Sun, sea, swimming, summer is here!

What an incredible, incredible weekend we have experienced here in Guernsey - well I guess it is subjective, but I have definitely had an incredible weekend.

It is not every weekend that the weather is so bright, sunny and warm, and the tides so high in the morning and evening, making for a wonderful opportunity to truly enjoy Guernsey at its best and get down to the beach!

I am greenhouse and cat sitting at the moment so am based down on the West coast, which I absolutely love because you can hear and smell the sea from the house and although it is only an 8 minute drive from where I currently live in the middle of the Island, I do feel like I am not only getting away from it all, but also coming "home"!!

Saturday morning was spent in the greenhouse, I just lost all track of time and while it was stupidly hot - I can totally understand why you hear of ladies wearing their bikinis when they used to work in the greenhouses in the height of the horticultural industry - I just lost all track of time. My grandfather was a tomato grower and my uncle a rose grower and now my parents grow, so I guess growing is in the blood somehow. Regardless, I got right into it and ended up weeding, picking and watering.

In fact the picking is actually the most time consuming part at the moment as there is simply so much to pick! The Mirabelle, nectarine and plum trees are laden with fruit, all ripening at the same time, and the runner beans are going slightly mad and there is tons of curly kale and even the peas, aubergines, courgettes and tomatoes are making a go of it too! So I ended up putting a lot of it in the stall at the bottom of the drive for general sale.



I have to say it is great around here at Vazon and especially along our road as you can buy all manner of organic vegetables and of course my Mum's fruit, so you don't really need to buy any fruits or vegetables from the shop at the moment, which is brilliant. Not only that but it is fresh here too, and full of all that wondering prana so it makes you feel so much better.



I was reminded about this the other day while reading one of Thich Nhat Hanh's books about anger and the Buddhist wisdom of cooling the flames. He is an incredible man and I love how he writes about "we are what we eat"...

"Eating is an aspect of civilisation. The way we grow our food, the kind of food we eat, and the way we eat it has much to do with civilisation because choices we make can bring about peace and relieve suffering...the food that we eat can play a very important role in our anger. Our food may contain anger. When we eat the flesh of an animal with mad cow disease, anger is there in the meat. But we must also look at the other kinds of food that we eat. When we eat an egg or a chicken, we know that the egg or the chicken can also contain a lot of anger. We are eating anger, and therefore we express anger...

...So be aware. Be careful what you eat. If you eat anger, you will become and express anger. If you eat despair, you will express despair. If you eat frustration, you will express frustration. We have to eat happy eggs from happy chickens. We have to drink milk that does not come from angry cows. We should drink organic milk that comes from cows that are raised naturally. We have to make an effort to support farmers to raise these animals in a more humane way. We also have to buy vegetables that are grown organically. It is more expensive, but to compensate, we can eat less. We can learn to eat less".

And it is so true. Not only should we consider where our food comes from, but how it has been treated. Plus of course how it is cooked. This is what i love about the whole Hari Krishna set-up, the whole concept of preparing food with love, of chanting while preparing food to raise the energy within the preparer and indeed the room and in fact imbuing it with the energy of love so that you eat that energy and feel better as a result.

Everything we eat has some form of vibration to it and the fresher the higher the vibration and the more healing and better for us. This is one of the reasons I love eating from the tree or plant, it doesn't get any fresher or more energised than that and the fact that my Mum and Dad grow organically and with love - my Mum talks to her plants and even uses Reiki on them sometimes too - means that they are so much tastier than anything else I have ever tasted! Ok so I am biased, but come and try some for yourself - Mum even sells them really cheaply too, it’s her bit for increased peace in the world!!!!

The afternoon was spent practicing Yoga in the garden and helping E with some chores before going down to Vazon for an hour at tea time to enjoy sitting in the sunshine under the wall and swimming in the sea. I just love it down there when the sun is shining and the tide is rising and everyone seems so happy!! In the evening we cycled all the way along the West coast cycle paths from Vazon to L'Ancresse to join a friend's 40th birthday celebrations.

If you live on, or visit Guernsey, then I can highly recommend this bike ride, in the early evening when the sun is going down and the tide is high. My gosh, it is stunning. It is times like this that I am not only o happy to be alive, but so happy to be living in Guernsey. I can't think of any other place in the world I have travelled where I would rather be on days like this. Thank you angels, I guess my karma can't be so bad to have been born here (I doubt I will be saying that in the middle of winter however!!).

Today has been pretty cool too. After watering the garden, E and I managed a quick dip at Vazon before catching the boat to Herm to meet E's Mum who had been playing the organ in the lovely little church over there. She treated us to lunch in the sun at the Ship - thank you V - before I topped up my crystal collection in the shop over there (this is the cheapest place I have ever come across to buy crystals and the shop next door has some wonderful crystal jewellery and angel related paraphernalia) before we went for a walk.



We stopped in at the church on our way to the beach. It is really rather wonderful in there. I seem to think it has been around since the 13th century (although don’t quote me on that) and if you put your hands to the stones inside you can certainly feel the heightened energy in that room. I love doing this, not only can it can tell you a lot about a place but I have no doubt that if the room has a high vibration and you put your hands to it, then you receive a healing in the process. There are some wonderful old and small and incredibly powerful churches out there.



Anyhow the church in Herm has these wonderful flowers growing outside and just has this really peaceful feel to it - I would love to re-create this in my own garden one day, it is the kind of place where you feel you could sit and meditate and just feel at peace somehow. Perfect for a spiritual retreat centre.

We sat down at Belvoir Bay, which looked magical of course as the sea is always so clear and bright and we went for a swim and were amazed to find that it didn't feel as cold as usual - well either that or we have just become immune to it after swimming on the South coast of Guernsey so much!! We walked back along the spine of the Island, past the cows and down overlooking Jethou, before catching the boatback to Guernsey. Lovely.

Back at home we decided to make the most of the sunshine and put together a picnic/bbq and the 3 of us headed down to Port Soif and set up camp with the sun dropping and the tide rising, bliss! What is so wonderful is the fact that so many other people are doing the same thing, all the way along the coast, people enjoying bbqs, picnics and fish and chips on the beach, and swimming too, so many people swimming and in fact I bumped into a lady who comes to Yoga classes and she went swimming 6 times in the sea today!!!

So while the bbq was heating, E and I went for our third swim of the day and probably the warmest too, with the sea covering the warm sands, plus the bay is like a horseshoe and I am sure this traps the heat somehow. Regardless, it is interesting to swim at all these different places on the Island and notice such a difference in the sea temperature.

After dinner V dropped us at the house in L'Ancresse where we had left the bikes the night before (new moon tomorrow mean it was really dark by the time we were ready to leave and I didn't fancy 30 minutes on a bike not being able to see properly even with bike lights) so we got to enjoy the high tide and the beautiful views a little more as we cycled back home to Vazon - there is some lovely bright purple heather on the bank at Albecq, everyone needs a little lucky heather!

So all in all a stunning weekend and I am looking forward to finishing work tomorrow and getting back to the beach, this is certainly a time to make the most of each moment and all those summer activities!

With gratitude and love.

xxxx

Sunny, happy, summer days with love

Wow what an incredible few days of glorious sunshine we have been experiencing here on Guernsey, it seems that summer has finally arrived, and lucky me has been able to make the most of it!

Yes I have to admit that whilst I may have been struggling at the beginning of the week with the whole concept of working in an office, I have reflected and since realised that actually it is what you make it, and as soon as I let go of the thought that working in an office equals a loss of freedom and that whole scary soul-less existence of times long past (thankfully), I have started to appreciate the benefits of contract part-time working, which means I can walk away when the hours are done.

On Thursday I met my spirit cousin Yo, who is over from Devon for the week. We had met earlier in the week for swim in the sea, and while I was keen to take her to Petit Bot with me, she wisely suggested we go somewhere different and so we ended up at Saints Bay and what an absolute joy!

So while Petit Bot was rammed with people, and probably most of the other main beaches on Guernsey too, Saints was refreshingly quiet with only a handful of people making the most of this beautiful bay. And with the tide rising, Yo and I enjoyed a lovely swim backwards and forwards across the Bay, chatting in the process and trying to make sense of the warm and cold patches everywhere!

After a few hours,I dropped Yo off at her brother's house and carried on down to Vazon on the West coast to meet one of my lovely angel friend's, Christine, and her beautiful daughter Jasmine, for another swim. Well, I have to say I have not seen Vazon that busy for some time, it was 4.30pm by the time I got there and the tide was on its way up so people were pushed higher up the beach and onto the pebbles under the wall, so I found a spot and settled on my rug and was amazed how hot the sun still felt and by the number of people still turning up at the beach to meet family and to cool off with a swim.

Christine and I went for a lovely swim across the bay, yet more chatting in the process, before settling back on my spot under the wall to dry off with Jasmine in the warm sun. An hour later and we were still sitting there and Jasmine was inviting me to join the two of them for a spontaneous supper at Crabby Jack's over the road.



I found myself declining the invite on the basis that while E was out for the night I still needed to go home and water the garden and prepare food and catch up on emails etc, and then I caught myself...this day is never going to come again...the sun is shining, it is high tide, I am with a really good friend and her daughter, I have nowhere I need to be and nothing I really need to do and they have asked me to join them for supper at a restaurant with views over the beach. If there was ever a moment to go with the flow then this was it!!

So I went with the flow and enjoyed a lovely supper with Christine and Jasmine with lots of chatter about 2012...more about that another time...before going home and enjoying the beautifully warm, calm and peaceful energy of the garden as the sun was setting in the distance. Really, these are the best evenings.

I guess this kind of set me up for a joyful start today - Friday - knowing that it is not only the end of the working week for me, but the sun has been shining again!!

So after work - and what a jubilant day it was for everyone, it is incredible how different the energy is in the office on a Friday compared to a Monday - I dragged a hungover E to Saints Bay with me for a much needed lay on the beach and swim in the sea. Ahhh, there is nothing quite like getting down to the beach and switching off from everything.

We warmed ourselves in the sun commenting on the lack of people on the beach, which just seems so strange as it is such a beautiful bay and it used to be so popular that it even has its own kiosk and toilet, but these days I suspect people just find it too much of an effort to walk up and down the valley to access the beach - before swimming backwards and forwards across the bay. Bliss!!

Later in the afternoon I had a treatment, before moving down to my parents' house on the West coast to look after the cats while my parents are away for the weekend. I love driving down to Vazon when the sun is shining high and it is a Friday and I have the a whole evening without any commitments!!



So we decided to make the most of the wonderful combination of a Friday night, high tide and beautiful weather, by having a picnic on Vazon with E and his friend C. E and I managed another swim at high tide and I actually stayed in for 20 minutes enjoying the shore break and some body surfing, before warming myself with a cup of redbush tea and tucking into the picnic, yum!

We stayed for sunset, beautiful as ever, I just couldn't imagine wanting to be anywhere else in the world at the moment, we are just so lucky to have so much outstanding natural beauty just on our doorstep - this summer I honestly feel like I am discovering the joy of Guernsey for the first time, like I am seeing it through open eyes for a change...just goes to show what happens when we do open our eyes and go with the flow of things...

Happy swimming!!

Sweet pea season

My sweet peas are a real delight at the moment - if only I hadn't planted them behind a tree in our garden then we may be able to appreciate them a little more! Not that we ever seem to spend much time in the garden much these days, the beach is just too big a draw and we have been enjoying swimming and lying on the pebbles at Petit Bot!

I have to admit that working in an office is a challenge for me, but I also appreciate that challenging ourselves is a good thing, otherwise how do we ever hope to grow and develop as people if we are always comfortable and yet perhaps limited in our comfort zone. Regardless, getting down to the beach, into the fresh air and connecting with the earth has become a necessity.

Reading one of the "A Year of Living Your Yoga" quotations recently really made me reflect:-

"Whatever I spend my time doing is what I am committed to in my life. Notice what you spend your time doing. That is what you are truly committed to. Are you happy with this commitment? Ask yourself, "what needs to change and what merits celebration about how I spend my time each day".

It really made me think about how I spend my time and really question whether the time I spend on facebook and sending emails is really such a positive commitment in my life. I often justify it as "work", but really, wouldn't it be better to spend that time working on my relationship with others, seeing friends and family in the flesh, helping my Mum in the greenhouse and doing the things I love, like reading and writing.



So I have made a conscious effort to email and use facebook less. It is liberating, giving myself permission to do something else instead. I have read a book and I have been far more helpful in the greenhouse. I also enjoyed catching up with friends and family over the weekend, got to love the opportunity at this time of year.

It makes me think how often we spend our time doing stuff we don't need to be doing, but become attached to doing, and the things we don't do instead...I guess it is a process of decluttering our lives.

Thank you to Hayley and Mike for a fabulous get together on Saturday night, it was so enjoyable to spend time with like minded friends and enjoy a vegetarian pot luck feast - the evening went so quickly and it was 1am before I even realised!

Thank you also to Sally for a lovely few hours on Sunday afternoon sitting in her lovely garden and chatting to Mike and Hayley and other friends.

It is a challenge changing one's routine, but I guess this is the benefit of Yoga - encouraging us to live in the present and approach life with a degree of flexibility and appreciate that nothing is forever...everything is transitory, and that if we are rigid in our thoughts, then life will not be so easy going.

You only have to watch nature to know this is true...would be awfully strange if the trees decided to shed their trees and get so used to being without that they never allowed them to grow again, or the flowers decided that they couldn't be bothered to blossom this year...but everything ebbs and flows, compresses and grows, going with the flow.

And the summer really does encourage us to go with the flow, all routine is out of the window, especially with this unpredictable weather!! Of course I believe this can only be a positive thing, as gets us to consider what we are really committed to!!

Enjoy the sunshine.

xx

Angels are everywhere!

Well there I was on Sunday, walking along the cliff path at Icart with Ewan, thinking to myself how we usually have quite a few adventures together, unexpected happenings then, but that we hadn't gone for any ramblings for a few weeks for anything out of the ordinary to occur and it didn't look like anything was going to happen today, we were just enjoying a blustery walk on the cliffs on a blustery and overcast Sunday afternoon in July.

While I do not find the flora and fauna of the cliffs as stunningly beautiful as it was a few months ago with all the early Summer colour and that lovely bright yellow gorse, there are patches of pink heather and lovely cornflower blue flowers on the side of the path and you can't help but love the views whichever way you look. I do enjoy the walk from Icart, passing the wonderful La Jaonnet where Ewan and I went for our first walk together all those years ago (well 3 and a half actually!)and overlooking Petit Bot where we went swimming that very morning (interestingly I went swimming on the West coast over the weekend and it was so much warmer than swimming at Petit Bot!).

Anyhow so there we were, walking along the cliffs to the bit above Petit Bot and then back around along the lanes and then on to a larger road. I suspect I was dawdling, I can;t really remember, but it was one of those afternoons where I kept getting lost in thought and for some reason I was looking back he way we had come and all of a sudden this pigeon landed a few metres away from us on the road and I was immediately aware that this was a friendly pigeon because he (or indeed she) was walking towards us (I am guessing pigeon's walk right?!).

So I crouched down to get more on its level and the pigeon just kept walking right up to me and of course I noticed that it had two tags, a blue one and a yellow one. As I got a bit concerned that it was going to fly into my face, Ewan stuck his arm out and amazingly the pigeon flew up onto it as if it were his perch - which indeed it was actually and we managed to ascertain that he must be a racing pigeon from Holland, wow, poor little thing was a long way from home and clearly in need of food and water!

So this carried on for a while - the pigeon on the arm and the Ewan trying to put him back on the ground and the pigeon trying to fly back up onto him again, onto his back, onto his shoulder. Ewan got the pigeon back on his arm again and tried to put him up high on a wall with a field next door - we figured he was would find something to eat, but he was having none of it and clung to Ewan's arm. Ewan put him back down on the ground instead and we started to walk away, but he just followed us and it really reminded me of the cat, how she can follow us around, especially when she needs feeding.

But it was more than that, believe it or not the pigeon just had that look, or that energy about him that said "help", and being that Ewan and I both like to help, we couldn't just leave him there. I remembered a few years ago when a Dutch racing pigeon had ended up in my parents' garden and they contacted the local racing pigeon organisation who arranged for the pigeon to be returned to its owners in Holland. So with this in mind I tried to telephone my parents to ask them to join us with a box to collect the pigeon and take him to the local organisation.



However just as I was trying to work out how to use Ewan's telephone and Ewan was trying to direct the pigeon (who was on the road now) away from the middle of the road, a large black car approached and stopped beside us so the driver could ask if the pigeon was okay and just as we were trying to say that "no not really", he had clearly spotted the tags and jumped out of the car and explained that he was a pigeon racer and the pigeon probably needed food and water. And like that, within a matter of seconds he had picked up the pigeon and said he would look after him from here.

Wow.

You just have to love it when things like that happen. I mean what are the chances of a pigeon racer turning up at exactly the moment that he is most needed - not by us as such, but by that pigeon (and indeed the pigeon's owner, who is also affected by this moment, even though he is beyond the time and space of that moment as we lived it.

And what makes me chuckle most about all this, is not only that I have recently been thinking about synchronicity and the fact that it seems to have been absent in my life for a while (at least, I have not been conscious of it), but the reminder that the Universe is such magical place and that the angels are everywhere and if I needed a sign then there it was - and also a reminder how interconnected we all are and that even a pigeon creates his own story and is supported by the magical and indeed mystical laws of the Universe (if ever that pigeon needed some support from the universe then there it was, and if ever I needed a reminder to have faith and trust and feel supported, then there it was...). There are angels, human and ethereal all over the place.

So there was my fun Sunday adventure.

Since then life has taken on yet more change for I am back working part time in an office and really enjoying it - as much as I love teaching Yoga, I do love to use my brain in other ways too...and that has been yet another huge realisation of late. And so the journey of self-discovery continues...a reminder that life transformation continues beyond the mat.

xxx

Full moon endings

Happy full moon!!

All very exciting. Like me you may have felt its incredibly unsettling and emotionally enhancing energy all week!

Apparently, while the eclipses are behind us, there are still issues left to resolve. It almost feels like a Hollywood film script with an ending that is dragged out deliberately in order to keep the suspension going as long as possible, but irritates instead.

The full moon is a potentially big date for wrapping up. Althopugh it is not an eclipse, it is near the degree of a total eclipse of the Sun in January 2010. You will likely know what your main challenge has been over the last 2 years (and if you don't, think back to January 2010, for an idea of what is going to be coming full circle).

If the "big finish" does not happen in the next week or 10 days, there will be a couple more dates coming up.

All rather exciting, as nothing more draining than having something dragging on. I can certainly relate to that and am looking forward to the endings and new beginnings ahead.

As it happens I am starting at Butterfield Trust again next week...Yoga classes calm down over the summer, and it will be refreshing to have both stucture and routine in my life for a few months - plus of course the opportunity to use different skills. All good fun!

I have been enjoying the beach the last few days, and swimming in the sea is great.

You have to enjoy the summer in Guernsey. The garden is looking beautiful, the sweet peas are so bright and colourful.

Off for a swim. Enjoy the weekend.

Love and light

xxx

Birthday celebrating with music and laughter in Sark and Guernsey

It was my birthday last Thursday, the last day of June, and I was spoilt as usual - thank you to everyone for the cards, gifts, thoughts, texts and emails. I found it all a little overwhelming to be honest, never easy to be the focus of attention, even if it is only for one day!!

After a birthday Yoga practice and teaching a Yoga class, I went for a magical swim with Chris at Petit Bot. The sun was shining and it was low tide so we swam around to Portlet (the secret beach that no one ever visits as you can only access it from the cliffs at low tide) and walked up onto the sand, the only people to probably step on that beach that day, before swimming back to Petit Bot and spending the next hour trying to warm up!!



I enjoyed the sunshine weeding in the garden before Ewan came home from work and we set about preparing for our weekend trip to Sark. My parents popped around with cake before dropping us and our ridiculous amount of luggage to the boat. We were not the only ones going over a day early to the Folk Festival but we still managed to have our choice of pitch for our tent at La Valette, with views overlooking Alderney and France, bliss!! Ewan took me for a lovely meal that evening and we were treated to incredible views of the starry sky from our tent.



The Folk Festival was blessed with sunshine once again and while we spent much of your time hanging out at the festival site and chatting with friends, especially Hayley and Mike, we did make an effort to go swimming in the sea each day which, for me, was a particular highlight. Each morning we trekked down the cliff path from our campsite to the bay below, which was beautiful, high tide, clear sea, very few people, beautiful swim - in fact on our last morning we were the only people and the tide was super high and we were able to swim on our own and feel totally and utterly free.


Sark is a beautiful Island there is no doubt. Time slows down almost immediately and any cares and worries seem to slip away. Admittedly going to Sark for the Folk Festival does not mean you necessarily get away from it all as there are a thousand other people from home over there too and of course small communities being small communities,m you tend to recognise quite a few others so no chance of the anonymity I crave from time to time. It was fascinating to notice how many Yoga practitioners were also over there, I guess the energy of the Festival attracts a certain person!



I taught a Yoga class on Sark to a few of the locals - it was great to have this opportunity and hopefully means I will have an excuse to visit Sark more regularly in the future - great to meet new people who share a common interest too. One morning Ewan and I saw dolphins from our campsite, now that was fairly special, seeing them dive their way past in the sea below. I was also able to practice Yoga outside our tent with views of Alderney and France in the distance, my life is indeed blessed - with gratitude, thank you.

So on the whole our weekend was fantastic. Admittedly we preferred the festival last year, there was something novel, special and new about it then and the views from the festival ground were better and more protected from the cool wind. But it is incredible what the organisers have created over there - a chilled out weekend with lots of quality folk music and quality food too - fresh lobsters and scallops and mackerel for example, yum!!



Back in Guernsey on the Sunday we headed to the Guernsey Festival of Performing Arts to really make the most of a weekend of music. Admittedly the energy was very different to the Sark Folk Festival, with a lot of drunk people, but well done to the organisers for providing us all with the opportunity to attend a weekend music festival here on Guernsey and it is only a shame that not more people supported the event and that some got so drunk that they had little respect for others who didn't want to get trodden on or covered in beer!! Anyhow c'est la vie!!

So all in all a great way to start this next year and lets just pray the sun keeps shining over the next few months so we can enjoy a proper summer here on Guernsey!

xxxxx