SEEING THINGS LIKE A MAD ORGANIST

I’m going to paint my house. Only the inside walls but it takes me ages to complete anything so I’m taking a break from ‘Loose and Leafy’ while I do it.

It’s not my time of year either. Not really. I’m not a very mid-spring kind of person.

And in the breaks from cleaning and painting I’ll be experimenting with my new camera.

So far, I’m not doing well. Indeed, if it weren’t for Gary (at Gary’s Garden) who went to the trouble of downloading the manual onto his own computer and giving me some really helpful advice - I would probably have shrivelled up in despair. BIG THANKS! I’m even beginning to hope I might eventually be able to take photos where the colour comes right first time and the focus is focused on what I am photographing instead of on something completely different. By June, with luck and effort, I will have got beyond having to decide whether a nettle swaying gently in the wind most closely resembles a golfer or a plate of food. (This camera provides me with some very odd options!)

My idea of a good photograph is one where it goes straight from the camera onto the screen or onto a piece of paper with no editing whatsoever . . . No colour changes, no cropping - nothing. And it’s been a frustrating (but illuminating) experience - trying to make things come ‘right’ on the computer. Sometimes, I can. Mostly, I can’t. And when I can’t, I find myself pressing buttons wildly and randomly like a demented organist in a supernatural storm.

. . . And the results have, at times, been illuminating.

I’ve realised there can be moments when seeing something all ‘wrong’ highlights things which have been there all the time but which weren’t so prominent until their colour changed. Truly, it’s a matter of seeing things ‘in a new light’.

Perhaps living next door to Esther Montgomery is rubbing off a bit. After all, photographs from space are sometimes presented with ‘wrong’ colours when that’s the only way their information can be expressed.

So, as a final fling before I reappear with proper photographs (hopefully!) sometime in June (after the carpets have been cleaned and when the hedgerows are beginning to tire interestingly instead of being all sparkling-fresh and boring) . . . here, in this post, are some mad-organist results.

Best Wishes

Lucy

I WENT TO FROME ON SATURDAY

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Last year's Buddleia flowers

and this year's leaves.

I went to Frome on Saturday; along a little branch line which chumbles slowly between bushes and fields and is single track in places. There are even 'Request Stops' where the train will only come to a halt if you tell the guard in advance that you want to get off.

Rather grandly, the notice board on the platform said it would be going to Cardiff and the signs in the carriages were in Welsh as well as in English.

Dead leaves at the foot of a Holm Oak Trunk. You can go to Bristol on the same train too. Sometimes there's an announcement to say it will go to Gloucester instead.

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Dead Gorse.

New Gorse.

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One of the trees I am following. The slashed off branch

is still visible but catkins have arrived and the leaves are there. (Can anyone identify it yet?)

But whatever its destination - it never fails to be an adventure, going on this train. There's always a sense of 'something beyond' - a notion that, one day, one might simply stay in one's seat and leave it to chance where, and when, one might arrive. And, wherever it's going, it goes slow enough to make it worth while looking out of the window because everything stays there long enough to be looked at.

Much of the Ground Elder is taller than me now.

There are an awful lot of blasted oaks in the middles of fields on the way to Frome. You'd have thought they'd be in the way. And un-blasted ones too. There are little rivers and small hills - and a high ridge to look up to. And nearly all the fields are bright green squares bordered with the white blossom of blackthorn.

The Dandelions are like gold coins, dense along the verges. (Except gold coins don't tend to be lying around densely like this. Not round here. Wish they did!)

Not for much longer though. The further we went into Somerset, the tattier it got, browner, closer to the moment when petals will fall. It'll happen here too soon - and then we'll be into May. There's a white Hawthorn tree near my house which breaks into blossom first every year.

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And it's done it again!

Hawthorn in bud. (May.)

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And Hawthorn Blossom.

And, after the May . . . maybe last year will be gone. In the meantime, there's a lot of 2008 still around.

(Which is what, on the side, this post has been about.)

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DEAD THINGS AND DAPPLED THINGS

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Thank God for dead things

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Dappled things,

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Brown things.

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Holed things

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Old things

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Twisted things

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And shadows.

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Many more than these things!

(Not alone for green things.)

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With thanks to Gerard Manley Hopkins who wrote:-

PIED BEAUTY

Glory be to God for dappled things - For skies of couple-colour as a brindled cow; For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim; Fresh fire-coal chestnut-falls; finches wings; Landscape plotted and pieced - fold, fallow, and plough; And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim. All things counter, original, spare, strange; Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?) With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim; He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change: Praise him.

AN ERRONEOUS POST - IN PRAISE OF GROUND ELDER (EXCEPT IT'S ALEXANDERS)

THIS POST COMES WITH A HEALTH WARNING!

When I wrote this post,
I thought I was looking at
Ground Elder
I was wrong!
It's ALEXANDERS.
Which means most of this post
is
wrong and
MISLEADING
and nonsense!
Apologies

At the beginning of March, I posted a photo of Ground Elder on Pictures Just Pictures. Julia (We're Going to Need a Bigger Pot) said it would be useful for ID.

(Be careful - don't use these pictures to identify Ground Elder.

They are not of Ground Elder.

They are of a plant called Alexanders.)

Well, at first, I was surprised. I didn't know there was anyone in England, possibly in the whole of the British Isles, who hadn't at one time or another, had a show down with the stuff. (Except she may have been joking. I'm not very good at tone of voice in comments. I hang my head.)

BUT . . . on reflection, it may be there aren't many gardeners . . . (especially town ones) who really know what Ground Elder, in its full glory, is like - because it is generally pulled out before it has a chance to show what it can do.

Nearly everyone knows its spreading capacity - sort of infinite, sideways . . . but what about up?

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In the hedgerows, it is now about eye level with me. When it's on banks, it's higher. (Well, obviously, but you can see what I mean from the photo.)

One of the reasons I thought
 this was impressive Ground Elder
is because I was mistaken.
It isn't Ground Elder - it's a plant called
Alexanders.

In fact (confession) it's only recently (this year) that I've realised these wonderful plants with their lovely white flowers are Ground Elder. Idiot that I am, I'd thought they were growing majestically through it. I mean, they're not exactly hugging the ground are they? I suppose the point is that they are not trees.

But, look at this.

I'm still wrong.
All the way through this post, I'm wrong.
It's a beautiful plant, all the same -
Alexanders!

If you saw this photo without knowing it's Ground Elder, wouldn't you think it something quite exotic? Wouldn't you think it is the kind of plant that grows only in hot countries? That it should be classed along with orchids and lilies? That it would need special care if it is to be grown in England? Maybe only the people in charge of the greenhouses at Kew could be guaranteed success?

(Now I'm going to hide and wait . . . for . . . Nigel Colborn . . . to come along . . . and say . . . "it isn't Ground Elder at all . . . it's . . . . . . . . . . "!) ALEXANDERS - THAT'S WHAT IT IS!

I thought this was
Aegopodium podagraria - But IT ISN'T!
It's Alexanders
(Smyrnium olusatrum)
I HOPE I'M RIGHT THIS TIME!

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