A story of the falling rain …..
Nikon Coolpix A
Nigel Borrington
A Short Story of Falling – Alice Oswald
It is the story of the falling rain
to turn into a leaf and fall again
it is the secret of a summer shower
to steal the light and hide it in a flower
and every flower a tiny tributary
that from the ground flows green and momentary
is one of water’s wishes and this tale
hangs in a seed-head smaller than my thumbnail
if only I a passerby could pass
as clear as water through a plume of grass
to find the sunlight hidden at the tip
turning to seed a kind of lifting rain drip
then I might know like water how to balance
the weight of hope against the light of patience
water which is so raw so earthy-strong
and lurks in cast-iron tanks and leaks along
drawn under gravity towards my tongue
to cool and fill the pipe-work of this song
which is the story of the falling rain
that rises to the light and falls again
A cool Sea breeze ….
A wanderer, I explore grasses high as my knees
Far away, grey foam breaks from the stiff seabreeze
To my left, a stark mountain frames the sky
My tireless bare feet follow memories nearby
As I inhale familiarity, my heartbeat slows
And earthy remembrance kneads through my toes
I’m not scared as blossoming storm clouds appear
For I remember what happened when I was actually here
Nostalgic breaths of wind soon whip at my face
Surrounded by vastness, this awe I embrace
To a place lost in time, I’m fervently drawn
Funny how you can only miss something when it’s gone
Fabrizia Mugnatto Dec 2016
Monday morning on the river bank …..
River Barrow
County Kikenny
Ireland
The river has a silver string that runs its length,
holds it to a source in the mountains.
The river cradles its corded muscles of water
between high banks, giving the banks no thought
as it bites them with eddies,
eroding their lower flanks.
River thinks it is only water and the gristle
of currents, hay stacking surfaces
and deep, bellowing falls
running for the sea, though
it does not know it is there.
River should take more care of its banks.
Banks are what hold it a river, give
direction, keep it mitering downward.
Without banks, river loses its way,
becomes a swamp and stills.
All my life I have chafed at river banks,
fighting to spread my currents
in whatever turn needed exploring.
The high song of freedom seemed
to be a music of ‘no banks’,
and yet the whole joy of rivers is pushing,
etching the banks to join the flow,
but having them hold.
Dandelion seeds a poem by Whitney Albright
Dandelion Seeds
Woodland nature
Nikon D700
Nigel Borrington 2020
She stands out
Against the weeds
Oh, she spouts
Her dandelion seeds
The smiling song
Of spring she leads
May the sunshine on
Her dandelion seeds
From the damp land
Her roots feed
Causing silver strands
In her dandelion seeds
Wishes she carries
Wishes she bleeds
Wishes are scattered
In her dandelion seeds
The sun sets in county Kerry
The Sun sets
County Kerry
Rep of Ireland
Nikon D700
Nigel Borrington
A lot of my images have been black and white of late, I love black and white :), here is a great use of colour in a photo, A sunset that is to die for 🙂
Of all the locations in Ireland for a great sunset, County Kerry has to be the best 🙂
The Peace of Mindfulness is like a Boat at rest …..
The Peace of Mindfulness
Irish Landscapes
Canon G1x series
Nigel Borrington
The Peace of Mindfulness is like a boat at rest, just slowly reacting to the movement of the water that it is resting on !
Its our job to find a way of being more like this boat !
August mornings – Black and white landscape images
August Mornings
Kilkenny, Ireland
Nikon D700
Nigel Borrington
August in Black and white, In the forest after the rain.
In the forest after the rain
Black and white landscapes
Olympus Pen
Nigel Borrington
I have always loved black and white images, from the moment I first started looking at photographers work and then owned my first camera and loaded its first roll of Ilfords HP5 black and white film. I love the drama that can be created using shades and tones, from pure white to inky blacks.
These days many photographers long after and spend lots of cash on digital cameras that can deliver the highest possible dynamic range of tones and shades, to myself however I just love trying to bring an image back down to the lowest dynamic range possible, that works towards adding true drama into an image.
This image was taken this evening on a forest path, just after we had a thunder and lightning storm, how much more drama does a photographer need ?
Monday Poetry : Wildflowers by – Deb Jones
Wildflowers
By Deb Jones
Wildflowers
Every year I get a gallon
Of wildflowers seeds
Just imagine!
February is when I toss them
Into the wind
In an ever widening circle
Irish wild flowers
Sheeps bit
Slate quarry’s
County Kilkenny
The moisture laden breezes
carry them over 10 acres.
And the field I leave the most seeds in
is actually a pasture.
Violets, yellows, whites and blues
They come in such beautiful coloured hues
A field of wildflowers grow
And I let them grow unknown
Until they bloom no more
A pleasure to look at
A treat to sit in the middle of
Sometimes we need color in our lives
For no other reason
Than “Why not?”
Life on the Forest floor ….. Wood from a fallen tree.
Dead wood
Life on the forest floor
Nigel Borrington 2019
The forest floor is always full on life old and new, it offers amazing images with a macro lens and man times I just love getting in close and then waiting to see the captured images when I get home 🙂 .
In this image it was not until I looked closer that I noticed a small grub( Bottom Center of the image), munching away at all the dead wood, its these little insects that act as the recycling machines of the forest as they turn all the fallen trees and branches into a compose for new tree growth.
Irish wildlife trust’s – People for Bees Project
Irish wildlife
People for Bees
Nigel Borrington
2019
People for Bees
The Irish wildlife trust are running a People for Bees project across the country once more in 2019. With People for Bees we deliver accessible talks on bees, their identification and how to create bee friendly habitats.
This training includes practical outdoor sessions where participants practice field skills like bee identification, bumblebee monitoring and biodiversity record taking. The project is aimed at community groups and members of the public in every province of Ireland.
The Irish Wildlife Trust works closely with the National Biodiversity Data Centre to support the All-Ireland Pollinator Plan and the Bumblebee Monitoring Scheme. With the new skills learnt through our People for Bees programme, participating groups have the knowledge and confidence to start carrying out bee population monitoring and habitat creation in their communities, thus completing two of the objectives of the All Ireland Pollinator Plan – “Making Ireland more pollinator friendly” and “Bee population monitoring”.
All-Ireland Pollinator Plan
In 2015 Ireland, North and South, developed a strategy to address pollinator decline and protect pollination services, the All-Ireland Pollinator Plan.
Sixty-eight governmental and non-governmental organisations agreed a shared Plan that identifies 81 actions to make Ireland pollinator friendly.
You can take part, using the guides and resources provided by the National Biodiversity Data Centre for your garden, school, local community group or council and map those actions on the online mapping system, Actions for Pollinators, to help track the build-up of food and shelter in our landscape.
Sheeps bit – Wild flowers at the old slate quarry
Irish wild flowers
Sheeps bit
Slate quarry’s
County Kilkenny
Sheeps bit – Wild flowers
The Slate Quarry at (Ahenny, Windgap, Co. Kilkenny) is one of our best local locations for wild life and wild flowers – at this time of year. There are three or four old open quarry pits most of which now form small lakes, along with many heaps of slate that remained in place after all the good slate in the area had been removed. In the summer the lakes are used for swimming in.
I often visit and today I captured these blue sheep’s bit flowers at lunch time and they cover most of the tops of the old slate heaps. Natural blue wild flowers are one of natures rarest finds so it was a true pleasure to see such a large amount growing in one place.
Here are some details about these very special little plants ….
Sheep’s-bit
Scientific Name: Jasione montana
Irish Name: Duán na gcaorach
Family Group: Campanulaceae
Also known as Sheep’s-bit Scabious, the books say this is a rather variable plant and can easily be mistaken for a composite or a scabious, but theAlso known as Sheep’s-bit Scabious, the books say this is a rather variable plant and can easily be mistaken for a composite or a scabious, but the florets have a 5-toothed calyx and not a pappus. Also the anthers in this plant do not project – unlike those of Devil’s Bit Scabious. I hope this helps. It is a pretty little downy biennial which grows in rocky places, cliffs and heaths up to 40cm high. It has bright blue rounded flowers aggregated in a compact head (15-25mm) which is borne on a slender stem. Its leaves have wavy edges and are hairy, grey-green and short-stalked. The plant is on flower from May to September. This plant is a native and belongs to the family Campanulaceae.
I first identified this flower in Laragh, Co Wicklow in 1976 and photographed it in Glenmalure, Co Wicklow in 2006.
florets have a 5-toothed calyx and not a pappus. Also the anthers in this plant do not project – unlike those of Devil’s Bit Scabious. I hope this helps. It is a pretty little downy biennial which grows in rocky places, cliffs and heaths up to 40cm high. It has bright blue rounded flowers aggregated in a compact head (15-25mm) which is borne on a slender stem. Its leaves have wavy edges and are hairy, grey-green and short-stalked. The plant is on flower from May to September. This plant is a native and belongs to the family Campanulaceae.
I first identified this flower in Laragh, Co Wicklow in 1976 and photographed it in Glenmalure, Co Wicklow in 2006.
If you are satisfied you have correctly identified this plant, please submit your sighting to the National Biodiversity Data Centre
Irish Butterflies – Wood White Leptidea sinapis (lep-TID-ee-uh sy-NAY-piss)
Irish Butterflies
Wood White
Leptidea sinapis (lep-TID-ee-uh sy-NAY-piss)
It a pleasure to be into photography at this time of year, nature is in full flight and at her very best.
For many personal reasons I have no been posting regularly here on my blog for the first time in many years so it also a pleasure to be able to make a start again.
Last week I spent as much time as I could taking my much love Nikon and macro lens out into our local woodlands and capturing lots of nature images. Here is just one of the many images I managed to get the time to process so far.
Now that I am starting again to post here, I plan to be very specific this summer with my images and close-up nature images will be one of my main areas.
Wood White
Family: Pieridae Swainson, 1820
Subfamily: Dismorphiinae Schatz, 1887
Tribe: Leptideini Verity, 1947
Genus: Leptidea Billberg, 1820
Subgenus:
Species: sinapis (Linnaeus, 1758)
Wingspan 42mm
The Wood White is one of our daintiest butterflies with one of the slowest and delicate flights of all the butterflies. When at rest, the rounded tips of the forewings provide one of the main distinguishing features between this butterfly and other “whites”. Adults always rest with their wings closed. In flight, the male can be distinguished from the female by a black spot at the tip of the forewings that is greatly reduced in the female. This butterfly lives discrete colonies and was only recently separated from the visibly-identical Cryptic Wood White. This local species can be found in central and southern England and also in Ireland on the limestone pavements of Clare and South-east Galway. This species is absent from Scotland, the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands.
Connemara, Co. Galway, Ireland – The Landscape of Poetry – Poems by Mary O’Malley
Connemara
county Galway
Ireland
Nigel Borrington
2019
Connemara, Co. Galway
Mary O’Malley is truly the person who has written Connemara, her writing laced with the fierce beauty of the landscape, and the sounds of the sea. In ‘Porpoises’ she sends our minds out to sea from the most westerly point of the county:
The sky is close.
Out from the once manned rock
White electric light
Arcs over the Water
Difficult not to agree with her when she states that the sea is “just the place from which all things make sense”.
Pierce Hutchinson, also writing on Connemara, said:
There are chinks between
the neat stones to let the wind through safe,
You can see the blue sun through them.
But coming eastward in the same county,
the walls grow higher, dark grey;
an ugly grey. And the chinks disappear:
through those walls you can see nothing.
Perhaps our poetic landscapes remind us of that – to keep our hearts alert for experiences of water, wind and wonder.
The Angel – A poem by William Blake
A September Sunrise, County Kilkenny
Landscape Photography : Nigel Borrington
poet William Blake
#11 on top 500 poets
The Angel – Poem by William Blake
I dreamt a dream! What can it mean?
And that I was a maiden Queen
Guarded by an Angel mild:
Witless woe was ne’er beguiled!
And I wept both night and day,
And he wiped my tears away;
And I wept both day and night,
And hid from him my heart’s delight.
So he took his wings, and fled;
Then the morn blushed rosy red.
I dried my tears, and armed my fears
With ten-thousand shields and spears.
Soon my Angel came again;
I was armed, he came in vain;
For the time of youth was fled,
And grey hairs were on my head.
William Blake
The Land of Beyond, Robert Service
The Land of Beyond
Robert Service
Have you ever heard of the Land of Beyond,
That dream at the gates of the day?
Alluring it lies at the skirts of the skies,
And ever so far away;
Alluring it calls: O ye yoke of galls,
And ye of the trails overfond,
With saddle and pack, by paddle and track,
Let’s go to the Land of Beyond!
Have ever you stood where the silences brood,
And vast the horizons begin,
At the dawn of the day to behold far away
The goal you would strive for and win?
Yet ah! in the night when you gain to the height,
With the vast pool of heaven star-spawned,
Afar and agleam, like a valley of dream,
Still mocks you the Land of Beyond.
Thank God! there is always the Land of Beyond
For us who are true to the trail;
A vision to seek, a beckoning peak,
A fairness that never will fail;
A proud in our soul that mocks at a goal,
A manhood that irks at a bond,
And try how we will, unattainable still,
Behold it, our Land of Beyond!
A Poem for August : In August – Poem by Paul Laurence Dunbar
A Poem for those Augusts when it doesn’t rain …..
In August – Poem by Paul Laurence Dunbar
When August days are hot an’ dry,
When burning copper is the sky,
I ‘d rather fish than feast or fly
In airy realms serene and high.
I ‘d take a suit not made for looks,
Some easily digested books,
Some flies, some lines, some bait, some hooks,
Then would I seek the bays and brooks.
I would eschew mine every task,
In Nature’s smiles my soul should bask,
And I methinks no more could ask,
Except–perhaps–one little flask.
In case of accident, you know,
Or should the wind come on to blow,
Or I be chilled or capsized, so,
A flask would be the only go.
Then could I spend a happy time,–
A bit of sport, a bit of rhyme
(A bit of lemon, or of lime,
To make my bottle’s contents prime).
When August days are hot an’ dry,
I won’t sit by an’ sigh or die,
I ‘ll get my bottle (on the sly)
And go ahead, and fish, and lie!
In August
Paul Laurence Dunbar
My Mountain Ash Tree, a poem ….
My Mountain Ash Tree
Season after season.
I’ve gazed upon you
through my window.
I’ve seen the snow hang low
upon your branches.
With white upon red berries.
I’ve watched the snow melt away
to reveal new buds,
opening,
ever so slowly,
to leaves so green.
In early Spring.
I’ve watched all the creatures
hop, climb, and fly among
your branches.
I’ve watched the birds taste
your blood-red berries.
I’ve seen songbirds…
Nuthatches,
finches, and chickadees.
Come to the feeders.
That hang from you.
I’ve seen the squirrels steal
seeds from the birds.
As their little paws unlatch
a little hook.
I’ve heard the birds sing among your
branches.
So sweetly.
I remember when the chickadees
built their nest in you,
and then watched their young fledge.
I remember the year the woodpecker
came knocking at your trunk’s door.
As he drilled his beak into you.
And made a hole.
After that.
You were never the same anymore…
I watched your life slowly end.
Another year.
Another season.
More dead branches to be severed.
Fewer buds.
Fewer leaves.
As your story slowly drew to a close.
Yesterday,
they chopped down what was left of you.
But I will always remember you.
And I thank the Lord for the joy
of beholding your beauty.
Of watching your story.
You have blessed so many creatures.
Including me.
Farewell,
Beautiful Mountain Ash tree.
Irish Landscape Images – A Land so green
Irish Landscape images
A Land so green
Nigel Borrington 2018
Following one of the driest summers in Irish history and with some recent rain fall in the last three weeks, the Irish landscape is slowly returning to it wonderful colour of green ….
Irish Landscape Photography : The rain maker
The Rainmaker
Written by
Roger Turner
The weather plots his journey
Town to town in dead of night
Fields dead and on a gurney
He comes in to make it right
A rainmaker, people call him
A psuedo-scammer others say
He sells himself as godlike
He comes quick and does not stay
He tells people what they wish for
He beats the storm in to their town
He seeds their minds with his tall stories
He promises more green than brown
Like an evangelistic angel
He beats the weather to the ground
He’s a salesman like no other
He picks their pockets with no sound
A rainmaker, just a scammer
He works the towns where nothing lives
He is an alchemist non-gratta
He always takes and never gives
He sells snake oil and concoctions
He is a shaman in disguise
He promises rain where none has fallen
There is more moisture in the farmers eyes
He takes credit for a rainfall
He promises gold where once was straw
He’s a rumplestiltskin with their feelings
He sells them only what they wish they saw
He may believe in what he tells them
He always puts his name out on a stake
But, can he truly make the skies open
That is a choice the desperate make
Images of Summer 2018 : Down in the Barley
Images of Summer Down in the Barley
Nigel Borrington 2018
Nigel Borrington 
Life is about being Happy, finding a way to stay happy …
Derreen Gardens
Lauragh
Country Kerry
Canon G1x series camera
Nigel Borrington 2020
There are so many great quotes from John Lennon, but this one has to be one of his best 🙂
“When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down ‘happy’. They told me I didn’t understand the assignment, and I told them they didn’t understand life.”
John Lennon
In current times finding happiness has become very important for our mental health, we all need to fight as hard as possible to achieve personal happiness, never let anyone for what ever reason put you in any other mood than a generally happy one !
One tool I have developed over the last weeks to active this aim is to stop reading/watching or listening to the daily news, I could write an essay on the why’s but life is to short!
Just stop listening, get outside as often as you can (walk, say hello to people, look at the landscape around you), it is not selfish to make sure your in a good mental place, you can give more to others if you are!
Happiness needs working at, working to find the things that make you happy and at the same time dismissing the things that don’t – it takes work !!!!
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September 17, 2020 | Categories: Comment, Gallery, Images of Summer, Irish Landscapes, Nigel Borrington, Solo images | Tags: Canon G1x, county kerry, Derreen Gardens, Good mental health, Happiness, Irish Landscapes, John Lennon, Lauragh, Nigel Borrington | 4 Comments