Category: flowers

Instructions for living a life:

Pay attention

Be astonished

Tell about it

Mary Oliver

For this week’s Lens Artist Challenge, Beth asks us to show shots of what has astonished us, and takes her inspiration from this short poem by Mary Oliver.

For some reason, my mind was drawn back to Lockdown. For us, Daily Exercise was one of the pleasures of that peculiar time. Country dwellers, we could range freely over our home patch without meeting a soul. And here, it happened to be a wonderful spring, where plants, birds and all life could flourish in balmy temperatures and just the right amount of rain.

Walking by myself down deserted paths – M was exploring on his bike – I discovered Wonder and Astonishment anew. Day by day, I could watch leaves unfurl from tightly-bound buds; flowers appear; lambs totter their first hesitant steps.

I had the leisure to enjoy the intricately-designed feathers of a common-or-garden mallard, or the complexity of dandelion petals.

Best of all, creatures we rarely saw close up crossed my path. Who expects to stumble by a toad on a riverside stroll? Or, best of all, come across shy curlews nesting within a foot of a normally well-used road across the moors.

Skies, undefaced by plane trails seemed more multi-faceted and interesting. And back home, day after day, hour after hour, from dawn until darkness, this thrush gave an apparently unending performance with almost no breaks.

Such a time of loneliness, grief and isolation for many remains in my memory a period of joy in the rediscovery of the astonishment offered by the countryside just outside our front door.