An Autumn Walk in the Sierra Aracena. The falling leaves of the ancient trees. The photography and Art of Ruth Koenigsberger

Old chestnut trees in the Sierra Aracena

I am so pleased I have the opportunity to share the photography and links to art work of my friend and neighbour Ruth. Her photographs come from walking around the countryside with her dog, the lovely Lotti. ( featured in previous posts and a surrogate dog for me at present!) When I can I walk with her and breathe in the beauty of the changing seasons we have here. I have also shown her garden with all the poppies in my previous post and haiku to Liberty, Love and Light. The link is to her art work at the Artagora Galeria Virtual Ruth Koenigsberger. I love the way she can capture both colour and light. For me there is a deep link to nature in her work and a spiritual light within her creative art. Try the link on her name and walk round a virtual art gallery too! There are  castano trees, ancient chestnuts from the Sierra and the Caldera in La Palma but also some imaginative interpretations of our world from the inner eye of an artist.

I miss all my friends in the Sierra Aracena as I have to be in the UK for a short while. Many there live a peaceful lifestyle that can bring them close to the natural world through organic gardening, permaculture, spiritual practices, yoga and of course the creative arts. It is almost a year since I wrote Bats on my Birthday and have found blogging useful to warm up my writing muscles. I hope to write more stories and poems to help us come closer to this wonderful and diverse world of nature.

For this week I want to highlight the need to care for the living systems on the planet. There are so many people who want to rise above the atrocities in Paris and send a message that we must change the way we live in this world or the living planet will suffer and not be able to give us and all other creatures the habitats and food sources we need to thrive.

As I cannot walk on the Climate Change March  on the eve of the talks in Paris I will try some virtual walks like this one in the Sierra Aracena. Let’s hold the Climate Change talks in the light  and where possible petition and campaign for the change our planet needs.

The lovely Lotti

Hollyhock and black carpenter bee in Ruth’s garden. October 2015

Haiku for Hope. Flowers for Liberty, Light and Love. Inspired by Dverse Poets.

 

Wild Iris at Navasola

 Inspired by Dverse Poets

Blue iris stands tall
White blossoms radiate light
Red Poppies seed fields

 

 

I miss the wild blooms
Of Summer’s soothing softness
So all seasons change.

 

 

 

 

The May in May. Hawthorn blossom

Wild garlic in the woods, Dalton

Camellia in Camellia conservatory

Wild red poppy with coriander flowers

Wild red poppies in a good friend’s garden.

Wherever the Weather, Whatever the Weather, for Dverse Poets.

Here is a poem about the weather for Dverse poets as I look through my window onto a very London Garden of the past. There is still an old apple tree from when this area was an orchard in the 1920s! How aware are we of how the weather is changing and the causes of this are possibly much more of our own making. When will we wake up to the stronger winds? The British Met Office has decided to name storms. Storm force gales of 80 mph are supposed to be hitting the North of England soon. The weather may be a little quieter in the south,for a while.

Garden and apple tree in London

Fuchsia for a dearly loved cat

In London Town the sun shines bright

After dismal days of rainy grey clouded skies.

Leaves falling with their tints of yellow red,

Tiny blue of tiny tit, pink plumage of wood pigeon

The lilac tones of fuchsia for a dearly loved cat.

A family garden of changing times

In the shade of an ivy clad old apple tree.

The weather is changing, November is now warm,

Am I too changing with the passing seasons.

The sky changes to a stormy grey, the leaves fall fast.
The Met Office wants us to feel storms are friendly too.
By giving names do we accept them more,
The changing times of climate crisis.

Abigail is brewing over the Isle of Skye

Far off in a North West corner of a very British Isle.

Warm and wet is that our future, clustered in a cloud.

Frozen drought and hurricane forces

Are coming further north or further south

The wind is knocking far too gently at our door.

Kew Gardens London UK .
Storms and glasshouses.

Coddiwompling through Dorset England. For Dverse Poets

This poem is inspired by Dverse poets Dverse and the strange word coddiwomple. This seems to be defined as English slang but as I had never come across this I was gripped by a resfeber feeling( travel fever)  to see if I could find where the word had originated from. It’s not in the Oxford dictionary yet, unlike lolly gagging! However it has a kind of ancient ring to it. Maybe a cross between a cod piece and a wimple.  I am travelling through Dorset to visit a friend. Dorset is stunningly beautiful but has so many strange, odd and rude sounding place names. I always want to find out more.It is also a place for going on a literary tour with Thomas Hardy and others. But most important perhaps in the struggle for equality is Tolpuddle.

For me it’s not where we travel to but how we travel anywhere. Hopefully then our minds can be opened to different experiences and understandings.

If you coddiwomple in Dorset as I am doing now

You pass by place names so fun and strange.

Some will tempt you back to visit

Some will remind you of the past

Some will scare your wits away.

Fiddleford is one where maybe someone fiddled by a stream

But what they fiddled may have been a dream

If they could happily wander up the the river Piddle

And excuse themselves with just a little widdle

Dorset farming folk out in the cold.

From Roman times in Blandford Forum

No slave could ever make a quorum

The ancient chalk giant at Cerne Abbas

Still well endowed with great prowess

His private part gives hope for future births

Dorset folk of old from Celt to Roman bold.

Down to the coast to find a woman’s love

For her lieutenant looking out to sea

Lyme Regis, royal and proud

Among the fossils of prehistoric swamps

Ammonite from Jurasiic Times.

Dorset fossil hunters find a kind of gold.

To roll along on paths through Hardy’s  heavenly hills

Farming folk and friends of Tess

Characters in dark distress

Obscured within the depths of native woods.

Good folk must prevail for Dorchester jail.

The devil never far away with rocks thrown down

To make Old Harry and Aggleston

Places like Dewlish are devilish and Grim’s Ditch

Makes the Pokesdown goblins twitch.

Dorset folk beware the uncanny in the air.

But now in modern times when we’re coddiwompling along

To pass by Puddletown is easily done

We go too fast on the new highway

And can now by pass the place of martyred men

Tolpuddle and its meeting tree

Dorset folk who wanted to be free.

From coach window travelling to Dorset.