It’s difficult to do justice to the place where I’ve been working today. Dinefwr Park in West Wales is a beautiful, historic designed landscape, laid out by the people who lived here in the 17th century.
A mixture of parkland and farmland, with hundreds of oak trees that are over 500 years old. Today we were working out how to maintain these ancient trees for another two hundred years, and how to create the right conditions for their successors. So we’ve been thinking very long range thoughts today indeed.
And if that wasn’t enough Dinefwr is home to a very rare breed of the White Park Cattle. This beautiful breed can be traced back in history over a thousand years.
And if the trees and cattle are not ancient enough, then just under the soil here there are rocks containing thousands of trilobite fossils, aged a mere 400 million years.
It was a wonderful day immersed in such ancient beauty.
Australian based artist Mike Barr is incredibly talented and here he gives a demonstration of how he constructs one of his beautiful paintings, with some of my music for background.
Check out Mikes website @ http://artofbarr.blogspot.co.uk/
…so I’m told. To make up for my lack of self promotion here are a few words from people who have bought my first album, Time Stands Still and reviewed it on Amazon and Itunes…
“Time Stands Still is British guitarist Mike Howe’s debut album and contains just under an hour of some of the most soothing acoustic guitar music I’ve heard”, Kathy Parsons
“This is one of the most beautiful CD’s I have ever listened to. You will play this over and over. I could listen to this all day. If you love acoustic guitar you will really enjoy this CD. I hope to hear more from this artist. Just beautiful”, E. DeCamp
“This is the most calming and beautiful CD I have ever owned. I could listen to it all day and never tire of it”, Kathy Meyer
“One of the major distractions for contemplation and reading is music that has words, even if it is an instrumental as the past memory of the words will intrude. Howe has combined good rythmns with abstract melody – done beautifully”, Bette Inman
“A very relaxing sound with a hint of Chet Atkins. Hope to hear more from Mike Howe. This is great music that is timeless and always appropriate”, Technogeezer
I’m intent on sharing as many of the other Mikes wonderful photographs with you as I can – here are some beauties of a tiny Pembrokeshire fishing village as Autumn returns…
My lovely, but very badly behaved van broke down the other day (again!), left me completely stranded in the middle of the road – I had to be towed home by a very kind passer by with the right kind of vehicle (land rover).
Tired of constantly being in the hands of the mechanics I decided I was going to find the fault and fix it myself. So I did. I went from a dead van to one roaring to glorious healthy life after I’d diagnosed the fault, bought the bits I needed for the repair, performed the surgery (it was touch and go there for a while) and then started her up – bingo!! There are few things in life as satisfying, take it from me. Then as a reward, and to calm my frayed nerves, I went here for a walk…
Happy days….
Mike Howe 