It confuses me when people don’t think I work because I spent all morning printing mushrooms and having a generally terrible time. Recently I got my first three star review because the ‘the paper as a bit thin’; it really wasn’t, it was Daler heavyweight cartridge exactly as I had described in the description she probably hadn’t read, but anyway, I dread to think when she’d think of the tissue papers I’m currently working with. The Japanese washi are incredibly strong despite their thinness, and in the end, I found I cannot happily print the detail in the mushroom on the 300gsm Somerset I usually use; the details come out fuzzy, and disappointing. The ink is very sticky, and I think it’s enough to keep a thin paper firmly in place, but not the thicker one. In the end I got a delivery of hosho paper from handprinted, which worked perfectly.
The same mushroom print won the handprinted collective challenge for the month so I got a prize in with my paper, which I meant to photograph, but didn’t.
It confuses me when people say that I don’t work because it’s lilac season and I have to go out and make the most of it, it doesn’t last long. When I moved here, I felt a little disappointed that the lilacs are white (the clue is in the name, after all) because the white lilac is the whitest of all, and seems to glow slightly in the twilight. It’s best viewed, and smelt, in the evening, under full moon. There’s one bush in the front garden, and one in the back, so the whole garden is perfumed.
There’s the lilac, and the swallows that wheeling, and another shape, larger, more commanding, banking to the left, a mastering wind. It takes my brain a second longer to recognise the kestrel, because the colour is slightly wrong; I am used to the male kestrel who lives near the garden all year long, and this is the female.
She reminds me that I need to go to the kestrel tree, an oak, now coming into full leaf. I stand in silence until I hear a chorus of tiny cheeps in response. Satisfied that the brood is going well, it meander along the lane to check on the cow parsley, which attracts the insects, which attracts the bats, who I will check on at dusk tomorrow, after smelling the lilac under a full moon.
See? I am really rather busy. I note with satisfaction that although the college have mown the verge a little to stop the path getting overgrown, most of the cow parsley is intact. After this I need to check for froglets at the pond- April has been so cold I think their development is delayed; the rescued tadpoles in my own pond do not have legs yet, just little frog eyes starting to protrude. After this, I check on the house martins at the college, who have reinforced the old nests that cling to the side of the dorms. In April, I often see swallows and martins flying around the college, and again in September, but now the only place I see swallows are in the stables opposite my house. I sometimes wonder if the house martins and swallows travel together, before nesting in separate places. I like to imagine so, but I can’t prove it.
I could see how someone seeing me wandering around might think I have nothing better to do, and they are right. I have worse things to do; listing the prints, housework, mulching the flowerbeds, making dinner; but what can be better than my important checks on the burgeoning summer? What is better than walking through the ploughed up field and noting that that turnips, all eaten by sheep, have been replaced with sweetcorn?
Last year I took my son to a maize maze and he refused to pay the (extortionate) entrance fee. I mean, why would you when Bill will let you play in the fields for free, and steal fat cobs the squeak then you pull them off? A field of sweetcorn is a good development.
And so I meander past the donkey field, over the overpass, and back home, where I photograph some astronomical hares to put on Etsy. Now I must go; that hammock isn’t going to lie in itself. Enjoy the rest of your weekend!
I enjoyed reading so much. The title of this post is shared with an album I have been listening to - folk songs of the 60s and 70s, so evocative of this time of year…. All the sightings and wonders you describe are but fleeting so important work is done in their recording.