I wake peaceful and turn to gauge the time from the skylight window. Dawn already, without Jessie’s sharp 3am barking to be let out, wakening the whole house. The fire is still smouldering, Rio dozing in the armchair and in the kitchen Jessie is curled on her pillow having scattered her blankets across the floor: a restless night for her. Sensing my presence, her head raised, I pick her up, surprised to find her shivering, and step outside.

The moon is directly over the house, her bright spotlight on me, Jessie, the garden, the trees, the hills and my winding highwayman pathway running up and disappearing into the thicket. Taking Jessie back inside, I tuck her blankets round her and in seconds she asleep, her loud snores the only sound in the stillness of the night. It’s 3.45 am.

There’s a huge star over the great tree and quickly clad for moonlight walking, I step round the side of the house to get a better look. The vast field is bright with moonlight, the tree spectacular in its silhouette, the clear outline of the surrounding hills comforting and protective. The small ash tree, growing beside my water tank seems glowing, its skinny branches sleek with wet, drops falling from its limbs with a soft plop onto the leaves of the blackberry bushes beneath. The water tank too makes its own music, each single drop from the gutter falling loudly into the almost empty dark pool below, a melodious echo bouncing off the walls. In the trees on my left, a rook breaks the silence with a sharp call but his companions remain silent, no answering calls to his dark alarm.

To the right of the doorway the sky is clear. For a night like this the stars are sparse, just a chosen few of bright intensity. Hovering between the massive pine trees at the gate, a single string of 3 widely spaced diamonds hangs; a formation I have not seen before. Closer to the moon now, is a large star and close to that, a diminutive companion. Above this, two bright widely spaced eyes and way down the perfectly positioned bright little nose. Perhaps a special night out for the elder creatures of the sky to come together to discuss the fate of the planet earth.

The tree beckons and Rio on ahead, we walk across the vast expanse – stunning in its bright beauty, its silence, its timelessness; the scene the monks would have witnessed many centuries earlier. Standing under my tree, the moon is entangled in the branches I stand still until Rio, ears skyward, fixes her stare on a clump of bushes across the empty field and takes off. I follow whispering her name afraid to interrupt the congress of the stars, the sleeping earth. In a few moments she returns to my side animated from her quick but fruitless chase.

Back inside the fence, the drips from the bigger trees are loud in the stillness. The young whitethorns running up the pathway are festooned with hundreds of glistening droplets, moonlit jewels that they are reluctant to give up, their beauty rivalling that of heavens.

Jessie is still in deep sleep when we return again to the warm kitchen.

Freezing cold last night but by dawn a mildness had set in and all is green again in the garden this morning. The finches, bluetits, sparrows, robins are busy on the windowsills and on the birdtable. A lone brown blackbird is feasting on the almost leafless but bountyfull harvest of the Whitethorn tree by the birdbath. And as I’ve planted lots of Whitethorns, she could take her extended family with her and there’d still be enough berries for all.

There’s a great disrespect for the Whitethorn in the West, and more and more I see great swathes of them bulldozed and tossed aside. And with them goes shelter, natural fencing, safe nesting places, winter feeding and spring beauty.

I read some time ago that an average of 1,000 kilometres of hedgerow is destroyed in the country every year. Easy to believe when driving through once beautiful hedge lined roadways you find them in the course of a day or two raised to the ground and replaced by concrete and stone walls and builders hoardings. Imagine if as humans we arrived back home one evening to find our ‘nesting’ place raised to rubble? And moving down the road to a neighbour only to see him similarly floored and dazed.

I wonder what happened to the Whitethorn tree beside the statue of Padraig O’Connaire in Eyre Square? Beware of the curse of the Lone Whitethorn the older generation used to say. Looking at Eyre Square yesterday, I’d say there’s a lot in what the old folk say. The generation close to the land.

November 1st-4th 2007

The mildest of days. Green shoots already sprouting in the pots – birds coming and going to the bird table but not continuously – rather in flurries – so mild. Beautiful.