Year ii: Still Home

Picking up from where I stopped last year. Blooms, baking and staying at home. Maraschino cherry topped buns, homemade lasagne, home-delivered poutine. Plum blossoms, capri rosemary, hellebores. St. Patricks day with an Irish flag inspired trio of drinks.

Lucky weather meant balancing remote work with walks along the hedgerows. Growth and colour and signs of life rudely interrupted by the shocking news of the passing of an old, good childhood friend. Grief walks in.

The bees really arrived and the cherry blossoms peaked. Primrose, forget me nots, wild strawberry. More local walks and remote happy hours. Saying goodbye at a virtual funeral. Grief continued, and perversely the glorious weather continued too.

Blessed with even more warm days. Pink elderflower, sweet roses and a lilac bath. The ever dramatic nelly moser clematis and rosebay rhododenrons. A lost baby bat and distraction causing a hot oil burn.

Fruit salads and plucking strawberries from pots. Walks in Forth Mountain and dreamy swims in beloved Curracloe. Fire-red montbretia, the prettiest love-in-a-mist and bellflower beardtongue. Perfectly timed annual leave, during an Irish heat wave.

A worrying web and both wasp & caterpillar intruders. Giant bees in the buddleia and finally some butterflies. The woods, the sea, melanzane parmigiana. Mountain ash, a surplus of apples, St. Johns wort.

Real rose gardens, building lego roses and the start of mushroom season. Surreal landscaping in the gem that is Altamont Gardens, castles and follies! Bed spiders, parasitic wasps and self imposed isolation breakfasts after dining with pals after a break of more than 500 days.

Quite a lot of mushrooms! Things happening again while Covid continues; an exhibition launch, an indoor meal, a pint of Guinness for the first time in a long time. Bjork live from the opera house in Rekyjavik. My best friends wedding.

More opening up, more isolation meals, more anxious scientific debate about the virus’ trajectory. Retreats, reversals, restrictions, the word ‘Omicron’. Apple galette, mist and low sunsets.

Another strange season. The same colours, lights and rituals as last year but again too quiet and solitary, and again for safety. Facetimes, cheers over Zoom, sticky sausages and sweet treats. Boosted!

Cheese, roast dinners and crisp sandwiches as tactics against the usual January blues. Choosing to ignore this birthday, apart from some lovely surprise gifts from friends and a waffle maker.

Snowdrops arriving but still cold, still fireside. Poetry by Dad echoing ennui as Covid selects locations for a rebound in some places, but not in others. Rocky news items. Winter hangs on.

Finally back to visit Visual. Full circle, another year, 365 days. Nervous feasting with friends, while watching a war unfold, and the virus carry on.