For many of us trees are much more than mere wind-breaks or carbon-captors, fruit-bearers or building materials. They are beings, symbols, repositories of memories and links to other worlds.

All this is what lies at the heart of our newly published book Trees & Souls/Bäume & Seelen.  

In the Encyclopaedia of Magical Herbs the frangipani is associated with the feminine and is ruled by Venus. Its element is water and its deity is Buddha. Its power is love and its magical uses are in love spells.

The Artists of Mallorca group kindly accepted me into their ranks as a member and have also accepted my work to be part of a midsummer exhibition that will take place in the Tunel in Soller, in the west of the island.

One of the conditions for putting work into the show was that the work should not be on paper because the tunnel is humid and paper will not fare well in damp conditions. This left me with a bit of a dilemma at first because all my most recent work (and much of my older work) - lithographs, drawings and watercolours - are all on paper.

I’d had to pause while I stood watering the pear tree, and that was why I noticed it. It was tiny - just a single small white blossom - and yet it gleamed and glowed with so much light and energy that it was impossible to overlook it.

The image of that little blossom’s powerful life force has remained with me ever since…

,,,It is good to be in a place where a newbie can make meaningful connections with like-minded people, even better when those connections lead one down a new and previously unexplored path…

…And, just as a tree burrows its roots deep into the ground and stretches its branches up to touch the sky, so this old olive tree’s influence has mysteriously radiated out into the wider world…

‘(We have an…) intuitive response to that profound beauty, when it reminds us of the impermanence and fragility of life. Wabi sabi reminds us that the bad will pass, and to treasure the good too, as it will not last forever.’ (Beth Kempton)

Ideally, transitions can be periods of inner growth, helping us to develop some truly desirable qualities, but they certainly are troublesome times in any process, so I’d like to share with you some of the things that recent experiences have been teaching me.

…even as in winter in nature, when all appears to be dead, there is much going on below the surface