Jane Wheeler's Blog - Just another WordPress weblog

watery

Posted jane -->on 19th Dec 2019

weeks have slipped away and I have not managed a new blog post until now. perhaps this is because I have taken up my knitting again. it’s very slow, but I must do a bit every night if I can, the yarn was far too expensive (yak/merino/silk fingering) to leave in my previous fashion, perhaps only for the moths to enjoy.

it’s no news to anyone in the UK that we’ve been having a very wet autumn and now a wet winter too.

water is lying in puddles and ruts in fields and walking round the village involves wearing gaiters or wellies and dogs need a bath on their return, the lanes are full of mud.

on a day like today when the sky clears there is so much damp in the ground and in the air that my washing hung out on the line has more water in it at the end of the short day than it started with.

here’s the river Stiffkey on its way through the water meadows below Stiffkey village before it flows out through sluices at Stiffkey freshes, looking very full, about two feet higher than in August and September.

and today the Glaven, even fuller after yesterday’s rain, its surface pitted and burnished by the strong current.

it looks quite clear, unlike two or three days ago when it was definitely murky. these North Norfolk chalk streams should be as clear as crystal, but agricultural runoff can add silt and chemicals. they rise from chalk springs, from the aquifer that underlies the whole county, and from which our drinking water is pumped. it’s also used by farms to irrigate, especially potatoes, so it’s ironic to see a field of potatoes locally, unharvested, with water between the ridges, basically abandoned because it was too wet even two months ago to get them out of the ground.

on rainy days there is something magical about the drops hitting water and making circular ripples that widen and then disappear.

at Glandford the river narrows under the footbridge and then widens out into a deep wide pool that tractor men and others with large tyred vehicles love to cross in a wake of pebbles and froth.

a few weeks ago I came across this pickup sitting in the middle while its driver made a phone call, not stuck, just enjoying being in the middle of the river.

I’ve been filling a sketch book with these watery drawings. the khadi handmade cotton rag paper mops up the pools of water I brush across it, leaving tidemarks of watercolour. there’s something elemental about watercolour paint, the way it can imitate weather and light.

our writing outside group met in Edgefield this week to come to this place, Pond Hills, on a rainy day when the drops pattered down from the trees and the overflow of the pond gurgled happily down its sluice to join the Glaven.

you don’t see the water from the road, but have to climb up a bank covered with fallen chestnut leaves to stand and watch the raindrops opening their concentric ripples in an infinite pattern of widening circles that disappear into the silvery sheet of the pond’s surface.

on a still day the reflections are clear.

trees lower their tangles down to meet themselves

grey sky meets grey pond

and the mirror trees are perturbed by the ripple patterns.

larger drips from the trees make louder pops as they land on wet leaves

and submerged branches stick their rotting stubs up through the meniscus.

my new notebook for these sessions is a landscape-shaped hard-back sketch book. it offers a tempting space to draw as well as write.

fallen trunks crouch on the edge of the bank, limbs propping them like reptilian monsters. it seems as though we are in temperate rainforest, surrounded by otherworldy beings, as we wander between the feet of great trees in the misty rain. the sound of the rain and running water remind me of the soundtrack of Tarkovsky’s film Stalker, filmed in a wet spring in Estonia.

the other occupation that has side-tracked me is painting of course.

I’ve been making small abstract paintings on thick watercolour paper and small canvas-covered board

perhaps the watery weather has been influencing them

here there’s a saturnalian brushwork too.

 

 

the magic of a wet November morning

Posted jane -->on 11th Nov 2019

when you get ready for what you think will be an unpleasant cold wet and very muddy walk, haul on the waterproof over-trousers that impede your stride, lace on the boots that have hardly had a chance to dry out over the past few weeks, zip up the big hooded jacket and find your gloves, slide the dog into her waterproof fleece-lined coat and lock the door behind you, you may not anticipate the wonderful autumn spectacle that awaits

here is the muddy field

but as we turn into it, the source of the pinkfoot calls that we’ve heard all down the lane becomes apparent – here they all are, eating the potatoes that Walter has not been able to harvest because of the state of the ground. they fly up when they see us, but they don’t go far –  more are arriving all the time.

we walk along the edge of the wood, squelching – the bottom of this field is still sodden, despite the new land drains and the enlarged and cleared ditch. it is a place full of changes of subsoil – from sand to clay to chalk, to chalky clay – and full of little springs and pools in the wood. saying that though, the pools in the wood are still dry, in spite of over a month of rain.

here they come, in waves rather than skeins. since I came back to Norfolk almost twenty years ago, the geese have been a wonder to me, something to delight in every time I see and hear them – usually the other way around, you hear the calls and twirl around to see where they are in the sky.

they fly so fast, and i suppose the calls carry a long way, they call in more geese when they find a plentiful source of food. I haven’t seen any on locally harvested sugarbeet, which is where they do no damage, eating the leftovers. but I think Walter will be along with some bangers soon to get them off his potatoes. it looked like at least a thousand on there, and that’s at least a few thousand spuds with beaked chunks out of them.

the rain was pattering and the wind gusting but we just stood and watched in awe

and here is a soundscape  – another skein of geese, then two woodcock fly up, and the second one rockets off along the edge of the field, jinking and twisting into the distance. listen carefully and you’ll hear a roebuck barking alarm (or it could be a muntjac) the gusty hoarse sound echoing through the wood, a bird cheeps, the rain patters on my and Bims’ coats, and you can even hear the tinkle of her collar-tag.

more geese – they spot us and quieten a bit, and you can hear that eerie echoing deer bark again …

am I imagining it, or are the trees brighter this year?

the oranges seem more intense

in Cakes lane the leaves are falling fast

ashes have dropped most of them in the past few days

field maple leaves still bright on the hedge

the phone camera doesn’t see the same thing as me, my eyes exaggerate the brightness of rusty oranges and leave out the greens that the camera emphasises. this oak seemed all ginger when I walked past it.

the grey sky

and wet leaves make the bright colours luminous

and reflect yellow light back upwards

the bracken is always more intense when saturated

from copper and bronze

to amber yellows

ash leaves reduced to stringy stalks on the path, it’s like walking through straws

the trees are beginning to show their sculptural forms now, branches like dancers’ arms

we are lucky to have this green lane – if the farmers didn’t bring their slashing hedge-trimmers and grass cutters down it regularly, a few walkers would not be enough to keep it usable. so though it’s horrible to see it all smashed up in february, it grows again incredibly quickly.

more bracken colours – a fierce blaze in the wet lane.

the gusts bring leaves down, hard to spot in a photo

so here’s a clip of me trying to catch them with the phone camera.

 

 

 

walking from Kelling

Posted jane -->on 27th Oct 2019

at last a clear day after so many rainy and very gloomy ones

this bourbon rose still flowering and beautifully scented by my gate; I am astonished, because summer rain turns the opening flowers of this particular rose into tiny brown paper parcels and they don’t open. it’s a climbing version of Souvenir de la Malmaison.

we were on our way out for a walk from Kelling reading rooms to Kelling heath and back, via Muckleburgh hill; a walk that involves two big hills and wonderful views of the sea.

Just B and I and the sunshine

Muckleburgh hill has low growing oaks around its double crown, stunted by sea winds and poor soil.

you think you have reached the top and then find there is another higher point

the view is better from the second one

so up we go

looking over and down slope to the North Sea. interesting to think that 10,000 years ago after the ice sheets melted, you would have been looking at dry land down there, low chalk and sand hills, chained by marshy rivers and lakes, wooded and full of wild animals, what archaeologists nowadays call Doggerland. a rich environment for a sparse population of mesolithic human hunters.

East across to Sheringham and Beeston bump

West over the saltmarshes and shingle ridge to Blakeney point, Salthouse church and Walsey hill

down again through woods on the Weybourne side, easy to get lost, until we find the gate to the coast road, along the road a bit and through a gap on the opposite side, through tunnels of low ivy and woody groves up to the eastern edge of the heath. here it’s not really a heath any more but a wood.

rather soggy traveller’s joy, old man’s beard, or whatever you want to call wild clematis

Telegraph hill is the name of this steep slope, perhaps it had a signal tower or pole at the top for semaphore communications, which were used during the Napoleonic wars by the Admiralty, though I’m not sure that there was ever a chain of them in Norfolk.

here we are climbing up the Holt-Cromer ridge, which is composed of outwash sands and gravels deposited by rivers at the glacier edge, during the last Ice age. a steep northward-facing slope which would have been the glacier margin. probably Muckleburgh Hill itself is a kame, like Beeston Bump, a steep-sided mound of sand and gravel deposited by the melting ice sheet.

bracken turning all colours, some very pale. looking out across the fields here I spotted the snowy white steam cloud from the local Poppy Line steam engine chugging hard to pull its coaches up the gradient to Holt from Sheringham

the footpath crosses another road, and then very quickly turns up Holgate hill to the railway line, the most punishing slope. at the top you are higher than the railway line which is down in a cutting. I think I sounded like a steam train puffing up the last and steepest bit.

 

lovely steam train coming past, hooting for the pedestrian crossing then slowing for the little halt at Kelling, downslope. I couldn’t see a thing through the screen because of the bright sunshine, so I was trying to watch and film at the same time, hence the wobbles.

before diving down the steep footpath to Kelling village again I met some people with a lovely basket of fungi; the main collector a German woman who couldn’t tell me the English names of what she had found. one was as big as a loaf of bread, slightly bigger than this. I’m waiting for a Collins fungi book to be able to name it. we agreed that the ceps are over. that’s about the only edible fungi I recognise apart from field and parasol mushrooms.

this brilliant and perfect fly agaric was a neighbour of the edible one.

this one a few days older and already beginning to melt back into the earth.  they coexist with birch trees, and like most of the fungi we only see as “fruiting bodies” in the autumn, have extensive networks of hair-like threads which tap into tree roots, providing minerals and taking sugars in exchange.

the landscape changes as you walk down the path

at first bracken hangs down from high banks

and the slopes are steep and wooded with silver birch

as the slope becomes less steep there are small paddocks and large grass fields, oaks and a lot of ash trees, none of which are very old, probably dating to the disuse of the heath for common grazing. recent rains, some extremely heavy – Weybourne recorded over seven centimeters in one afternoon, where in Bale we only had just over three – have scoured out some sandy gullies at the top, and dumped sand on the path at the bottom of the hill.

back home in my garden there is more autumn colour than I saw near the coast – this guelder rose is full of berries and the leaves are turning very pretty colours

the hornbeam which is only nineteen and has got quite tall now has a lovely display

and the rowan

all berries gone, a delicate and elegant garden inhabitant. I put a new one in on the other side this year. I don’t really have room to plant any more trees, there are too many already, but my garden is a little oasis of wilderness amongst more conventional spaces and the industrial agriculture which we need to feed the country. though I must say growing potatoes for crisps is not the best way to do that! nor are crops to feed intensively reared livestock.

a quick burst in the studio, to start base layers on some ready-gessoed panels I just bought. 40 x 40 cm.

it’s lovely to just slap on some colour with a brush

and then some coloured texture (marble dust mixed into paint)

last week this one emerged, also 40 x 40 cm

.

and then this, which is just over 60 x 60. I’ve called it the Rain’s Voice. probably those bright things above will need more layers, but I think I will try to keep them bright, a bit of cheer as we continue towards winter.

 

 

 

October colours 2

Posted jane -->on 19th Oct 2019

I wasn’t entirely happy with the last painting, although close up bits of it work really well – I think I need to simplify.

I went back to the kind of thing I did in the last folded book

where I used watercolour pencils in combination with the new handmade watercolours I’d bought

 

making myself allow this clean simplicity which is easy to do on paper with these materials

when the watercolour granulates and runs it does the most perfect things all by itself

so I took this one as my preparatory drawing (it is a section of a painting)

and worked off it in acrylic. there’s lots of texture because under the gesso is an old landscape painting I’d done about three years ago and decided to delete, so to speak. it’s 60 x 70 cm.

various bits of it look like good starting points for more paintings

using the watercolours for colour reference was interesting. I don’t mix the watercolours much because I bought a range of about 6 greens.

now I have to think up a good title!

the same day I put these final coats

on two small paintings, 30 x 30 cm (that’s 12″ x 12″) also basing them on sections of the watercolour.

I have this one to think about

here’s a pretty crucial watercolour, mostly using the pencils, in a square Khadi paper sketch book (it’s stitched, flaps right open, which is very useful, and its spine is about and inch or two cm thick.)

the marsh is a pretty good source of ideas too

these simple shapes of creek and tide

and reflection

feeding into the pencil gestures

as well as the textures of seaweed and stones on the mud

something about paper standing in for light

and windblown grass in stabbed lines

and lines coming through

so here is this one, as far as I’ve got it today, maybe it’s finished. a bit bigger, 60 x 82 cm   – perhaps “Wind through the Marrams”

using a graphite stick that is water soluble

thinking of these marks on paper with crayon

and much scratching with the point of the pointy palette knife

this pale pink reminds me of pink plaster

under this was an abstract painting with lots of blues and I have allowed them to come back under the paint around the edges and in this corner

now I feel I have a stronger language to explore, that’s related to landscape. we shall see.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

changeable september sea-light

Posted jane -->on 28th Sep 2019

and it’s almost a month since I last posted ….. perhaps being so devastated by the cutting down of all those irreplaceable oaks has put me off. anyway, quite a different subject – equally important environmentally – the saltmarsh at Morston on our beautiful North Norfolk coast. since the birds have finished nesting I’ve been taking Bims there in preference to the beach at Wells – it’s quieter, and better for her feet

and more fun, cross-country jumping over little creeks and pools. and for me a beautiful place with curlew, oystercatcher, redshank all calling –

at high tide when it’s early and still un-busy it’s very beautiful, I just long to be out there on a boat on a morning like this with no chop and hardly a breeze

though I’m a poor sailor and have never done much almost getting my bum wet and all that stuff. I did love having my tiny Mirror dinghy, but could hardly ever take it out, it was always too windy for me!

this was last week in clear sky weather

then later in the week with the tide lower. it’s all starting to look quite autumnal. funny how these salt-tolerant plants – samphire and sea-blite turn orange red or maroon. I’m not sure what the process is, as they are not about to drop leaves or anything.

the pools reflect the sky, so double the light, it’s all around you.

and a riffle of wind coming across this one

here’s B doing her thing, zoomies, round and round. she doesn’t go far from me

cooler light yesterday, and the tide on its way out. this perfect row of Cockles (or is the one on the right an Oyster – my initiation into this place more than thirty years ago involved a real clinker-built wooden Oyster – these are all fibreglass replicas) sitting upright in the mud.

this is the special place we used to come to by boat at high tide for picnics all those years ago, when our daughter and our friends’ middle daughter were only three … Morston Freshes and a side creek off the Stiffkey where it comes into the lagoon it shares with the Glaven

this morning’s sky

we were there earlier, so caught this lower sunlight and silvery sky

quite wet from all the rain

and the tide still on its way out. I have a sore foot so the saltmarsh and soft mud are kinder to walk on, and Bims gets to run as much as she wants. we may be doing this as our regular walk for a while.

as she was here yesterday she’s not needing to run around like a complete looney

sea-aster everywhere. the Elizabethans valued this as a garden flower. it flowers all along the margins of this coast in september and october

still quite a lot of thrift/sea-pink in the pink

and artemisia (sea-wormwood) silvery everywhere. I was lucky that B did not roll in the small dead seal which is decomposing slowly alongside the path. it looks like a young common seal. they pup in the summer, whereas the grey seals (the ones with long noses) give birth and mate in November, haunting the place with mournful calls.

the sun on the dunes and beaches of the spit, just for a moment ….

and a little bit of painting chat to tuck on the end of this watery post

I’ve tried glueing fabric onto my canvases, specifically pieces cut off linen shirt sleeves

they echo what I’ve done on fabric with stitches. but the problem is that getting past this seductive stage is rather difficult.

the unprimed fabric is absorbent and takes the paint quite differently from the canvas

here I could have held back too, if the surface quality of the canvas wasn’t a bit repellant

so a couple of layers later (the joy of acrylic paint, you can white over what you did that day, and have another go the next) this one is waiting to see what happens next

here’s another which looks interesting like this, but it still wasn’t enough

so here it is, finished (for now) 60 x 70 cm. the pale blue was a freebie with a paint order!

it has lots of texture and “Mirfak” scratched into that blue socket. Mirfak is a star in the constellation of Perseus. they have amazing Arabic names from the thirteenth century when astronomy was forging ahead in Islamic countries.

 

 

 

 

 

back to norfolk

Posted jane -->on 28th Aug 2019

after another early morning walk on West Sands

although it would be warm later in St Andrews

the mist was only just burning off, and there were only one or two runners and not many dog walkers

I thought it would be a kindness to Bims to let her have a run before the long journey home

and a paddle. but it turned out that her adrenalin levels were quite raised, and she was not happy in the car, it took her at least a couple of hours to settle. stress equals adrenalin even when it seems like she’s having a nice time. we of course had air conditioning to insulate us from the 33 degree heat on the drive, but the heat of the following two days has got us in a rhythm of very early walks – straight out of bed on waking and off before seven, even six fifteen yesterday.

our norfolk fields are very beautiful then

the stubbles full of frolicking hares

pink horizons

and sea-wards a lingering mist

those hares got B’s stress levels up again – in fact it takes days for the levels to go right down, and she seems quite over-alert even three days later.

sun on my back and a bit warm already by six forty-five ..

not a creature to be seen along by Bale wood, where the huge field (named the prairie by the neighbour) has had its oilseed rape harvested – however much B hoped to see another hare

the silver-washed fritillaries long gone

and the thistles now beneficial to birds rather than insects.

this morning we are cooler, and slightly damp – what a relief!

but at Bullfer Grove there is devastation

all the non-National Trust part of the wood is being cut for selected timber removal

and a right mess the machines make getting in and out

I would guess that Albanwise are harvesting mature oak trees all round here

there are I’d estimate at least a hundred trees piled up here where there’s access from the main road

each side of the NT gate

really it’s a shock to find this many trees felled

and they have been in to all of it and taken the large oaks

leaving smashed up branches

and stumps. so the question is, are they going to replant? and does this have anything to do with a 2013 statement

that they were then thinking of more intensively managing their 300 hectares of woodland, possibly using the product for woodchip fuel

whatever the intention, it’s horrifying to see trees cut down that would have been viable for at least another two hundred years, and helped to keep our carbon dioxide emissions just a little lower, at the same time as we are seeing apocalyptic film of the Amazon forest burning, and fires in the Arctic boreal forests out of control in Siberia, canada and Alaska.

 

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.

 

early blues and a smaller splash

Posted jane -->on 19th Aug 2019

back in Scotland after an eight hour drive through rain and wind (only on the M6 and M74) and surface water yesterday.

wind this morning but with it light and shadow and clarifying blues

early morning walks at West Sands beach are rewarding, both in terms of cobwebs blown away and in sheer beauty

also in the opportunity for my running dog to run – difficult in the summer in North Norfolk where beaches are crowded and the temperatures a bit much

with the tide out this morning there was plenty of room

she was completely blown after a second session – not a teenager any more

though the energy seems endless.

all along the high tide mark there are clumps of sea rocket flowering

it’s a salt resistant sand loving plant that responds to sand blowing over it by vigorous growth, and it has a deep tap root to keep it in place and find moisture. there’s a lot along the edge of the sandy beach at Blakeney Point, and it’s typical in the Hebrides – in fact all round the British coast where there’s sand and dunes.

I was delighted and astonished to find more harebells growing in the sandy grass than I’ve ever seen before, probably altogether more than I’ve ever seen in my life.

I think this grass must qualify as machair, though it’s not in the Hebrides or any Western Isles. harebells love a chalky soil, and one of the characteristics of machair is a high lime content of the soil, due to shells breaking down on the beach.

lots of rosebay willow herb too

but the harebells were just stunning

thickly spread blue, lighter and more airy than bluebells

those of us who walk in birkenstocks with bare feet …..

and more blue – this was the product of the leftover oil paint during last week, a smaller canvas, 50 x 50 cm.

it has something of the drama of the beach and sky this morning in its contrasts

and textures

but it does remind me a little of the splash detail in Hockney’s swimming pool paintings, so “A smaller splash”

meanwhile B is on her hols and I have brought some new watercolours to see if I can do the delicate thing for a change.

holt lowes – a favourite place

Posted jane -->on 14th Aug 2019

a few years ago I stopped going to this place, because under the aegis of the Norfolk Wildlife Trust all the mature silver birches were grubbed up, and a lot of soil removed back to flinty ashy subsoil

in an attempt to get it back to the four thousand year old heathland it had once been.

the idea is to encourage the heathers – bell heather like this –

and ordinary like this –

and to cut the gorse back.

the trees got in the way and changed the biome.

but nature is irrepressible, and a few Dartmoor ponies put in to encourage the grass will not keep back the growth of trees. Once it was common land with rights of grazing and furze cutting for households in Holt, and presumably there were hosts of goats, cows, geese, sheep and people using the land. now it’s dog-walker territory, with some rare flora and fauna – sphagnum moss and natterjack toads, more common on Dartmoor than in Norfolk. the birch seedlings sprout everywhere.

not many people walk here either, it’s very quiet,

the ponies are fat and peaceful,

a little mischievous perhaps,

appearing and disappearing mysteriously amongst the remaining trees.

I’d thought we were going to get a wet walk but the morning warmed up,

there were gatekeepers and painted ladies flitting about,

and the regrowth of the gorse makes the paths sheltered.

one could have done with a sit down,

but Em and Bims got a paddle at least.

the flinty dry upper heath is cut in two by a damp trickle and pools – a small wetland.

this pool’s trees are full of willow warblers in early summer.

it’s the time of year for heather –

here the gorse cutter has succeeded in making it look like a heath.

it’s a place that’s good for winter walking with these dry peaty, sandy paths. of course, you can’t let dogs off the lead near the ponies – but I wouldn’t have Bims off anyway.

 

« Previous Entries