When things speak to you . . .

Inanimate things that is. Books. Pictures. Hand-sewn textiles. China sometimes. Two little pictures spoke to me a the car boot sale this morning. I was immediately drawn to them. I looked, and loved them. Then I looked at what else the woman was selling, and thought, hmmm, they won't be cheap. She was deep in conversation with someone else, but when I caught up with K, I mentioned the pictures. "Where are they?" was his question, so I showed him. I got the woman's attention and asked the price. "£5 the pair". Oooh - cheap then! We offered £4, and they came home with me! £2 each is not too much of an indulgence!

As I said, some things just seem to speak to you. Once it was a box of china and house clearance oddments at an auction. No good for me, but gosh, I sensed the previous owner was very angry that her treasures had turned up via the house clearance of her effects.

In Hay-o-Wye, on one occasion, I was browsing the horsey books and one particular one seemed to draw my hand towards it. I had a brief look at it and saw that it was a little autobiography, and the author had kept a lovely little Arab stallion, amongst other horses. I put it back, as I wasn't really looking for that style of book. But my hand was irrisistably drawn back to it, and when I opened it this time, my eye fell on a paragraph where the author mentioned that he woke in the night, and had the strongest feeling that his favourite mare was in trouble, and was in desperate need of his help. He dressed and ran across the pasture, to find that she had caught her hoof in her headcollar when she was drinking in the pond, and had drowned before he could reach her. (One good reason for never leaving a horse with a headcollar on). The fact that his horse communicated with him meant that the book came home with me, as I have had similar experiences (especially with Fahly when I had him).

These little pictures seemed to remind me of my past. The farmhouse looked so like one on the Surrey/Hampshire border that I knew when I was doing my BHSAI training (assistant riding instructor) near Liss and it was such a comforting picture . . . The bridge doesn't evoke the same feelings, but is a nice little picture all the same.

Doing some research on line, I found that Wilfred Williams Ball (b. 1853 in the East End of London and died of heat exhaustion in Khartoum, Sudan on 14th February 1917.) He painted landscapes and marine pictures and was widely exhibited, including at the Royal Academy, and was President of the Society of British Artists in 1886. He always had a close affinity with the counties of Sussex and Hampshire (there is a beautiful painting of Romsey which I would love to buy the print of, as this was my mum's home town). He published two books of paintings on these counties in 1906 and 1909.

Some of his work can be found here, along with a potted biography. Here are some more of his paintings, including the Romsey market place one.

Sex-starved Frogs!

How many frogs can you count?

Building a wildlife pond was one of our better ideas. From day one it has drawn in the local wildlife. First to arrive were pond skaters, then little black whirligig beetles which flew in from somewhere, then the damselflies and dragonflies, and suddenly we noticed newts too. It's been established about 14 years or so now, and last year we had the most amazing quantities of frogspawn laid. Considering we'd had a very long and very cold and snowy winter, I was surprised that any frogs had survived to mate.

Anyway, some seemed to have survived and returned to procreate again, and I can honestly say I have never seen quite so any frogs all in one place before! I think there are upwards of about two dozen! They have already laid quite a quantity of spawn, but judging by the canoodling going on out there - right through the daylight hours too (in the past I have only been aware of them at night, as it sounds like the African savannah, with Bullfrogs making a racket).

Now it looks pretty quiet - everyone has just disappeared out of view after Lucky had a drink from the pond.


Above and below: This is the result of them spotting me 15 feet up at a window with my camera!

The frogspawn so far - all laid in the past 4 days.

February

Over the land freckled with snow half-thawed
The speculating rooks at their nests cawed
And saw from elm-tops, delicate as flower of grass,
What we below could not see, Winter pass.

Edward Thomas, 'Thaw'


I couldn't resist these few lines from my favourite poet. I have been out in the garden this week, trying to get to grips with the winter-grown weeds before everything grows frantically and gets away from me. I have been grubbing amongst the herbs in the herb garden, and enjoying the scent of Sage, and Mint, and Lemon Balm and Rosemary as I brushed against them. The Elecampane is still keeping a low profile, the Bronze Fennel nowhere to be seen yet, and the Thyme is looking rather sorry for itself (so is the one-leafed! Sage, come to that). The Sage looked even more battered after Gypsy had mistake it for Cat-Nip and rolled all over it!

Today I have been clearing the greenhouse pathway of weeds, and ripping back the grass which has draped itself over the edging stones. It is so satisfying to put things to rights, though I have a long way to go before even this little patch in the paddock is sorted out. After the stretching and kneeling and to give my back a rest, I have been standing and fielding slices of long-dead ash tree as my husband removes them with the chainsaw from the big double-trunked tree which fell about 5 years ago and now makes excellent burning.

For relaxation - reading Mathew Hollis' biography of Edward Thomas ("Now All Roads Lead to France") and I have just blown the dust off "The Muse Colony" (Dymock 1914). An Edward Thomas season then.

A River of Stones moment

On our way back from dropping middle daughter off in Swansea, the sun lit up the mynydd . . .




Behind the moor,
Rainclouds black as anvils
Devour the bleached horizon
In stubble-tinted bites.




The photo shows the same bit of moorland several years ago, well, the top right horizon is the same, and the dead grass shows you how light it turns in the winter, especially with the sun on it. I wish I'd had the camera today, for the contrast between the moor and the black skies.

I shall never complain again about the cold . . .

At the moment, I just seem to be wishing the winter weeks away, and the weekend's routines mark another step nearer to some sunshine and warmth again (I am hoping for a good summer).

At the car boot sale this morning, we found a book on the Welsh Borders, with lovely illustrations and excellent snippets of local history, folklore and interesting facts. I was reading it earlier on and came across the following, which I have read elsewhere a while back, but it is worth repeating here (and I shall never moan about the cold again, I promise!!!). The author is talking about a walk on the Long Mynd in Shropshire.

In fine weather its beauty has an oppressive quality; in winter, as the Reverend Donald Carr found out back in 1865, it can be deadly. Mr Carr was the rector of Woolstaston, north of Church Stretton on the eastern side of the Long Mynd, and was also responsible for the remote outlying village of Ratlinghope on the west side, 4 miles away from Woolstaston. On 29 January 1865 he set out through the snow on horseback to take the afternoon service at Ratlinghope. The fallen snow was deep enough to force Mr Carr's servant to take the horses back home, but the clergyman went on alone, crawling on hands and knees through the drifts, to reach the lonely village on the moors and take a short service in the company of a handful of people. The Journey home was a different matter entirely. Back on the heights, a furious gale had blown up. Mr Carr was at first confident that he was on the right track, but soon realized that he had lost his way, with darkness coming on and the blizzard getting worse all the time. Then he fell down the side of a ravine . . .

"I found myself shooting at a fearful pace down the side of one of the steep ravines which I had imagined lay far away to my right . . . I continued my tremendous glissade head downwards, lying on my back. The pace I was going in this headlong descent must have been very great, yet it seemed to me to occupy a marvellous space of time, long enough for the events of my whole previous life to pass in review before me, as I had often heard that they did in moments of extreme peril."

He survived that fall, but shortly afterwards, now conscious that he was completely lost, had another even worse, this time losing his hat and gloves. He still had his brandy flask, but "could hardly get my hands to my mouth for the masses of ice which had formed upon my whiskers, and which were gradually developed into a long crystal beard, hanging half way to my waist."

Somehow he kept going all through the night, continually falling down and forcing himself up and on again, fighting the overwhelming desire to lie down and drift into sleep. Dawn brought no relief, as a dense fog lay over the Long Mynd. Mr Carr found that he had gone snow blind when he could not tell the front of his watch from the back. Staggering on, he found himself at the top of the Lightspout Valley, and in his weakness tumbled over the upper part of the waterfall - somehow without adding to his injuries. Then he lost his boots:

"They do not seem to have become unlaced, as the laces were firmly knotted, but had burst in the middle, and the whole front of the boot had been stretched out of shape from the strain put upon it whilst laboriously dragging my feet out of deep drifts for so many hours together, which I can only describe as acting upon the boots like a steam-power boot-jack. And so for hours I walked on in my stockings without inconvenience. Even when I trod upon gorse bushes, I did not feel it, as my feet had become as insensible as my hands."

At last the exhausted man, "crowned and bearded with ice like a ghastly emblem of winter", stumbled down the Cardingmill Valley and came upon a group of children, who promptly ran away from the apparition. However, help soon came, and Mr Carr made his way home to Woolstaston and eventually to a complete recovery.

Taken from Philip's Welsh Borders, by Christopher Somerville.

What are you reading at the moment?

Last week, being pinned to the sofa with the chest infection and the side-effects of the anti-biotics, I read my way through "Daphne" by Justine Picardie, from cover to cover. This week I am back into Edward Thomas country, reading the biography I got for Christmas: "Now All Roads Lead to France", with the Annotated Collected poems of Edward Thomas beside me for company. Bedtime reading is Virginia Woolf's "Jacob's Room".

Now we are virtually out of heating oil, we are down to one-room living, although my little office is bearable as long as I have the small oil radiator on when I am at the computer. Curtains are pulled early, a hot bath is the highlight of the day, and regular hot drinks the order of the day! Slipping into a warm - no, HOT - bed at night is bliss. Roll on spring! But then it will be all the outside jobs which cannot be done at the moment, so I will read whilst I can.

A walk in Brechfa Forest

I had cabin fever this morning, after being confined to barracks last week with my chest infection and the bitter weather. Yesterday's walk convinced me to get out again, and I persuaded K to get the paper from Brechfa for a change, so that we could have a walk in the Forestry. The sun was out, so we grabbed the moment (just as well as it's disappeared again now). Here is Brechfa in the distance, photographed through the car window.

We parked up on a good piece beside the road, so we weren't locking the lane, and walked half a mile or so to the Forest edge. This gateway seemed to beckon me in to take a photo.

From the bridge, looking upstream.

Fallen trees across the river. Further along, a beech had toppled over, but continued growing, with lots of upright branches crossing the trunk.

The track ahead.

The Afon Clydach below us.

This footpath leads you along the bottom of Allt-y-Garth.

Above and below, early morning sun highlighting the moisture on twigs and leaves, as if they were touched with mercury.


Whinberries grow amongst the mosses and small ferns on this wet slope beside the path. Whinberries are a common feature on higher ground here. We used to pick them when we camped on Dartmoor.

Looking across the river from the pathway - a tangle of brambles and Fireweed (Rosebay Willow Herb).
The Afon Clydach scampering away downstream.

These were the colourful mosses I was speaking of yesterday. A different bridge, but same plants and same stunning colours. This is Pont Cymmawr-du.

I was intrigued by this little cabin beside the ruins of a former Hafod or barn. I wondered if anyone used it as a weekend retreat or whether it was a Hippy hideout.

I LOVED this photo (hence it being the new header.) It is the atmosphere of it - sun breaking through the river-mist and the beautiful tangled blackness of the tree boughs. This is our lane home, back down the valley.

Looking back up the valley in the direction of Abergorlech.

Frost still held captive the North-facing slopes and low-lying marshy fields beside the river.

Looking towards home . . .