Looking Back

 This photo above reminds me so evocatively about Cornwall, the first time we arrived at The Hurlers stone circles, the rain was beating down washed sideways by the wind and there was a mist so that the stones loomed out towards you unexpectedly.  Water and reeds and tall derelict buildings, reeds everywhere and then the yellow of gorse, probably one of the most unfriendly plants on this earth.

In the above photo you see the covered remains of the ceremonial path between two of the circles, it was called the 'Crystal Path' because of the quartz stones that were laid and in the following 1938 photo you can see the excavated path.....

English Heritage;"The monument forms one element in an extensive grouping of later Neolithic and Bronze Age ceremonial and funerary monuments on this part of Bodmin Moor, and the circles are directly aligned with some of these.The axis through the centres of the two northern circles aligns directly on the massive Rillaton Barrow, visible on the skyline to the north-east,

Rillaton barrow

 while the axis of the southern pair of circles in turn aligns directly with a prehistoric round cairn to the south-west.

Another line at right angles to this axis through the central circle takes in another stone circle, an embanked avenue and a stone row. Such circles are likely to have had considerable ritual importance for the societies that used them.

A local legend identifies The Hurlers as men who were turned to stone for playing the ancient game of hurling on a Sunday. The two isolated stones of the Pipers are said to be the figures of two men who played tunes on a Sunday and suffered the same fate."

Stowe Pound, quarried during the 18th century.

And then of course  there is the 'gorsedd' the centre of the prehistoric settlement, the tor that attracted the burials and stone circles and the settled community.  This was a settled place for the 'stone age' people they would maybe have been there for centuries, slowly building up the significance of the importance of the rocky world they  lived in, the landscape very different to what we see today.  Today the  tor shows its importance to a later time, quarrying has stripped a part of the hill away, till halted because of the settlements on Stowes Pound; going back in time to the Early Neolithic.

The land is so lived on and yet at the same time empty and bleak, that one becomes overwhelmed by its strangeness, always aware of the rock beneath your feet, the water that lies on the surface unable to percolate through the rock.  The weird engine houses so derelict and stark reminds you of a working landscape a couple of hundred years ago, there would have the noise of the engines, hammering, men shouting the coming and going of a different civilisation in the small village of Minions. You can almost see H.G.Wells The Time Machine, the relationship between the Eloi and the Morlocks, the rich and the poor in Cornwall, the masters and slaves.  Today we translate our world into a different set of options, we put people into 'classes' but the old classifications still apply those that have and those that do not.

I like Cornwall but could not live there, it has a barren nature that rubs against my soul, I cannot condone its nationalism and need to be separate from the rest of the country......

The Piper stones

King Doniert stone at St.Cleer

 "consists of two pieces of a decorated 9th century cross, located near St Cleer, Bodmin Moor, Cornwall. The inscription is believed to commemorate Dungarth, King of Cornwall who died around 875."  Wikipedia

light relief - .four inquisitive donkeys/

Saturday 9th July

The small room downstairs is now furnished

Well the move went off perfectly, LS kept a space in Flowergate with the car, and the removal men arrived with a medium sized van managed to fit in and packed everything in about half an hour.  As one of them said what a lovely place to live in, right in the middle of everything.  Funnily enough it is very quiet in the cottage, noise will only come when they (people/cars) pass the entrance gate to the yard.

'Compassion' rose has made an appearance

pale lemon, with plenty of buds

I shall be blogging about Cornwall a place we visited a couple of years ago, mostly to do with stones, a nostalgic trip but our friend in Cornwall is doing all sort of exciting digs and exposing stuff that has been hidden for many, many years.

Wednesday 7th July

Well another quiet week, though tomorrow Thursday we go to Whitby to be there in time for the removal men on Friday.  It is a sad process selling the cottage, I should be pleased that it went so smoothly, though if the phone was to ring and say that the transaction had fallen through would not be too upset. And of course with all the latest shenanigans it could have  happened.

The weather is dawning fair, as I let out the chickens into their run and the dove and jackdaws came down for their bread the garden looked as if someone was beginning to care.  Into the house to make more bread, and it is slowly rising in its bowl for it to be baked eventually.

I have made a vow to revamp the dolls house as well, as I shall have a new table soon in my workroom to put it on.  Sometimes I think I should get rid of it, but it never happens.

And today it is the time of the Chilcott Report to come out, vast and unwieldy (was that deliberate?) it stands at the base of all that has happened in the terrible fallout of the Arab nations.  I remember hearing the war planes go out from a base near us in Bath, watching the terrible bombing of Baghdad on the evening news and then hearing those planes, low and heavy come back late in the night - or was that just  fevered imagination time presses on and we are left with vague impressions.

Sure that must be called a silver edged butterfly.....

Paul's Scarlet  is starting to come out

Penstemon 'apple blossom' looking very pretty

The dig begins at Ness of Brodgar a panoramic view

And just because it is a lovely day it is wise not to forget Climate Change. high temperatures of 50 degrees in India, and the Jet Stream winding its way below the equator.........

Friday

As someone said on the radio this morning, the situation as far as politicians are concerned is just surreal, there is surely another way of governing the country without the need for self-serving politicians!  But to better things a video here,  a mechanical dragon/ horse in France, this is something totally clever and ingenious, though he has a lot of keepers to make him move.

And from terrifying dragons to a more gentle pastime, the recreated Dutch painting on the front of (link) The National Gallery, made entirely of real flowers, made in early June, to celebrate the art of Dutch flower painting.

And a less savoury reference, Heron noted yesterday that we have two blonde Beeblebubs on the world stage at the moment, well there is a third, if not a fourth, think of La Pen,  but another in the form of Geert Wilders, whose blonde hair tops Trump and Johnson,  the 'devils' are colouring their hair for goodness sake!

So I shall return to my contemplation of the small world I live in, a damp, wet world at the moment. The road gleams outside, everything green has acquired a hue that is darker and more vivid than ever. The delicate petals of the flowers hang limply, the wild cranesbill's petals are translucent, especially if the sun shines through them.  Oxeye daisies are exuberant, great banks of them, the red of the poppy trails along the verge, reminding us that it is the 100 year anniversary of the Battle of the Somme today.  Meadowsweet unfurls its feathery flowers and perfume and the birds sing as if winter is a thousand years away.  

A pale lemon lily has unfolded its petals and stands amongst the pots of the courgette plants, who seem to revel in this watery world, and the garden still needs to settle down and mature but as each rose bush unfurls its roses then the Universe becomes a better place....

cranesbill

meadowsweet

Wednesday 29th June

So hear we are, unrest in the country, our politicians not sure what heads they have on, but business amongst us all still goes on, what with a see-sawing pound and prophets of doom and gloom on all sides. My interpretation of all the events is not likely to make headline news but I note that there have two demonstrations by the people outside the House of Parliament in the last two days, one for backing Jeremy Corbyn as leader of the Labour Party and the other for the 'remain' young people to make a stand against the blight of Brexit that has been unwittingly forced upon them.  There is a (hopefully) gentle 'turning' of the people against politicians, their lies finding them out as they stand in public and deny half of the things that took us into this mess.... and weirdly there are some who voted for 'leave' now wishing they had voted for 'remain'?

First of all my camera refuses to load up to the computer, two hours later and it works!. my photos would show the crowds of people at Whitby, where we were yesterday packing up the cottage bits and pieces.  Hungry, we made our way down to the quayside for a shared small box of chips, Lucy had her share to but not the seagull that floated aimlessly in the water below us.  The day was dull and when we drove back in the afternoon, the rain settled in as it has for the last few days and will remain so.

Whenever the world starts to draw in I need to plant food against the coming storm, I look out on the lawn and wonder how much we could turn over for a vegetable plot, the hens of course would be a bit of a nuisance, but the eggs are in demand from some of our neighbours, and occasionally I wonder if there will be enough for us.  The money I receive, which they can choose to pay or not, goes towards the church.  I have courgette plants, tomato and cucumber all in pots, but the weather is a bit cold up here in Yorkshire.  There are two cold frames with lettuce in and some white sprouting for next year.

Lucy has just slammed the kitchen door for some attention, this is her trick of reminding us that life goes on in her part of the world as well, it can be a sign of petulance if she gets shut out of a room, or a need to wake us up in the middle of the night....

George Monbiot in The Ecologist - Redemptive Anger

The first two are the narrow and Victorian confines of Sherlock's coffee shop, with its dark sombre air but very good coffee.

A trip round the bay

She is very rarely in her cubby hole, the spiritualist

Something positive

There is nothing really to say, the knives are out in the political scene, we are heading for a dramatic climate change moment at sometime in the future, and yes Asterik was always a favourite of mine, I loved buying the books for my son....
 but not forgetting this from Rudyard Kipling, picked up in that scavenging manner I have;

I could not dig; I dared not rob: 
Therefore I lied to please the mob. 
Now all my lies are proved untrue 
And I must face the men I slew. 
What tale shall serve me here among 
Mine angry and defrauded young?
-Rudyard Kipling

A pretty penstemon, called 'apple blossom' I think. The large giant catmint Six Hills, jostles it but it is always alive with bees and therefore will hold its place.

Trying to catch the bees

Saturday; recording on 25th June

Another glorious morning, Lucy and I lingered on our walk through the fields, tall grasses covering Lucy as she stuck doggedly to my heel.  I picked elderflower to make a tea with, and we wandered through a magical world of grasses.  Small white moths, dark ones to flitted around and then a jewel alighted in front of me, the beautiful azure colour of a damsel fly.  No camera you will just have to imagine it in the mind's eye.  This is something I miss, damsel flies and dragon flies, though we live by a river, but I think the large overhanging trees shades its water from insects.  I also miss early in spring the annual emergence of frogs as they made their way to the pond and the little lizard like newt, something missing in this village I think, although once there were, presumably, medieval fish ponds in the fields behind the garden.

I look over the road to the field on the other side of Nigel, think years ago it was the old cricket field, and wonder if it is possible to buy it and create a small nature reserve.  Most small fields round here are covered with living lawn mowers, ie sheep, but this one has the tall grasses that once made up the old meadow lands, it must belong to someone.

Another thing I have noticed, I am not particularly good with names of trees but there are quite a few Ash trees around. Odin's tree, the mythical Yggrdrasil Tree and they have the magical nine leaves on either side of the twigs.

When Odin hung, speared, for nine days on the World Tree, he uttered the words that he had ‘sacrificed himself onto himself’. This stanza gives us a description of the unity existing between the Godhead and the Tree in the myths. To emphasis this connection, we find in old English the word treow, which means both tree and truth. Etymologically, then, truth and tree grow out of the same root. Subsequently, in the Norse creation myth, man and woman originated from trees. We are all the sons and daughters of the Ash and Elm tree: the first man was called Ask, born from the Ash, and the first woman Embla, born from the Elm. Their oxygen offers us the primordial conditions for life. Ask and Embla sprouted from Yggdrasil’s acorns, and so it is that every human being springs from the fruit of Yggdrasil, then to be collected by two storks ,who bring them to their longing mothers-to-be. In Scandinavian folklore, they say that children are born through the knot holes in the trunks of pine trees, which is another version of the same myth.  Taken from here

And another thing to note, I picked my first sprig of meadowsweet, it lay on the tarmac looking rather forlorn and the Himalayan Balsam is just starting to flower.

Post Referendum

And so we have decided, the future awaits, the  adventure begins! LS has been up all night watching the TV and is now in a deep sleep in his armchair.  Honeysuckle in the hedgerows along with wild roses, the world is alive with beauty and takes little notice of the human world and all its contradictions.... Yorkshire was literally balanced on the edge of the cusp 51.9% leave 48.1% remain, so close, a country of two halves and the Prime Minister has just resigned.  I voted 'remain' but seemingly there were more people for out, let it be on their own heads if something catastrophic happens.....

We did quite a bit of walking yesterday, first around the fields, secondly to our polling station at Marton and then wandered round the village admiring the neat flower  borders to the cottages and then on to the trees down the forestry track.

I tried looking for a quote of John Ruskin in which he says the ways of the leaves on a  trees leave us a lot to learn, as they make way for each other in a particularly graceful way, let us hope that a country split down the middle can do this as well.

Edit; One thing seems clear after the end result, people over a certain age should not have been allowed to vote, cruel I know but it was not their future world, the young should have taken their future and voted for it, isolationism does not work.  

Trees reaching up to the light

"When you enter a grove peopled with ancient trees, higher than the ordinary, and shutting out the sky with their thickly inter-twined branches, do not the stately shadows of the wood, the stillness of the place, and the awful gloom of this doomed cavern then strike you with the presence of a deity?"

-   Seneca  

"And see the peaceful trees extend

their myriad leaves in leisured dance—

they bear the weight of sky and cloud

upon the fountain of their veins."-   Kathleen Raine, Envoi 

Different ecology on rocks this little yellow flower

cannot resist the grace of honeysuckle

   

Thursday 23rd June

Well forgetting about the excitement  of today's voting, great adventure either way!  Last night I picked up a book  and settled down to pick my way through it.  Written in 1964 the writers slowly gave a blow by blow account of the course of this Roman road, notice there is no hesitation in saying that it was Roman and not Saxon as some would have it today.  The road has been cleaned or excavated at various spots you would not see this chalky white colour today......

under it's covering of turf

There are two cists on the road, must have been added after it was built, so probably makes them Iron Age, they abut the kerb stones.  Apparently there is another stone cairn as well, but this was the burial place of Satyr the dog in the 19th century,  for there is an inscribed stone to him.  When I get my car, there will be a certain amount of exploration I will do, one is to go to Old Mother's Well you can read all about it here in this descriptive blog on wordpress.

Tuesday 21st - the moon was not strawberry coloured last night though.

An early walk.  The weather is gentle, no wind, slightly cloudy sky and warm.  We go our usual walk, over the bridge, opening the five bar gate into the field. Up onto the bank, past the empty farm, though to be fair someone does still live there.  The soundscape of bird song stops me for a moment and as we walk on the three notes of the curlew followed by those lyrical bubbling notes that echoes the river's voice.  The curlew on the moors is the voice of Yorkshire for me, these curlews must be nesting in a field somewhere.  White tails of the young rabbits bob everywhere, someone said that they could only count three in my photo but rest assured they are everywhere, a couple of dozen.

The wild grasses are so long and very beautiful in their own right, still wet from the rain yesterday, as we go through the second gate I see Allison dog-walking her charges.  She must have 8 dogs, two collies vibrant with life are off their leads and come bounding towards us, but skitter aside plunging into the long grass, Lucy takes no notice she is not interested in other dogs.

Not sure what today will bring, coming back I take photos of what is happening in the garden, I bought a mallow (malva) plant on Sunday along with a red lobelia,  W.Robinson says of this plant "of these there are few pretty garden plants, the majority are coarse and weedy" but of course mentions the wild marshmallow which is pretty at this time of year.

I think this is the form M.Crispa, see how the leaves curl.

Bee loving plant 6 Hill Giant cat mint, not a bee in sight but a good dozen when I looked! Behind is the penstemon 'Apple blossom just waiting to appear

Nasturtiums starting to appear

the roses unfold

A white one appears

Monday 20th June

Two things of note today, the first is eating flowers and making one's salad pretty.  Now to me a few flowers thrown onto the salad looks a bit naff, but apparently according to Sarah Raven they have plenty of vitamins, etc, so try it one day when you want to impress your visitors.  

The second thing is I came across Scott and Helen Nearing on Youtube, a 'back to the earth' couple many years ago, who lived in Vermont.  I used to have their two books, Scott as he grew very old decided to end his life by starving himself to death, which he did.  They lived that basic life which they both loved and I noticed Helen knitted a lot of the time, something we share.  Helen also built a wall round her vegetable garden to keep out the rabbits, and as I watched the videos the walled garden was there, though now tended by others who presumably run the Nearing Center.  Their house looks very Swiss, but no animals of course as Helen was a vegetarian.