HOW NATURE CREEPS INTO ARCHITECTURE

Even if it hadn't rained, we would have visited Gloucester Cathedral. And the rain wasn't too bad that day, more like on and off drizzle, so we were able to visit parts of the town as well - but the cathedral cloisters caught my imagination beyond everything else. (If you've seen the Harry Potter film where Hermione fights a troll - you've seen them too - and I understand they were used as a set for one of the Doctor Who episodes.)

I walked round and round (or square and square!). There's a garden in the middle but you can't see it unless you go out through one of the small doors.

These cloisters are large and wide. Very beautiful, clearly very old - but not exactly material for a nature blog so it took me a while to decide whether I should include them.

So, once back here in Dorset, I went for a walk. And as I went, I thought. And as I thought, I took some photos. Then I came home, turned on the computer . . . and looked at them all, holiday and here.

Part of why I felt so at home in those cloisters was evident.

It's a very outside sort of place. I doubt it would always have been glazed - even though monks would have washed in the basins at the side. And there's a stone bench running around the inner walls. You could sit there and be cool, or cold . . . depending!

These cloisters were begun in 1351 and construction continued over the next . . . well, decades. Never mind Rome not being built in a day - some cathedrals took centuries to build. Durham, which we visited later in our journey, took four - and they hadn't stopped tinkering even then! We may have less reason to complain about having the builders in than we think. The building of buildings like these was part of life's fabric through generations of workers and couldn't but have had an impact on everyone who lived in the town and the lands around.

Looking up - fan vaulting - the earliest surviving. Some of it probably the first ever built.

But 'fan' vaulting . . .

This post is a struggle. I'm heavily dependent on the internet for information and, so far, I haven't been able to find who first thought of the name.

To me, the 'fans' look more like support structures of umbelliferous flowers

- and such flowers are not a silly place to find inspiration. In the middle ages when towns were smaller and the country always close at hand, for people interested in pattern and structure (architects!) plants like these could not have been other than fascinating. So, for me, this is fennel vaulting. Whether fennel had been introduced by then is beside the point. There would have been all sorts of umbelliferous plants in the gardens and hedgerows of Gloucester and beyond.

(This family of plants has now been renamed 'Apiaceae' but (to me) 'umbelliferous' describes them better. Think of prongs which hold up umbrellas.)

I once spent ages trying to find out how long roses had grown wild in Britain - and writing a post like this forces me, once again, to realise that the English countryside is not ever-unchanging.

I don't know whether chicory grew in its mediaeval hedgerows (I suspect not) but the flowers, though striking in their blueness, are not alone in their umbelliferousness. Look at the shape of the petals too - tall, with straight, parallel sides and a toothed edge at the top. Look at their simple circularity. Then look at the lines and shapes and circles of the cloister windows.

This is a shoddy post. It is dreadfully short of information even though my brain is bursting. That's why it's taken so long to write. I've been hoping to find time to check out the facts, fill in the gaps - but, in the end, I've decided I'd rather post something inadequate than to let Loose and Leafy grind to a halt while I swim through a sea of research . . . so . . . take this next bit with care.

I'm not an indoors kind of person. Well, I spend a lot of time indoors but indoors is not where I feel most at home. Yet these cloisters entranced me.

Here is a door.

And this is a familiar walk along our old railway line.

There will always have been routes through woods where the trees arch over. There will always have been bridges of some kind to walk under. Doors into . . . where . . . ? One catches one's breath.

And ever since I walked in these cloisters, I've been plodding around taking pictures of the spikey tops of leafless bushes - and chimney-scapes. Of telegraph poles and trees. And examining the way flat topped builidings don't seem to fit into our particular landscape as comfortably on the eye as those with sloped roofs and overhanging eaves. Is this because some reflect the shapes of oaks and mushrooms but others clearly don't? Do I like some buildings more than others because I begin from nature (in other words, is this is a matter of taste) or does architecture go wrong for everyone when it abandons the way things grow and form?

(I put it this way because buildings which suit a rocky country might well need to be more angular than those which 'fit' here.)

No way is this to do with simplicity. The cloisters of Gloucester Cathedral are far from unsophisticated structures. They didn't take a long time to build because workers were short of JCBs and tall, metal cranes. They were a radical innovation. A new design. Something people hadn't seen before.

If only we in the twenty-first century paid as much attention to ceilings!

Tweet

A PORTRAIT OF PRINCE CHARLES

In 1980, Bryan Organ painted a picture of Prince Charles.

I seem to remember there was a fuss. I’ve been googling away and can’t find a trace of what was said at the time. It will be there, of course, buried under all the articles I’m not looking for but I’ll leave that aside for the moment. There’s always a fuss. No-artist can please everybody.

This painting pleased me though.

I remember going to see it in the National Portrait Gallery and how it touched my humour. At the time, it seemed more to be a portrait of a flag and a fence than of a prince. But the flag and the fence would have been much less memorable, would have held much less meaning, if there hadn’t been a man in the foreground. If he had been standing, instead of sitting on a mundane wooden chair (a nice one though, blue) the image would have faded from my mind. And the best thing is, so much space is taken by the flag and the fence and the blue, blue sky, there’s not enough room for the whole of him; one whole foot, a toe and a heel are missing.

I’ve been trying to re-construct how I saw the world before I saw the painting. And failing. I can’t remember whether I liked the painting because I could already see that some things are so important, they don’t fit fully in the frame; that the power of the whole can be displayed more completely if all of the whole shape isn’t in view; that space is as important as content; that straight lines and bold skies are . . . don’t know - but I like them.

I just can’t remember.

Did this painting inspire to such a degree it has influenced the kind of photos I have taken ever since? Or did I warm to it because I recognised a fellow ‘eye’?

Reconstructing is made extra hard because, back then, I hadn’t had much access to a ‘proper’ camera. I have little with which to compare.

The point of this will emerge in a moment.

Just for now, back to hedgerow photos when the light has gone black and white.

When I took this photo, I thought this tree was a young lime (Tilia). I now think it might be a sycamore or maple. I’ll see more clearly come the spring.

From light and twiggy to heavy, dark and solid-leafy all year - Holm Oak (Quercus ilex).

An oak of some other kind. (Turkey Oak? - Quercus Cerris.) (Very scientific, this!)

Buddleia

And . . . tantarantara . . . ! The reed (Phragmites communis  - I think!)

which reminded me of Prince Charles.

You can see more of my photos at Message in a Milk Bottle and Pictures Just Pictures.

* * * * *

This post is listed in the Festival of the Trees 56 , February 1st 2011 which, for this edition, is hosted by Treeblog.

For information about future (and past!) Tree Festivals, click the picture below.

WHAT I'VE FOUND IN A YEAR

Every year is odd in some way. This year had its discomforts - for a while I was without a camera. But having a new one has been a delight!

Disregarding that blip, Loose and Leafy has documented a year in the hedgerows. Old scenes have been re-visited. New interests developed. The only constant is that I respond to what I see rather than have a detailed plan ahead - so the posts flit about randomly, depending on what I notice of what has flowered, died or reappeared. Much depends on weather! Much depends on page space (and time!) so all sorts of interesting things get missed out. 


(I’ve seen them though. Rarely a few days go by without a camera walk.)

June 5th 2010

In May and June, the focus was on colour

Viper's Bugloss (Echium vulagere) and Wild Fennel (Foeniculum vulagare)
June 30th 2010

and patterns.

July 1st 2010

In July I stood up for Bindweed.

(When I'm not championing Bindweed, I'm sticking up for Ground Elder - this is the blog where villains are allowed to celebrate!)

Cowslip - Primula veris -
August 15th 2010

In August, seeds roused my interest.

September 22nd 2010

In September, I began to pay attention to the wild plants of towns and cities.

Sandsfoot Castle, Dorset.
Built in the 1530s.
Now falling into the sea.
October 12th 2010

In October, I was drawn to the seashore - looking up as well as down!

Beadlet Anemone - Actinia equina - November 5th 2010

In November, I began to notice creatures - not cuddly ones but interesting none the less. This blob which looks like a shiny bit of plastic is a Beadlet Anemone. When the sea comes in, its top opens and tentacles emerge to grab food from the water. These creatures are carnivores and though small (rising up to about 5cm when fully expanded) are violent. They'll tolerate members of their own group but are likely to attack Beadlet anemone intruders and sting them! (Looking at this shiny red thingy, I find it hard to grasp that it is animate, let alone able to distinguish one being from another.) They are common but I have only ever seen them under water before I came across this one. And even though they are common, scientists don't yet properly understand how they reproduce. (Collins Pocket Guide to the Seashore talks about both male and females disgorging their young. Sounds disgusting, doesn't it?) I find this very reassuring. It's nice to know that, although I am more ignorant than others, ignorance isn't completely avoidable!

Each year, I’ve looked for fungi. Now I’ve become more aware of  lichen too - and here is some on frosted rocks.

December 9th 2010

Frost on rocks on this part of the south coast isn’t common but, hopefully, through the year, I have shown the uncommon in the common - and a few things new too. I have certainly found plants, fungi, seaweeds, lichens and creatures I haven't thought about before, even if they are ordinary in the experience of 'proper' naturalists and however many there are in the wild. 


Thank you for accompanying me on this journey.

The spring will come and we'll be back to pretty flowers, wonderful colours  and unfurling leaves but, just at present, the hedgerows are full of berries and birds hunting for food. It's all pretty stark, the light is dull and it's getting close to Christmas.

Have a wonderful celebration!

Here’s to the year (s!) to come!

Hurray!
Meanwhile . . . .

P.S. This is an advert for my other blog  - Message in a Milk Bottle. 

Message in a Milk Bottle takes up where Pictures Just Pictures left off. (A picture a day without words). There are lots of plants and twigs and leaves and stones shown but Message in a Milk bottle offers a place to the urban, the abstract and the domestic as well. Why not follow me there too? I’d be glad to read your comments.

PRINTS AND PATTERNS

This is a bit of side-step from usual Loose and Leafy posts. It is about patterns, rather than plants and it includes two garden plants as well as wild ones.

The pictures are very cropped so there's no point in clicking on them. They aren't especially interesting botanically but . . . look at their colours.

Here lie inspirations for curtains and clothes. Bit of a come-down, I admit. Flowery curtains have long been laughed at. Flowery clothes can look all wrong. Not necessarily though. I'm not a designer - but I'd love to be clothed in the woods and hedgerows and snatches from garden plants.

That's all - four prints in a block.

There - don't they make you happy?

PAINTING IN THE NEW YEAR

In celebration of the New Year, I'd like to ask you to do something completely out of character - to forget you think plants should be cared for, protected, admired, studied or anything else like that. Imagine you've never seen plants and trees before. I mean you might have seen them unintentionally as you do the shopping or knock on doors or walk down lanes in the ordinary course of life - but pretend you've not actually seeeeeen them in the sense of having taken proper notice. Maybe it isn't too hard to imagine after all. I don't think many people see ivy round here; not each, glossy, heart-shaped leaf. Great, thick vines of the stuff envelope trees and trail across the ground. There's no shortage.

Brambles are the same; acre upon acre of dark, impenetrable, unsightly prickliness. No ordinary person would go examining individual leaves. There isn't the time. If you worked in a bank, you wouldn't take a microscope to the pennies. Someone sprayed silver paint on the trunk of my neighbour's ornamental cherry last summer. If only I'd taken a photo! It looked very pretty. The tree itself is a disgrace to plant-dom. It produces great big, pink, vivid, un-sightly hunks of blossom every spring. They look like squashed up blobs of loo paper. The silver paint though - it high-lighted the texture of the bark and the sun sparkled against it as if this was how everything was meant to be. Squirt paint on a plant, tip colour on its leaves . . . and lo and behold . . . it looks different. Each shape calls for attention. Out of all the leaves in the wood, these stand out proud. The colours on the leaves in this post are the result, I guess, of random acts. I don't know why they are there and I don't suppose much thought went into choosing where the paint should go. Isn't chance lovely? Polka dots on trunks are different though. There's effort behind them. They are up the trunks and along the branches of a whole, small grove of Holm Oaks. Don't sniff or complain - admire the industry . . . think how proud you would have been if it had been you who had done it . . . (bet you wouldn't even have thought of it!) - so SMILE! Smile for New Year! (And if you don't smile - the penalty is to count all the millions and millions and millions and millions . . . of leaves which don't have paint on.) Lucy P.S. The trees and the blue ivy were first seen on Pictures Just Pictures. Hope you don't mind seeing them again

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

SEEING THE WORLD IN COLOUR (AND THE BLACKTHORN IS FLOWERING)

I've seen a car I want. It's rust coloured (matte) and like an oversized VW Beetle only wider, and taller - which is just as well because the hair of the young man driving it had been cut as a flat topped mohican. It looked as if he'd stepped straight out of 'The Incredibles' and he wouldn't have fitted in the car if the roof hadn't been so high.

I don't approve of cars (with a few exceptions) and I don't drive. They fill up the roads and towns have become little more than collections of car parks with shops and dwellings scattered loosely between them. They're not much good for the atmosphere either. But if I had a car, that would be the one.

* * * * *

I saw this car when I was walking into town to buy a replacement for the camera phone I dropped down the loo. It was going the other way.

* * * * *

So far, I've spent nine hours walking in and out of town, trying to buy a new phone. One and a half hours of that was when I was returning a phone I didn't like and left the charger at home - which meant I had to go back to fetch it and the journey was wasted. (It's three-quarters of an hour in each direction.)) Another hour and a half was spent going to buy a different one and finding I'd left my purse behind so I had to go home for that too.

Reasons for Returning the Phones

(Remember, I don't want to phone on a phone but to take pictures with it.)

One - was five times as expensive as that I've been using. It was on a contract, which made me nervous, so I'm glad I didn't like it after all but everyone seemed to recommend it - on the internet, in the shops - so I plunged in.

How come I'm the only one not to like it?

Well, to me, it made the world look murky.

This has challenged me about the way I see things. Perhaps the world really is murkier than I've imagined. Almost all the photos I took on the old phone came out with what were, to me, true colours. There are few exceptions. One is some bark which looks yellower than in real life - but the patterns are crisp and interesting so I used it on Pictures Just Pictures all the same. And the walls of the tunnel in the Roots and Water post aren't as brightly orange as they appear. But at least you can see them, so I used them. But almost everything else has come out just right - leaves and trees and skies and toadstools and all.

This is where the car comes in. There are some things, things as well as people, that one simply bonds with - as I bonded with my phone. It's light. It fits in my hand. It and I see the world in the same way - so we are friends.

* * * * *

Presumably, the people in the shop and the people on the internet who recommended this other (expensive) phone must see the world differently from me. They must see the world as shown by its pictures.

The young men who sold it were very kind and patient. I could tell they were trying to see things from my point of view, understand my interests. They explained how the camera on the phone searches for faces and focuses on them. It will even wait until the people in the picture smile. (I didn't ask for how long.) (Nor what it would do if some people smiled and others didn't.) So, I told them about my blogs, and how I take pictures of plants. So they talked about how to take photos in the snow, or on the beach, about front lighting and back lighting . . . for instance, they said, if you were taking a photo of a plant in a night club and the strobe lighting was on . . . they even showed me which buttons I would need to press.

* * * * *

Since taking it back, I've been trying to see the world as that camera sees it - all dull and murky and bland. And I can. It takes a bit of effort and it's taken me a while to do it - but, now, I can.

It's like listening to a huge orchestra and picking out one instrument, intentionally being more aware of the 'colour' of that sound than usual. I'm not meaning exaggerate its influence or listen to its tune or rhythm at the expense of others, just being more aware that it is there.

* * * * *

The other phone was more straight forward. It didn't focus properly.

However, before I took that one back, I had a go at the black and white setting. Strangely, the focus was sharpened - but its idea of black and white turned out to be not in the least like mine - I saved some of the photos I took on it and am using them to liven up this post.

Talk about seeing the world differently!

P.S. It had a 'grey' setting too. The photos on that setting came out . . . grey.

P.P.S. I've found a phone like my old one, on ebay, new . . . fingers crossed . . .

If it's an identical twin of my old one (which can't be guaranteed, every single object has its own character, there's no such thing as a clone . . . )

Well . . . perhaps in a fortnight . . . I'll be up and running as usual.

And happy.

_____

P.P.P.S. The Blackthorn is flowering.

PHOTOS IN THIS POST

Header - Rambling Rector Rose and Spanish Broom.

Then:-

1. Tea Towels on Washing Line.

2. Antarctica Fern.

3. Rambling Rector Rose (again).

4. Shoes and Broom (of the sweeping kind).

5. Cordyline Palms

6. Trunk of Madeleine d'Angevine Vine and Japanese Anemone

7. Wild Blackthorn and Gorse

_____

For the Next Post - Two Letters, Two Trees and Some Weeds

For the Post Before This - I've Dropped My Phone Down the Loo

AUTUMN - FALL - THE BACK END - (and SEPIA)

I used to think Sepia was cheating. Now, I don't. If black and white is ok - why not sepia too? Especially when it says something more about the season than full colour can on a dull day?

For The Post Before This One

For The Next Post