Antics

I accidently disturbed an ant's nest beneath a slate.

They immediately fell to rectifying the damage

by implementing their emergency drill,

carrying the exposed pupae to safety underground.

It was so methodical and swift.

Most of the ants were porters

although some of them did seem to be scurrying

rather frenziedly to and fro,

metaphorically clutching their heads and exclaiming,

Wherefore art I this evening?

Watching this.

Nearly finished

And so am I.

Luckily we're going out for a curry tonight.

Cutting out and colouring in

There's a little project on the go.

It's taking rather a lot longer than I anticipated,

when I offered to decorate a children's library ceiling.

The Sistine chapel it is not,

but, if I'm not here much

 picture me on my scaffold with a cricked neck.

Resting

A plea

Does

anybody

know

the

name

of

this

plant?

They arrived last year as tiny plugs

from my veg box provider 

and did nothing.

Now suddenly it is about 2' high with

soft thick leaves and

 spurs of delicate mauve bracts.

Poppies

Poppies
by Mary Oliver

The poppies send up their
orange flares; swaying
in the wind, their congregations
are a levitation

of bright dust, of thin
and lacy leaves.
There isn't a place
in this world that doesn't


sooner or later drown
in the indigos of darkness,
but now, for a while,
the roughage


shines like a miracle
as it floats above everything
with its yellow hair.
of course nothing stops the cold,

black, curved blade
from hooking forward -
of course
loss is the great lesson.

But also I say this: that light
is an invitation
to happiness,
and that happiness

when it's done right,
is a kind of holiness,
palpable and redemptive
Inside the bright fields,

touched by their rough and spongy gold,
I am washed and washed
in the river
of earthly delight -
and what are you going to do?

what can you do
about it -
deep, blue night?

Nice evening

Hum

Hum
by Mary Oliver

What is this dark hum among the roses?
The bees have gone simple, sipping,
that's all. What did you expect? Sophistication?
They're small creatures and they are
filling their bodies with sweetness, how could they not
moan in happiness? The little
worker bee lives, I have read, about three weeks.
Is that long? Long enough, I suppose, to understand
that life is a blessing. I have found them-haven't you?—
stopped in the very cups of the flowers, their wings
a little tattered-so much flying about, to the hive,
then out into the world, then back, and perhaps dancing,
should the task be to be a scout-sweet, dancing bee.
I think there isn't anything in this world I don't
admire. If there is, I don't know what it is. I
haven't met it yet. Nor expect to. The bee is small,
and since I wear glasses, so I can see the traffic and
read books, I have to
take them off and bend close to study and
understand what is happening. It's not hard, it's in fact
as instructive as anything I have ever studied. Plus, too,
it's love almost too fierce to endure, the bee
nuzzling like that into the blouse
of the rose. And the fragrance, and the honey, and of course
the sun, the purely pure sun, shining, all the while, over
all of us. 

Behind every great man...

stands a great woman - or so the saying goes.

Red Lion Mary was a popular servant at 17 Red Lion Square

where William Morris and Burne-Jones lived from 1856 to 1859.

She was later depicted at Red House, but standing, 

as befitted her station, on the other side of the garden fence.

Morris was a man of prodigious energy 

and died as his doctor wryly observed of, 

'simply being William Morris and having done more work 

than most ten men.'

Thank goodness then that I see from the 1861 census 

that he had a little extra help:

Thomas Reynolds - groom

Jane Chapman - housemaid

Charlotte Cooper - cook

Elzabeth Reynolds - private nurse

and by 1871 when he had moved to Queen's Square in London

he had three servants:

Eliza Searle

Agnes Turner

Marie Hughes


I just thought they deserved a mention.

Si je puis*

* If I can -

William Morris's motto, seen below in a stained glass window 
at Red House, the home he had designed for him 
by Philip Webb, when he was only 26.

'The beautifullest place on earth,' said Edward Burne-Jones.

It was set in the middle of a Kentish orchard, 

sited so that apples fell in at the windows 

as they stood open on hot autumn nights.

The only items that Morris would buy for the house 
were Persian carpets and Delft china, 
so it became the focus of intense communal effort by Webb, 

who designed tables, chairs, cupboards, shelves, candlesticks, 

fireirons, catches and hinges;

Morris and his wife Jane, who embroidered hangings, 
frescoed ceilings, hand painted tiles, 
painted cupboard doors and stained glass, 
(but not the birds -

Webb had to do those for him);

 and Rossetti and Burne-Jones who supplied stained glass and paintings.

Rossetti said that it was,
'more a poem than a house, but admirable to live in too.'
In truth it was too hot in the west-facing kitchen in summer, 
and too cold with its north facing aspect in winter -
not helped by the inadequate size of the coal cellar.


Sadly, the house was only home for six years.
The plan to build two more wings 
to accommodate the Burne-Jones family
never materialised and financial problems meant 
that he had to sell in 1865 for £1800 - 
well short of the £4000 that it had cost to build.
He never visited the Red House again.

Despite the unhappiness occasioned by 
his wife Jane's long affair with Rossetti
I prefer to think of the early happy times
 when he would drive three miles through the
rose-hung lanes of woody Kent, 
in the wagonette designed by Webb, 
to collect his friends from the station
for a weekend of house decorating, 
bowls in the garden, hide and seek 
and singing round the piano.

His 'can do' attitude to life should be an inspiration
and instead of my usual lament 'tempus fugit',
it might be as well to adopt the more galvanising
' ars longa, vita brevis' in future.

For Vieuxtemps' sake

These flowers for Avis

and this clip of Menuhin playing with what was to be 
her orchestra, almost exactly 60 years before her birth.