Our lovely neighbour is home again after being away in China for a month where she and her brother have been constructing an amazing sculpture, the Chinese God, Thousand Mile Eye.
Thousand Mile Eye by Sue Hill and Pete Hill
Showing the scale
Sue brought us home presents – a beautifully embroidered scarf for me and a super sharp peeler for Mr S.
Beautiful scarf
Heavy rain this morning left just-about-to-drip-off raindrops on the Agapanthus buds.
Agapanthus
Perun, the 6 m high Slavic Thunder God next door, is being dismantled for his journey to Slovakia. I love how his hair is flowing in the wind! You can read more about him here.
Perun, Slavic God of Thunder
The Party
This beautiful poem came my way today. Thank you Silver Tenters.
When I die
Give what’s left of me away
To children
And old men that wait to die.And if you need to cry,
Cry for your brother
Walking the street beside you
And when you need me,
Put your arms
Around anyone
And give to them
What you need to give to me.I want to leave you something,
Something better
Than words
Or sounds.Look for me
In the people I’ve known
Or loved,
And if you cannot give me away,
At least let me live in your eyes
And not on your mind.You can love me most
By letting
Hands touch hands
By letting
Bodies touch bodies
And by letting go
Of children
That need to be free.Love doesn’t die,
People do.
So, when all that’s left of me
Is love,
Give me awayMerrit Malloy
I love getting the beds ready for LiveWire visits! As I write they are on the train and will be here soon and the bunk beds are ready with their favourite bedding.
Our neighbours are sculptors and quite often build something in the garden before it goes off to its new home. Here are the legs of the next big thing! Check out their website http://www.peteandsuehill.co.uk/ to find out who these enormous legs are going to belong to!
Today’s poem is by Fleur Adcock and is in Poem for the Day Two for February 10th. I love the lines “your gentleness is moulded still by words/from me” What a responsibility we have to the world to teach our children to be kind and gentle.
For a Five-Year-Old
A snail is climbing up the window-sill
into your room, after a night of rain.
You call me in to see and I explain
that it would be unkind to leave it there:
it might crawl to the floor; we must take care
that no one squashes it. You understand,
and carry it outside, with careful hand,
to eat a daffodil.I see, then, that a kind of faith prevails:
your gentleness is moulded still by words
from me, who have trapped mice and shot wild birds,
from me, who drowned your kittens, who betrayed
your closest relatives and who purveyed
the harshest kind of truth to many another,
But that is how things are: I am your mother,
And we are kind to snails.
We visited the Lost Gardens of Heligan this morning. The changing room for babies caught my eye!
Baby changing room at Heligan
Last year, in the gardens, there was a wonderfully moving commemoration of the start of World War 1. You can read about it here. Thousands of poppies were planted for the event but, as is the way with poppies, they chose their own time to bloom and there were few around last year. This year they have bloomed in their thousands and make for a most moving spectacle. Click your way through the gallery and enjoy them as much as we did.
3 The Giant is always one of our favourites and the Live-Wires all love him. Wish they had been with us today.Here he is for them!
The Heligan Giant, made by Sue Hill and Pete Hill
Thank you for this one, Di
My lovely neighbour, Sue Hill, and her brother Pete are in Bhutan, having been invited to make new artwork and provide art direction for a brand new festival – the First Bhutan International Arts Festival (www.bhif.org) Feb 14th – 24th. They are working with a little gang of Cornish artists and local Bhutanese artists to decorate the site for the festival and to make a lantern wind-horse and ……
Sue has sent along the following photographs of their work, both in progress and made. Click on any photo for an enlargement and the caption.It looks like a wonderful place to be!
Thank you for the photos, Sue. Have a wonderful time for the rest of the festival.
Bhutan measures prosperity by gauging its citizens’ happiness levels, not the GDP. What a wonderful idea! I read that “A series of hand-painted signs dot the side of the winding mountain road that runs between the airport and the Bhutanese capital, Thimphu. Instead of commands to cut speed or check mirrors, they offer the traveller a series of life-affirming mantras. “Life is a journey! Complete it!” says one, while another urges drivers to, “Let nature be your guide”. Another, standing on the edge of a perilous curve, simply says: “Inconvenience regretted.” Fancy being greeted like that as you drive around your home town!
“It’s easy to mine the land and fish the seas and get rich,” says Thakur Singh Powdyel, Bhutan’s minister of education, who has become one of the most eloquent spokespeople for GNH. “Yet we believe you cannot have a prosperous nation in the long run that does not conserve its natural environment or take care of the wellbeing of its people, which is being borne out by what is happening to the outside world.”
Powdyel believes the world has misinterpreted Bhutan’s quest. “People always ask how can you possibly have a nation of happy people? But this is missing the point,” he says. “GNH is an aspiration, a set of guiding principles through which we are navigating our path towards a sustainable and equitable society. We believe the world needs to do the same before it is too late.”
You can read more by clicking on the red link.
The Lost Gardens of Heligan are a treat for everyone.
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