Month: April 2021

Skunk Cabbage

skunk cabbage

So far this month, there’s been an air frost somewhere in the UK every night. It’s also been one of the driest Aprils on record, so it’s not surprising that, compared with last year, things are a bit behind. For instance, the kingcups by our pond have only just put out their first flowers today.

woodland

Harlow Carr RHS Gardens was originally the trial grounds for the Northern Horticultural Society, who chose a site on the edge of the Dales to ensure that any plant that could survive here would do well anywhere in the in the North.

Harlow Carr is the furthest that we’ve travelled since mid-autumn. We feel that it’s time for us to get out to different places again.

The yellow hooded spadix flower heads of skunk cabbage are bursting into life on the banks of the beck that flows through the gardens.

But is it Art?

pink-footed goose

Have you ever come across the idea that natural history illustration “isn’t art”? I remember you trained in design and illustration rather than fine art – have you ever had to defend your work against this charge?

My friend, writer Richard Smyth, in an e-mail today

Interesting question. It’s not anything that anyone has ever challenged me on but, like most creatives, I wouldn’t want to use ‘artist’ as a job description. I’d always describe myself as an illustrator/writer. Although I’ve had exhibitions of paintings, probably 99% of my work is illustration and intended to be seen on a page or screen with text. My sketchbooks are part field notebook.

It’s a relief to be off the hook as far as art is concerned. When I draw a flower, bird or snail, I love the idea that the creature has the right just to be itself. I can’t avoid being an observer and therefore having an implied presence in a drawing but I don’t want to burden the poor creature with how I was feeling that day, or with my views on Life, The Universe and Everything.

I feel that when Picasso draws a dove, a monkey, a horse or a bull, the critics have to scramble around to tell us what that symbolised at that stage in his career, whereas if I, as I did this morning, draw a pink-footed goose, I’d like the actions, appearance and personality of that particular goose on that particular day, to be the main subject: not to mention the energy and mystery implicit in said goose simply being a goose.

I know this is impossible, as I’m not a camera, but that would be my aim.

Spurge and Foxglove

spurge

As we continue under high pressure, it’s been cold – sometimes down to below freezing on a night – and very dry. That hasn’t been a problem for the spurge, growing in my wild flower patch at the bottom of the garden. I guess that the milky, corrosive sap must work well as an anti-freeze and is perhaps one of the reasons that spurges do well in dry habitats, for instance in the dry, sometimes dusty, soil in the raised bed in our greenhouse.

spurge and insects

It isn’t the most popular of plants with pollinators: during the hour or so that I’m drawing I notice only two insect visitors, both small flies, one a species of hoverfly. The small bumble bee in my sketch was working its way around the flowerhead of a dandelion.

sandstone

We’re on coal measures rocks, so mainly shales and sandstones, which usually weather into slightly acid soils.

foxglove

The foxglove is typical of dry acid soils and it self-seeds and thrives amongst our flower borders and veg beds so, as a change from trying to establish a patch of traditional English meadow on my wild flower patch, I’m going with the flow and planting out the foxglove seedlings transplanted from where they’ve sprung up to create a woodland edge habitat.

The Pink-foots on Vacation

goose family

I went for the great wildlife spectacles of spring migration and nest-building for twins Connie and Annabel, who live alongside the flood meadows of the River Trent.

mallards cartoon

I found myself thinking, if Ikea ever broke into the wildlife market . . .

Dozing Drakes

drakes

There was plenty of action on the duck pond in Thornes Park this morning but these two mallard/farmyard drakes were a more appealing subject, dozing in the sun amongst the ferny cow parsley by a woodland path.

sparrow and wood pigeon feather
Male house sparrow, wood pigeon feather.
three snail shells
A ramshorn snail shell (a pond snail) and what I think are two brown- or possibly white-lipped snails.

We’ve been in a high pressure area for a while now, which means sunny days but cold nights. So far our tomato plants in the greenhouse had survived unscathed but an extra heavy frost last night has shrivelled most of them. There’s still time to plant replacements.

Barbara’s birthday today and last year, still under the first lockdown, the highlight of the day was a click-and-collect visit to a supermarket, the furthest we had been since our previous click-and-collect. This year we can entertain a limited number of guests in our garden.

Garden snail shell

A Classic Cake

John Carr

It’s so hard to find a birthday card with a Horbury theme, so it was back to the drawing board for this one, celebrating local architect John Carr’s towering achievement, the classical confection that is the Parish Church of St Peter’s & St Leonard’s.

Happy birthday to Alex!

Carr topped the spire with that rather un-Christian symbol, a Grecian urn, but this crashed down and was replaced with a wrought iron cross. The urn, which was about 7 feet tall, was carefully pieced together again and, in my teenage years stood as an oversize garden ornament in a house on Cluntergate which I believe had once belonged to a Mr Green.

A Taste of Normality

lls

It must be over a year since I’ve had a coffee and scone at Blacker Hall. Good to be able to linger a little with a sketchbook without feeling that I’m breaking some rule. The Courtyard Café is now literally in the courtyard.

Apple Blossom

blossom

As I draw, bees, including two different species of bumble bees, and a small hoverfly are continually busy on the blossoms of our single cordon Golden Spire cooking apple. The single-stemmed seven-foot tall tree can’t possibly as many apples as there are blossoms but we can thin the little apples out to two or three per cluster and, if we don’t, it will shed a few anyway.

West Yorkshire Mayoral Election

candidates

You couldn’t ask for a better bunch of candidates for the final line-up for next month’s West Yorkshire mayoral election, my only regret is that we can’t be in an alternative universe where Tracy Brabin’s predecessor in the Batley and Spen constituency, the ebullient Jo Cox, could also have a crack at it.

Therese Hirst

Therese Hirst

Therese Hirst is our candidate for the English Democrats.

Green Park

honesty

Green Park, South Ossett, 10.45 am, 10℃, 50℉, sunny

A jingling orrent of song from a dunnock in an adjacent garden. Three blow flies gather around a tiny naked chick that has been taken from its nest. A male blackbird perches on a tangle of honeysuckle stems cascading from a larch lap fence.

A robin perches on a branch, watching intently, then spots something and swoops down to the ground to pick it up.

Apart from a few quick sketches in the co-op car park, I’m out of practice for drawing on location, so I decided that I had to be kind to myself this morning and not to worry if, for instance, I get the flowers of the honesty out of proportion with the rest of the plant.