Category: Parish Notes

Every day is the start of something beautiful and right now

I look at the plants and shrubs fading, scraggy now at the end of August. I think how beautiful they were over the summer – their blooms, their leaves flourishing. The joy they brought to me.

My lovely neighbours are moving back to England. The removers will do it in two hours. I’m not there to see them off.

On Inis Oírr I saw a blue jellyfish called, “sailor on the wind.” It’s like a mussel with a fin.

I’m wrapping up, for the last time this year, my garden parasol. Picking up nasturtium pods, saving seeds for spring.

Are we just “sailors on the wind,” being carried where more mighty forces take us?

Dead at the edge of the road, under the bridge, with it’s head turned into it’s chest, an owl. White frightened face.

Thump, another bird hits the window making myself and the dog jump. An upturned thrush on the ground two legs kicking the air. I put it in an old tea towel and place it in a box on the window sill it’s body in shock. Later, it spreads it’s wings, a great stretch. It hobbles, it’s foot is turned in. The other leg is caught in a hole on the floor of the box. I frighten him more by moving him. He huddles into the tea towel. A while later he has stopped breathing.

Within the hour there is another thump at the window. I repeat the pattern.

I have placed four dead birds on top of the ditch. Three thrushes and a blackbird.