Shiva's and Metta's Mother's Sutra

Odysseus and the Sirens I am rereading The Odyssey - the TE Lawrence translation - so it is very formal and amusing. But what is interesting is how much my reading of it has changed. First, of course, when I read it, it must have been more than twenty years ago. It was probably in connection with Joyce because at the top of each section I had written Telemachus, Calypso, Nausicaa, etc. The second thing which has happened is I have taught as a Class Teacher, this means having done lots of background reading into the Greek Mysteries and Initation, as well has having read numerous abridged accounts of the story, like the play by Simon Barnes and a teenager's version of the story. So I know it inside out. I remember being utterly frustrated and perplexed about why the first third of the story was about Telemachus and then a good fifth about Odysseus crying on Calypso's island. Followed by this really annoying bit about Nausicaa and her white-arms... it wasn't really a ...

Can't quite believe how amazing that hair looks! Well, my period arrived again after three weeks and what an arrival it was. It was almost as bad as the torrential downpour we had yesterday. Never in all my time in Norn Iron had i EVER seen rain like it. The intensity and the duration was something else. On Ardmore Heights the drains were overflowing and they overflowed like rivers. In the school this morning, I saw that about three inches of rain had fallen over the course of the afternoon. It was something else. But today dawned bright and early and beautiful and we headed out to Belfast. The famile are here and life is now very busy, but compounded by straddling two houses - and work. It is so all go that yesterday I was so exhausted when I got back that I didn't realise I had taken off my tights in the dining room and left them there with my socks. That is how tired women do. Today after St George's we did more shopping for stuff and then I came home and promptl...

Migration, Phase I Goodbye sis! Yesterday we began the half term of school. It was really interesting to get everyone back and into the saddle again. There was gardening and looking at handbells and sorting tunes out - and there was maths and studying the eye and today there will be cooking. Life is so busy in our little school. It always astonishes me, yes I know we work to the bone, but how much breadth and variety the curriculum allows a child to do and how much teachers are asked to do. We cook and bake and knit and sew and math and literature - the kids do woodwork and games and German - it is really a rich fabric of life we have and it is something which I never take for granted. As the weeks have passed, where I felt exhausted in the first half term, I feel like I'm getting my mojo back. The first half term is all about finding your sealegs. Getting used to the rhythms of the years, seeing how much the children are able to learn, checking things out, and then ...

This little pond has a cute history - it was the bath which I used for Oisin and later Ghin. It was given by Peter's mom, all those years ago. Almost twenty years and it is still going strong. Well, went for my run. Yes, it was amazing, in the rain. But warm rain, it isn't cold at all. And it also wasn't heavy. I had a very strange dream last night, so strange that my reality practically vanished this morning. I dreamt that I was in a school and I was a student, like I was in JC, but I was also teaching but in a Steiner school which wasn't my school. When I woke up for about ten seconds I was trying to figure out how I haw going to teach my regular class while teaching this new class - and with me were two friends from JC. It was the weirdest thing. Anyhow, I have decided to do the history of music with my class, instead of them going to choir. It would be more profitable. I just thought, well Christmas is coming and any number of oratorios and cantatas are coming...

This pond I have three ponds in my very tiny garden. Every winter they fill up with leaves and I need  to clear them, which is what I did today. This very funny garden statues I bought - there are four - a frog, a turtle, a mushroom and a bird. They featured in Breaking Bad as extremely ugly garden gnomes, but I just LOVE them. These three ponds will be looked after over the winter so that birds can drink from them when the winter freezes things over. Although this looks highly unlikely as the weather is just very balmy. I was astonished that I was able to garden from 7.30 to just fifteen minutes ago. Here's the shroom Close up I cut the entire garden by hand. I have realised that this enables all the inverts to hide. I also fou dhte caterpillar of a moth which I was able to hide. Peter took the boys for a walk which meant I was able to garden without any interruption - apart from lunch. Although it has to be said I slept little last night as Ghin was feverish and kep...

If you have a beech tree in your garden, you have a forest... Taken this morning at 7.30 am - still LOADS of light Well it is almost the end of the school holidays - tomorrow we restart. It is really amazing how much there is always to learn about yourself. This half term, I learnt how much I, when forced, do enjoy the company of others. I also learned how I am perfectly content with where I am with life. I am utterly enjoying the calm before the storm which will be Brexit and the chaos it will bring should May bring herself to carry it out. Here is a garden table set I bought two years ago - it finally has the patina I wanted. The candle holder is from Singapore and has aged well as has the flower pot which has now got a few years of moss on it I think that the aged look really works. I can't bring myself to throw away anything - yesterday I began gathering shards of broken pots to bin, when i thought, no I could make a cool border with that. So I do the little ...

Oh yeah, slow gardening, I get it Yesterday I hit the garden for the first time and for the first time I felt like I really knew what I was doing. I wasn't trying to manically 'organise' it - it felt like I was being in it and enjoying it deeply for the first time. You know it only took twenty years, so, you know, what the heck. Instead of trying to channel my idea of what a garden would look like, I just cleared things very slowly and left many things which I would have insisted on taking away. Things get old, they decay they get the patine of age - they have their own charm. I loved how calendula had grown in between the cracks and that the nasturtiums were still flowering because of the mild autumn we had had. I loved the way the nettles had grown and promised myself that next year I would keep the nettles. Also rather like a revolution I discovered I could put my bins behind the gate and this meant that the empty space behind the gate would now have a use and th...