Do you ever get to the stage where life is just a bit too much? Time to escape, to recharge: time for indulging in a bit of relaxation and for hiding yourself away from the busy, busy world where no-one can find you! 'Interlude' was written about one of my favourite places...
Dapple soft sunshine
Filter through the leaves,
Glisten on the water
Where the fishes weave.
Willow fronds cascading,
Gentle in the breeze,
Hide me where I lay
So quiet beneath the trees.
Bubbles in the water,
Fishes in the deep,
Glide between the lily pads
Where the bullfrogs leap.
Where the water ripples
On a summer’s day,
By its soft reflections
I will gladly stay.
Watching, waiting, dreaming
Where the willows weep,
By the sparkling river
Let me softly sleep.
Solitude, sweet peace at last,
Here I take my place,
Where the willows hide me
In their fond embrace.
Rest awhile and ponder,
Find new strength to face
All that life demands once more
In the human race.
Saturday, April 16, 2011
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
I don't do yoga!
Someone said to me the other day: “You must spend a lot of time sitting looking at nature.” I guess I do. I guess when I think about it my blog is crammed full of birds, hares, butterflies, lambs, frogs and flowers! She’s right - I love to look at ‘nature’!
Why? Why do we do that? For me, it’s relaxing: balm for the soul, as the phrase goes. I love to just sit. “Sometimes I sits and thinks; sometimes I just sits”, my mum used to say. I don’t do yoga, but I do meditate and I love to do it out of doors. Life is busy. The city where I live is noisy, achievement-orientated, dusty and dirty and, although it’s vibrant and stimulating sometimes, it’s also exhausting. My garden is a haven. Right now it’s a mini ‘Keukenhof’ (that famous Dutch garden) – full of tulips, narcissus and grape hyacinth. Red, yellow and blue – primary colours. It’s not subtle, but it’s bold and beautiful. Even in April the birds and butterflies love it, and so do I. Out in the countryside it gets even better and I can stop on a walk and watch hares racing across the fields or crested grebe bobbing up and down on the canal in their annual mating ritual. It’s all around us when we stop and look.
Why is nature so restful and relaxing? I guess it’s so at peace with itself. It just ‘is’. Nature doesn’t struggle or strive. A friend of ours said “you never see an apple tree straining to produce apples”. They just come, regular as clockwork, every year. It’s an intrinsic part of the tree’s ‘apple-ness’. It will never produce pears (without some very smart, human intervention). Life can be such hard work for us humans. We need to achieve – and be seen to achieve – such a lot. So sometimes a long hard look at nature can be so refreshing.
“Consider the lilies, how they grow. They neither toil nor spin. But I tell you, Solomon in all his glory did not clothe himself like one of these”.* The Bible puts it very picturesquely but maybe if we stare long enough at nature and meditate on it, some of that natural radiance will rub off and we can stop rushing around so fast and lay back a bit – stop thinking and just sit, like the lilies!
*Luke’s gospel: chapter 12, verse 27
Friday, April 8, 2011
The Kitchen Garden
No year in the Netherlands, expat or otherwise, would be complete without making that annual pilgrimage to the bulbfields – the bollenstreek, as it is called. Some things are just too special to miss and the yearly extravaganza that Mother Nature puts on in those bare old fields that have been overwintering under a thick covering of frost, ice and snow is one of them. The warm weather has arrived. It’s time for rejuvenation! It’s time for colour! And I love it!
However, let’s apply a bit of realism here before we drown in an excess of sentimentality…The Dutch, it seems, have a different take on flowers to many other nations. Here in Holland, amongst the most famous flower-growers of the world, nature works in straight lines. Rows and rows of colourful tulips are laid out for us to see, in orderly stripes of colour: the palest of pink hyacinths, scarlet tulips, strikingly yellow daffodil stripes, set off by a splash of that most vivid hyacinth blue. The Dutch think in straight lines and are turned on, not by sentimental dreams of a glorious garden landscape, but by productivity, production lines, profit and loss and precise schedules for the export of their major, multi-million euro, commercial exercise. To the watching expats and tourists, however, the landscape is breathtaking and it’s time for a little dreaming and romance.
However, another shock is in store for the uninitiated. Not only is the aesthetic appearance of these fields of flowers not uppermost in the minds of their Dutch growers, despite nature’s best efforts, but they are not growing the flowers for their own sake at all! The flowers are largely expendable – just a necessary means to the commercial profit-making end: that all-important multiplication and maturing of the flower bulbs. What is important to the growers lies in the dark earth, buried out of sight. Some use is made, it is true, of cut flowers which are sold in flower stalls and shops all over Holland and exported across the world, but the major issue here is the cultivation of bulbs. In the flower fields the flower heads can be ruthlessly and systematically cut off to encourage further growth beneath the ground. The flower growers are patient and pragmatic and can wait whilst this process takes its course. In the meantime, the flowers lie in huge heaps by the side of the fields and by the roadside. Huge processions of flower floats display some of them for watching tourist eyes but the majority die unloved and unwanted. Flower production is not for the faint-hearted!
The final irony is to be found in that wonderful name: ‘Keukenhof’, known so well and pronounced so badly by countless myriads of annual tourists. They flock to the area by plane, ferry and coach and arrive on buses and in cars and campers to trample the fields and stand amazed in one of the most famous flower parks in the world. ‘Keukenhof’: a byword for natural beauty and breathtaking colour! These flowers are grown for their own spectacular beauty, but also as a showcase for the bulb growers to encourage visitors to order bulbs to stock our gardens next year and in years to come. Many of us are unaware of the prosaic roots of that romantic sounding name: the kitchen garden! Just a modest little vegetable garden…
However, let’s apply a bit of realism here before we drown in an excess of sentimentality…The Dutch, it seems, have a different take on flowers to many other nations. Here in Holland, amongst the most famous flower-growers of the world, nature works in straight lines. Rows and rows of colourful tulips are laid out for us to see, in orderly stripes of colour: the palest of pink hyacinths, scarlet tulips, strikingly yellow daffodil stripes, set off by a splash of that most vivid hyacinth blue. The Dutch think in straight lines and are turned on, not by sentimental dreams of a glorious garden landscape, but by productivity, production lines, profit and loss and precise schedules for the export of their major, multi-million euro, commercial exercise. To the watching expats and tourists, however, the landscape is breathtaking and it’s time for a little dreaming and romance.
However, another shock is in store for the uninitiated. Not only is the aesthetic appearance of these fields of flowers not uppermost in the minds of their Dutch growers, despite nature’s best efforts, but they are not growing the flowers for their own sake at all! The flowers are largely expendable – just a necessary means to the commercial profit-making end: that all-important multiplication and maturing of the flower bulbs. What is important to the growers lies in the dark earth, buried out of sight. Some use is made, it is true, of cut flowers which are sold in flower stalls and shops all over Holland and exported across the world, but the major issue here is the cultivation of bulbs. In the flower fields the flower heads can be ruthlessly and systematically cut off to encourage further growth beneath the ground. The flower growers are patient and pragmatic and can wait whilst this process takes its course. In the meantime, the flowers lie in huge heaps by the side of the fields and by the roadside. Huge processions of flower floats display some of them for watching tourist eyes but the majority die unloved and unwanted. Flower production is not for the faint-hearted!
The final irony is to be found in that wonderful name: ‘Keukenhof’, known so well and pronounced so badly by countless myriads of annual tourists. They flock to the area by plane, ferry and coach and arrive on buses and in cars and campers to trample the fields and stand amazed in one of the most famous flower parks in the world. ‘Keukenhof’: a byword for natural beauty and breathtaking colour! These flowers are grown for their own spectacular beauty, but also as a showcase for the bulb growers to encourage visitors to order bulbs to stock our gardens next year and in years to come. Many of us are unaware of the prosaic roots of that romantic sounding name: the kitchen garden! Just a modest little vegetable garden…
Monday, April 4, 2011
More Wandering in Wonderland
Isn't feedback wonderful? I love it. I sometimes check the 'stats' for my blog and discover with amazement that someone out there in Russia or the Arab Emirates, Latvia or Finland is reading my blog! Occasionally someone replies or posts a comment... I wonder what they made of my last blog post about mad hatters and mad March hares. Do they read Lewis Carroll? Have they ever heard of Alice? Or am I under surveillance right now, suspected of using 'nonsense' as a code for some kind of illicit political activity? Probably not!!
However, I received some welcome response from my sister and brother-in-law on the subject of mad hatters: "We still read the blogs with interest." (always good to know!) "The latest one amused us and we think we can help you out about the hatter. We looked it up in Brewer (Dictionary of Phrase and Fable), which suggested the answer. Mercurous nitrate was used in the making of felt hats and it was just about impossible for the people making them to avoid ingesting mercury. Mercury is a cumulative poison (like lead) and gathers in the brain doing neurological damage. Sufferers exhibit symptoms similar to those of madness – tremors, ‘St Vitus’s Dance’, confusion etc."
How about that?! Isn't it amazing how much we all know! When you put it together our collective wisdom is awesome - look at Wikipedia. Even if only half of its 'information' is accurate we're a clever lot! So, how about 'daft as a brush'. Where did that come from (see last blog on Wandering in Wonderland) - any answers?
However, I received some welcome response from my sister and brother-in-law on the subject of mad hatters: "We still read the blogs with interest." (always good to know!) "The latest one amused us and we think we can help you out about the hatter. We looked it up in Brewer (Dictionary of Phrase and Fable), which suggested the answer. Mercurous nitrate was used in the making of felt hats and it was just about impossible for the people making them to avoid ingesting mercury. Mercury is a cumulative poison (like lead) and gathers in the brain doing neurological damage. Sufferers exhibit symptoms similar to those of madness – tremors, ‘St Vitus’s Dance’, confusion etc."
How about that?! Isn't it amazing how much we all know! When you put it together our collective wisdom is awesome - look at Wikipedia. Even if only half of its 'information' is accurate we're a clever lot! So, how about 'daft as a brush'. Where did that come from (see last blog on Wandering in Wonderland) - any answers?
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