Driving home from work recently at a time when the sadness often overwhelmed me the most, I found myself longing for my garden in Montaigu. I have often written about how that garden healed me, but more than anything it was the view, and the solitude that we were blessed with in that house. I actually had a need to sit and look out at that view. But then I remembered that I had a view, here and now.

Our house is located in a very quiet community of just three houses, and even down our road there are just a handful more. The location is rural, and the most you can hear are the cows mooing, or the farmer passing by in his tractor. We have a half acre paddock beside our house, and the view from there is vast, comprising of rolling hills, and the patchwork green quilt of fields for which Ireland is synonymous. But that’s just one part. As you move around the paddock the view changes to include The Sperrins mountain Range, it is as equally breathtaking as Montaigu.

But as you can see from this photo the paddock is severely overgrown, I would say it had been left for at least two years. Our welcoming little house had been unloved and rented out to what can only be described as an arsehole, who left burn marks on the sealed window units, and repaired cars for a living, meaning the paddock also has various bits of car parts just strewn across it by the skank who couldn’t be bothered to look after anything. It always amazes me how people wonder why their lives are shit, when they themselves cannot be arsed. But back to my post.

When we moved here we didn’t know how secure the paddock was, and like most of us do, we thought we had ‘all the time in the world’ to sort it out before we could let the dogs run out there freely. And then ‘Life’ did her little reminder thing: none of us have ‘all the time in the world’, all we have is here and now. So when I got home that night, with a driving need inside of me to just ’be’, and to look out at a view I put my Wellygogs on and went out into the paddock with my little green camping chair, two Welshies and RD in tow, and we just sat.

I explained to RD how I had felt, and how I had the revelation that I thought we were both missing the views and the comfort that they bring and RD agreed. We had been sitting in our courtyard during the summer, in fact we had seeded a patch of the previously paved courtyard that the skank had ruined, to cover up the mess he had made. It is a little sun trap in the evening but as you can see the view is not fabulous. Over the months neither of us had realised just how much we were missing the views of wide open spacious beautiful countryside, and now we both had a ’need’ for it.

We have no ride on mower any more, we have bought a mower, and a strimmer, but with grass as high as it is, and often wet, it is virtually impossible to make in-roads. However RD ploughed on and he has now cleared over half way through. It is a prison task, but we will persevere. Now we have a space to sit and breathe, and let nature heal us. which she will, she always does.

So yesterday on a sunny, blustery Autumn afternoon I went out into the paddock with my little camping chair, and a Wiglet beside me and I wrote my journal for the first time in a month. I sat and looked at my baby, enjoying the weather, enjoying just being, and despite the sadness and difficulties coming our way I knew I was blessed.

It’s interesting isn’t it? We think we have ‘all the time in the world’ we take for granted what we have and then ‘Life’ sends us a lesson to remind us. We learned to listen a long while ago, we always do, and now I am calm.

Rosie