Today's Small Beauties

The first flowerings of cow parsley

Staying awake into the early morning full of hopes and plans for the future. I am all fired up, rising like Bridie's Imbolc snake into the newness of things!

The lovely newsagents near my house being available for the offering of much needed and delicious coffee when I had to leave home early. It is so close that I can just tumble, or crawl, in the door.

A crescent moon of crocuses.

Listening to Spock's Beard, and how music is so interwoven with memories; tender thoughts of last summer.

Gatherings of delicate Common Gulls and Canada Geese wandering on the Heath.

Handing in some much-overdue reports, feeling the relief and the expansion of possibility in my life now that they're done.

A warm, friendly, and nourishing meeting with work colleagues and the possibility of new adventures with tiny people ahead.

Visiting St Blaise Well; pleased at making a plan to seek it out earlier in the week and making it come true, moved by being in the presence of sacred waters, visions of surrounding the well with white roses, the good company of yew trees, snowberries, periwinkles, daffodils, corkscrew hazel, lungwort, and the first flowerings of cow parsley.

Snowberries

St Blaise Holy Well, of which more soon.

Finding newly grown daffodil leaves, which had pushed through the soil with such determination to be born into the light that they were covered in dirt. I love it when primroses do that too, as though they have to really struggle to emerge; an inspiration and a perfect symbol of what Imbolc means to me.

Determined to break through and grow ~ one of my favourite reminders of what Imbolc means.

A crow calling.

Speaking sacred words of commitment to myself to the well and being blessed by a wild wind that blew a great spray of water into my face! I feel that I have been heard.

A little girl, who can't have been more than two years old, running along the road dressed as a tiny Victorian nurse. She had the hat and the cape and was for all the world like a cross between a superhero and an angel. Completely delightful.

Lovely finds in my local charity shop..a beautiful blue silk dress, a long winter skirt, a fluffy waistcoat, and the most beautiful dusky pink scarf shot through with silver thread; making myself new.

The most delicious and much-anticipated omelette in my favourite greasy spoon cafe, eaten whilst reading Terry Pratchett's 'Wintersmith'. Perfect.

A box of the tiniest and most delicious clementines imaginable.

Feeling how Himself and I make each other braver and freer and wilder; just as it should be.