Midwinter in Dublin
I like these shortest days of the year. Even if covid19 still casts its gloomy shadow and travel is restricted [again!], not to mention meeting up with friends and family or music sessions that have died a death!
No choice but to get out locally onto the seafront or off into the parks whenever possible. With phone camera at hand ! And the low angle of sunlight catches the eye.
Kitesurfers on Dollymount Strand, Dublin.
Despite the icy winds, the rain, the long nights of darkness,the bare looking oak and ash, the hungry goldfinches on the Bull Island scouring for thistle seed that they might have missed, despite all that, something is stirring . The yin of winter with the yang of summer all coiled up inside, anemone bulbs sprouting inside the december darkness, trees feeding deeply in the earth's silence.
Hawthorn in Winter, Phoenix Park, Dublin.
So these shortest-days-of-the-year are here and the light is becoming more overt from now on. Nature can begin to shrug off the wintry stasis. All the better on the morning walk at dawn if there's a glow from a sunrise that’s beginning to crank up from beneath the horizon. Can’t get to the cairn in Newgrange but nevertheless, there’s one’s own celebration of the winter solstice to warm the inner chambers of the heart !
Wooden Bridge in Midwinter, Clontarf, Dublin