Yesterday I wrote about walking around the racecourse and ended the post with a photo of cow parsley. Today the top photo is a different umbellifer. I think it’s probably common hogweed, which I’m assuming might be a relation, as it’s also known as cow parsnip.
For those who haven’t made the connection, umbelliferous flowers are arranged on short stalks that radiate from a common point, like the ribs of an umbrella.
Continue reading “maybe not”
Whether or not we have any religious interest, most people in the UK look forward to Easter for a variety of reasons. Perhaps the main one is the chance of a really long weekend – although more and more businesses work on Good Friday, having the weekend wedged between Bank Holidays makes for a four-day break for many, which can’t be bad.
And then, of course, there’s the chocolate. Those Easter eggs that have been so effectively filling the spaces on the supermarket shelves left by recent stock-piling. Personally, I can’t see the point of them – although the bright wrappers are pretty, a decent slab of chocolate is far more cost-effective.
Continue reading “fashion update, Easter 2020”
I’m pretty sure I’ve said it before, but the local park is really rather lovely. It’s far more natural than the town parks I was brought up to, with their bright formal flowerbeds and low box-edged parterres. Although it’s tiny and it has a local council office in the middle, it still manages to boast a brook, a bluebell wood, a vast range of native, fruit, and ornamental trees, and lots of wild flowers.
Even the redbrick records office is set on the site of a ruin and surrounded by swathes of very apt forget-me-nots.
Continue reading “the path through the woods”
We all know that, as the year turns, Mother Nature’s palette of colours changes. But while we indecisive mortals might hum and haw about redecoration for weeks or months on end, visiting different shops, compiling mood boards, comparing colour swatches, holding fabrics alongside wallpaper samples, and trying out tester pots of paint, she just gets on and gets the job done.
Continue reading “mostly monotone”
The idea of paintings and pictures as windows and doors into other worlds is fairly common in literature.
From MR James’ The Mezzotint to Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, pictures reveal secrets that are hidden from the real world; from Princess Rosamund in George MacDonald’s The Lost Princess to Edmund and Lucy Pevensie and their cousin Eustace Scrubb in CS Lewis’ The Dawn Treader, children step – or tumble – through into other worlds and places.
Continue reading “watercolour morning”
