Category: The Natural World
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Sunny side up, or over easy?
We’ve been waiting weeks for the giant poppies in our new-to-us front garden to bloom. These plants are just about taller than we are! Three have opened all at once, in the past couple of days, and it’s been worth the wait. There’s lots more on the way, too. Over the past fortnight, life has…
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The surprise of the old, informing the delight of the new
In 1883, James Faed the Younger presented a large painting titled ‘The Town Park’ to the Royal Burgh of New Galloway. This painting is stored with great care in the main hall, behind protective panels at the front of the large room. I’ve never seen it, but thanks to ArtUK we can consider it in…
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A single flower . . .
Sometimes the beauty of a single, solitary bloom is enough to take your breath away. This lonely tulip in our new-to-us garden was one such. I’m reminded of the William Blake poem, Auguries of Innocence, of which I suspect most of us are aware only of the first quatrain: To see the world in a…
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We have a ‘slow worm’ resident in our compost
This limbless lizard certainly lives up to its name! When I lifted the old carpet section laid out on our compost box, I revealed this fellow. I ambled back to the house, retrieved my phone and ambled back. He was still there, looking around with his little eyes. I don’t actually know our slow worm’s…
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The gathering moss . . .
So the corollary to the aphorism about the rolling stone must be that the sedentary one does gather moss. Our gardens, front and back, have accumulated a rich, thick, mossy carpet. Apparently this ground covering is an ideal environment for an ecosystem of invertebrates, and as such should be a brilliant place to retrieve, with…
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The Joy of Living
My old friend Simon Smith has embarked on a project to curate his favourite songs in a daily blog, Simon365, throughout the year. This piece is my homage to his effort — I’m in awe of his encyclopaedic music sensibility. Yesterday evening members of the SongWave Community Choir, led by Kate Howard, were engaged in…
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The Enchanted Loch
This month’s VisualVerse.org stimulus reminded me of nothing so much as the times I have spent with pondlife under a dissecting microscope. And then I remembered what we call the enchanted loch, beyond from the viewing bench at the top of the temperate rainforest next door, down the path’s right fork, through a couple of…
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For International Haiku Day, what else?
Our new-to-us garden faces west, so that the sun rising in the east illumines the space beyond the shade of the two extension peaks. I’m sure that there must be a quiet haiku to develop, as a kind of textual representation of the early morning scene before me. Oddly enough, I was writing haiku earnestly…
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As the sun rises
The daffodils at the top of our new-to-us garden nod towards the dawn of Easter Sunday. We seem to have been imbued with a surplus of joyful moments, this weekend, with more to come. Yesterday I finally sat down and did my hour’s stint on this month’s VisualVerse.org prompt. It had taken rather longer in…
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When the entire garden is open to explore . . .
I could never feel right by embarrassing her, except by relating the tale, but we have never seen a cat in such excited ecstasy before, and when she’s happy, well, she drools. Three months on, and since we’re finally settled in our permanent home, it was time to introduce Kali cat to the garden. As…
Roads to Joy 