That’s what my brother refers to it as. Being based in Yorkshire as he is, you’ve got to get in your t’s while you can. It seems a strange one to put in the box, when it’s also work, rest, and a speedy route to Christmas present decision making, but there it is.
Why today? Because of what it made possible. In consultation, and with audience, I was able to make a couple of charity donations (a ‘swap’ with another section of the family, where we donate on each other’s behalf each Christmas time). Find out that one child was nearing getting better, and another had new challenges. Catch up with the successes of friends in new ventures.
The best use of t’internet today was in looking together at a blog site I discovered recently. SouleMama is stateside (as most of my current blog reading seems to be), recommended through another blog I’m following, and charts the progress of the Soule family in running a smallholding, and collating a magazine called TapRoot.
I’m a bit hooked on it at the moment, partly as they are based in Maine, and I rather like the notion of north + coast that Maine evokes for me. It was what was on the screen when I opened the laptop today, and so after we’d done our other stuff, we went back to it.
Part of my progress with others’ blogs seems to be starting with current posts, and reading back through previous posts. It’s a reverse chronology, but still effective, especially when the blogger posts regularly, as SouleMama does.
What captured us both today was the farm pictures: the look of baby turkeys, being admired and passed round by the kids in the family; sheep being shorn, and some amazing pictures of a bird’s nest that had the feel of timelapse photography.
You can query whether this is the Good Life for the 21st century: reading someone else’s Grow Your Own story. Whether it’s too easy to see all the lovely pictures and scroll through in 3rd gear. But the bird’s nest stopped us: we had to go back, and see each photo individually.
The nest, a thing of amazing beauty in its shape and materials. Later, the speckled eggs, all neatly tucked in. The sudden realisation in the next picture that you are seeing tiny heads in the nest, so they must have hatched.
The archetypal picture of baby birds wanting to be fed – heads tilted back until you’re sure they can manage 180 degrees of open. Catching sight of a worm or two in the next picture, and realising the feeding going on, without seeing the adult bird.
For the days when we forget the marvel of seeing/acting/doing on a world stage, with speed, with convenience…a bird’s nest. Nature happening right in front of us.
Albeit at a distance. Several thousand miles, a few months back, and so on. But right there – and relevant for us here, in that moment.