Poems, stones, trees

Something caught my ear on the radio about wild places and attempts to write about them. There was a recording of Ted Hughes reading Sylvia Plath's poem 'Wuthering Heights' ...

"There is no life higher than the grasstops

Or the hearts of sheep, and the wind

Pours by like destiny, bending

Everything in one direction.

I can feel it trying 

To funnel my heat away.

If I pay the roots of the heather

Too close attention, they will invite me

To whiten my bones among them."

Simon Armitage was in the Pennines talking about the Stanza Stones.  Seven poems have been carved into stones on the moor between Marsden and Ilkley, putting words into the landscape, left to age and weather for people to find as they walk there for years to come.

The project has caused a bit of a stir locally, as always happens when money is spent on art.  Words such as 'desecration' have been used.

Still, it's far worse to cause no reaction at all, nor stir up any kind of emotion.

Stanza stone

It's high time I paid homage to trees.  An ancient soul in ages past (can't remember his name) refered to trees as 'an esteemed vegetable', and quite right too.  It is a massive omission that they haven't had a mention on these pages yet.

My garden isn't big enough to grow trees in, apart from a small apple, but I have favourites I like to visit.

The old Beech by the Priory

the beech that could be an Ent

The very first day I came to this town I made my way up the hill, past the Castle and on to the Priory.  This fast became a familiar walk and the huge grey beech growing high above the wall at the back of the Priory always makes me stop and look, seeing more to admire every time.

In full leaf with the air rushing through it sounds like the sea, on quieter days more of a whisper, immensely reassuring.

It also gives a generous dark green shade to rest inside, a great place to think.

This tree is good company and I'm just glad it's there. It also reminds me to look up, which is a good thing.

 

The Great Holker Lime

'In the 17th century it was the fashion to plant lime trees in Britain.  It's vigorous geometry suited the new landscape of walks and avenues radiating across Europe after the model of Versailles.

The Holker lime is probably  a survivor from a formal layout of the early 18th century, when a great house was built here by the Lowther family.  Later the estate was inherited by the brother of the 4th Duke of Devonshire to form one of the string of Cavendish palaces.  Today the tree belongs to his descendant Lord Cavendish who has given it the freedom of the garden.'

So writes Thomas Pakenham in his brilliant book 'Meetings with Remarkable Trees.'

The Great Holker Lime is a cathedral of a tree, standing in a cavern formed by it's overhanging branches of lush green light.

It's great girth measures an impressive 26feet, making it an official British champion, and a challenge to any tree-hugger.

It stands 72 feet tall.  Ten feet up the grey bole disappears into a complicated tangle of whiskers then emerges as a dozen separate trunks.

In June the tree makes a bower of pale green that sweetens the air with it's flowers and hums with bees.  It's easy to believe this ancient tree is home to hidden folk, little people, sprites and elves.

After spending time in it's splendid company you leave with a green calm inside and a sense of deep comfort.  And awed, knowing this lime existed long before you did and will probably go on existing long after.

the garden lake

Here Comes The Sun...

"Here comes the sun and I say - it's alright"

My favourite track off Abbey Road.
Here are some pics of the best bits of my garden right now... hope they make you feel like the sun's coming out :)

Delft blue Agapanthus

The Bishop of Oxford

The Bishop and a bee

the clematis on the shed

border edge lovelies

Hog weed

Lucifer son of the morning

Tamburo dahlia

Russian Giant sunflower

Mae strawberries

Salvia & sea holly

yarrow, salvia, campanula

I like to grow things I can cut and bring into the house, and have plants that flower at different times.  Hopefully I should be able to keep harvesting til October.  Bringing the colours and scents of the garden inside is wonderful, a little thing that brings a lot of pleasure. Never mind fancy or expensive vases, jam jars are great!

sweet peas, feverfew, roses, sunflowers

a Tess rose in all her glory - wish you could scratch & sniff this

my sugar snap pea harvest - I'm so proud ! sniff...

comfrey

Well that's all folks...happy gardening and may you never find a slug in your wellies :)

Looking at the Big Sky

I'm glad of the breaks in the wet weather but not so much for the sun and heat, more for the difference in the sky.
Colours come back into it.  In the early morning it's a fragile blue sometimes softened by a warm pink.  I saw my first sunset in ages last week.  After too many days on end living under an overcast and heavy grey it's good to see white clouds again, not dishcloth ones, but the kind you only see in the summer.
Mare's Tail and Mackerel Scale (or cirrus and altocumulus), fine long wisps curling at the ends like combed hair.

Mare's Tail clouds

Mackerel clouds

It gets better.  I went outside the other day and wierdly there was more space than before, a much wider view. It took a moment before I realised the row of dense conifers that had always been there were gone from the next-but-one garden!

Oh happy day :)

The privet with wild honeysuckle growing through it is in full flower, filling the air with a heavy honey-vanilla scent.  It has become a bee metropolis, a pollen-palace.

All through the garden bees are joined by butterflies now and caterpillars are appearing.

Before dusk the swifts come out to wheel around, diving and playing, then the bats are skimming the sky which never quite goes fully dark.

The air is laced with the scent of sweet peas and lemon verbena, the bees are gone and everything is quiet. 

Bumble bee

Swift

Best of all is that there are stars again and the Plough is right overhead just now.  A night sky no longer hidden by cloud.  The longer you look the deeper it becomes.

Skies lead me to the German Romantic painter Casper David Friedrich.  This might seem irrational but I've spent weeks trying to find the kind of blue in his paintings for one of my bedroom walls.  I want to look at sky rather than hospital white.

Realising this was a tall order I was determined to get something as close as I could, and finally found it.

It doesn't take long before I'm back looking at Turner.  I read that his last words were, "The sun is God."  Of course we'll never know if this is true or not, his last words could have been a lot less poetic and profound but it doesn't really matter.

"The sun is God" is believable since he spent his life painting light.

In the later paintings which are more abstract you can see absolutely that Turner's view of the world was as an endlessly shifting play of light and colour.  Elemental atmosphere.

Some years ago at Tate Britain there was a blockbuster exhibition of Turner, Whistler and Monet.  Currently at the Liverpool Tate there's another, until September, but this time it's the later works of Turner, Monet and Twombly.

The exhibition is in sections with paintings representing each artist hung together.  These sections are titled, in true Romantic style, as:

Beauty, Power and Space, Atmosphere, Naught so sweet as Melancholy, The Seasons, Fire and Water, The Vital Force and A Floating World.

I might have to leave the garden to go see this.  

Turner's 'Sun Setting over a Lake'

Monet's Garden

Monet's Waterlilies

Cy Twombly

Random notes...

So, they think they've found the subatomic particle that is the cosmic glue holding the entire universe together and is responsible for all life.
I struggle to wrap my mind around this I'll admit, but I've seen some interesting attempts to visually explain the science to the uninitiated, resulting in some rather far-out images...

See what I mean? No wonder prof. Higgs shed a tear.  One of the things I discovered was that the guy responsible for naming the Higgs boson the 'God' particle actually called it 'that godamn particle!', but some publicist changed it.

Anyway, I've heard my first joke:

The Higgs boson goes into a church and the priest says, "You can't come in here, get out!"

so the particle replies,

"Sorry mate, but you can't have mass without me."

Ta-dah!

Thanks to the lovely Snailman for that gem.

Moving swiftly on...

A belated mention of Lonesome George, who finally shuffled off the very last mortal coil of his kind, leaving a tiny island in the Galapagos bereft of giant tortoises.  He was the rarest animal in the world, and a poster boy for all things conservation. Now, alas, the Pinta island giant tortoise subspecies is extinct and another tiny light goes out on the tree of life.

Apparently old Lonesome had survived pirates, whalers and even the goats that threatened to eat him out of home and habitation to reach his century.  He had the look of a creature who had seen much in his time and had many solitary hours.  More than enough time to think.

Farewell fella.

Lonesome George R.I.P

 

Learning to slur

At violin lessons I'm learning new bowing techniques and I've been looking forward to this, after playing the major and minor scales.  The first of these is slurring, which makes you think differently and change what you already know about using the bow.  It's not easy and for a while my brain just refused like an unruly horse.  A bit like  being asked to rub your tummy and pat your head at the same time.

Some things are done best without too much thinking, when instinct takes over rather than thought.  This is one of them.  Like steering a car and changing gear and lots of other things that seem over-complicated when you do them for the first time 'cos you're thinking about the mechanics too much.

Slurring is playing two or more notes with the same bow direction.  An important technique I have to be able to grasp.  I can do it more easily at home when I'm not being watched, but I think this is true of most things.  If I'm writing and someone is looking over my shoulder suddenly I can't type or spell.

Any road, my slurs are getting better so we've progressed to Spiccato, which makes a whole new sound.  For this you have to find the balance of your bow (they're all different)and that's the part you use.  You then have to make a small smile, curve the bow onto the strings and lift it off to make a detached, staccato note.  But not too bouncy, and don't just hit it, it has to vibrate.
I am liking this a lot.

I am becoming increasingly attached to my violin.  Whenever I go into town carrying it I am less self-conscious and wary.  I like that the more I play it the longer it stays tuned.  When I pick it up now I no longer think I'll break it, it's less fragile and delicate somehow, and has become stronger and more responsive.

A violin is a wonderful thing.

"A table, a chair, a bowl of fruit and a violin; what else does a man need to be happy?"

Albert Einstein

Einstein playing his violin

Einstein's mother was a pianist and determined that her boy should learn to play an instrument and develop a love of music.  He learned to play violin at the age of six and described it as one of his great delights.

New Notes From The Garden...

Well so far July looks much the same as June - grey skies and rain mostly, but there is plenty of colour in the garden to more than make up for this.  As well as sunflowers one of the dahlias, Roxy, is flowering and the Bishop of Oxford looks like he'll be next. I couldn't resist putting an actress and a bishop in a pot together.

Tess of the D'Urbervilles has waited til July to show herself, a beautiful deep crimson shrub rose I planted close to the path to catch the old-rose fragrance.

For me, July is roses and birthdays.  We had a bed of them in the garden at home when I was growing up and they seemed spectacularly huge, so many colours and luxurious scents.

Back in the here and now, the foxgloves are still going strong and in the dry sunny spells are humming with bees.

The corncockles, wild flowers which used to grow on the edges of cornfields in abundance, grow tall and have purple flowers that unfurl like flags.

I pulled up the garlic and it's now drying out in the shed,(the scent in there is so strong I think the whole neighbourhood is safe from the undead).  I'm very proud of these babies since it's the first time I've grown garlic.

Corncockles

 

garlic - yay!

Tess of the D'Urbervilles

Roxy the dahlia