Summertime, and the living is easy

(Unless you are very talented at making things difficult for yourself)

It is bluebell season here in southern England, so here is you obligatory picture of a woodland floor

Things change fast this time of year. In the space of a week, the whole view changes; the swallows finally return, and the crab apple blossom, intensely pink against the dark burgundy of the leaves, so pleasing, is all blown away in the wind. Funny how after all those storms it was just a windy day that brought down a tree. I’m pretty sure it’s just a bog standard pussy/goat willow but feel sure it ought to be a crack willow because it’s split clean down the middle. It is one of the less important trees in the garden, but any loss is a sad thing (assuming the still standing half dies, I guess). Plumes of seeds would drift past like smoke in the autumn, and little willow seedlings pop up in any patch of bare earth left untended, so I doubt the garden will be willowless for long. It was a big tree though, old, and looking at it now, quite rotten. It’ll be a while before there’s another willow sturdy enough to tie the slack line to.

The weather improves, and I feel the urge to start tending the garden, though whenever I do I am quickly overwhelmed by how much there is to do; as I said, things grow quickly this time of year and every time I go out the weeds have increased tenfold. As I work I gradually pay attention to a familiar chattering, a lengthy conversation song that while familiar, I realise, I havent heard for a while- the blackcaps have returned. One swallow does not a summer make, but several swallows and some blackcaps? I think we’re doing quite well.

This is not the crab apple which was spectacular, but the regular pink and white apple blossom is a joy too, and the apples taste nicer.

I think it’s still a little cold to put tender plants in the greenhouse overnight, so my home is overrun with tomatoes, and even the houseplants are starting to want watering every five minutes as they start to grow again. There are too many plants, so I do the only sensible thing; I go to the garden centre and get some new seed trays, and two new houseplants*

Workings

Since I mistakenly thought I could get the plants under control if I took a few days to focus on them, I haven’t done much printing this week, and my practice has been mostly sketchbooking.

On a recent walk on the ridgeway, I happened upon a hare so close that I could take a picture using my geriatric iPhone. This is fairly unusual as hares are either very far away and in a field approximately the colour of a hare well beyond the scope my best zoom lens, or moving quite fast and not inclined to stop for pictures.

We were walking along a small country lane and there were unusual worn gaps, smaller than human but quite big, through the hedge on either side of the road periodically- the hare popped out of one, crossed the road, and through the gap in the hedge on the other side. I was transfixed with joy at the discovery of hare passages over the road, and more so to watch her (I’m assuming, because she looked quite pregnant) so long. She looked spectacular through binoculars, really beautiful russet coloured in full Technicolor detail.

When I got home, jubilant at my genuinely terrible reference shot,  I realised, even more excitingly, that it was a Live Photo, a tiny video of a hare lolloping along which gave me a good opportunity to study the movement in detail. I’m not working a hare themed print specifically at the moment having just finished one, but I have two modes of operation; I either do something immediately, or mean to do it the rest of my natural life, and it’s a useful study for next time I need to draw a hare.

I also drew some blackbirds, because I think it’s high time there was a blackbird print in the shop, to be honest. I’ll probably mean to get round that for the rest of my natural life.

Findings.

I bought Hana Videen’s excellent Word Hoard for my husband some christmasses back, which explores anglo Saxon words still found in our present English language. English is a Germanic language, but was also were heavily influenced by the Norman French, and later the central French dialect spoken by the Plantagenets (please note, Richard the lionheart didn’t speak English, please use this knowledge to annoy nationalists) and a bit of Latin. Our most common every day words, however, are still largely Anglo-Saxon in origin. Sometimes we kept both the French word(s) and the Anglo Saxon word- that’s why so there’s so many words that mean almost the same thing, and sometimes two ways construct a sentence, one derived from Anglo Saxon, one from French. It’s fascinating, to me anyway, because we don’t even know properly what people sounded like because, well, language has changed so much over time, and there haven’t been recording devices throughout most of that. What I’m basically saying is don’t ever say you like ‘the British accent’ to people like me, and I’ve been spending far too long on Simon Ropers YouTube channel (I attended every wicker man burning Beltane at Butser except the last couple so I’m very probably shouting in the crowd at the end of that video)

*the garden centre has these cheap little baby houseplants, I enjoy watching them grow and if the don’t.. it’s only a couple of quid.