Jane Wheeler's Blog 2010

the beech wood

Posted jane -->on 1st Nov 2010

this week it is the beech tree’s apogee. everywhere in north norfolk beech trees are standing out as their leaves start to turn, blazing with copper and gold. the best place to see them round here is Felbrigg Hall, where there are native trees of huge size and age, relicts of a medieval or earlier wood pasture or wood commons.

in this avenue, one half of a v-shaped tunnel of beech planted to celebrate VE day after the second world war, the trees are only sixty years old, but behind the point of the v, and the tidy paths with the bench positioned so that you can see down both portions of the landscaped vista, there exist beech trees of a different sort entirely.

they tower above the underwood, massive trunks divided by ancient pollarding which has preserved them for double or triple the normal life span of a beech tree. the last time that they were cut was in the eighteenth century, so the subsequent growth is two to three hundred years old, the average age of a normal beech tree.

they are monsters whose stretched lives are accompanied by beneficial symbiotic and non-beneficial fungi. this is some sort of bracket, which does kill trees, but may be growing on a root, or a fallen branch.

their multiple trunks, smooth and serpentine, rear up a hundred feet or more and compete for the sunlight.

several have lost major sections and trunks splay out across the woodland floor, ripped off by their own weight, in various states of decay. this has happened in the last forty years – I found a photograph of them taken in March 1970 in Oliver Rackham’s book “Trees and Woodland in the British Landscape”, in which the massive boles stand intact and clear in woodland pasture, with none of the holly and probably none of the bracken, bramble and fern undergrowth that surrounds them today.

the remainder of the tree continues to live, apparently unaffected, but I suppose the fungal infection will spread through the entire organism in the end. several of these trees do seem to be in the later stages of life now

but there are younger trees here as well. much of the original timber planting on the estate in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries used naturally occurring seedlings (according to Richard Maybe in his book “Beechcombings”). unless the National Trust decides to start a pollarding programme they will never have the longevity of the ancient trees. grazing livestock and pigs feeding on beech mast would have kept the ground clear of new growth; the current policy seems to be in favour of allowing rotting trunks to deliquesce into the ground, providing habitat for a multitude of insects and thereby creating a species rich environment.

these fungi look like earthball, scleroderma citrinum, full of spores.

this dead giant has a young oak tree entangled in a fork.

the next generation, a delicate beauty.

two sections of trunk have collapsed, one leaning on a neighbour. we walk underneath it with some trepidation, but it is firmly wedged.

beech trees grow naturally on acid soils in Norfolk, especially on the Cromer Holt Ridge’s glacial sands and gravels, but most of the trees which this week are lighting up the roadside woodlands around Blickling and Thursford are planted. In Bale we had one mature hedgerow beech tree which was blown down in a March gale soon after the earthquake tremor in 2008; it turned out to be almost wholly rotten at the base of its trunk.

there is another on the road to Hindringham which seems to be suffering, this is the second year that its leaves have started to brown off much too early, with none of the mixture of healthy bright greens turning first to yellow and then to copper that the Felbrigg trees are displaying.

this bracket fungus looks a bit like Ganoderma sp. – Artist’s Bracket, and in fact the bracket on the ground in a previous picture might be the same – it is common on beech trees.

I found this quote on www.treeblog.co.uk – “This Ganoderma sp. is a saprophytic fungus: it will only attack the “non-living” heartwood and won’t harm the “living” sapwood. Infected trees may appear normally healthy in external appearance, but inside they can be a soft and mushy mess liable to collapse or fall over at any time.”

this is the biggest of the giants, and I didn’t see any fungus on it

four huge trunks soar upwards

carrying those sinuous beech branches way above the surrounding canopy. what magnificent trees; although their days are obviously numbered.

a postscript – Felbrigg also has wonderful spiral bark sweet chestnuts, also fairly ancient and some in a state of advanced decay, but truly lovely trees.

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clouds

Posted jane -->on 22nd Oct 2010

it started at dawn; clouds had to be photographed. I had to run and get the camera to catch this sky out of my bedroom window.

this afternoon we went to Morston, and after a late morning and middle of the day with perfect sunshine, if a rather blustery wind, it suddenly clouded over and the wind stopped. but over the sea the sky was still perfect satin blue.

towards Blakeney it was clear and fine

a jaunty rather crisp cloud

the mud in the creeks (it was low tide, sadly) shining with the sun’s brilliant reflection

after a week of strong winds, frost and hailstorms this afternoon’s warm temperatures and light wind were a welcome change.

black brent geese and curlews calling, white egrets lurking

Tilda eating something nasty but satisfyingly crunchy; maybe a long dead crab.

a ghostly mountain range of cloud out to the north west

sand banks and seagulls

another pristine little cloud, just like a curly ostrich feather.

the Stiffkey winding its way around the mudbanks – plenty of food for the waders.

the dogs get the mud off their legs with a paddle

the redshanks seemed very calm today, allowing me within a few yards

the zoom on this camera allows better bird photography provided they stand still

we paddle across and along towards the mussel gatherers, where the spell is broken; sadly mussels are being cleaned with a machine – a noisy generator and a foul smell. “I’m told it’s progress!” says the other guy, picking over his shellfish in the riddle, “but I’m not sure that it is.”

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holt lowes – devastation

Posted jane -->on 10th Oct 2010

today we went to Holt Lowes (see their website here for more) to see how far the destruction of the woodland has proceeded. this land, a remnant of similar heathland covering the holt-cromer ridge since the bronze age, was productive common and heath once, allotted to the poor for grazing animals; the gorse and heather cut regularly and used for firewood. since that use stopped, and also since rabbits have been controlled by myxomatosis, it has reverted to scrub woodland, of oak and silver birch, and the change of flora threatens the rare and special fauna, including natterjack toad and nightjar. as a heath with areas of wetland it supported varieties and species more common in devon than in norfolk. for several years now small areas have been cleared of trees and in parts the gorse cut regularly with a machine. now almost all the remaining trees are to be cleared and the topsoil taken off, to discourage regrowth, which recently has been poisoned in the already cleared areas. because the heath is no longer used it is almost impossible to reproduce the suppression of woodland achieved by heavy mixed grazing, traditional burning and furze cutting. a few cows or sheep will not have the same effect. so it is hard to see how they will maintain the tree suppression.

a grim sight greets us inside the gate. stump grinding and tree felling and heavy machinery reduce pretty winding paths and little ups and downs to one muddy hillside.

even this dry peaty soil will churn up into a bog when the winter comes

we can’t find our old path and trip over roots and branches strewn around the place.

back in an uncut section. two weeks ago this was full of fungi, spotted red fly agaric everywhere, but 2 weeks of wet weather has rotted them away.

very little is left, through that little copse and we are back in the open again. my sheltered winter walk will offer no protection now.

I hope soil erosion does not ensue.

the last time we will wander through these bracken filled glades.

this – all silver birch – is to go ….

these oaks I think will remain

all these lovely old silver birches with their shaggy trunks are doomed

the most graceful tree

and here there are bluebells in the spring – a sign of ancient woodland.

to be reduced to this – brambles and weeds, the new sprouting birch and gorse all removed by weedkiller last year.

I found one remaining fly agaric fruiting body today. with the birchwoods gone and the topsoil removed there will be no fungi – edible or poisonous – next year.

this little heather area has been established for at least fifteen years; soon there will be no birchwoods in the distance.

next to the forestry commission plantation there is still dew on the spiders’ webs in the heather.

a nasty shock awaits us – the plantation is going too – here the bronze age barrow has been cordoned off to prevent it being damaged by the machinery.

this beautiful cathedral of tall pines, a restful place of shade and quiet, is already half gone.

huge machines lurk on their day of rest.

exquisite fungi amongst the needles and cones on the floor of the wood.

another area of heather, cleared a few years ago and beginning to grow well, although the gorse will soon overtake it, if it gets a chance.

more silver birches awaiting their fate.

and here is the stump-grinder, an unlovely beast.

I wonder how misguided this effort really is. every so often there are oak trees marked to be left standing. I hope they survive the lack of shelter after the surrounding trees have gone. time will tell.

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late september afternoon

Posted jane -->on 21st Sep 2010

the last few weeks having been so wet the grass everywhere is positively glowing green, and in the warm afternoon light everything looks vivid and springlike. Tilda has spent the day outside in the warm air and sun. at last we are having a short period of indian summer.

the rosehips on the dog roses are more decorative than anything else in the garden at the moment. they will provide food for some creatures; when the contents were stored under tarpaulins the autumn the sheds were rebuilt, I found chewed up rosehips inserted between boxes and under the tarps everywhere.

they are glowing red, taking over from the honeysuckle berries which the bullfinches have been taking for two or three weeks now. I have never seen them before; they are very shy, but perhaps the bad weather which kept us indoors encouraged them to come into the garden. I heard their distinctive flutey calls around the village several times. it is not so long since they were routinely killed for taking apple blossom; although I don’t remember them in our orchard as a child, my cousin has a distinct memory of her father shooting them out of the bedroom window.

another fantastic crop of apples is ripening. they are not quite ready yet, about two more weeks I think, and then I will be overwhelmed with them.

I am pleased to see the wild carrot back in the corner by the sheds; they self seed and are spreading. a very graceful plant and useful for decoration.

the very last of the poppies – all the rest have been cut down, as I have worked hard to revitalise the grasses by cutting all the yarrow, poppy and knapweed back, and will keep rotor-scything until the growth stops. I want to try to seed cornflowers into the bare patches this autumn.

a lone comma catching the sunshine

he had found a good place to absorb the warmth and stayed while I tried to get a close-up. this camera seems to get confused and took several very blurred photos.

out on the farm the stubbles have an undergrowth of grass and weed – they are not very pretty. we disturbed half grown roe twins in the long grass, they got up and then froze for ten seconds, and the dogs didn’t see them, then as I fished out my camera, of course they started to bolt, Sal rushed after them, Tilda pulled on the lead and all I got was blurry pictures of the grass.their ears were enormous – such pretty creatures. Sal’s rushing is of course very ineffectual, it just incites Tilda to protest.

bright guelder rose berries in the green lane.

the big pasture is bright green and has no sheep on it – I wonder if they will come back this autumn, there seems a fair bit of feed.

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East Anglian elms

Posted jane -->on 4th Sep 2010

the East Anglian Elm, the narrow leaved elm, Ulmus minor, or carpinifolia, the smooth-leaved elm; it has many names, and almost every village or wood a slightly different variety, but sadly nowadays you are more likely to see dead trees than living, or at most young sucker growths.

the latest, most virulent episode of Dutch Elm disease started in the south west in the 60’s and progressed across England over the next twenty years, so that now we have almost forgotten what the landscape looked like with big elm trees. in the 90’s another wave of the disease arrived; the survivors are mostly small trees, suckers growing up from the roots of the dead trees, which are hit in their turn by a new outbreak.

there is a corner of Bale wood where they survive, growing to a certain size, until the beetle introduces the deadly fungus which will kill in a year. Elm trees rarely propagate by seed, so they can only spread gradually from an original tree by suckering, but in time can invade a wood. here they die, regenerate, and die again, but never completely. eventually the fungus seems to burn itself out, perhaps attacked in its turn by a virus.

young growth stands next to the dead hulks along the edge of the wood

and groups of clones cluster together inside

one big live tree seems to be thriving

though its top looks a little thin.

a group of dead clones collapsed on the woodland floor, opening up a clearing. everywhere dead trees lean and sprawl amongst the living. this part of the wood seems to have an equal distribution of elm and ash, with a few hazel, sycamore and pine amongst them. there are patches of primrose and violets grow with ground ivy all over in the spring.

outside, on the border of the field there seem to be the remnants of a hedge; elder have mostly died but there are blackthorn and hawthorn and bramble. there is also a marked browse line. I have come across roe deer feeding here.

one fairly big Ulmus minor growing on the edge of the wood.

elms have suffered from outbreaks of this beetle-born disease through history. documentary and tree ring evidence shows a mysterious death of elms from 1819 until the 1860’s, and probably in the 1500’s. Oliver Rackham (the History of the Countryside, latest edition 2000, pages 243 – 246) proposes that the prehistoric Elm Decline, which occurred at about 5,000 to 5,500 years ago, around about when early agriculture arrived, was caused by the disease rather than man’s interference.

pollen deposits show how after the ice sheets melted, woodland reasserted itself across Britain rapidly between 9,000 and 7,000 years ago. at first birch, aspen and sallow replaced the grasses and heathers of the immediate post-glacial tundras and moorlands, then pine and hazel, followed by oak and alder, next mostly in the south, lime and elm, then holly, ash, and the last to arrive , beech, hornbeam and maple. between 7,000 and 4,500 years ago climax wildwood types adapted to climate and soil; in Norfolk there were at least seven local types, including limewood, ashwood and elmwood. Native elms include Wych Elm and the East Anglian Elm, found in the pollen profile (Bennet, K.D. ‘Devensian Late-Glacial and Flandrian vegetational history at Hockham Mere, Norfolk, England’ New Phytologist 95 (1983) 457-487), but not the English Elm, a later arrival, possibly introduced by humans, or a hybrid of the earlier two types.

more elms can be seen in Clip Street, behind an old flint wall which encloses the remnants of an orchard with two huge walnut trees and a mature lime. this is where the electricity cable from the North Sea wind farms is proposed to be laid. if so we will lose all these beautiful trees.

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another summer show

Posted jane -->on 2nd Sep 2010

it turns out I was one of three potters in the Hart Gallery’s Summer show, with some work they have had for about a year. it was interesting to look again at what they have.

they have this one as the main piece for me in their website – in fact it was sold a while ago! but I like it and it makes me think about using this horrid poisonous barium carbonate glaze again.

other artists shown include this painter, Lewis Noble – I like his work very much.

I am proceeding at snail’s pace making more work. I have quite few of these bottles made, which are slipped with porcelain. it’s just the leftovers from slabbing with porcelain kept in a bowl with a lot of water, mostly roughly brushed on.

some experimentation with clay as a stencil, and then leaving the stencil on and brushing more porcelain over it.

I am using clay that’s still quite fluid to build with and then there is a temptation to push it about a bit, which I easily give in to.

my plan is to carry on making for a while before firing anything.

the porcelain has been squished onto this dish, so thickly that it has a lumpy and cracked texture. finding the right glaze to complement it will be difficult.

and here is the main group of bottles, with sgraffito, applied clay, stencils, over-slipped scratched squiggles and more. you can see how I have pushed the soft clay to make inward bulges, and all are slapped about a bit to give them soft rounded shoulders. the clay is mostly a cheap stoneware buff I am trying out. it’s called “school clay”. we’ll see.

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birds and butterflies

Posted jane -->on 1st Sep 2010

a new camera to start off a new stage of the blog. I am on wordpress 3.0.1 now, and it’s a little strange to begin with. the camera is a canon powershot SX 120 with ten times optical zoom. it does have a bit of a problem focusing on close up with the zoom , even in macro mode, so I end up missing butterflies or just getting totally unfocused blobs until I back off with the zoom a little. there’s an easy video clip recorder I have been having fun with, and mostly I think the photos have a clearer quality.

this looks like a meadow brown sampling the cosmos.

these few days of superlative calm and blue skies after the rain and winds of August have encouraged a few butterflies out. this summer, although there have been plenty of large whites, small coppers, common and holly blues, and meadow browns, the big hibernating butterflies have been missing. there was no influx of painted ladies either; I saw one ten days ago when the weather warmed up over the penultimate weekend of August, none before or since. a couple of red admirals appeared at that point and have reappeared with the good weather, accompanied by more.

this red admiral must have been newly emerged, it was so perfect, the fur on its body all glossy, and it spent about ten minutes on the flower, completely undisturbed by my photographing it.

they are still feeding on the buddhlias. the echinacea, which was very popular, is over, but they are also attracted to the rotting plums out of reach on the tree or windfallen in the grass.

there was a small tortoiseshell yesterday and today a single peacock was back, now seen twice in my garden this year.

friends have reported hummingbird moths in their gardens, I am most envious. all through June and July when my wild flower and meadow garden was full of knapweed and other suitable flowers, there were plenty of wild bees feeding, but no butterflies to speak of.

the big fennel plant in my garden, gathering the autumn sunlight to itself as it begins to ripen and fall.

during the last wet and windy week a bullfinch appeared on my honeysuckle, eating the berries. a beautiful bird, its deep rose chest and blue-grey head and wings making it immediately obvious. I don’t think I remember seeing one before, and certainly not in my garden. I had been told that there were some in an old orchard in Clip Street last year. then a female arrived a week later; there are perhaps a pair around, but they are shy birds. I had tree sparrows visiting my feeder two winters running; another attractive bird with their chestnut heads and black cheek spots, but the return of house sparrows seemed to put them off and I haven’t seen them for about four years. I have stopped feeding seed to garden birds, as however careful one is about the feeder itself, the ground below, where much edible debris falls, cannot be disinfected and trichomoniasis (a parasite which grows in the throat and prevents food passing through. it is passed on by birds feeding their young and males feeding their partners) was affecting the greenfinches and chaffinches. since I started feeding peanuts I have not had this problem, although they are not as popular as the feeder seed mixtures.

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exhibiting in shipston-on-stour

Posted jane -->on 29th Jul 2010

my exhibition at the Stour Gallery has been on for three weeks now, and I am only just getting around to posting about it. I probably needed a bit of distance before thinking about it again.

the pots are a mixture of quite a range of older dates and the very new just-out-of-the-kiln. in the window a flask from 2007 (most of these went to Japan) and a porcelain bowl made last December and re-glazed in the last firing. this should have gone to Japan, but I discovered that the glaze leaches poisonous barium carbonate in contact with food, so we decided it was better for Mina Perhonen not to have them in their shop, just in case …

I have only two photos from the gallery; it was evening and the lighting made it too difficult, so I can’t really give you a good idea of how it looks, but I am very pleased. the mixture of my pots, which seem very restrained with their rock/nature surfaces and colours, with brightly coloured late 20th C “Modern Master” original prints – Bruce McLean, Albert Irwin, Ceri Richards, Sandra Blow, Terry Frost et al – and a great Maurice Cockerill canvas with thick mauve paint pooled and almost spilling off – and Adrian Frost’s vibrant little abstract paintings, works extremely well, and even better, an arrangement of my pots including some of the grey-blue textured porcelains along a low shelf under a selection of delicate Peter Blake prints in similar blue greys and browns.

this saggar-fired bottle from last September looked particularly good under a big striking McLean print.

it was nice to see some more pieces fired in Gas Kimishima’s 2008 anagama out in the world too, like this quiet scored bottle.

this new porcelain layered piece looked very striking too, some good lighting and the gallery white wall does help!

Sarah asked for a couple of these porcelain stem bowls – I will be interested to see if they sell. they are somewhat different from my usual rugged oeuvre.

the exhibition is on for two months, finishing at the end of August, which I am also pleased about, especially as it’s the only exposure my pots are getting this year.

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three devon potters

Posted jane -->on 20th Jul 2010

last week I stayed a night in Devon with old friends Nic and Sabine. Tilda renewed her acquaintance with Rody, their huge and very laid back deerhound cross lurcher. he isn’t susceptible to her feminine wiles and refused to give up his stick. in the field next door there were three alpacas, recently sheared and looking like extremely long thin poodles. T was sure they were deer and had to spend most of the time tied up.

Sabine and Nic have almost finished their beautiful new workshop. the lower half is built of cob (clay and straw), with a white lime render top coat – soft and organic in shape. above it it wood lap. with the wooden floor, and a projected open wood fire in winter, it will be pleasant to work in and pots should dry well.

Nic’s new anagama kiln, replacing the old out-in-the-open hog-back which I helped fire a couple of times, is under a solid roof, and sheltered by the other buildings – much more comfortable for the crew.

a lovely place to work, especially in the summer.

the pots all lie about outside when finished, which somehow makes them more beautiful. these two huge bottles of Nic’s have big cracks horizontally around them – presumably because they are thrown in sections and then subjected to horizontal stresses pulling them apart during firing, as they are fired on their sides. anagama firing always produces a lot of spoilers. the cracks on these do not detract from their quality, it’s just all part of the process. (his website here)

Sabine’s work is much quieter and made with huge attention to detail, fired in her “fast fire” wood firing kiln with soda.

I have crewed this kiln, and it was nowhere near as easy to fire as you would think! very easy to clog it up in fact, by rushing it with too much fuel …

the dry weather has made Devon a little less lush than usual, but driving to see another potter, Doug Fitch, I found myself amongst deep narrow lanes

hedged in with bracken, swooping up and down the hills and valleys

Doug’s workshop is at the top of one of these steep valleys

with a lovely wood opposite, from which he digs the clays he uses to make slipware, which follows on from, and improvises on , the traditional pottery of Devon. I completely forgot to take any photos, too busy talking and looking, which is very sad, so I have borrowed a couple and there is a short film about him and his work here – it’s on facebook so I hope this works for non-facebook users – his website is here

you wouldn’t think it but his workshop is basically a set of old block-work pig sheds

a sample of his exuberant slip-wares. I am saving up.

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going to the races

Posted jane -->on 4th Jul 2010

a sail with a picnic is proposed, which mutates to a motor, as the wind is freshening up to 25 mph, and indeed later gusting to 35 mph. the sky is intensely blue and the wind merely a little breezy as we leave Bale.

the tide is still coming in and the the wind deceptively slackening at Morston. it is the weekend of the Cockle Racing World Championship, and cockles all along the creek are getting ready. (there are only two cockles in existence outside North Norfolk).

we are all going in Elsie, as it’s a smallish shortish tide, Elsie’s mooring gives her more latitude.

here goes George’s yacht, which is used as the starter’s boat.

the cockles racing have enough expertise to manage their boats with the strong wind; we don’t. the outboard is filled up with diesel and started and off we go.

here comes Sandpiper, zipping up the creek, faster than us, the wind south south west, behind her.

we motor out and turn into Blakeney harbour to check out a friend’s very impressive vintage motor cruiser.

some cockles are moored out in the pit, and are having trouble getting sails up; a lot of flapping. some have reefed their sails, but the boldest and best don’t bother.

here come two, sails bellying wide.

this is a smart little fishing boat I haven’t seen before.

Elsie’s skipper is relaxed – “just driving” he says.

it’s quite choppy – the wind is in opposition to the tide.

we land on the point and leave an anchor in the stones and sand of the beach. the cockles are milling around before the race, getting the feel of the conditions.

this sailor seems to be having a bad time, he’s lost his crew, his boat wants to blow across onto the mud, and he can hardly hold onto it in this wind.

the cockles bunch up for the start –

and they are off. I brought my little telescope but the view through it is very two-dimensional; it’s hard to see where the boats are in relation to the course, especially when they tack.

quite a lot of heeling and sitting up on the rail; stealing each other’s wind, and similar tricks. fun to watch.

the seal boats are landing people to spend an hour or so on the point, and others have come to spend a few hours. we decide it’s not a comfortable place for a picnic out here – the wind is getting up, and Elsie will be hard to get off in this rough chop.

so the bags all go back on board and we get her off with difficulty, the wind pushes us back onto the beach.

the cockle race is over and everybody sailing back now. packets of water come aboard and the waves are quite big; some of us get rather wet.

trundling safely to the head of the creek we find those without motors having to tack into a strong wind.

some spectacular manoeuvring going on

with a casualty – the laser on the left – and crikey, that looks scary ….

we are told to keep out of her way as she shoots from one side of the creek to the other

unlike Wiveton Belle, who make longer tacks, under better control,

looking thoroughly seaman-like

Shokanawe narrowly missing them and the moored boats, but it turned out that they had a lot less control due to the fact that the hull was damaged and the buoyancy chamber was full of water, so were doing well to get back under sail.

in a flurry of booms and long tillers crisscrossing

having managed to avoid collision Elsie is put to bed safely

and we have a peaceful picnic, although the awning wants to play sailing boats with us.

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