Footpath in spring

Summer Break

2006-05-31T22:58:00.000+01:00

Tomorrow is the first of June. Surely then it will be summer (though there was almost a frost a couple of nights ago). The blog is having a break, and so am I.

The breakneck pace of everyday change has started to slow down. The trees are fully green now, the hedges too. The rose and the honeysuckle will be here soon. The bryony and the hops and the brambles will keep on growing tying up the hedges in long twisting strains of creeper. But the changes will slow as the summer comes.

What should I have told you that I still can? The sorts of trees that were planted when the hedges were laid maybe. All native English species, hawthorn, blackthorn, field maple, guilder rose, wayfarer tree (a sort of viburnum). This to add to the oak, ash, elm, hazel, dogwood, holly, elder and rowan that were there before. The hawthorn is standing 18 inches out of the tubes now and the guilder rose is in flower.

How old is the cut? Several hundred years for sure, probably as old as the huge oaks at the top end. It must have been used since there was a village at the bottom and a hamlet at the top. There's been a village at the bottom for a thousand years. At the top our house is the oldest building standing maybe 4 or 5 hundred years. The cut they say used to actually go through woods (by the look of the flora). Two hundred years ago there was a house at the bottom on and probably one at the top too. You can it from the fact that nettles grow there. Nettles only grow where man has been. They stay on a lot longer though. You can find Roman sites in the forest by looking for patches of nettles.

I haven't even talked about the people who use the cut, or the animals that live in the burrows or nest in the trees and hedges. I haven't talked about how the hedge was laid. (Here's a joke from Ashok. Good news - you can get a grant from the EU to get laid. Bad news - you only get it if you're a hedge.)

What are the beauties of the cut? The flowers (it used to be called Madeira Walk because of the flowers there.) The scent of the cow parsley. The changing sunlight on the leaves leaves, the feel of the curve under foot where thousands have walked before you.

The pictures today show the cut at the beginning of March bare and brown, then the yellow of the daffodils and celandine, the blue of the bluebells, and finally the cow parsley filled path of May now slowly going. Finally a picture of the oak at the top finally in full leaf.

The blog may change direction and follow me and my wife around England or it may just rest until autumn the next big season of change. Thank you for looking.

Buttercups

2006-05-26T22:08:00.000+01:00

Buttercups are going mad in the field next to the cut. I remember the riot of buttercups was one of the first things I noticed when I came to our village. It's amazing.

When I was a small boy grown ups were always poking buttercups under my chin and saying "I see he likes butter." I used to think this was particularly stupid - and still do as a matter of fact. Buttercups are the "cuckoo buds of yellow hue" from Shakespeare's "Daisies pied abd violets blue" poem. But really I just thought you'd like to see the picture of the horses grazing amid the buttercups. Oh there's some chestnut spikes in the background so a good chance of linking to "This is the weather the cuckoo likes" by Hardy.

Incidentally this site has a "Poem of the Day" page which is fun to look at though today's is a poem by Robert Service who wrote Desperate Dan McGrew I think.

Good eating on the cut

2006-05-25T22:35:00.000+01:00

There's good eating on the cut if you're a catterpillar. If you're a kid there are a few nice things to chew. But if your an ordinary person there is not much "food for free" in spring, and the plants you can eat, don't taste very nice. On the other hand the chances of getting poisoned are pretty low although Briony and (I think) Lords and Ladies' berries are poisonous. Also Hemlock, which looks very like Cow Parsley, is poisonous. Hemlock did for Socrates who was executed "on the grounds that" he offended the gods. I had to translate that into Greek as a boy and there was a special Gereek phrase for "on the grounds that" which I have long forgotten.

However I do remember the first sentences we had to translate when learning Latin and Greek and they have proved a constant source of joy to me throughout my life. (Though of course absolutely no use whatsoever.) The first word taught in Latin was "mensa" - table. And the first verb "Amo" I love. "I love the table." A very useful thing to say. What was really peculiar, if you were a boy, was that all the first declension nouns (those that end in "a" were feminine and the only man whose name ended in a was Cotta - some general of Ceasar's I think but will find out from Google, - yes he was Gaius Aurelius Cotta who fought some battle in Gaul). Yes I think "Cotta loves the table" really was a sentence we had to translate. There were a lot of sentences about Cotta so that we wouldn't get the impression that Latin was somehow effiminate.

The first verb in Greek was "luo" meaning I loosen. Lots of things were loosened. Well no, only a few things because there really aren't many things that can be loosened. "I loosen the belt of the judge" Surely I made that up, but I think I translated it. Certainly there was "He loosens the fetters of the goddess." A bit near the mark it seems to me in retrospect but of course as a child your expectation of anything you learn in class making any sense at all is zero. Notice how all the sentences are in the present making the whole thing seem even more non-sensical.

Back to eating. The favourite at this time of year must be "bread and cheese" the buds of May blossom. You can pick them and chew them. They feel a bit like little bits of cheese in your mouth and don't taste too bad at all. Kids used to pick them and eat them on the way to school. Sorrel leaves and flowers are nice to chew as well with a sort of lemony taste. You can chew on grass too, the soft ends that you pull out by pulling on the flower. Before the days of tins and frozen food people would eat "spring pudding" made from the spring shoots and mixed, I think with barley. It probably gave them much needed vitamin C after a long winter living on root vegetables. (My sister Jacky the Kew guide tells me about this and here Google really lets me down as practically every chef has a recipe for his or her "Spring Pudding" and so the information on the sort I am insterested in is burried somewhere in 30 million results. So I can't give you a sensible link.)

Enough waffle. On the cut if you're a person you can eat May buds, sorrel - the small leaves and the flowers, garlic mustard, best boiled, Celandine leaves for vitamin C, nettles - very nice boiled but hell to clean as the hairs trap the grit and they sting until cooked. (And make sure the nettles haven't been poisoned with weed killer - that would be deadly!) You could also eat cow parsley leaves as a substitute for chervil - probably best avoided as it is very like the very poisonous Hemlock. "Cow parsley may be distinguished from hemlock by its having hairy rather than smooth leaves and stems which, though sometimes purple-tinged, are never purple spotted".

In September there will be blackberries, a few apples off the very old trees, a few wild strawberries in June, and a few gooseberries off the bush near the top. But really there is not much "food for free" unless you are a caterpillar. Catterpillars are starting to eat away at all the leaves. See the photo of the hazel leaf at the top.

The old cut and the new

2006-05-23T19:49:00.000+01:00

I got given a photo of the cut taken last November before any of the laying was done. It's hard to believe it's the same place, but it is. Last autum (and for the previous 20 years or so the cut was a mysterious dark tunnel while now it's a light, open, flower filled walk. Something has been lost. Something gained. Some people love the change, some people hate it. Me? I expect it will all grow up again in the next thirty years. European money won't last forever.

Most likely the cut has seen the cycle many times before. We know the path has been there for a couple of hundred years and more likely two or three times as long as that.

The photo came from Ian Stone of Forest Friendly Farming who arranged the funding for laying the hedges - (yes it did come from Europe). The Forest Friendly Farming website is at http://www.forestfriendlyfarming.org.uk/.
I've also been talking to Peter today the local historian, and hope to talk to the man who actually did the hedge laying sometime soon, so this weeks blogging should be slightly more fact-friendly than usual. So to make up for it here's a link to a poem.

The picture of the cut as it was reminded me of Kipling's "They closed the road through the woods, seventy years ago" seems kind of appropriate when you look at the size of trees. Here's the link. I love Kipling and grew up on it. Here's the link to Road through the Woods. Ogden Nash was similarly devoted to him and wrote a nice little poem that goes something like this

When I a winsome boy did keep
I'm told that I was fond of sleep
And later as a handsome strippling
Gave up my life to sleep and Kipling.

I can't give you the rest because, for once, I know something that doesn't seem to be on Google.

Joy in the cut

2006-05-22T21:04:00.000+01:00

I saw Tom running up the cut, and ran myself to get the camera. I got there as soon as he was past the kissing gate with his young cousin and grandfather. He was happy to run through the cow parsley again and let it tickle his face and brush against. The camera failed, and he did it again and again. He would have been happy to do it all afternoon I think.

Tom's young cousin was so small he was hidden in the flowers, but I got two of Tom.

Cow Parsley - see how it grows

2006-05-19T21:33:00.000+01:00

Cow Parsley (Anthriscus sylvestris) is part of the carrot family and it's root can be eaten. So can its leaves and we had a chef living here who used to pick it and take it as Chervil to his restaurant. But the amazing things is how it has grown from a few little leaves in March to dominate the cut now in mid May.

See how it has grown in the series of pictures. A few miserable leaves at the edge of the path, next there are flowers here and there, then it is chest high as my wife walks through it, and yesterday, wild in the wind, it filled the cut with white foam.

The books say that another name is "Queen Anne's Lace" though I've never heard this used. It seems this is an American name. (Curses be upon Americans for inflicting "Rooster" upon us and calling the "Plough" the "Big Dipper".) It seems that Queen Anne's Lace is a slightly differentflower from cow parsley with one red flower at the centre. (I put this in to explain the poem I found - quite by chance about it it.) The poem is by William Carlos Williams. (Praise be upon the Americans for writing most of the best 20th century English poetry - the 21st century will be Indian for sure - there are already more English speakers in India than there are in all of the rest of the world so we'd better start learning to understand them.)

The line that caught me was "until the whole field is a white desire". Today the whole cut is a white desire. Here's the link to the Queen Anne's Lace poem - and here is another poem of his that I have just discovered. I really liked it for its everyday simplicity - I hope you enjoy it too.

The exotic sex life of lords and ladies

2006-05-18T20:55:00.000+01:00

Hidden in the dark bottom of the hedge on the cut, strange sexual shenanigans are going on amidst the lords and ladies. Not the aristocracy. We have no real lords and ladies in the village any more though we used to have two sets before the war. (We also had the millionaire who invented Allan and Hanbury's Blackcurrant Pastilles in the third big house.)

No these are plants called Lords and Ladies or Cuckoo Pint. Both names refer to the penis like spike (Called "spadex" I think) that comes up as a shield for the flower. Cuckoo Pint because "pint" is short for "pintle" which was another name for penis. Lords and Ladies for the same sort of reasons. But all this was just the look of them, their method of reproduction is really pretty improbable. Flowers go to great length to avoid self fertilization and this is how Lords and Ladies do it.

At the base of the flower, one of the cells generates heat and the base of the flower is about 10 degrees hotter than the air outside. This generates the smell of rotten meat and along with the spots on the leaves attracts flies to come into the flower. Alas regardless of their doom the little victims play. They fly down into the flower brushing past the female part of the flower and down into the male pollen. No rotten meat at all just lots of pollen around the flies feet to prance about in while that delicious and deceptive mouldy meat smell drives them crazy with hunger. The plant can't release them until the female flowers have been polinated so they have to wait trapped by downward facing spikes.

Eventually a previously trapped fly brings male pollen to the female flowers and the downward spikes wither away to allow the trapped flies to escape and lured by more putrid meat smells go and fertilize another Lords and Ladies flower. When do the poor flies ever eat I wonder?.

You couldn't make it up, and I would take a big bet on it never working. But the lords and ladies come up regularly every spring and are bright with red berries in the autumn. Maybe they are secretly polinated by crazed botanists who want to keep this improbable myth alive. Seems a much more probable explanation to me.

Wether human Lords and Ladies really have a more exotic sex life than us commoners I don't know. Half of me hopes they do (what's the use of being so grand if you just have an ordinary sex life?). Half of me hopes they don't. Part of me hopes they hardly have a sex life at all. Here's a limerrick, often recited by Philip at the Friday sing song at the pub, which suggests this.

At dinner the Duchess of Bec Said "Everyone listen a sec, They've found a man's tool In the small swimming pool. So would all of you gentelmen check?"

On a similar subject there's a nice poem by John Suckling, the cavalier poet, about an aristocratic wedding which ends with the verse:

At length the candle's out, and now
All that they had not done they do;: What that is, who can tell?
But I believe it was no more
Than thou and I have done before: With Bridget and with Nell.

Here's the link. http://www.theotherpages.org/poems/sucklin1.html
It contains the nice lines

Her cheeks so rare a white was on,
No daisy makes comparison,: (Who sees them is undone),
For streaks of red were mingled there,
Such as are on a Catherine pear,: (The side that's next the sun).

There's two more nice poems there as well. Take a look.

While I'm droning on about poetry "Alas regardless of their doom the little victims play" comes from Gray's poem "On a distant prospect of Eton College". Seeing the doom of the Eton pupils was probably to become prime minister or something of the sort maybe they should have been more cheerful or maybe not. The poem also contains the line "Where ignorance is bliss tis folly to be wise". Here's the link. http://www.emule.com/poetry/?page=poem&poem=672

After the rain

2006-05-16T18:37:00.000+01:00

The rain came today and the cow parsley reaches across the path drenching your trousers as you walk along the cut. The briony reaches in curls weighed down by the weight of the water. The smell is sweet from the cow parsley flowers, and the May blossom shines and everywhere drops nestle on the leaves and flowers. The trees really are green and no question of it.

The White and the blue

2006-05-14T13:25:00.000+01:00

It's the white and the blue time on the cut. With cow parsley flowers tickling your face as you walk by and the bluebells hidden behind a veil of white. I'm out camping in the woods where the beeches are dressed on bright new pale green like brides and everything is extremely beautiful.

Lucky me - more soon

The last of the daffodills

2006-05-03T22:19:00.000+01:00

This is the last of the daffodills on the cut. And one of the last of the celandines, looking like a little picture of the sun from an old map. (Sometimes they go like that as they die.)

The last of the daffodils gives means it's the last chance to include the Daffodils Poem by Herrick

To Daffodils

FAIR Daffodils, we weep to see
You haste away so soon:
As yet the early-rising Sun
Has not attain'd his noon.
Stay, stay,
Until the hasting day
Has run
But to the even-song;
And, having pray'd together, we
Will go with you along.

We have short time to stay, as you,
We have as short a Spring;
As quick a growth to meet decay
As you, or any thing.
We die,
As your hours do, and dry
Away
Like to the Summer's rain;
Or as the pearls of morning's dew
Ne'er to be found again.

"Why is poetry always about death?" One of my classmates once asked this and was fobbed off with some dismissiive answer. "Don't be silly!" I expect. But it's a pretty deep question that continues to bug me. My answer is that some things are too deep for prose, death and love and spring being high on the list of such things. (Strangely enough when I was reading about the "Doctrine of Signatures" for this blog - see "Comparisons, changes and Celandines" - I found that the doctrine says that God gave us messages in symbols because they had so much more meaning than words.)

Anyway most of Herrick's verse was far away from death and all about women.

Upon Julia's Clothes

WHENAS in silks my Julia goes
Then, then, (methinks) how sweetly flows
That liquefaction of her clothes.
Next, when I cast mine eyes and see
That brave vibration each way free;
Oh, how that glittering taketh me!

"Liquefication" seems so wonderful and here's one that never made it to the school anthology(I wonder why!)

On Julia's Nipples

Have ye beheld (with much delight)
A red rose peeping through a white?
Or else a cherry (double graced)
Within a lily? Centre placed?
Or ever marked the pretty beam
A strawberry shows half drowned in cream?
Or seen rich rubies blushing through
A pure smooth pearl, and orient too?
So like to this, nay all the rest,
Is each neat niplet of her breast

It seems that Julia was probably imaginary. Rather sad really, but perhaps it made for an easier life for Herrick as he also wrote poems to Anthea, Cynthia, Perina, Perella and many more besides, probably, say the historians, all imaginary. He never got married perhaps the poems tell us why. Herrick had a big patrician nose and was a cleric during the English civil war. Here's a link to his life

Robert Herrick
Was an odd sort of cleric.
John Donne
Was another one.

So wrote Ogden Nash and here's another link for him. Because I love him too.

So back to the cut. The bluebells are make the big show now and the leaves of the huge oak can at last be seen greenish on the top of the tree when you get far enough away. The Bluebells are the English ones which bend over at the top. Spanish ones are bigger and are usually the cultivated ones. Bluebell juice is supposed to cure snake bites but I wouldn't try it if I were you.

I spent ages looking for a nice poem about Bluebells and found some awful ones - particularly one by Anne Bronte. But you can always rely on "Flower Faries" That woman, Cicely Mary Barker, wrote poems about every wild flower you can think of and none of them a real bummer. The fact that a flower was called "Stitchwort" or "Viper's Bugloss" or "Lesser Ragwort" didn't stop her. There is a fairy, and a picture, and a poem for them all. Follow the link in the poem title to see the illustrations which are the real joy of the Flower Fairy books.

THE SONG OF THE BLUEBELL FAIRY

My hundred thousand bells of blue,
The splendour of the Spring,
They carpet all the woods anew
With royalty of sapphire hue;
The Primrose is the Queen, 'tis true.
But surely I am King!
Ah yes,
The peerless Woodland King!

Loud, loud the thrushes sing their song;
The bluebell woods are wide;
My stems are tall and straight and strong;
From ugly streets the children throng,
They gather armfuls, great and long,
Then home they troop in pride
Ah yes,
With laughter and with pride!

Enough for today. Nick

May Day

2006-05-01T15:07:00.000+01:00

I didn't know we had a Rowan tree in the cut. But we do. Here is the blossom down in the laid hedge. Rowan is the thing you decorate your house with on the first of May so it seems right.

Enough for today. I'm going out to enjoy the sun. Here's a link if you want to pursue the Rowan tree and it's magical significance. Nick

Goodbye April - a look at the changes

2006-04-30T16:36:00.000+01:00

APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm,

That is the start of the Waste Land by TS Eliot. It's the last day of April so I had to get it in now. Eliot is full of bits that resonate combined pointlessly arcane references. The Four Quartets is a bit easier to stomach than the Waste Land.

I don't know if April is kind or cruel or both but here are the changes it has made in the cut. The path has changed from almost bare brown, to gilded with yellow and onward to blue and white with green along the edges. (Sounds almost like a birthday cake!)

The twisting climbers like hops and briony have changed from tiny shoots to twisted plants four foot high or more. And the Briony here twisting with itself and reaching vainly for the sky. The ferns have changed from fluffy brown fiddle heads to tall green leaves (will they go I wonder now the light comes in more strongly.) I'm about to put the pictures in so let's hope they go where I want them - but if not you will have to work out what is what for yourselt. (I struggled for 3 hours yesterday and still failed, and I'm not going to do it again!)

To finish here are a couple of other little poems about April. I've been talking to a lot of people about the laying of the hedge and the species that are in it and a lot more besides so I hope to bring you that tomorrow. Meanwhile here are the poems - follow the link to Ogden Nash for a bit of fun. I love him.

Whatever Eliot says I can't see the growth of new life as "cruel". As the trees change every day through every shade of green it seems more like a group of teenage girls changing for a party so the end poems are light but jolly.

The wild sweet rain of April spills
On golden - throated daffodils,
On garden wall and new green bough,
On earth fresh - turned before the plough.
It scrubs the pansy's small shy face
And shines each blade of grass in place
To leave the springtime world aglow,
And lift my heart to walk tiptoe.
VINEY WILDE

and Ogden Nash

Always Marry An April Girl

Praise the spells and bless the charms,
I found April in my arms.
April golden, April cloudy,
Gracious, cruel, tender, rowdy;
April soft in flowered languor,
April cold with sudden anger,
Ever changing, ever true --
I love April, I love you.

Ogden Nash

How many kinds of sweet flowers grow?

2006-04-28T19:34:00.000+01:00

How many kinds of sweet flowers grow
On an English country foo-ootpath
I'll tell you now, in case you don't know
It's enough to fill a foo - oot bath

Several footbaths in fact. Here are a few of them on the cut at the moment. And here's a link to a more or less definitive list of 135. Cow Parsley, or Queen Anne's Lace, or Wild Chervil. You can eat it the leaves and a chef who lived with us for a while used to pick it and take it to his restaurant. The only problem is that the flowers are rather the same as Hemlock - the poison they used to execute Socrates so take care.

Garlic mustard is down below - formatting has gone to hell on this post! You can eat this too and I might try because it sounds quite tasty. Boil it like greens. Greater Stitchwort (the little white flower below), cures the sort of stitch you get when you run and also good for bones. The "Doctrine of Signatures" (see an earlier post) suggests that you can see this by the fact that the stems are so delicate - like broken bones. This rather confirms the view that the doctrine of signatures was used as much for a mnemonic as a way of discovering what might do what. Here's a nice link about stitchwort.

Next it's a wild strawberry plant. I've never seen any strawberries in the cut and they won't ripen till June or so. Then there are primroses. The wood pigeons (or some bird) comes regularly and picks the flowers and strews them all around the plant. Maybe they eat the honey or something.

Bluebells are still there and here is a pink one that sprang up. I thought these were only cultivated ones. But maybe it sprung up as a sport. Or maybe there was a house nearby and this came from their garden. There's a plaintain flower because I used to enjoy these when I was a boy. You can bend the stalk over and fire off the plaintains at your friends.

Finally there;s Lady's Smock pinky rather than silver white when you see them one at a time but anyway here's Shakespeare's song about them.

When daisies pied and violets blue
And lady-smocks all silver-white
And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue
Do paint the meadows with delight,
The cuckoo then, on every tree,
Mocks married men; for thus sings he,
Cuckoo;
Cuckoo, cuckoo: O, word of fear,
Unpleasing to a married ear!

When shepherds pipe on oaten straws,
And merry larks are ploughmen's clocks,
When turtles tread, and rooks, and daws,
And maidens bleach their summer smocks,
The cuckoo then, on every tree,
Mocks married men; for thus sings he,
Cuckoo;
Cuckoo, cuckoo: O, word of fear,
Unpleasing to a married ear!

"Paint the meadows with delight". That's worth repeating.

Of flowers and trees

2006-04-26T21:25:00.000+01:00

Down the side of the cut - about 2 yards in, are two old apple trees, one on one side and one on the other. Both old and litchen covered. The picture shows one bare as it was a month ago, the other as it is now with leaves opening and buds coming. The third picture is a close up of the buds (just showing red) and the litchen.

These two trees were part of an orchard - an orchard that went around the edges of the two fields. Twenty years or so ago they used to produce a nice crop of apples - not any more. And why did the orchard go round the edge of the field? Well you see the land had been given to Syd as a gift for work well done on the big estate. They gave him quite a nice big piece of land but it was all round the edge of the fields so that Syd still had to keep up the hedges. The estate kept the middle of the field and used it for crops. Syd's land was too narrow for crops so he planted apples and kept up the hedges.

Such are the gifts of the rich to the poor.

On a more cheerful note, the Blackthorn is flowering at the top of the cut. Here is a picture of the blossom with the big oak tree in the background. It's called Blackthorn because it flowers on the bare wood - unlike Whitethorn, or Hawthorn or May (all the same thing) which does not flower until the leaves come out.

Blackthorn is a sort of wild plum and in the autumn you can pick the plums, called sloes. They are horribly sour but you can use them to make sloe gin. Basically what you do is wait till the frosts come which increases the sugar in the sloe, pick them, prick them (with a silver fork so they say and under a full moon if you find that makes it more fun), add sugar then pour gin on them and leave it till Christmas. Very nice stick and sweet. Here is a recipe: http://www.liqueurweb.com/sloe.htm
It makes no mention of silver forks, or the moon, or even pricking so maybe you don't need to do it - it's a horrble fiddle but somehow seems to make it more fun.

Oh and to finish here's a poem for those who like their poetry rich and sticky like their slow gin. It's by Swinburne
and was on Poem of the day yesterday.

Marzo Pazzo - Mad March

Mad March, with the wind in his wings wide-spread,
Leaps from heaven, and the deep dawn's arch
Hails re-risen again from the dead
Mad March.

Soft small flames on rowan and larch
Break forth as laughter on lips that said
Nought till the pulse in them beat love's march.

But the heartbeat now in the lips rose-red
Speaks life to the world, and the winds that parch
Bring April forth as a bride to wed
Mad March.

Here's Swinburne's biography and here's "The hounds of spring". Wonderful stuff particularly for a love-sick adolescent.

Hedge laying and, ash before oak

2006-04-25T10:51:00.000+01:00

Actually had a comment yesterday asking me what has happened to the cut. For the last thirty years or so the cut has been surrounded by tall trees (mostly hawthorn) and as the spring has gone on the cut turned from a sunlit valley into a dark and mysterious tunnel But earlier this year it was laid. That means they cut down the tall trees and cut the branches half way through and bend them down and twist them into the hedge. That way the bottom stays thick and becomes a real barrier. Some people like it some don't.

I hope to find out more soon but as a blog is published backwards (latest posting first) you will have read anything already that I will ever write about it. So I don't know whether this should be an apology or an item of self congratulation. Anyway here is a picture of the laid hedge with the sun behind it. The top picture is the cut looking down. And you can see that the hedge of tall trees on either side has been cut down. Under that is a picture of the laid hedge. As you can see some of the branches they laid are pretty big because the cut had been left for so long.

Here is a link to a hedge laying site http://www.hedgelaying.org.uk/faq.htm#1 .

Oak before Ash

Oak before Ash/ In for a splash

Ash before Oak / In for a soak

This is an old weather rhyme that my mother used to quote.
She said that she had never seen the ash come into leaf before the oak and I don't think I have either and that is why we always had wet weather in England. This year however it almost looks as if it might. So it's bad news for our reservoirs and means hosepipe bans maybe, or maybe not. At the top of the cut there is a smallish ash tree and two huge oaks. Here's a picture looking up into them. Oak at the top, ash at the bottom. If you look closely you can see the buds on both of them.

Before I came to live here I never realised that most trees have flowers. But they do. And on the ash and the oak they are the first thing that appear. Here are some pics. Oak before ash in the order of the pictures.

When Ahok asked me a question I started wondering whether to ignore it or answer it and a quote came to mind from e.e. cummings "thou answerest them only with spring". The poem turned out to be very appropriate for a footpath in spring.

(But before we get there I wonder what ee cummings reason for using no capitals in his poem was Archie of Archie and Mehitabel fame had a good one. Archie was a cockroach who wrote by jumping on the keys of a typewriter from the roller and he could only jump on one key at a time. So he couldn't hold down the shift key. e e Cummins just thought there was a better way to use capitals than to mark the beginning of sentences and put them where he pleased. Also it got his poems noticed I guess.

Anyway here is the poem
:

O sweet spontaneous

earth how often have

the

doting

fingers of
prurient philosophers pinched
and
poked

thee
,has the naughty thumb
of science prodded
thy

beauty .how
often have religions taken
thee upon their scraggy knees
squeezing and

buffeting thee that thou mightest conceive
gods
(but
true

to the incomparable
couch of death thy
rhythmic
lover

thou answerest

them only with

spring)

More soon Nick

Comparisons, changes, celandines

2006-04-22T21:24:00.000+01:00

The top picture was taken on March 5, the bottom one today April 22. That makes almost seven weeks and the changes are clear but they are not huge. The sides of the cut have greened up and now they are covered in beautiful feathery green Cow Parsley with leaves as beautifully patterned as snow flakes. The daffodils weren't there at all in March and the celandines were hardly showing. Now it's the last of the daffodils that you can see in the later picture and the celandines are nearly gone too. The trees don't look as if they have changed at all but in fact they have. The oak has buds on it now, and the flowers on the ash - right at the top of the cut are out with their filaments streaming from them.

Overall the cut which has been predominately a blaze of yellow celandines, primroses and daffodils for the last month is just on the cusp of change. Soon down below the sides will be green, and blue with bluebells and above them the delicate white of the cow parsley flowers.
Up above and along the sides the leaves will come, the ash leaves - I have forgotten the look of them, and the oak which start a khaki and on some trees almost a pink

But the celandines are still there for a few days yet and so it is time to write about them.

A project like this starts you wondering about a hundred new and different things. I want to know more about celandines so I Google for"celandine". (Does google as a verb deserve a capital G like God?) maybe not - I google for them, and what do I find - that this, the lesser celandine was Wordsworth's favourite flower but that they got confused when they carved his gravestone and put greater celandine on it. Well now I've bothered to try to find a picture for you I can't do it. All the pictures of his gravestone make it look absolutely plain. However strangely if you google for celandine the first reference is to A modern Herbal and they have got the wrong picture - a greater celandine with wriggly leaves and only a few petals.

Anyway the lesser celandine's Latin name is Ranunculus Ficaria. So it's a sort of buttercup. Ranunculus comes from the Latin for frog because butercups grow in damp places full of frogs. Ficus means figs because it's tubours suposedly resemble bunches of figs. It's also called the fig buttercup (same reason I suppose).

You can eat the celandine as a sort of spinach if you want - the Swedes did, and the Germans used it as a cure for scurvy. Most interestingly it was used as a cure for piles. This was because it's root is supposed to look like piles. One of its names is "Pilewort". For those who have seen here is a picture of the root for comparison. (It comes from www.the-organic-gardener.com - an excellent site.) It seems as if it works, mixed with lard it makes an excellent softening ointment.

Aparently all plants with the name "wort" (like Liverwort) were used as cures because they looked like the thing they were supposed to cure. This is known as the Doctrine of Signatures. The idea was that God had put his signature in everything and if you searched for it the signature would have a meaning. So red plants helped you with blood diseases, walnuts helped with the brain (well they do look just like brains) and celandines helped you with piles and lots more besides. It seems pretty strange to us and some argue that where things work the resemblances were discover after the fact and that the whole Doctrine of Signatures was used as a kind of nemonic. (I can't remember how to spell it - I obviusly need a nemonic for that purpose.) Anyway my sister Jacky who guides people round the herb garden at Kew introduced me to the idea and there is plenty about it on the web. Here is a link to a Doctrine of Signatures site
http://www.holysmoke.org/wb/wb0081.htm
I wonder if scientific thinking will one day seem as quaint as the doctrine of signatures does to us. And I also wonder if they were in fact onto something. Aparently native American and Chinese people thought and still think the same.

Anway here is a picture of a violet. There are not many on the cut but it will give me a chance to end with a poem. The lovely one about the violet and the rose and the "curious chauntlers of the wood and Philomel the nightingale. I thought of waiting till the rose had blown but that won't be for a good few weeks yet and the appearance of the violet seemed a good enough excuse.

Elizabeth of Bohemia
by Sir H. Wotton

YOU meaner beauties of the night,
Which poorly satisfy our eyes
More by your number than your light,
You common people of the skies,—
What are you, when the Moon shall rise?

Ye violets that first appear
By your pure purple mantles known
The first proud virgins of the year
As if the spring were all your own,—
What are you, when the Rose is blown?

Ye curious chauntlers of the wood
That warble forth dame Nature's lays,
Thinking your passions understood
By your weak accents,—what's your praise
When Philomel her voice doth raise?

So when my Mistress shall be seen
In sweetness of her looks and mind,
By virtue first, then choice, a Queen,
Tell me, if she were not design'd
Th' eclipse and glory of her kind?

This poem is particularly appropriate for today because it is the birthday of well known house fixer and republican stalwart Citizen Michael of Pink. He shares his birthday with a number of lesser people including Elizabeth Saxe-Coburg (now more commonly known as Elizabeth Windor), and it is her 80th. Elizabeth Windsor is in some way descended from "Elizabeth of Bohemia" who was a daughter of James I and (I think) an ancestor of our royals via William and Mary. William and Mary were the closest related Protestants when James II got the push in 1688. Sir H Wooton was provost of Eton and had his biography written by Izak Walton who wrote "The Compleat Angler" - you can google for all and any of them if you so wish. So it's a good point to stop.

Getting left behind

2006-04-20T19:23:00.000+01:00

The ivy sprouts - I've never noticed this before though it must happen every year.

The daffodils fade - sad really but their time has gone.

The cow parsley continues to sprout. And the blog continues - but is struggling along in the wake of spring.

More tomorrow.

The First White Blossom

2006-04-18T23:21:00.000+01:00

There was a sign of a big change on the cut today. There is the first white blossom. Hawthorn blossom, or May blossom whatever you want to call it. I walked straight past it at first as it was down low on one of the branches that has been laid (?layed?). (Cut down and bent so the hedge thickens at the base - more about hedge laying soon.)

So this is transformation. Till now the flowers have been yellow - celandines, primroses, daffodils. Now they are turning to white, May blossom, Blackthorn blossom soon, Cow Parsley flowers which will be up around our faces. And the bare twigs will start to become green. There was the first sign of that too.

Celandines
But yesterday I said it would be Celandines and so here are some photos of them. The lovely delicate celandines that formed the carpet of the cut for the last month and will last a week or so yet. They open like a kid's drawing of the sun when the sun shines on them and close when the sun goes. Just photos today and maybe something of the odd facts I picked out about them on the net in the next few days.

Sop here they are, budding, dying, full face to the sun, forming the carpet to the cut.

These are lesser celandine. They were Wordsworth favourite flower (not daffodils like we all thought) here's a link to his poem about them. "And oft as on my couch I lie, in vacant or in pensive mood I will l turn off the telly (during the commercials normally) and rush off and photograph the things I find in the cut. I'm having wonderful fun with this project. If there's anyone else out there I hope you are enjoying it too. More tomorrow. Nick

Back on the track - what a difference a month makes

2006-04-17T16:56:00.000+01:00

Well yesterday I meant to write about the path and start with a picture of it 5 weeks ago and a picture of it now and you could see how much it had changed. But as you see the answer is - really not much when you look in the distance. It's only when you get down and peer at the vegetation that you notice the difference. The yellow carpet of celandines has grown and flowered. The daffodils have come and almost gone. They're cultivated daffodils not like the Lent Lillies that you find in the woods around here. They were planted by Maurice who really loved the cut and cared for it for many years.

I'm no purist about these things and I love the huge blooms and strange double petals. Mostly I love them because of Maurice. Sadly gone now. But he lived all his life within a quarter of a mile of this cut and was a lovely man. He gave us a fig tree which might bear a lot of figs this year. (Two links come to my mind as I write one the quote "Each mark of things a-gone from view/ To eyesight's one to soulsight's two" it's by William Barnes who wrote Lynden Lea. http://www.poetryconnection.net/poets/William_Barnes/5797
The other is about the fertilization of figs. It all depends on a special type of wasp a few milimetres long. The male is laid in the fig and lives there till it pupates at which point it must find a female (in the same fig). If there is one it then fertilizes the female (before she pupates) and dies. The female pupates (already mated) chews its way out of the fig picking up loads of polen en-route and flies to other figs to lay the eggs and polinate them and that's really only half the story - read more at: http://www.botgard.ucla.edu/html/botanytextbooks/economicbotany/Ficus/index.html
Another even more peculiar life cycle is that of the liver fluke from sheep liver to sheep shit to waiting around in the water for years for a particular type of snail, back to hang around in the grass for a few more years and then be eaten by a sheep again. It makes our lives seem really mundane:

The rites of passage of the liver flukes
Don't feature in the list of World's Great Books.
Where human rites of passage - had you wondered -
Dominate ninety of the first one hundred.
And that is really odd - because you see
The flukes have eight or nine - where we have three.

Actually this is not strictly true, in "Pilgrim at Tinkers Creek" Annie Dillard has written one of the great books on just this sort of subject. Annie Dillard is one of my favourites but like many an author her best book is about her childhood. They say authors never have a life after about 15, they just spend their time writing books and not meeting anyone. For a few Dillard snippets try
http://www.earthlight.org/earthsaint24.html

Anyway tomorrow celandines, and here is a picture of some in the cut.

Feast Day

2006-04-16T23:59:00.000+01:00

Easter Day – Kissing gates (and keeping up with yesterday)

Most days I don’t see anyone on the cut. But today is Easter Sunday and the sun was shining and there were visitors strolling along the path at the same time as me. So, because it was spring and a time for eggs, and rebirth and all the other Easter things, I persuaded two of couples to kiss at the kissing gate. (How you use the kissing gate is that the most eager one rushes ahead and holds the gate shut so the other cannot get through without paying with a kiss.) Today the couples weren’t hard to persuade. So here’s two photos. Two couples, two kissing gates one at each end of the cut.

let us rejoice and from us tear
in glee, our winter underwear
and let us dance and let us sing
and let us pluck the harps of spring.

That’s what this morning made you think

“Procrastination is the art of keeping up with yesterday”. So said Don Marquis who wrote most of the poem above (I’ve ended it for him because I can’t find the real end on the net). “Keeping up with yesterday” is going to be a real problem on this blog. Down the cut in the last couple of days I saw the first bluebell, and the first dandelion, and the first violet, and meanwhile the cow parsley grows about two inches a day and the hawthorn first leaves are suddenly fully out.

At the moment the cut has a yellow carpet of celandines and some daffodils. The twigs are mostly bare. In a week it will be the white of the cow parsley and the blue of the bluebells and the leaves will start to show on the hedges.

And meanwhile I have got a month of catching up because I started photographing the cut four weeks ago. So tomorrow perhaps I will do better and start to catch up with yesterday.

Meanwhile here are some links. First to Don Marquis: The creator of Archie and Mehitabel http://www.donmarquis.com/readingroom/index.html.
And seeing I was coming back from Church on Easter Sunday, a couple of other poems. First Manley Hopkins lovely "Spring" so complex and passionate.
http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/hopkins/hopkins9.html

Then Herbert’s Easter Wings. Wonderful language clear as water in a crazy typographical conceit that really comes off . (By the way “imp” here means join.) http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/herbert/wings.htm

And so it’s cheerio my deario’s till tomorrow with a picture of the yellow celandine carpet that adorns our glorious cut.

First Post

2006-04-15T10:54:00.000+01:00

Here is the first post on the footpath. (Silly pun but it is, right there by the kissing gate at the top of the path.

We call the path "The Cut." It's about 100 yards long, runs slightly South of East to West. I've been photographing it daily for about a month now and the next post will show views of the changes over the past few weeks. But I'm feeling the way (like you have to when you go down the cut to the pub in the dark). So I'm going to stop and see how it looks so far.