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high points

Posted jane -->on 20th Sep 2021

the first is that I drove in a city for the first time in years – and having upgraded my car I could reach Glasgow with no worries about the battery. living here in Fife, both Glasgow and Edinburgh are within easy reach, and there was an exhibition I wanted to see. the motorway takes you right into the middle of the city, with scary right-handed slip roads (I remember those from Newcastle) and the Annan Gallery is on a road very close to one of those slip roads, so actually it was quick and easy. it would have been quicker without the road works that shuts off lanes on the motorway and the side roads, but I was not in any hurry.

I wanted to see these luminous paintings by Alison McWhirter. she is a New Scottish Colourist, a native, although she went to Bath Spa Academy, which funnily enough is the more recent name and location of the art school I went to, all those years ago (late 60’s, early 70’s) it was in Corsham and was Bath Academy of Art.

the way she handles colour is superb and an inspiration.

then I went to the Glasgow Women’s Library for something completely different, but equally inspiring. it is the only Accredited Museum in the UK dedicated to women’s lives, histories and achievements, with a lending library, archive collections and innovative programmes of public events & learning opportunities. the exhibition, Life Support, distributed around the building, was about art and activism, with displays of posters and photos about socially deprived concerns like housing in New York and Glasgow.

I was surprised to find that it was only established in 1991, in a shop front. in 2015, it moved to more suitable premises in Landressy Street in Bridgeton, the former site of Bridgeton Library, which was a B listed Carnegie Library built in 1903, which makes it feel like a Victorian institution.

there were several photos of these full size figures, layered sculptures by Greer Lankton – a key figure in the 1980s New York art scene, Lankton used her dolls’ unique trials and tribulations to create an entire universe of fantasy and discord. there isn’t room to go into all of it here, but if you are interested here’s a link

another time I will visit the library and spend a lot more time there.

meanwhile this painting has just gone on and on, from this

which I liked bits of, but then I started

wanting something more subtle

this is a smaller painting

and this a postcard sized one on paper

and another, and they got me wanting the whole thing to be more like them

so this happened

close-ups

of beach plastics

picked up on West Sands

and a lot of postcards

so then I was really unhappy about the big painting and did a few things to it which added layers but didn’t make it work.

some bits worked

I couldn’t get this sort of thing working on that scale

I looked at Joan Mitchell

and Idris Murphy, and wished I was them …

yesterday I put a whole lot of white on the top half, and then worked into it

while more at the bottom was working nicely

with thin glazes into the yellow (the stubble field colour)

but today after two more glazes scumbled on and partly wiped off

which I had been looking at in an old painting of mine at my daughter’s. and here’s another bit of beach plastic …

I like what’s going on and am ready to call a halt

there’s a sort of glow in the pinky layers

which I am pleased with

Towering, 100 x 100 cm

a painting by Chuta Kimura which uses layering and equally well represents the late summer light and stubble fields.

anyway, the other high point was yesterday, a more literal one, when we walked up to the top of Normans Law, the most easterly of the Ochills, crowned with an iron age fort and marvellous views.

West Lomond lowering to the South East,

across to more Ochills, and the Cairngorms, you can see summits eleven hundred metres above sea level, and seventy kilometers distant, all listed on a plaque with the direction.

the Tay

and all the little hills round about.

some steep slopes to get up there

and down again

but not a long walk, and very near Cupar. in fact walking from Dairsie today, I caught a glimpse of its heather and lichen brown hump. a real treat, we had been planning this walk for about six months.

 

 

 

more walking and painting and prairie gardening

Posted jane -->on 22nd Apr 2021

on Saturday mornings I drive to Bowhouse near St Monan’s to pick up a local veg and other foodstuffs order, so I have been looking for walks nearby. last week’s was one of those. this week I did a circuit of part of the coastal path and inland around the Balcaskie estate.

first along the coastal path above those rocky beaches with all their geology laid out

and the sloping cliffs covered in gorse with linnets singing in the sunshine on the top twigs

I think the footpath may follow a raised beach, where the land has been rising through the Holocene, due to the release of pressure from the weight of ice sheets.

and a clump of alexanders, so familiar in Norfolk, which knocked me back as I haven’t noticed it anywhere else here yet, this spring. it looked like the frosts has browned it off a bit.

the hedgerow plants really have not got going yet inland, though I did see a stand of jack-in-the-hedge at Kemback on Sunday.

Pittenweem and St Monan’s both have sea-filled swimming pools cut out of the rocky foreshore. all year round swimming has really become a thing over the last year, everyone seems to be doing it.

the pretty little East Neuk (Neuk being the Scottish for nook, or corner) fishing harbours all look a bit the same. this is St Monan’s. I avoided the Pittenweem one because of the steep steps down to it which my knee finds difficult at the moment. it is the most active commercially apparently, a small number of boats remain, nowadays mainly fishing for shellfish. several fish vans from Pittenweem deliver inland, blasting their horns as they roll up – one outside this house – but their fish will be coming from a central market I’d guess.

from St Monan’s there’s a not very exciting stretch along the road to Abercrombie and then across a couple of fields to the ruined church. Abercrombie, recorded in 1157-60 as Abercrumbin, means ‘mouth of the river Crombie’. The first element is the Pictish word aber ‘river mouth’. Crombie is a stream-name derived from the Gaelic word crombadh ‘bending, winding’.

with old gravestones to read and ponder over. a new plaque in the wall celebrates the lives of Tom and Ingrid Pevsner, he born in Dresden in 1926 … what story lies behind that I wonder. I completely missed five sculptured stones, showing Celtic ornament, in the walls, mention found online.

so why was this medieval church abandoned and allowed to fall into ruin, some time in the seventeenth century? something to do with the presbyterian movement? the graveyard is still consecrated, presumably, as it has more recent memorials, including the Pevsners.

walking on round the estate in the marvellous sunshine

over a formal bridge

past redpoll cattle with two young calves

and the very restrained house, no mad gothic stuff there …

the madness reserved for the lime trees, all pruned of their whiskers and skirts

and two clumps of snakeshead fritillaries rather isolated along the verge.

the button-push gates and the lodge with its matching doocots (dovecote in Scottish)

are quite fancy. from the right hand doocot you can just see Kelly Castle, under Kelly Law, another walk I must do.

I am taking my four winds sketch books on all my walks, I just started the sixth one.

very quick drawings, done on varied papers, some already drawn on, or patterned, bring a life and intensity to painting.

I also have a new tool, a brush pen, designed for calligraphic writing, specifically Japanese and Chinese scripts. it brings a broader more intuitive attitude.

the new book has some different papers

from envelopes (a Mina Perhonen invite card envelope, which is an art object in itself) and birthday present wrapping.

it already has some hints inserted

the first one only took me a few days to get through, but now it’s a couple of weeks. they are thicker, though, more signatures (book-binding term for the packets of folded paper in sections that form a book) sewn in.

meanwhile the new painting has been taking shape, a lot of green brush-drawing

then a coat of translucent yellows,

and something else started to happen, which will have to wait for the next blog

meanwhile ALL my little prairie plants are outside in the growshed, wrapped in wool liners to keep the night cold (and frost) off.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

the hills around my town

Posted jane -->on 22nd Feb 2021

I forgot to say that the week before last I had my first Covid “jag” as they call it in Scotland. the Pfizer one. so pleased I didn’t feel slowed down by it in any way. it’s like a miracle. just shows what science can do if it’s given enough money. think of all the misery we could stop if governments and corporations really wanted to.

really I am feeling ten years younger after spending three months or so with younger people, who get up early, have a smallish breakfast and get out for a short walk, walking fast and up hills and then at weekends six mile walks with more hills, fast … I have lost inches around hips and waist and can move on up a proper Scottish hill in a reasonable manner. as in the path in the photo above.

I thought I was doing plenty of walking before, but there really are not any proper hills in Norfolk. from the top of Kemback you can see two big hills, East and West Lomond, still patched with snow on Friday. I have been to the top of West Lomond, about five years ago, but I had to stop and start, could not keep up with Lucy, some sort of breathing problem, I am not sure quite what it was, I used to get it a lot. it was a very cold day too.

at Kemback the woods are full of bluebell shoots, exposed by the deer I think

such gorgeous sweeping steep woods.

 

this is a view from my house. I have not walked quite up that hill, as it has sheep on it, but my usual morning walk takes me up to about that height.

on a rainy day this week, I walked up the usual hill then left into Owlet wood, taking a new little fourwinds book with lots of inserts sewn in, as a notebook

this is from India Flint’s online workshop

making these is an ideal way to keep up a practice which I have let drop, of making notes on walks,

since I stopped being able to take part in Jonathan Ward’s Writing Outside workshops, due to Covid restrictions

I took a red crayon and scribbled in the rain.

yesterday we walked up that. it is a short but quite hard walk, even Lucy found it quite tough. of course Scott was running about in front of us, making Bims want to run too.

it is the Hill of Tarvit, and it’s 211 metres above sea-level with tremendous views in every direction

you can just see the sea this way …. it was very windy up there.

down in the beautiful woods that surround Tarvit house there were spring flowers – crocus

and masses of snowdrops. I am waiting to hear when I can collect snowdrops from Cambo Gardens to plant in my garden.

snowdrops in the family mausoleum

with a very very sad plaque for Little Jim, who died at eleven months and ten days old.

starting a new fourwinds ( see @prophet_of_bloom ) notebook with a list of all the hills visible from the top of the Ceres Moor path, or rather from the higher place in the cut down wood that is the remnant of the Moor itself that isn’t under cultivation.

Letham. Lindifferon. Kilmaron. Kingask. Foodie. Craigfoodie. Myrcairnie. Torr of Moonzie. Kedlock. Colluthie.

Hoping that Scottish placenames on the OS map are less anglicised than Irish placenames. but there’s a website where you can look them up. Foodie, the translation is ‘Place of peats or divots’. Moonzie, formerly *Auchtermoonzie, is the name of the settlement near which the Moonzie Burn rises, and of the parish through which it flows for the first 1.5 km of its course. It is probable that the settlement-name derives from uachdar qualified by the burn-name Moonzie, ‘the upland of the Moonzie (Burn). I love all this – Assuming that Moonzie is in origin a hydronym, it may be related to moineiseach ‘low, inactive, diffident’ (a by-form of mainneiseach ‘slow, sluggish’, an adjective from mainne ‘delay, sluggishness’, according to Dwelly). This is apt enough for the Moonzie Burn, which is slow-flowing for much of its course, dropping only c.7 m in its first 3 km. There is a Moineiseach Burn in the Don catchment area. Alternatively, and equally aptly (see next paragraph), it may be related to  mòine ‘moss, bog’, with –es-extension. It could also be argued that the development of the stressed vowel in Moonzie is more likely to derive from mòine (cf Balnamoon, Menmuir ANG, for baile na mòine/mòna).

Birds listed, seen and heard this morning. a song thrush on the hill up to the Moor, a mistle thrush in Ceres, several larks, and two yellowhammers.

also thinking about Tim Robinson a lot ( noted Irish landscape writer and cartographer who so sadly died at the beginning of last April from the novel coronavirus) and the connections between place names and going really deep into landscape.

this is what my new studio practice will be about

here’s a stash of paints that arrived last week. some are expensive and some are inexpensive. but all are lush and exciting.

new canvases stacked up indoors

and in the studio, which has had the electricians in to put up a couple of good “daylight” lights and rather a lot of sockets.

now it’s just a matter of waiting for a couple of coats of white emulsion and some strong arms and backs to push the various plan chest/heavy kitchen dresser/ trestle tables around so there’s room to paint. I’ve also got a four foot by six foot shed coming to keep all my boxes of pots and old paintings in.

footnote

Kemback – G ceann + G bac

‘End of the bac’, which can mean ‘hindrance; bend in the ground’, from Middle Irish bacc ‘angle, bend; corner, especially of a field, used as a shelter for horses or cattle’. It can also mean ‘hollow or bend’, especially on the body (Angus Watson 2001). The element is not discussed in Watson 1926, but twenty years earlier he translates Bac nan Cisteachan in Applecross parish ROS ‘ridge of the chests’ (1904, 217). This word is not to be confused with the loan-word bac from Old Norse bakki ‘bank’, meaning ‘moss, peat-bog’. This is the first element in the Gairloch place-name Bac an Leith-Choin, which Watson translates ‘moss of the lurcher’ (1904, 228).

 

 

 

 

snow and painting on the kitchen table

Posted jane -->on 22nd Feb 2021

the weather got  even colder and we had a night of minus sixteen Centigrade which is almost a record. never was I so thankful for an insulated house and a new boiler.

the view from my window is really not bad, and the snow reduces it to black and white –

makes me want to draw it. I like the simple shapes of the buildings too.

then I have started another little book making – folding and stitching – course with India Flint and so something had to be done with this

the cutting up of the image by folding into book pages improves things radically

though strangely the paintings I did after that were not monochrome. I guess I am just a colour addict.

I decided it was the colours under the snow I was after.

or the colours yet to come

Beech wood between conifers/redwings/ holly – there were redwings in the field at Tarvit Farm where there are horses and the old haha barrier into the garden.

the snow took some time to melt, with the very low temperatures and more snow showers

walking felt restricted, up here there were drifts even when the rest of the snow had gone

and in Owlet wood.

I ordered a book of 101 paintings by Henry Ward ( Shed Paintings @henzward ) documenting the 101 paintings made in his shed during the first 6 months of lockdown in 2020. they are all painted with acrylic on paper. this decided me to get my acrylics out and stop being chicken. I have a huge roll of decent but not fancy Fabriano paper, so I took some of that and had a go.

the great thing is that unlike with watercolour and gouache, you can layer and layer and it doesn’t kill it.

and if you don’t like it you can turn it into this

more window gazing

the roof shapes and the tree! so Japanese somehow … this from my kitchen window ..

I was much more pleased with this than with the rather sentimental looking landscape above.

I must go back to these ideas

meanwhile the view from the front is really quite astonishing

Bimba likes it too. and at about this week I advanced the levels of civilisation in the house by connecting up the audio system. I can play records and CDs!

 

 

 

 

January walks in Fife

Posted jane -->on 31st Jan 2021

the weather seems to have been a bit colder than I was anticipating, the pavements have been lethal at times. most nights have been around or below freezing. obviously I have forgotten what winter should be like.

up the steep path to Ceres Moor there is a point where the snow is always heavier,

and the path to Ceres, which is well trodden, over the top has icy compressed snow and puddles that are hard to avoid.

the hills around are beautiful with their white coverings, sometimes you can see the Cairngorms.

trees and snow are studies in monochrome

the trees draw lines with their branches and trunks

that are irresistible to me

I have to try drawing with black paint on white cartridge paper

I have to learn to hold back, not do too much, but be bold with the gestures.

there’s never been enough snow to stop everything, just enough to make pedestrians feel insecure. and enough cold to make my secondhand electric car, a Nissan leaf, use more battery for short trips than I would like.

this steep lane to a farm up on the hill where a loop path from Cupar to Ceres takes you higher was an inconveniance to cars as well. luckily for a walker there are wide enough grassy verges.

then we have a few days when the snow disappears from all but the most sheltered spots.

on one of those I spotted this kingfisher, in Cupar itself. the river Eden runs through, like a rushing coldwater tiger, but these backwater pools are the remnants of a mill leat. in the river itself there are otters, a friend saw four yesterday, I think a mother and cubs, the youngsters whistling and tumbling off the bank. There are dippers and herons too.

last Sunday we walked out of the town along the river bank. the river was rushing along as usual, and the ground was frozen hard, ruts full of inch thick ice. we took the path where it gets very close to the water, and the land closes in to make a shallow gorge.

there had been a hoar frost, even the snow had fractal crystals on it.

we had to avoid some very slippery paths and some iced over floods

and clamber about between withered stems of reed and rosebay, amongst these crystalline gardens and under huge alder trees hoary with frost. it’s a beautiful place, and the river noisy, greedy, charging past.

eventually we climbed back up into sunshine and great tit song and green fields and golf course, to walk back into Cupar.

I’ve been taking Bims to Tentsmuir, except when the black ice is bad and the car park too dangerous and they close it.

this was ice on the beach itself, quite slippery.

the weather has been very calm and the waves tiny, which must be what causes these ripples in the sand, with broken shell like ice crystals lodged in between.

pink foot geese are as much a thing here as in Norfolk, they fly over us here in Cupar on their way from or to fields to or from roosts on the Tay estuary.

here is the Cupar heron, a very scruffy bird, under South Bridge in the middle of town.

Looking for kingfishers, another bird inspired painting.

 

 

moving in

Posted jane -->on 31st Jan 2021

on the 5th of January my worldly possessions arrived in Scotland. it was a day of thick black ice everywhere, pavements and the cul de sac road impossible to walk on. I can still see the fibres stuck to the pavement where the removal guys put their blankets down. so then my house was a chaos of boxes, furniture, bed in pieces, the usual. Luckily for me I am in an extended household with my daughter and her husband, so having spent another night with them, we arrived at the house in the early evening the next day and a lot was unpacked, the bed put together (but where were those special bolts? – never turned up)

the view yesterday morning from my kitchen window.

At the same time I was trying to get the studio sorted out (also chaos and desolation, especially as a full pot of acrylic gesso fell down in the lorry and broke open) and the joiner has turned out to be very slow and not exactly perfection when it comes to laminate floors. so I have gaps around the edges in the bathroom, hall and back bedroom, and he has to redo them and take the skirtings off in the process, but not until lockdown is over and I’ve been vaccinated – which could be months.

very very slowly order is being reimposed. the wonderful thing is that I have these big blank walls to hang big paintings on. the studio now has to have the electrics redone (it was the garage) and then a couple of coats of white emulsion over the OSB board it’s been lined with (over kingspan insulation on floor, ceiling and walls) so a lot of paintings are indoors or in a garden shed, as there had to be space to work in there, though luckily the joiner and his mates got the walls, ceiling and floor done before everything arrived, though not the front wall completed. the garage door is still lying in the drive, too big for the skip.

having the paintings indoors has given me the opportunity to reassess, in one case quickly splotch a few brushfuls of paint on – and that may happen to others.

I made an unexpected discovery – the intense deep blue walls in my kitchen enhance this large oil painting, painted I think a couple of years ago. and the painting enhances the kitchen, makes it a conversational space – my long table is underneath it, so I have a dining area with a bit more dignity to it.

I’ve hung this painting in the front bedroom, opposite another big oil abstract, which was

started in 2003 but finished about the same year as big blue. it’s the first one I put up, it’s a natural for a bedroom, sunny and light. lots of texture and craquelure, and thick paint pushed about, then a top coat partly rubbed off, of very runny Swedish linseed oil outdoor house paint, which gives it some almost watercolour-ish runs of barley-coloured paint.

this is the huge painting I did for Cley 2018, and I have ordered a low storage unit from Ikea to go below it so that there is room for it to hang. the pigeon-hole shelves came out of my old studio, but there may not be room for them in the new one. a lot of things are still not sorted out in the living room, the audio equipment for one thing!

this diptych is a good example of how different things look when you bring them into a new space. I had not thought of putting these two paintings together, but I need big pieces in this room, and they speak to each other.

Idris Murphy, one of my favourite Australian landscape artists, talks about the effect of a 5th edge in a diptych, the division between the two sections. it’s very interesting.

so I ordered a frame, the widest I could get, luckily the painting is exactly the right size, four feet wide.

this one is just slightly smaller – “The path holds tokens of waking” 120 x 75 cm – and although the two paintings started off separate, they came together early on into a diptych. It hung in my studio, but really not a great setting. put here, it’s wonderful, it springs to life!

then this part of the wall, next to the bay window, has become somewhere to photograph smaller paintings

the light is very good and the pale grey walls show off paintings very well

I like this one best

in the hall, which is the same grey, I’ve made a monochrome arrangement.

the smaller bedroom is a reading room, with an Ikea version of a traditional Swedish farmhouse sofa bed. I love this green so much I am going to paint the rest of the woodwork with it. but probably not until the flooring has been sorted out.the painting I think still needs some work, but I definitely like it there. Of course, technically all these paintings are for sale. it would be nice to sell them so that I could paint new ones for the spaces.

on Friday I went to have a look at this waterfall in Dura Den in Kemback, which really reminds me of the painting.

I painted this one last week after walking along the river Eden. subject of another blog post to come. it’s called “How the River Shines Today” – gouache and watercolour pencils over acrylic on heavy watercolour paper 28 x 38 cm, for sale £90 unframed including shipping, as part of #artistsupportpledge a generous culture and dynamic economy between artists and clients needing no gatekeepers dreamed up by @matthewburrowsstudio to help artists continue to make a living during the pandemic. here’s the link to my big cartel shop should you be interested.

 

 

October colour

Posted jane -->on 19th Oct 2019

firstly I have to squeeze in a succession of photos from the last day in September, really worthy of a separate post, but I put it off, so this is a catch-up

on Monday 30th September we arrived early at Morston knowing it would be a big tide, but after an overnight blow from the north-west the water had not got out of the lagoon behind Blakeney point between high tides and had risen right over the marsh

giving an impression of how things may be in a few years? decades? when more polar ice has melted

even the coastal path was impassable without waders or a boat

and B got several cold wet surprises leaping about in the long grass

but it was peaceful and very beautiful

and I took a nice clean dog with me on my taxi run for my good friend who has just had a lung transplant.

only two days before

I was taking photos of autumn on the edge of the marsh, where the samphire has turned all sorts of lovely colours, from maroon to shocking pink.

the sea asters are over but the sea pinks survived the inundation

inland colours are mellowing. here is an ivy bee, a specialist wild bee species that’s become more common recently

a little bit of bracken bronzing

and early leaf fall – at Holt Lowes it’s mostly the birch

of course Bims is a nice autumnal colour herself

the dartmoor ponies will stay out all winter, they have great resistance to cold and wet and are able to stay fat on very little

pools reflecting sky and leaves

as for painting I found these colours in a book of Diebenkorn paintings, this abstract done in 1951

and happily tried to transfer them

but my painting seemed so dull when I got it indoors I went back into it

with lighter versions of these early autumn shades

these details give me points of departure for new paintings

in the meantime I visited the original church of Edgefield, near Holt, in the 1880’s most of it was taken down and incorporated into a new church in the centre of the village. they left the Saxon octagonal tower

and some of the doorways and windows

the churchyard is full of hawthorns, bloody with haws – our visit on 1st october, the anniversary of Mary Tudor’s coronation – and some late tombstones

in heavy rain I took this photo of the biggest remaining window arch

which inspired me to add the shape to my painting

 

 

two walks in Fife

Posted jane -->on 24th Aug 2019

yesterday we went to Kemback wood, a steep woodland quite near to St Andrews, for a shady walk at lunchtime, thinking of what was best for the dogs as well as ourselves.

this walk begins and ends with a pretty gate, first through the stone wall near the Neo-Gothic parish church, stone-built  in 1820 and very small with narrow pointed windows. you drive up an alarmingly steep lane to get to it.

the gate leads to a path along the lower edge of the wood, looking out

under trees into meadows. one tree was a huge field maple, I’ve never seen such a magnificent specimen, as big as a mature beech. I’m pretty sure it was field maple, with small maple-type leaves and the rather spongey bark.

small burns flow down the hill

Em always likes a paddle

B not so much unless she’s been running

this burn tumbles down the hill from a set of waterfalls, amongst bluebells

and ends up in this pond, flowing over the far edge. across the meadows is Kemback House

our path led up and up. we were thankful for the shade and the breeze shimmering the dappled light

when we got to the top, past caves, or quarrying in the level bedded sandstone, the path skirted some steep drops

then we were out into the back of Blebo Craigs, and a grass field with a gorse portal to this path

back into the edge of the wood

through a narrow kissing gate, and then down what seemed like hundreds of steps back to the church. a good work-out for all parts of legs and bum.

this morning we drove to Balmerino, a bit further from St Andrews, near Tayport and on the Tay estuary. I actually looked at a small house for sale here about three years ago, but the enclosable garden was too small for dogs. this yellow painted one would suit me better, but it’s not for sale, of course.

a few metres down the lane you drop down to the Fife coastal path and a shingle beach

today the tide was low and the water clear and still

the estuary is huge, the Tay has a catchment area of two thousand square miles and is the longest river in Scotland.

the coastal path takes you along the edge of the estuary, on a paved path above the shingle, and then up steps into a wood full of bluebells and also many campfire hearths. today there was a beach clean along here, and I imagine there’s a lot of litter and debris involved with this camp fire activity.

several burns flow down the steep slopes, with footbridges crossing them

the path wanders up and down

at times near the beach, where there were some line fishermen and views across the Tay

not so much of a breeze today and higher temperatures.

the beach with overhanging trees made me think of a book I’m reading at the moment, Oliver Rackham’s The Ancient Woods of the Helford River, which has just been published by Little Toller Press. In that part of Cornwall, on the Lizard peninsula just south of Falmouth, the land is interpenetrated by drowned valleys, where the woods come down to the sea in the same way.

here though a lot of the trees are non-native conifers

with some clumps of beech, also planted. Beech is common in Fife, but it is not native.

we turned off the coastal path to take a track back to Balmerino. the conifer wood is very obvious in this view of the Tay and the farmland opposite.

the track is bordered with ditches, some sounding with water burbling, and hedges of bramble and sloe,  edged with rosebay willow herb. in the middle of the track we found this huge elephant hawk moth caterpillar looking for somewhere to pupate. Rose bay willow herb is a favourite food plant. the adult moth has a wingspan up to 2 1/2 inches and is a beautiful creature, olive green and pink. you can see this one’s horn at its rear end and the double eye patches near the head. it was flowing across the track at speed.

we found a more portable treasure as well – a jay’s secondary wing feather with the blue stripe of the covert feathers like a jewel on the edges of the white.

I would have expected to hear and see buzzards around here but there was nothing. too near the sea? over-active gamekeepers? (we saw a pheasant rearing enclosure in the woods) perhaps we were just unlucky.

today the Tay was like a mirror

back in Balmerino we popped into the grounds of the ruined abbey, founded in the thirteenth century by a band of twelve Cistercians.

it was converted into a house by the first Lord of Balmerino in the sixteenth century, and so much of it survives.

actually we were more interested in the four hundred year old sweet chestnut tree in the grounds.

 

Ty Newydd again

Posted jane -->on 13th Aug 2019

Back to Ty Newydd, the National Writing Centre of Wales for a nature writing course with Mark Cocker and Kathleen Jamie (with Horatio Clare as the guest writer/reader) last week. when I was there in the autumn it was late October and quite a different feel to everything. and this was such a different course to the rather alternative storytelling retreat with Hugh Lupton and Eric Madden.

last week it was warm and we had a lot of sun

the lavender in flower and filled with bees – honey, and several different bumblebees

I think this is a carder bee

and this is a white-tailed bumble. One of our morning workshops with Mark had us looking hard at the bees for at least fifteen minutes to write something really concentrated about them.

there were also dragonflies – this is a dead one found in the house

and a few moths. this rosy footman was stranded in the house overnight

having entered and become confused by the glass the night before. there are so many moths with wonderful names; it was great to have someone (Mark) who is an expert on insects to share information.

this time I managed a walk to the beach almost every morning – the circular walk is just over two miles, taking in small paths

through tree-edged fields of grass

under the single railway line

past brambles – ripe blackberries one morning for breakfast –

bracken, grazing cows

a deliciously tarry hut

down to where the river Dwyfor comes out into Cardigan Bay

and along the coastal path

beside burling water (burly water described by Norman MacCaig) that in spate into a high tide must be quite a sight –

but the tide was out or going out in the mornings last week – and one morning a heron flapped across low to the little waves

there’s always a special light in the mornings

and back up to the house, David Lloyd George’s last home

a lawn full of self-heal, and the semi-circular porch and window echoed by lines of flat pebbles set on end raying out in another semicircle before the grass starts

the house is surrounded by mature trees, but this walnut is my favourite, its branch across the stone steps down to the kitchen and utility part of the house.

I omitted to take photos of the wood and the river where we spent one morning making notes, leaving me with a few close-up portraits of Himalayan balsam flowers – extraordinary sexy glutinous objects.

full of thoughts about my own writing and about the very good insights into the poems we worked on, from the whole group of writers, and from Kathleen Jamie. I drove home in a gale, shreds of leaves flying across the road. these damsons blown early off the tree in my garden went into a cake. the next lot will be gin.

those blues seem to have got under my skin

yesterday I tackled a large oil painting (48 x 48 inches) which has been waiting for me to know what to do to it. the large emulsion brush turned out to be the key.

it’s good to have a break from something like painting. doors open, just like that!

 

 

 

the flowers of the forest

Posted jane -->on 25th Jun 2019

a well-timed visit to scotland in mid-June, where the weather was cool but sunny in contrast to saturated Norfolk

we had several beach walks, some here on West Sands in front of St Andrews’ golf course, early mornings before family went to work

low tides gave us plenty of room

although one of us is very sadly a bit too arthritic to play games on the beach

I visited Big Cat Textiles in Newburgh, on the Tay estuary, had lunch with old friends on the last day of Michel Garcia’s plant dyeing course. everyone was extremely busy rinsing, printing, ironing, drying in a fever of time limits, I pottered in the shop, bought some of Alison Mountain’s deliciously dyed merino/silk/yak knitting yarn.

Jeanette Sendler showed me a marvellous book from their library, of Sheila Hicks’ small tapestry works, Weaving as Metaphor, which ought to inform some abstract paintings soon; if I were not already doing too many projects it would have me going back to this art form which I tried in my twenties.

back at St Andrews – Bims is so much more grown up now she is three and there were no floor/carpet tragedies.

on the Saturday we went for a walk at Tentsmuir near the mouth of the Tay estuary – in fact between two estuaries, the Eden flows out to the south and the beach here at low tide appears to join up with West Sands, but in between are sandbanks, quicksands and a river. Tentsmuir forest is forestry commission, but the seaward edges are very au naturel, low sandy hillocks covered with some marram and some machair-type vegetation, full of flowers. this is an area full of ancient archaeology, which used to be turned up by rabbits until the myxomatosis disaster. it’s also next to a military zone. a place full of complications and connections.

to my delight this June it is full of northern marsh orchids, some flower heads five inches long. I was so excited by the orchids I didn’t take enough notice of all the other flowers.

Bims had another fantastic run and play

then back on the lead and into the woods

more orchids along the trail

woods in Scotland have totally different understoreys to english woods, fern, lichen, and moss are king

old birches growing out of mossy humps and cushions

someone had put a painted stone in a hole in this tree – green with red lips and white teeth, a kind of baby dinosaur face.

on Sunday we went further afield, into Angus, near Forfar, Montreathmont Forest.

it’s Forestry Commission like Tentsmuir, but much of what we walked was open like this, some spruce but a lot of scots pine and forest floor covered in a mixture of ferns, mosses, heather and bilberry.

there are supposed to be capercaillies, but I think you would have to be up at dawn to hear them.

more flowers – a lot of bugle – occasional orchids – beautiful dark blue speedwells

and this which I now think is wild grape hyacinth – I found the native version in Simon Harrap’s very thorough Wild Flowers, although the flower head is usually more like the garden variety, except that it’s a really dark smoky blue, and in this photo the blue is too bright.

we followed some marked paths through open meadow (where the bugles followed lines across the grass) with alders and birches, and then through more of the “Caledonian Forest” style woods, delightfully not forest trails.

Lucy had downloaded the OS map for the walk, and there was supposed to be a path near here, in an open strip similar to this, with a little burn/ditch, but no sign of the path, in very long wet grass

then as the grass was so long and wet we tried the edge of the wood, but the moss and heather cushions were knee high, so that was not any easier

we crossed the burn/stream/ditch – luckily there was a ledge or the remains of a bridge where the path had been

through drier/shorter grass and a landscape of fern clumps growing out of their own humps/stumps and some birch, alder and then heather and broom. then the open landscape ended in a wood. the path was supposed to go through it, parallel to a straight forest ride. we had to push/crawl through small spruce and gorse, ended up soaked and our clothes and hair full of pine needles. the spruce branches low sharp and painful. at last we fought our way through to the high gorse edge of the trail, I had to sit on a gorse bush to allow Bimba through. real forest bathing – and my hip has still not recovered completely.

the trail also petered out, but that was marked on the map, and the path it turned into had recently been tended with some branches cut. finally we were back on track to where the car was parked.

 

 

 

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