Welcome!

Dear friends,

Welcome to my blog. I hope you stay a while and visit often!

Please let me introduce myself a little, before I begin.

I'm a mum of an 18 month old little girl called Leela. I practice attachment parenting with her, and this, along with many other aspects of my life, is one of the things I'll be writing about here.

I have a background as an ecologist and finished my PhD (after a hard slog!) in 2005. But afterwards, even though I loved working in this arena and am still passionate about conservation, I veered off in other directions. One such direction was towards permaculture, simple living and sustainability.

In 2008, I moved to live in India with my husband. Over the last 2 years, I've been living there most of the time, and was blessed with Leela in January 2009. I wasn't brave enough to give birth in India (!) so she arrived in Carmarthen, South Wales, in the UK, in the same hospital in which I was born 30 years ago. Right now, Leela and I have returned to live near to Carmarthen with my parents until we come up with a cunning plan from here onwards. Hence... this new blog to illustrate the changes we will be going through!

You see, I am passionate about many things, but I guess the main things that get me excited are these things:

* Attachment and natural parenting, which to me is parenting with love, fun and compassion
* Finding ways to live as simply as possible, which I also like to think of as frugal living (in a very positive way)
* Learning new practical skills, such as knitting, sewing, making clothes, woodwork, cooking, organic gardening, soapmaking...and so on - all things that feel wholesome and useful
* The natural world and all its wonders
* Yoga, meditation and Buddhism (although I'm a very open Buddhist and love exploring and celebrating all the world's faiths and religions)
* Watching good movies and reading good books
* Photography, especially of my family and beautiful scenes

So this is just a little clue as to the things I'd like to share with you here. I hope you enjoy the journey too!

See you again soon...