Earth at Work

Years ago, in a university English department that was shaded by leafy jacaranda trees in summer, the most earnest and cleverest of boys (it was always the boys) would push their glasses against spotty bows,  call upon notes made feverishly in the small hours and make grand pronouncements that generally included words like ‘intertextuality’. Being broadly less studious, I’d roll my eyes and gaze out at the mauve blossom in the neighbouring courtyard, for the belief was that if a flower fell on your head you’d pass all your exams…I stood beneath a lot of jacaranda trees that year.

However, in the same very, very loose way in which I approached most of my English essays back then, intertextuality popped into my head earlier this week while I looked through the website of St Jude’s .  I had come upon this pretty fabric, ‘Painswick’, designed by Ed Klutz:

Do you see those lovely follies clever Ed has drawn?  Well, they come from here, Painswick House,  which has a rather fun garden in the Rococo style. At this time of year it is full of snowdrops and is a pleasant place to spend an afternoon, as we did last weekend.  Of course, it is impossible to visit the garden without noticing the follies, particularly those which are painted a stark and rather hard white…perhaps the colour is historical but Ed has done them rather a favour in this fabric. Also, in the small orchard, there ‘grazed’ several fibre-glass sheep which looked realistic from afar but on closer inspection brought to mind the MPs’ expenses scandal of some years ago. Duck houses are so passé these days, don’t you know?

This, my favourite folly, not painted white, was tucked away in a woodland walk. It made a super focal point at the end of the long walk, which I’m tempted to call an allée, but I don’t think it’s quite that.

And a few flowers

You might notice a faint watermark on these pictures.  It’s an experiment inspired by the current infatuation with Pinterest – I’ve noticed that, in most cases, by the time an image has been repinned for the third or fourth time,  all attribution has been lost.  I’ve resisted this kind of labelling in the past because I felt it seemed selfish, miserly  even, but I’m going to give it a go and see how I get on.

Lovely documentary about wild flowers and meadows called Bees, Butterflies and Blooms from Sarah Raven on BBC 2 last night. I tuned into it by chance but it was just the tonic for a cold, damp, wintry evening, ahead the snow outside at the moment. There were lots of shots of gorgeous meadow flowers and various good-hearted people campaigning to see a return to more environmentally friendly growing methods, so fields and commons end up looking more like this

It was day of co-incidences,  actually.  Earlier in the week, foolishly perhaps, I started clearing out my bookshelves and, aside from ending up with more books on the floor that in the shelf, I rediscovered a review copy of Sarah’s latest book about native flowers called, simply, Wild Flowers. It is a magnificent labour of love, with superb images and – this is not meant to be demeaning – makes for rather good bedtime reading  if you don’t mind a couple of hundred pages in hardback resting on your knees. There is something about the calm order of reference books such as this, as well as Larousse Gastonomique, various dictionaries for editing purposes and, heavens, OS maps,  that sends me off to sleep very happily indeed.

In a continuation of the serendipity/zeitgeist/talk-of-the-town theme, at work earlier today, soon after chatting about Nina Campbell and the eye-catching designs from St Jude’s (and particularly Angie Lewin), press releases from both their publicity operations plopped into my mailbox.  Prefer not to think about it too much.

[Top image taken from a tent during a wonderful camping weekend at Botelet Farm, in Cornwall; middle on my walk to work one day (typically, I was late); and bottom in the fields around Darwin's home, Down House, in Kent.]

One of the curious things about writing for magazines, as I do, is that you will inevitably experience a kind of virtual life three or four months before the fact, in order to accommodate print production schedules.  This means that in summer, while kith and kin are ensconced in one of these, gin and tonic in hand,  in our heads we magazine writers will already be celebrating the perfect Christmas, complete with happy families, a magical tree and the gifts you’ve always wanted.

I was reminded of this yesterday afternoon when, on a rare weekend at home, I walked through the fields that surround the village in which I live.  The birds were out in force and some time over the past fortnight blossom had appeared, as had daffodils, hyacinths, muscari and  forsythia.  ‘So this is what spring is really like,’ I said to myself, absurdly pleased about being outdoors without a coat and feeling real warmth on my shoulders.

Some months ago, around Christmas in fact, as snow blew down from the north (and the east and the west), flights were grounded and any excursion outdoors involved warming a cold bottom against the Aga – ok, ok, the radiator – I had imagined everything about yesterday and, indeed, had yearned for it.  In my head I’d inhaled the scent of washing dried on the line,  heard the robin, sentinel on a bough of hawthorn springing into leaf, felt the twitch of fingers aching for an allotment and had ridden a step-through bike from the most beautiful bike shop in Great Britain.  It had worked. My work  looked fine. But there is nothing like the real thing; nothing quite like proper sunshine on your shoulders.

Of course the demands of work mean that  June and July are already here but for this season, this spring, twee though it may sound, I shall endeavour practise the pleasure of being in the moment. No longing; no wishing to be anywhere else; here is good.

* I had nothing to do with this image but use it courtesy of the International Bulb Flower Centre, a collective body that was established in 1925 to promote Dutch bulbs around the world.  If you are thinking of growing a few bulbs yourself, do have a look.