lovely art to gaze at along the corridor galleries.

How will you make the most of this SLOW month?

DRAMA IN CLWYD-THEATR-CYMRU - a slow afternoon

I’m at the theatre. Not to see a play or eat homemade soup and scones or to shop for Welsh-made earrings or gaze in awe at local works of art.  I’m here for Clare's Dru Yoga class.

I compete for car parking space with the Mansfield Park matinee-goers and dash into the warmth of the cafe, filled with the aroma of spicy pumpkin soup, though my eye is caught by a glistening chocolate cake... not before Yoga.

Upstairs, the Clwydian Range is our backdrop as we stand barefooted in the mountain pose .  There’s a silent scenery change as beams of sun and silver edged clouds are replaced by a black and grey wash. Then the sound effects begin - hail pelts the flat roof, bouncing and pinging as we stand rooted to our purple mats.  We stop to watch the show and cheer at crows flapping in the wild wind, like cloak-swirling-old-movie villains.  Then we turn back to face Clare and concentrate on inner fire.

We end the class wrapped in fleecy blankets, with Clare encouraging us to let tension melt away.  The storm has passed and we bask in the glow of watery sun beams reaching in through the window like spotlights.

 

I'm lucky enough to live 3 miles from this fabulous theatre.  There's a lot more to it than plays.

www.clwyd-theatr-cymru.co.uk

www.druworldwide.com/snowdonia