Miscellany

A walk yesterday in the afternoon reveals a dark inky river lit by low sunlight as it swirls its water in eddying currents on its way to the sea. Two boys fished at the bridge, skinny and pale of face, that tells me they need a better diet of vegetables... One boy flicks a small silver fish as bait into the mill channel that leads into the river, perhaps he thinks the fish are skulking up there. The branches of a willow have broken off and trail debris when the river must have been in flood recently.
The walk was to gather ivy for xmas, ivy wins the day with me over holly, stiff and prickly it does'nt look right in arrangements, but ivy with its black berries and curling habit twines more gracefully.
We went to the little field that is part of Sandford Mill, and one day I shall work out the mystery of this small landscape, for it reveals to me at least that some sort of industrial pollution has taken place. Perhaps it was a pond at one stage, but the range of plants that have established are mostly acid loving, and the small carpet of plants that clothe the ground seem to say we can't grow properly thats why we have become miniaturised. There are mosses, yarrow, and what looks like the leaf of the mallow flower there, a red deadnettle flowers, reeds and teazels, great looping branches of the red hips of the wild rose briar, and tangling heaps of blackberry briars...

Miniaturisation of plants

the river catching the blue of the sky for a moment

The field in summer with its great tangle of wildness