The moment I glanced across towards the Torc Garden, the colour combination of this beautiful deep purple Honesty and the jolly orange of the tulips wowed me, but this little plant is also teaching me a thing or two about getting honest with myself.

One small step we can take to help our planet is planting open pollinated seeds. Open pollinated seeds are non-hybrid and can be saved from year to year, meaning we can continually grow plants that are adapted to local conditions. By doing so we can support ecosystems. Lunaria Chedglow is loved by the orange tipped butterfly!

Not only does planting open pollinated seeds have environmental benefits, but it’s also such a rewarding experience as we see the growth of our own seeds and plants, which can be saved and planted during the next growing season, again and again. I went home with some of T.J.’s Lunaria Chedglow seeds, a biennial with beautiful pink/purple flowers followed by flat, round seed pots, and I’m off to sow the now!

Let’s take a step towards a sustainable future by planting open pollinated seeds and creating a more sustainable future for ourselves and future generations.

love & hope,

Michelle.

You are good.

If Belfast city is a tapestry, constantly being woven, then the creatives are the ones threading the needle, keeping everything together. Sometimes you meet people, and no words or thoughts can ever explain what it is, but they give you a glimpse into their beautiful, hauntingly, simply unintelligible essence. One of those wonderful beings is having an exhibition at Belfast Exposed and I encourage you to go see it if you can.

On my way to the Healing through Photography conference each day, I passed by an image of a mermaid being rescued by a deep sea diver which was painted on the iconic red brick of Belfast on Dunbar Street. There’s much art work on the walls of this vibrant city, but for me, this is a story that connects backwards through time, a story that wants to come through every life. A captivating and wildly original story about finding a voice and the healing power of friendship and love. A delve into the deeper iconography of mermaids suggests that crossing a threshold as un-crossable as that between air and water isn’t as straightforward as it seems.

The hauntingly sad Hans Christian Andersen story that inspired Disney couldn’t be further from wish-fulfilment. The mermaid falls in love with a prince she rescues from a storm. But in exchange for her legs, she has her tongue cut out and loses her voice. Even though the magic grants her a pair legs, walking on them is agony. And though the prince is fond of the transformed mermaid, he loves someone else.

A little grim?

But back to the conference. When it comes to photography, everyone here understands how to unlock the absolute joy of this art form. Following our art form, no matter what that is, means following our intuition and while it can seem scary and grim sometimes, our intuition rarely leads us astray. Maybe our idealisms or our reasonings are not dead on, but our feeling is. That’s what’s brought me here, once again.

And I can’t wait to do it all again next year. Thank you Belfast Exposed.

hope & love,

Michelle.

This is my story of learning at Patthana. Let’s call it new shoots.

This hawthorn appears to bring me a message of hope and healing today, on both the physical and emotional level. It’s not that surprising then, that it has a long recorded history of medicinal use and is known to cleanse the heart of negativity and to replenish the body through nourishment.

When we open our hearts and minds to what is possible, we soon discover that we’re not alone on our journey.

It’s time to let go of some personal projects that I hold near to my heart, and to start a serious overhaul of my creative endeavours. Cleansing, refinement, connecting to passion… that reminds me of Hawthorn.

With love & hope,

Michelle.

I live in an alive place, full of weird and wonderful personalities, and in order to feel at home here, it helps me to have this tangible relationship with my camera and the nature living around me. There are some beautiful classics such as oaks, hawthorns and a rather large gingko nearby, which if I planted now, I would never live to see the magnificent glory it offers today.

This is how I am making sense of the world. Through my photography. And through my connection with nature. And reflecting back how incredible life is.

I replay conversations and learnings that I’ve shared over the last year with my colleagues and fellow gardeners, and with a zealous energy and wanting to be part of making it all okay for our next generation, I think to myself, as Winter takes it’s grip, there’s always next year.

I look forward to turning some more sods and planting more seeds of hope and love.

Not only is this day one of the most powerful points of the year as the Earth’s axis pauses before shifting direction, but I learned it symbolises the rebirth of the Sun or the Oak King, also known as a robin, which signifies the new year and the growing sun.

Let it spill into the human spirit.

I often get myself into right old mythical tangles, but for me folktales or our classic stories play an important role in passing along core values and traditions, so I’ve decided to carve out a little time to learn more about them in 2023.

There’s no hope without love.

There are many words for love in other languages such as Sanskrit, ancient Persian, and Greek. But we have only one. I wonder how we can value such a profound subject with a poverty stricken language, but I look forward to a time when we might have enough differentiation within our vocabulary and culture to describe or celebrate these feelings.

During the making of this image, I also read that in some ancient cultures there was no word for nature, because we are also nature. So to do harm to our environment or the nature around us would mean doing harm to ourselves. These traditions and belief systems show us a deep respect for our world and a strong sense of place and belonging, don’t you think?

Perhaps we don’t need vocabulary, for now, because love and hope are the borrowed parts of ourselves we can use instead.

The curious history of this couplet written in 1978 by Christianopoulos is the inspiration for SeedShed.

Sometimes hope can be buried.

So too can love.

But like an unrelenting wildflower, you will see it return stronger than ever.

Power lies in the capacity to put down roots, to bloom and to shed seeds of love and hope everywhere.