In this place there are thousands of ancient oaks. Old and hoary and with trunks that look like agonised faces dissolving in lava. Many are dieing on their feet. They are like Indian elephants – domesticated that is and planted as a deer park 700 years ago by the local monks. Pollarded tops gave them…
Category: Landscapes
Monochrome zone: a black and white walk round my village today
A Black and White walk round my village today. I just love it that a in a stride about outside all bright shades have been erased and noise is muffled and bleached out. Snow glare has sapped tone and hue from the palette and turned the gaze over to sharp silhouettes.
Disgruntled snail trail up Arthur’s Seat in quest for the Speed of Light.
Today is the last time for the climb in the dark in Edinburgh. NVA’s Speed of Light which is billed as an interactive light show and heralded as ‘state art and spiritual collectivism” . In reality a slow blunder up and down a rocky hill in the dark. Groups of 100 set off together…
So, David Hockney it is over, but not quite.
Thousands of us stood and jostled in the grand rooms up the stair of the Royal Academy to see the rendering of our countryside by David Hockney. And returned home with eyes on stalks to stare at our surrounding woods and fields. To look at them anew without the mind overpowering the senses. I have…
Pattern of the DAY
Craggy Cornish wall.
Doing it with vegetables: a bit of a rant on the part of garden designers
The non glossy but very cool Garden Design Journal often has a thought provoking contribution from Tim Richardson. His latest, for September, will raise a show of hands from garden designers who do not belong to the BGP. (Big Gun Posse) As one of those types of designer – ie the slightly disgruntled second division…
Wordless Wednesday in Borgo di Casignano
Does it still exist? The WW bit I mean.
WWOOFING: a short guide to success
“I cultivate 1 hectare of aromatic herbs and collect wild herbs too, I also have 2 hectares of woodland and 9 donkeys. The work is mainly manual: hoeing, weeding, harvesting and drying herbs, harvesting saffron and the taking the donkeys to pasture and clearing in the woods. We prepare meals and eat in the fields …
Oh lovely Damascus.
Damascene rose, damask fabric and as the guidebook would have it, Dimashq. The old town is an ellipse – bounded more or less by walls and divided up into different districts – the original pattern is christian, jewish, muslim. The oldest inhabited city in the world, perhaps. The Romans came and went, Tamerlane shot through,…
Playing with scale
There is a walk round here that I go on nearly every day. The landscape is pretty spacious and empty. We are in Suffolk which is the county of the large skies. It is what you get with flat ground. London is not much over an hour away by train but this is the empty…