0145, sleep but this is not resting. Because, I live, to the full and if it is strongly felt it is that prompt, to write, to reveal.

Second strong nightmare in about five days wrenches me from slumber just thirty minutes ago. This is not so much about the actual dream, but a vivid dissonance with my recent activity, waking days.

Those days: cycling, deep in the Waterford countryside, amidst great natural beauty, abundance, a lush backdrop. Today, also Mount Congreave, a botanical, silvicultural accomplishment, one man’s vision, many moons ago. But these nightmares — well, just now something of an unwelcome ravishing, a violent coming of age, even rape. That is disturbing, that is highly dissonant with my prevailing, very positive and wholesome round of recent days with my my most cherished one, nature.

Let me tell you what I think, literally what the root of it is – us. I mean in humanity, in humanity. The fall of values that worked with and revered nature as a miracle, an intimate partner.

I felt the worry, concern, but matter-of-factually couched in that apparently carefree bonhomie, of my fellow gardeners, at Mount Congreave. Never, ever before had they experienced such outright challenge, as last year’s draught, in Ireland! And today, a year later, still dealing with the aftermath; cutting back, pruning, grubbing out, wholesale, the botanical legacy of the venerable Mr, Congreve. Dead, dieing.

Of ruins, of past dreams and erstwhile happy hearths, havens, now largely forgotten in the back lanes, bohreens of this cherished isle, I could tell more … Just one thing, well two words, the famine …

Where am I going with this? Where are we going with this? Well, for me, I feel and resonate deeply, to beauty. But there is also deep concern, at times terror and as now I am compelled, the writer, to write of this.

The rape continues, behind closed walls, closed minds. Change is nigh, change is here. Now is the time, for all, not just eight gardeners on seventy acres at Mount Congreave, to rise, to this challenge! For the sake of the many glorious aspects of our human heritage, for the sake of our, one and only Homeland.

No forest fires today; yet a ‘terrible beauty is born’ in me, in my daytime and nighttime perambulations. How about you?