When we first moved into our current home, our dream home, I experienced a vivid meditation in my newly blessed spiritual work room. As I unwrapped the potent energy package which I’d safely bundled up from my previous work space, I felt a shift in perception. In my mind’s eye, the walls around me dissolved and there was absolutely nothing separating me from the wild bank and oak woodland on one side, and the spating stream on the other.

Even though I knew I was inside the cottage, I was simultaneously aware of being completely immersed in the land on which it stood.

In the eighteen months since then, I’ve continued to assimilate and appreciate the meaning of that shining vision in many aspects of my daily life. As complete beginners to food gardening, we’re on our second season of growing our own food in the raised beds my partner George has created. We’re vegan, so the vegetables we harvest from the garden are the mainstay of our diet. In this very basic and simple way, the land is becoming part of my physical body as I ingest it. This land sustains and supports my life-force, giving me the energy (and I believe sometimes the wisdom) I need to do my healing and guidance work.

We’re fortunate to have a conservatory that opens on to the flat part of our garden. On dry and warm enough days – and I’ve actually been surprised how many of these there have been here in the lush moisture of West Wales – the double doors are propped wide open, so that it feels as if we’re outside. I do all my writing, planning and idea-dreaming in this space, caressed by gentle breeze or buffeted by rugged wind, sometimes kissed by the sun, always accompanied by the diverse bustle and ballad of birdlife on the numerous feeders.

Although we have shaped the garden to a certain extent with some landscaping and planting, we’ve left plenty of room for nature to contribute her own expertise. Welsh poppies, foxgloves, forget-me-nots and wild violets among others have seeded themselves artistically, so that new edges are blurred by blossoming belonging. The bank behind our cottage is an untamed meadow, mown at the right times to encourage more wildflowers who are already responding to the invitation. It plucks a wild heartstring every time I glimpse it as I walk up the stairs.

Already blessed with some beautiful plants from the previous owners, I’ve added many more to every space in the house so that each one can be called truthfully a “living” room. I’ve also taken to keeping a small vase filled with foliage or current flowering stems taken from the garden and its wild edges. It’s a beautiful way to remind me of, and to honour, the changing gifts of the cycling seasons.

I’ve noticed that this organic way of “being” in my environment has extended to the way I approach decorating and arranging the cottage. Rather than rushing in and imposing a colour scheme or a furniture layout, we found we just wanted to live here for a while and get a feel for the place. Sure enough, original ideas morphed and transitioned as signature pieces of furniture – an antique table, an original painting from an intuitive artist friend – gradually arrived or shifted position and began to whisper into their elected space. We still have improvement works to do before I can paint and add the finishing touches, but I have a feel for colours and designs now which are very different from the ones I moved in with.

Even my work, creative and social life has seemed to mushroom in a similar way, nothing apparently forced or overly laboured but rather sprouting from seeds blown in on the wind at my back when I turn in a particular direction. Seeds of friendship, seeds of inspiration, seeds of collaboration, seeds of community. My body, work, relationships, creative projects, all seem to be fed and flourishing directly from this patch of soil where I’ve chosen to plant my feet and root my dreams. Or maybe I was chosen by the land, as someone ready and willing to dissolve the illusory walls of my vision. As writers Sharon Blackie and Martin Shaw have suggested in their explorations, perhaps, here, the land is dreaming me. I’m happy to live the dream.