Sunday, 25 Sep 2011

Season of mists and …

Yes the season is turning – the beeches are going yellow, the light wakes me at 6 not 4.30 and there’s a chill in the air in the morning and evening. I have put the big storage heater on.

The time of fruitfulness just suits the moment in my stay here, I am bringing my strongest, most insistent, ideas to fruition and putting others aside for another time. I want to finish a body of work before I go that will be ready for a proposed exhibition at Stour Valley Arts Gallery next year.

Back at the beginning of this journal there was Ragwort everywhere, which I picked for dye and have used. There were berries already ripe too. Elderberry, which I picked and have used for dye, its a beautiful soft blue on cotton. The birds have cleaned up nearly every one around here so I have no photo, but I have blue. Rowan berries, flashing red against all the green, also gone as food for winter fattening birds.

Ragwort, Willow Herb, Thistle, St John’s Wort, Old Man’s Beard and Dandelion have made seed that drifts  away on the breezes. I have filmed the Willow Herb, blizzards of soft white down moving through the trees.

But now other plants are joining the fruiting, berries are everywhere. Red is the popular choice. Asking to be noticed by hungry birds, and they are feasting .

 

Hawthorn

 

 

Sloe, very bitter until sweetened with gin!

 

Bryony, Traveller's Joy. Displays in a graceful drape through another's foliage.

 

Briar Rose hips

 

Bramble and a view to the South coast

 

 

Honeysuckle

 

And another colour appearing, the damp leaf litter flowering with its own autumn palette.

The inimitable Amanita muscaria, fly agaric.

 

 

 

 

 


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