to learn from animal being

Nearer to the earth’s heart,

Deeper within its silence:
Animals know this world
In a way we never will.

We who are ever
Distanced and distracted
By the parade of bright
Windows thought opens:
Their seamless presence
Is not fractured thus.

Stranded between time
Gone and time emerging,
We manage seldom
To be where we are:
Whereas they are always
Looking out from
The here and now.

May we learn to return
And rest in the beauty
Of animal being,
Learn to lean low,
Leave our locked minds,
And with freed senses
Feel the earth
Breathing with us.

May we enter
Into lightness of spirit,
And slip frequently into
The feel of the wild.

Let the clear silence
Of our animal being
Cleanse our hearts
Of corrosive words.

May we learn to walk
Upon the earth
With all their confidence
And clear-eyed stillness

So that our minds
Might be baptized
In the name of the wind
And the light and the rain.

from Benedictus by John O’Donohue

Happy couple :)

Olga and Alvar are really close, Alvar is "protecting" Olga from other geldings, he is always blocking their way and telling everyone Olga is his property. Olga seems to like it this way.


Sometimes she "sneaks out" though, when Alvar is not paying attention :)


As soon as she does that, one of the two other geldings try to get her attention.


But no worries, she can continue her favourite hobby (eating) as her knight in shining armor rushes to the rescue!

New place to stay

Olga moved on tuesday.



Everything went very well.





She seems happy now.



She's got new friends!



..and also "Someone Special"..



Meet Alvar. Isn't he handsome?!

Mystery plants

Every plant is a mystery plant for me.



"It is only when we forget all our learning that we begin to know. I do not get nearer by a hair's breadth to any natural object so long as I presume that I have an introduction to it from some learned man. To conceive of it with a total apprehension I must for the thousandth time approach it as something totally strange. If you would make acquaintance with the ferns you must forget your botany. You must get rid of what is commonly called knowledge of them. Not a single scientific term or distinction is the least to the purpose, for you would fain perceive something, and you must approach the object totally unprejudiced. You must be aware that no thing is what you have taken it to be. In what book is this world and its beauty described ? Who has plotted the steps toward the discovery of beauty? You have got to be in a different state from common. Your greatest success will be simply to perceive that such things are, and you will have no communication to make to the Royal Society."
- Henry David Thoreau