St.Cedd

When we walked round Chelmsford Cathedral the other day, we did not go inside, but today I remembered the painted modern window we had seen a couple of years ago. Painted by Mark Cazalet, which I had put on an old blog.  The symbolism  can be found in the words below, St Cedd is sitting under his tree, the eldest of four brothers and a Northern saint.

This painting is rather beautiful, formed of five panels. The tree is an oak, on the right hand side we find St.Cede sitting under it in a tranquil scene of golden corn but on the left, the tree is dying and depicts the environmental degradation we subject our land to. Also there is a skeleton on this side, this is Judas Iscariot, 30 pieces of silver falling from his skeletal hand, a reminder that the oil rigs that we see in the picture is the price we are paying for the destruction of the Earth; the painting has several messages, and there is a certain pagan air to it, the great tree so much a symbol of other religions stands tall and magnificent centre stage, highlighted by the gold of the sun, but up above the moon shines, a darkening sky signifying the threat of coming disaster.

Friday 13th June

The weather has been so beautiful that it just deserves to be lived in, collage of the garden and a walk down to the river this week.  I call the pigeon Fred, dumb creature that he is, he wanders around with our three doves and the host of little sparrows that have been born this summer.  The pink Cape daisy unfolds its flowers every morning, till when you look down into their hearts the magnificent  force of nature reveals itself.

Lillie turns eight on this Friday the 13th, and in a week it will be the solstice, when the long nights of light will turn into darkness again.   Solstice is when the sun stands still!

There has been an interesting discussion elsewhere about why prehistoric people had their solstices, both winter (which is considered the most important) and summer. The stone's settings are the evidence that a calendar was needed in those times to herald the coming of light and warmth for the growing of crops. To make sense of their world, when the great glowing ball of the sun stood high in the sky, or when, as today, the full moon shone like a bright penny in the sky at night.

Elsewhere in the world on this day, chaos slowly unfolds as the East  falls apart on religious lines and one's heart can only break for the families and people who are thrown into refugee camps, and there is nothing to say that will make it better.

The Garden

Walk on Wednesday

Birthday girl Lillie up  at 5.20 this morning ready for her birthday, she lives in a world of her own, dearly loved by everyone who meets her....

Chelmsford City, (they are just changing the signposts too upgrade to city). Chelmsford has a cathedral and a prison..

Maldon

Tidal waters returning, when we first came there was no water.

Today it did not rain, the weather in fact turned out warm, and so off, not exactly to the seaside, but to the estuary at Maldon.  Funnily enough the tide was out and there was no water to be seen just vast expanses of mud.  When a spaniel, covered in mud from head to foot trotted past we both burst out laughing, I think his owner found it funny to.  

Maldon is what you would call a rather scruffy town, though I am sure its inhabitants do not think so, charity shops aplenty, and also restaurants of every taste, we decided as it was not too far from Chelmsford to go back for an Italian meal one day.

Walking to the path by the estuary and you find these great sailing ships, full of young people when we were there messing round as the young can only do

There are pretty places to be found look at these cottage gardens full of bright colour against the terrace of houses...

Not sure if this is a 'sea holly'

And I loved the three pubs (one is behind the camera) nestled round the church, obviously the fisherman of old had their priorities right.

We had been looking for the statue of Byrhtnoth, the English Elderman who died in battle when the Vikings invaded, and the great battle of Maldon can be found in the Anglo-Saxon -chronicle, an earlier blog gives some of the dialogue.  When we asked a gardener where it was he directed us about half a mile away, and then gave us the more modern history of the battlefield, which had once been a farmer's field, then a tip, then everything tidied to return it to its historical context.  I was starving at this point, so we decided to make it back to the car and head for the Cat's pub for a ploughman, but we shall be back to hunt down this elusive statue.  It sits at the end of point, jutting out into the estuary and presumably the island where the battle too place on the other side.
So this little island with derelict boats on is not it...

Odds and sods

Yesterday we went shopping in Chelmsford, which is not strictly true, I needed some more birdseed for the doves, shopping tends to exhaust me, so I don't do it, preferring the ease you can order things online.  But I also took back some books for Oxfam,  a couple by Hilary Mantel  which I can't get on with so her books went back mostly unread.  Picked up a rather good edition of Lark Rise to Candleford and that scary novel 'Woman in Black' by Susan Hill.  Which I read last night and had a nightmare about it.

Carl Larsson, almost a nursery print.

The other day we were watching a programme about art and the work of Carl Larsson appeared, and his wife Karin's decoration of their Scandinavian home.  Interesting fact is that Ikea is somewhat predicated on these pair, I like Ikea just for wandering around looking at their room settings, the furniture tends to leave me cold though. I had a couple of prints of Carl Larsson of the interior of their house, the painted surfaces and furniture and the fabrics most of which Karin designed on a hand loom.

the flouncy pink of a beautiful peony

Pretty caterpillar

The peony a bit bedraggled in the garden

A good copy of Flora Thompson's book, with, I note, a foreword by Massingham.

Growing in pots

The robust nature of the courgette plants means we should be eating them in a couple of days, this is of course due to warm fine and occasional rainy weather, not forgetting the compost that half fills the pots. Tomatoes plants are already beginning to flower as well and the runner beans are growing tall. There is always a battle with the slugs and snails, never use slug pellets because of the birds and their young and also our hedgehog that lives under the shed.

Pots are the mainstay of the garden, not so many lilies this year, though I hanker after the great white scented ones, and would love a collection of penstemons but any more pots and I would be using the lawn! (just negotiated that one with LS over coffee)

Talking to my daughter yesterday and sadly the children do not have any interest in gardening, here they are living in Edible Todmorden and completely ignore the events going on around.  They are all going to the cottage in Whitby next weekend to visit school friends. Lillie will be 8 years this June, how they grow, both girls are like exotic blooms themselves, flowering away, as is their brother Ben, who quietly stands by, I wonder what the future holds for them?

Add caption

A beautiful Morning

Time present and time past

Are both perhaps present in time future,

And time future contained in time past.

If all time is eternally present

All time is unredeemable.

What might have been is an abstraction

Remaining a perpetual possibility

Only in a world of speculation.

T.S. Elliot, Burnt Norton

(first of 'Four Quartets')

I had forgotten these words by Elliot, that time is not linear but an evolving space around us, past history falling into our present lives, and occasionally changing the future.  I got introduced to these words by a new blog I am following.

Following the theme of reburial of the dead  as seen from different viewpoints, such an issue has brought forth many opinions.  The reburial of Richard 111 which is different has been decided, though if the contending York side asks for an appeal there may be further shenanigans.  But it seems that this king will be buried in the area where he fell in battle - Leicester and a ceremonial event will no doubt take place, Mike Pitts covers the subject here in his usual excellent style.

This morning was a perfect June day, though in actual fact it is the last day of May, and so I went for a walk by the river, to capture the dog roses on camera and look for the gypsy horses.  Sadly I could not see the horses, they may have moved because a temporary road will go through the lower half of the water meadows as they mend the great bridge next year.
The field is full of buttercups, and the bird song was beautiful, a pale thrush alighted on the fence, a black labrador jumped into the river after a stick, making a great joyous splash. Ducklings sat around on floating branches and the first water lily bud has broken the surface.

Roses and Exhibitions

Wild Roses; Dog rose, burnet rose, field rose, yellow briar, cinnamon rose, one could go on as Margery Blamey's illustrations show.  These  shrubs of wild  roses emerge from our hedgerows in a cascade of white and pink, soon over, till we see their deep red hips.  They never achieve the splendour of the cultivated rose, but as the hawthorn blossom disappears the beautiful wild rose will make an appearance.  I have a feeling it is some what neglected because of the distinct blossoming of its cultivated mate at the same time. 

Why dog rose (rose canina)? well according to Grigson, a Roman soldier got cured of rabies by rubbing the root of a rose against the bite.  Gerard the 16th century herbalist, took up the term 'dog' to distinguish the wild from the cultivated.

Roger Phillips and Martyn Rix's illustration of the wild roses that appear in China... 

There is to be an exhibition at the National Potrait Gallery in Autumn, something we must go to, Fiona McCarthy is the curator....

NPG unveils its blockbuster autumn exhibition with Anarchy and Beauty: William Morris and His Legacy, 1860-1960

Can you believe it? an erotic lawn roller by Eric Gill, it just made me giggle through breakfast.  Lawn rollers are not something you see nowadays, we had one for our lawn when I was a child, a great heavy concrete creature that stood in the corner, LS remembered the great steam rollers on the road that probably did more damage to the roads than that sticky black tar they rolled into place.

Plotting a creative arc from the Pre-Raphaelites to Terence Conran, the National Portrait Gallery's autumn exhibition on the life and influence of William Morris is nothing if not ambitious.

It’s also the first major exhibition to really explore the influence the great man had on British design – and ergo life – in  the twentieth century.

The curator of the show is also a coup, with Morris biographer Fiona McCarthy lined up to guide us through the fascinating world of Morris’s far-reaching politics, thought and design via portraits, furniture, books, banners, textiles and jewellery – many of them  brought together in London for the first time.

That McCarthy also counts influential and polemical tomes on Eric Gill and Edward Burne-Jones among her works merely adds to the expectation at the London museum, ensuring that the exhibition will raise some interesting questions about Morris’s enduring influence.

Wednesday 28th May

For those who live in Wales, the small village of Solva (just one of my favourite places to live) is to be the place for a new Under Milk Wood to be filmed, so don't book at the Cambrian Inn from the 23rd June...

Most days I trog through the news to find things of interest for LS's blog, sometimes this can take an hour or two.  Sometimes I can spend time chasing news articles through links as I try to nail a particular point, this morning for instance Neolithic long barrows (long since defunct) at Coate, a place within Swindon that is in grave danger of development.  Swindon is looking towards 60,000 houses to be rebuilt in the future, terrible thought but why? I cannot answer that question, we are TOLD by those that rule this is imperative, but as always there are grave repercussions on the landscape.

A friend has just sent a link of a short video of an aerial view of the Cheesewring and Stowes Pound in Cornwall, and it brings back memories of walking up to the Cheesewring and noticing a sheep trapped on a ledge within the quarry.  Of course I worried, knowing that farmers would just leave it to die, and as I watched the trapped animal go from side to side from a distance, my mind became agitated and I did not enjoy the walk.  Well all is well in this little story, walking back and turning round there was an empty ledge and a foolish sheep above still looking over the edge of the quarry and dicing with danger.

You can just spot a dab of white below the edge..

Click on photos for a better view....

Monday 26th May

I haven't written much lately as life is quiet and I spin wool furiously.  Yesterday the internet did not work for this computer and so my love spent a couple of 'techy' hours trying to work out the problem, he has so much patience whereas I was quite happy to be not connected.  Anyway the problem was eventually sorted, there is a little 'f' button with the internet sign on and I must have accidentally switched it off.  We turned the computer practically inside out to find the 'switch' one diagnostic tool told us about, what we did find was a place to put memory cards in, which I suppose is a bonus, and my router does not need replacing but the battery for the computer does!

The last scrolls were finished in the studio last week, they are modern paintings done by the sister of a client and have hung round for ages.  So what does that mean? well I can go and spin in the studio, we are not quite sure what to call it now but maybe it will be a 'hobby room'. 

Also we have begun to talk about getting a dog, now my choice is limited here, one that does not drop hair - poodle?, though I dearly love shaggy collies, perhaps in the next house.

Not having a companion animal to walk with has been one of the things I have missed terribly, I chatter on a walk as I record absentmindedly  plants, animals and birds.  LS has got quite used to it, but he does not always want to go on a walk, so perhaps a canine ear will come in useful.

We have been talking about going down to Cornwall again, but holiday cottages are so expensive, and by the time I find somewhere the link manages to get lost.  My aim is to explore middle Cornwall around Lostwithiel, although we have not done the prehistoric remains round Penwith Moor which is as far south as you can go, one of the richest places for prehistory.  Bodmin Moor will always be close to my heart, just for its bleakness, but is really not a place to live on, as the mists come down regularly along with the cold and the wind!

The Hurlers Stone Circles

This 'crystal' pathway was excavated last year, a ceremonial path leading to one of the circles.  The turf has been replaced but one jagged white stone still sticks up in the centre.

A shaky video of the stones

And what I am reading at the moment - Boneland by Alan Garner. . The last of the Weirdstone trilogy  (written for adults this last book).  Colin has now grown up, is a scientist

at Jodrell Bank, but still searches for his twin sister in the stars. Two narratives sit side by side, the modern world and the shaman like figure that guards Alderley Edge.

Paper Mill Lock

Beautiful summer day, and Paper Mill Lock Marina crowded with people, but walk along the river and they soon disappear.  The swallows are here, nesting under the old concrete bridge at least a dozen, and they swooped and dived over the river and the buttercup meadow with such speed that it was impossible to catch them on the camera. 

What else, the Demoiselle damselfly was equally elusive, they hardly settle on the long strappy leaves of the yellow flag before they are off, fluttering the deep aquamarine of their bodies and laced wings justifying their name as the European Beautiful Demoiselle. The blossoms of the hawthorn are fast disappearing, changing from their 'Omo' brightness to a softer creamy-brown, and the cow parsley lines the path with that abundant exuberance of summer.  Will of the wisp lights danced on the water, perhaps a combination of sun and insects, but no fish rose to disturb the slow flowing current.  One batch of yellow irises, that was all and because of the heavy use of nitrogen in the large (think it is 120 acre field) there are not many wild plants which is sad.

And talking of things disappearing, welcome 'Natural England' on the scene, apparently, yes apparently, robins, starlings and wagtails are a 'health and safety risk', therefore open house on destroying their nests and eggs, can you believe it? Hopefully the RSPB will show them the error of their stupid consultation.  There is a Wordpress blog on the issue, which gives the reason that the chairman of Natural England, just happens (boys for the job syndrome) just happens to be a founding member of a company that build houses, and birds are a nuisance when it comes to nesting in the drain pipes under the eaves.  In fact that is what most of the starlings do round here every year, and I have never heard of anyone complaining......

To gentler things, as already my blood boils with furious rage at the stupidity of greed...

Swallow bridge

Buttercup field

Envious place to live!

two demoiselles

old hawthorn

Yellow flag

Monday the 19th May

I have been reading Sabine-Gould's book about the Reverend Harker of Morenstow, alongside Daphne Du Maurier's 'Vanished Cornwall'.. Sometimes stories overlap in one's mind and as you chase threads the small world of England closes in.  For instance I found out that Sir Bevil Grenville, a Royalist, who fought in the Civil War on the Lansdown ridge, near Bath, (my favourite walking place) actually came from Cornwall, and just following his family history in Cornwall makes me sad for this man who was killed in the battle so far from home.

 "Bevil Grenville, thinking to repeat his victory at Stratton, led his men uphill to seize the guns.  He fell, mortally wounded.  Thereupon his standard bearer, Tony Paine, seized Sir Bevil's young son John, a boy barely fourteen, and clapped him upon the dying man's horse, and the boy tears smarting in his eyes, brandished his father's sword and rode in the enemy's pursuit" 

Du Maurier even when she writes factual books cannot but embroider and illustrate her stories, and when I started reading her book she shocked me from the first page.  She opens with a story when she was 5 years old the gardener had caught a snake in the garden, but instead of killing it outright had nailed it to a tree with a knife, saying that it would be dead before nightfall.  She of course keeps an eye on its wriggling around, and sure enough the poor creature was dead at nightfall - how cruel....

But this is what it was like, and another story of Du.Maurier, which I will record because the telling of it was so good..

Pistol Meadow;  In the mid 18th century a transport ship of soldiers were washed up on the rocks at Lizard Point, and a couple of hundred corpses were washed ashore.  The locals found them at low tide jammed into rock crevices, tangled in seaweed, half hidden by stones and also a great quantity of firearms had washed up as well.  Just above the cove was a tiny meadow, the sort that Tangye talks about that fall down to the sea and are only good for growing daffodils.  Anyway it was here the local people dug pits for the bodies and carried them up the cliffs, but overnight a great company of wild dogs descended on the corpses and devoured them. 

This so upset the people that all their dogs were driven out of the villages for miles around and "In after months, and even years, so it was said, the Lizard people shunned the companionship of dogs".  Of course Du.Maurier visited the meadow, no wild flowers, just mounds surrounded by stumpy gorse, shaped grotesquely by the wind. I just love a truly gory story, maybe she just visited the wrong meadow. Telling this tale to LS and he suddenly says our friend down in North Hill also says that there are still wild dogs round in Cornwall - yikes...

Soon when LS has finished in the studio, we are off for a picnic at Paper Mill lock, scotch eggs are done, baked in the oven, and there is even some potato mayonnaise from last night.  We had our first English asparagus, which was delicious and a treat at this time of the year for tea last night, reminding me when as a child my grandfather always cooked asparagus (upright in the saucepan of course, so that the tips were lightly cooked) with a poached egg and a dish of melted butter...

Hyland garden

Tall spurges

Lacecaps

The witch's house

Dark spurge

A short video of the 'World' garden, with its bluestone walling from Wales.