I’ve just come back inside from being outside. I was standing beneath the fig tree, wandering the unkept pathways of our cottage garden, looking up at branches bending in the breeze. Flowers still blooming. Fruit still forming. There is something deeply reassuring about that. More than anything, it was the simplicity of stillness and silence that met me there. Not the absence of sound ~ the wind moved through the trees and brushed against the clothesline, birds called to one