Legend has it when the sun beams come, all the plants, they eat ‘em with their leaves

Tomatoes, crows and magpies.

There’s the smell of the tomatoes, and the plopping sound of unripe green ones hitting the floor. Tomatoes are perennial plants, intended for warmer climes. They don’t understand the onset of winter. They grow their hard little fruits not knowing they will never ripen, and these rain upon the floor as I rip the plants from the ground. Then there’s a popping sound, the sound of unripe tomatoes being stepped upon as I stagger out with as much vegetation as I can hold.

The problem with being offline physically and mentally at the end of summer is when you come round you are left with exactly three reasonably sunny days in October to pack up the garden for winter. I do my best to find ways to enjoy the task since I must do it anyway; smell of the tomatoes, the way the stems turn your hands yellow, and I time the birds singing outside. Once I’m done, I take time to enjoy the sensation of having done the task, because normally I  focus on all the things I haven’t done, and feel overwhelmed instead of pleased.

I’m not going to do anymore today. It is wrong to think you can win at to do lists. To do lists are a many headed hydra. You cut off one task and five others grow. There are more jobs to do but I have made sure to write the real and important things on the list so I don’t forget to live my life.  When I do the chores I try and give them my attention instead of switching off, and then I move on to my more important work, like wandering along the back fields seeing what the crows are up to.

The flock is even larger this week, and there are magpies in it, so it’s actually research for my new print. I can hear the jackdaws, who sound distinct from the crows, but the rooks are trickier. Rooks sound like a child’s stuffed crow toy, the type you squeeze to make a crow sound. Rooks sounds like a quieter lo-fi crow. A gang of black birds picks over the bare ploughed field, and some others hang about on the playing fields gossiping. More are hiding in the sweetcorn, but the maize is so high you can’t see what they’re up to, and even if you could you couldn’t understand it. Crow business is abstruse.

They fly away as I approach, some of them the most direct route, as the saying leads you to believe all crows prefer, but some of the swoop and swerve with the sheer joy of flight, mocking my stupid gravitationally bound feet. I walk on through the corn in search of moss and fungi in the woods.  More research. Those magpies need something to perch on, after all.

Workings

As with the garden, so with the printing. Before the fun stuff can begin there is maintenance to be done. I have to work out how best to use a new brand of photosensitive diazo to make my silkscreens because my usual brand has become prohibitively expensive. It’s a pain so set up, and tedious, so I won’t describe the process, but it works now so there will be a return of some cards and small prints to the shop soon.

I got this whetstone with grooves in for sharpening gouges but I don’t really rate it. None of the hollows are exactly the right size so you still have to rock the gouge from side to side to sharpen the whole edge, so you might as well do that on a regular flat whetstone.

And I sharpened my tools. Really sharp tools make a big difference, and I mean sharpened on a stone. Instagram suggests honing the blade on a slipstrop is sharpening it; honing is great, and means the sharp edge will  stay sharp longer, but there’s no sense honing a dull blade. This is probably very dull if you are not into lino or wood cut, but if you are then you should probably learn about it instead of believing whatever you see on instagram.

I also nearly finished carving this guy, and completed another magpie drawing. I transferred this second picture to lino, but decided that a flying magpie doesnt really fit into the image I have in mind. I love the flying magpie though. For a while I am stuck in a loop of not being able to progress because I am unwilling to sacrifice the flying magpie, which means I can’t complete the drawing because doesn’t work. In the end I decided to make the flying magpie his own print, and get to work drawing a third magpie who will sit politely on a branch and not mess up the aesthetics by being airborne.

Realising what was bothering me about the design and fixing it means I can finally feel excitement to be working- even though it does mean I am now working on too many prints and I’m unwilling to put any of them on the back burner. My fingers are in all the pies, it’s effecting my mobility.

Findings

I carve and think about magpies, I listen to The Light Eaters, by Zoë Schlanger . I was drawn to this book in several bookshops because of the title but also the cover, which isn’t meant to affect your judgement but I love carnivorous plants, so it does. Neither of the bookshops had the book in stock, though, despite having the poster. Plants live so differently to us that we write them off as inert things, furniture, but they are alive and responsive to the world in ways we cannot comprehend. This book leads to more questions than it has answers, because plants are mysterious. It works well with Ed Wongs An Immense World to shake us out of thinking our limited human perceptions are the only or best way to experience life. I’ve not finished it yet but I still recommend it.