Sunshine and Shade in the Weald of Kent.

A lovely walk today with the Dog Jed, in the rolling Weald of Kent, with its twelve feet of topsoil.

Across the fields

And into the woods ....

Jed is far, far ahead

But there is plenty to catch the eye

The red, white and blue, original form.

And so, back to the garden gate ...

What could be better?  Not much.

The Bluebells this year are lovelier, by far, than I have ever seen them.

When Spring comes around again, one of its greatest pleasures in southern England is to go and see the bluebells that carpet the woodlands with a hazy blue.

They are prolific in hazel woods, which in turn are prolific around here, and usually have been coppiced for centuries, providing a perfect bluebell environment.

Coppicing is an ancient method of woodland management that involves cutting the trees back almost to the ground every few years, so that they re-grow with thin straight branches.  This gives a nearly everlasting supply of wood for building, fencing and tool-making.

Another advantage of coppicing is that it ensures the  light canopy and dappled sunlight that bluebells prefer, so they become really well established: sometimes the colonies have been growing for hundreds of years, and cover many acres.

And I have never seen them lovelier than they were today on the Downs of West Sussex.

Take a look:

See what I mean?

And here are the Downs, that I love so much, probably because I was born among them.

A Down is a rounded, chalky, and largely treeless hill in southern England, with the same Old English root as "dune", as in sand dune.

I wrote about my favourite Down, and my Dad, here:  A Magic Summer Evening Long Ago.

More on Bluebells, which, as you might expect, are under threat from invasive species.

Six of the Best, and a few more for fun

Not all of my favourite posts feature in the Most Visited section on the right (although several do - you could check that out too)

So here are six more that I really like, and a few more for fun.

Political (in the broadest sense)

Alexander McQueen: Why I, A Feminist, Will Miss Him
Did his critique of the the fashion industry have a feminist tinge? It certainly looks like it, but hard to be certain.....

A Poem for 9/11 by Emmanuel Ortiz
Read with care.  The rage is incandescent (and righteous).


Bringing Berlusconi Low
Wrong pecker, Sr Tartaglia, but thanks anyway!


Personal


A Magic Summer Evening Long Ago and A Moment of Truth (which go together)
Father and Daughter.  Sometimes thirty seconds can last a lifetime

Five Things I Like about Newport Beach (and three things not so much)
Life in the OC is really something else

Newport Beach from the Air  Image via Wikipedia

It's True!  I met Rihanna....
It really is true, and the laugh's on me.

Fun


The Trees of Orange County
Short photo essay

Jim Jarmusch: Nothing is Original, Steal from Anywhere.
Lovely quote by a lovely guy.

My Garden is Extremely Green (literally)
Another photo essay.


And the Funnest of all

The Needy Blogger.
And which among us doesn't need links?

My Garden is Extremely Green (Literally)

I am a vagabond at present, part of the hidden homeless, kind of. So far this year I have had four separate homes: in sequence, of course.  

Fortunately, these places have had beautiful gardens, of various styles, which has been a comfort........

My current garden is a bit run-down, shabby even, but is very green and peaceful, and in its way, also beautiful.

Completely walled, it is (sadly) innocent of cats, but correspondingly full of birds and birdsong, including, especially delightful, a tame robin.

And for one so small, it has a vista.

And an embowered compost box

Sporting today a single spray of white flowers, the only one in the entire garden.

It has several interesting nooks and crannies

Sadly there is no veggie patch, and no tomatoes, but there are some peaches ripening by the kitchen window, which add a very subtle touch of colour.

All in all, I really am very lucky to be here.  

Other gardens I have known this year

A Garden: the best damn reading spot in the world.

Tea in the Garden

The Poem that Solved my Leadership Problem.

This is an anniversary of sorts.

I read a poem one Sunday morning in late 1999, and realised that I no longer needed my toxic commute to a toxic workplace, and third, no fourth, toxic boss in a row.

Several months of mulling, of back-burner pondering, resolved instantly to clear certainty.

In less than four short months I was outta there, with my own little biz and never a single regret.  I'm still in contact with the wonderful friends I made there and I'm still doing the same kind of work, but co-creating it now.  And no more brutal, stumbling, neanderthal "leadership".

Thousands love this poem: for me it was life-changing.

Here it is:

Wild Geese, by Mary Oliver 
from her collection Dream Work

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
The world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting -
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

The most totally liberating part for me?  The first line.

.

And here's my own little wildgoose.

From her I have learned and am learning almost every other thing I have ever needed to know about loving what I love.  The harshest and most exciting lessons of all, totally wild and wonderful.

Now flying strongly in the clean blue air herself, finding her own place in the family of things.

Wild Geese High in the Clean Blue Air by Under the Influence of Dub

Creative Commons License

And as every graduate of business school knows full well, Wild Geese almost never fly alone, unless they are really sick, and even then another goose accompanies as long as possible.  They fly in formation to benefit from each other's up-draft, and the leadership rotates, so that they all share responsibility.  And, almost best of all, they honk to support each other in flight.

Now, there's a life agenda. To co-create that kind of community.

The follower kind of leadership - that's what I like.  Not only in the sense that leaders pay attention to their  followers, but that leaders are also followers, and vice versa (and its so social networking).

"Real leadership always takes place through 
collective, systemic, and distributed action".  

Otto Scharmer.  MIT 

Florida Panther

Florida Panther : Only 80 to 100 panthers still remain in Florida, making this one of the most rare and endangered mammals in the world.

Originally uploaded by dpfunsun

How awsome is this?  How can we not get together and work out how to share our planet better?

According to Wikipedia, and Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, the state conservation of this wonderful animal has been bungled, and there is no congressional oversight.

The integrity of this animal, and all it represents, is so much more important than the consumption-driven sprawl and road-building that has been running amok in Florida all these many years.

Duality

Isn't this lovely?

For a larger image click on the link below

It was created to portray the love between two people from different cultures, and what a respectful image it is, reflecting also the deep beauty of our wonderful world, north and south.

For me it also symbolises the inherent connections between cultures and peoples that I was striving to strengthen through my work in the UN, although of course the unresolved contradictions of corruption, over-consumption and warmongering are overwhelming all the good efforts, without as yet a sufficiently strong fight-back (see "What Leonard Cohen Means to Me").

But putting that aside, this was and is the dream, actually fantasy, that I tried/try to realise through my work, and it also symbolises the reconciliation of all the dualities in my life, including being cash poor but resource rich.  This is such a positive and balanced image to keep front and central as we reflect on what really matters.

Thanks for a brilliant piece of work Visulogik: Connected Version 2