On our walk this afternoon a strong perfume caught us and we followed it to a Sarcococca bush – just glorious. We are agreed that we need one in our garden. It is also known as Sweet Box.
Sarcococca
Next we came across a beautiful blue Hydrangea, lovely on a grey October day.
Just the best blue
Coming home again, we found Blackberries and they were still juicy and sweet. I took the photo after I had eaten the best ones!
Blackberries
Our local hospital, The Royal Cornwall Hospital at Treliske, has put out a call for Baby Beanie hats in red, amber and green for the newborns to wear, the colour indicating the level of care and feeding support required for the baby. I have put Snow Dog to one side and made my first three little hats ready for delivery.
Green, red and amber Baby Beanie Hats
When we were in Portugal, we called in at a most attractive little shop selling the kind of clothes that I like. While we were browsing, the young woman behind the counter was crocheting a flower in a natural cotton. She was delighted by my interest, told me that she attaches one to the brown paper bag she puts clothes in and then presented me with a flower! I came across it again today as I was about to hand wash my linen trousers. Yes, I did buy something!
Beautiful crochet flower
Autumn is upon us. I have spent the afternoon collecting up leaves in the front garden to make leaf mould and the clocks go back tonight. Here is an Autumny poem for you – from Incantation by George Parsons Lathrop.
When the leaves, by thousands thinned,
A thousand times have whirled in the wind,
And the moon, with hollow cheek,
Staring from her hollow height,
Consolation seems to seek
From the dim, reechoing night;
And the fog-streaks dead and white
Lie like ghosts of lost delight
O’er highest earth and lowest sky;
Then, Autumn, work thy witchery!
The fading light was lovely for a walk this evening – flowers with a glow, a cat with blue feet and an ethereal weather vane.
The Sage leaves covered in dew drops in the early morning sunbeams looked like tiny sparkling jewels.
Purple Sage
From the kitchen window, I spotted something red in the border. When I investigated, I discovered that it was three strawberries in October. Sadly, another creature had started to taste each one so I didn’t pick them but left the produce to be shared.
Strawberries!
I love Autumny webs and the spiders that make them. This one stayed still for just long enough to get a photo.
Spider busy in her web
P.S. For Arkenaten
The following photo was the centre fold in our newspaper this morning and I thought of you.
Beautiful birds
Selections from Ornithurae
I love the Superb Fruit-Dove and the Bleeding-Heart Dove – poor creature.
The sun came out today! We sat out and read our books, had lunch outside and soaked up the glorious warmth. We saw fleeting butterflies, heard bees in the flowers and watched a Bumble bee collecting nectar.
Yesterday’s raindrops were still clinging to the purple Tibuchine Urvilleana in my Suffragette garden.
left behind raindrops
Our Dracaena Palm in the front garden is in blossom again.
Dracaena palm
Now it’s me under the weather so it has been another quiet day. We have recently discovered Mick Herron’s spy novels and are loving them! I’m onto the third in the series, ‘Real Tigers’, having read ‘Slow Horses’ and ‘Dead Lions’ on holiday.
Third in the series
I’ve made a start on knitting Snow Dog for Christmas for LiveWire B by special request. One ear, a tiny stripy sock is done and the body.
One ear!
Snow Dog
I ventured out late afternoon, when the rain had stopped, to catch raindrops on flowers. A twig with Lichen had fallen from the Winter Flowering Cherry onto the Cotoneaster with its glorious red berries.
Today, one of my Blogger friends posted this beautiful poem, High Flight, which is one of Mr S’s favourites having found it some years ago. It was written by John Magee, Poet and Soldier, 1922–1941. In his seventh flight in a Spitfire Mk I, he had flown up to 33,000 feet. As he orbited and climbed upward, he was struck by words he had read in another poem — “To touch the face of God.” He completed his verse soon after landing. It never fails to move both of us and you can truly imagine the feelings of freedom as he ‘chased the shouting wind along’.
Thank you Saymber for reminding us both of this special poem.
Flight – by John Gillespie Magee Jr.
Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth,
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I’ve climbed and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds- and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of- wheeled and soard and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there
I’ve chased the shouting wind along and flung
My eager craft through footless hails of air.
Up, up the long delirious burning blue
I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace,
where never lark, or even eagle, flew;
And, while with silent lifting mind I’ve trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.
Storm Brian has almost passed by and it was still very windy at Godrevy this morning. It certainly blew our cobwebs away! We walked down to the shop this afternoon and found a couple of Hebe flowers still pink and pretty. On our way up West End, a busy street in the week but quiet this afternoon, we could hear chickens muttering. After a few minutes they came into sight but didn’t stay still for long.
It’s been another quiet, stay-at-home, curl-up-with-a-good-book sort of a day today too as Storm Brian blows a hoolie outside. Today, however, we have had the best treat, two hours of having a story read to us! Not just any old story either but the first of Philip Pullman’s brilliant new trilogy, The Book of Dust, read by Simon Russell Beale on BBC Radio 4 this afternoon – two and a half hours of entrancement.
Philip Pullman’s new novel
I promised you more of the Onondaga Nation’s Greetings and Thanks to the Natural World. Here are the next two panels.
and from the four directions…..
and now the sun
Tomorrow, the Moon….
Just found this photo which demonstrates the hoolie very well! Thanks to Adam Sprague for this amazing photograph.
It’s been a quiet, stay-at-home, curl-up-with-a-good-book, rest-after-hectic-holiday sort of a day while Storm Brian begins to make its way across Britain, starting with us in the South West.
I saw this in Tiger in North Finchley on Wednesday and it made me laugh so I had to buy it. I do cook with Tarragon too.
Here is a brilliant poem by Mike Harding for you that came my way yesterday and which touched a chord.
One Swallow
Remember how you’d drive at night in summers past
Through fogs and mists of midges,
Blizzards of fat bugs, snowstorms of moths
All melting on the windscreen glass?
Long, hot, country miles, you’d drive
Dry eyed and squinting out into the dark, cursing,
The windscreen frosted with their last moments,
The wipers useless, washer water gone.
You’d get back home to find the hurl and heft
And spatter, the great smears of death,
The legions lost, all dashed and hurtled to their end –
Guts, brains and wings, thorax and antennae –
Pulped into a patina you’d have to soap and scour away.
But Death comes easy for them now, no battering
Oblivion at seventy miles an hour, head on,
Just the toxic rain of money slathered across
The meadows, hills and downs.
One swallow makes a summer now;
Soon she’ll be gone too with the bees,
The birdsong and the riotous great clamour
That once welcomed every dawn.
And, as we face each silent year
And see the dustbowl fells and fields,
We’ll weep for what we all have lost:
For clouds of midges, nights alive with moths,
The scimitars of swallows, martins, swifts,
The wrens and sparrows, nightingales and jays
And the chanting birds that caroled once
All across those golden, summer days.
(From “Fishing For Ghosts” Available via the online shop at www.mikeharding.co.uk)
Sunflower to attract insects September 2014
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