Spring board

As well as being seduced by Instagram,

I have been brought to a grinding halt by my old computer.

Now I have something new and shiny 

but I don’t know if it will let me load photos

or what anything will look like.

So here goes:

I know that magnolias are rather old hat now and are mostly

a rather thickly padded brown carpet for most of us

but I wanted a record for posterity anyway.

Moving swiftly on, we have apple blossom,

and lambs.

The garlic persists but with added flowers

Wood anemones are holding their own,

but have been joined tentatively by bluebells.

The Open garden season is upon us

and tulip mania is in full swing.

Today has been so warm that the belted Galloway

have sought shade under the hawthorns.

Well nothing about this short post went well.

Clearly an iPad is not suited to this sort of endeavour

and despite the tranquil scenes you see above

I have been tearing my hair out and gnashing my teeth

on the other side of the screen.

I cannot scroll.

I cannot stop the typeface reverting to Times Roman.

I cannot break a line without it inserting an initial cap.

I cannot enlarge the photos.

I cannot prevent the whole page from flicking back up to the top

While I type.

And there’s that blasted cap.

I must regroup.

It will be Autumn leaves before we know it 

and the whole summer will have gone unblogged.

Bear with.

抹茶*

New taste favourite.

It does taste a bit like twigs and lichen.

But like moss,

it's growing on me.

* Matcha green tea

The faerie glen

In a further defiance of my

risk averse persona,

I suggested that we should duck under a fence

in the dapply woods,

which had an invitingly worn footpath leading

away from it

into a ravine.

We followed a trickling stream 

down to the cliff edge.

Wonky horizon indicates the precariousness

of the footing.

There were comfortable tussocks 

and slabs of rock to sit on,

not too far above a sheltered cove.

We were not quite alone.

A young creature suddenly materialised,

seemingly floating up from the sheer drop.

He had very long hair,

a very long beard,

a curly waxed moustache

and was wearing,

well,

a sort of dress,

a short stripy dress,

flip-flops,

a bowler hat decorated with large white daisies

and carried a shiny pink satchel

messenger style.

We chatted amiably for a few minutes

about the inadvisability of our

climbing down to the beach

and then he carried on his way,

up the ravine.

There he goes.

The Secret Drawer

My thanks to Cornflower for pointing me in the direction

of this competition.

I'm not a 'comper' but this one caught my imagination.

The green velvet in the main compartment

of Aunty Mary's vanity box

has faded

but the secret drawer, only recently discovered,

has preserved its deep viridian.

This isn't the shade I would choose to have matched

as my bespoke Farrow & Ball paint.

It would have to be this one.

Green seen

It's trying to snow again.

Epithalamion

a walk and a poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins.

Hark, hearer, hear what I do; lend a thought now, make believe
We are leafwhelmed somewhere with the hood
Of some branchy bunchy bushybowered wood,
Southern dene or Lancashire clough or Devon cleave,
That leans along the loins of hills, where a candycoloured, where a gluegold-brown
Marbled river, boisterously beautiful, between
Roots and rocks is danced and dandled, all in froth and waterblowballs, down.
We are there, when we hear a shout
That the hanging honeysuck, the dogeared hazels in the cover
Makes dither, makes hover
And the riot of a rout
Of, it must be, boys from the town
Bathing: it is summer’s sovereign good.

By there comes a listless stranger: beckoned by the noise
He drops towards the river: unseen
Sees the bevy of them, how the boys
With dare and with downdolphinry and bellbright bodies huddling out,
Are earthworld, airworld, waterworld thorough hurled, all by turn and turn about.

This garland of their gambols flashes in his breast
Into such a sudden zest
Of summertime joys
That he hies to a pool neighbouring; sees it is the best
There; sweetest, freshest, shadowiest;
Fairyland; silk-beech, scrolled ash, packed sycamore, wild wychelm, hornbeam fretty overstood
By. Rafts and rafts of flake-leaves light, dealt so, painted on the air,
Hang as still as hawk or hawkmoth, as the stars or as the angels there,
Like the thing that never knew the earth, never off roots
Rose. Here he feasts: lovely all is! No more: off with—down he dings
His bleachèd both and woolwoven wear:
Careless these in coloured wisp
All lie tumbled-to; then with loop-locks
Forward falling, forehead frowning, lips crisp
Over finger-teasing task, his twiny boots
Fast he opens, last he offwrings
Till walk the world he can with bare his feet
And come where lies a coffer, burly all of blocks
Built of chancequarrièd, selfquainèd rocks
And the water warbles over into, filleted with glassy grassy quicksilvery shivès and shoots
And with heavenfallen freshness down from moorland still brims,
Dark or daylight on and on. Here he will then, here he will the fleet
Flinty kindcold element let break across his limbs
Long. Where we leave him, froliclavish while he looks about him, laughs, swims.
Enough now; since the sacred matter that I mean
I should be wronging longer leaving it to float
Upon this only gambolling and echoing-of-earth note—
What is … the delightful dene?
Wedlock. What the water? Spousal love.
. . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . .
Father, mother, brothers, sisters, friends
Into fairy trees, wild flowers, wood ferns
Rankèd round the bower

If you click to enlarge,

you will see that the air was filled with dragonflies.

13:09 from Epithalamion

All to no avail

The frantic activity ceased.

The nest fell silent.

I don't know what befell them,

but I don't think they fledged as

that takes about 14 days from hatching.

Only about 57% of eggs result in fledged youngsters.

Maybe they will have another brood.

I will keep you posted.

Scary numbers

Many thanks for my Lemonade award. But it has unwittingly plunged me into the scary world of exponential growth.

I know that I should do the decent thing and pass this award on, as instructed, to ten other people, but here's the problem: we are soon going to run out of people on the planet, never mind deserving bloggers, to satisfy this generous and well intentioned impulse.

I'm no mathematician, but I remember being told the story of the grain of rice on a chessboard when I was a child, and it gave me a headache, rather as the notion of infinity still does. Wikipedia tells the story here.

So I give you instead this restful picture of some moss growing on a brick wall and then

we should all have a nice cup of tea and a sit down to drive away the scary thoughts.