Category: Drawing

The oaks at Skelton Lake have long-stalked acorns so, as the stalk botanically is the peduncle, these are common oaks, also known as pedunculate oak.

The old oak apple is a gall caused by the gall wasp Biorhiza pallida. The larvae develop inside the corky gall, so the holes are probably where the winged adult gall wasps have emerged during the summer but they might also be where parasitic gall wasps that feed on the Biorhiza larvae have emerged. There are also inquilines, insects that use the gall for the development of their larvae without preying on the original occupants.

When the Biorhiza wasps emerge in the summer, the females lay their eggs on the roots of the oak and an all-female generation of wingless gall wasps will emerge in winter about 18 months later. These females emerge climb up to lay their eggs in the leaf buds of the oak and it’s the leaf buds which develop into oak apples.

Rough-stalked feather-moss, Brachythecium rutabulum, is a common moss on wood and rocks. It also grows in grassland and can be considered a weed in lawns. I’ve been raking and scarifying our back lawn in preparation for the winter and this looks like the moss that I was raking up. I filled a large trug with moss and dead grass.

The geese look haughtily at us and decide to move on but, as I crouch down to attempt to photograph them, the hens rush towards us, so enthusiastically that I narrowly avoid one of them pecking at the lens of my iPhone.

But they soon realise that we haven’t brought any corn with us and return to their continuing soap opera of sorting out the pecking order of the flock with a jab, flutter and squawk.

At the request of my sister, a character from the poem in yesterday’s post. As you might remember, Castro Rabbit appears in the final verse and, as far as I can understand it, he operates in ‘the meadow deep in the world squirrels’, so he’s got to be a bit of a tough cookie, surrounded by all those bright-eyed and bushy-tailed rodents.

I’m convinced that he has some connection with a scam involving ‘rattlebox-free shoes’, which gets a cryptic mention in verse 3.

Verse 1 sounds like the kind of hard-baked pulp-fiction dialogue he’d use, with more than a hint of a threat in it:

“Yeah, I know, but that is on the list,
down there in the bulkhead . . .
and it’s not that ‘cauliflower’.”

Castro Rabbit, ‘Do you say . . .’, verse 1.

But I think the line that he’s delivering here is: “Roger I’ll flax.”

A ‘flax’ must be the Squirrel Meadow equivalent of a fax, and as we’re veering towards Toon characters, Roger must be Roger Rabbit.

I’m looking forward to learning more about de Zee Cow, the one known for uttering the occasional grouse in verse 3.

“Last week I was in Ilkley,” the waller tells me, “and had some lovely sandstone, but I’m making the best of this.”

The irregular fragments of limestone in the Greenfield Valley, Upper Wharfedale, don’t stack up as neat layers but there’s plenty of material available. Another waller is repairing a section and he simply digs up a piece he needs from the turf alongside the wall.

The hogget hole allows sheep to pass through. This one can be blocked by the slab lying beside the wall on the roadside verge. A hogget is a young sheep.

It’s been another exciting day down at the chicken coop.

A Swaledale Ram in profile. Like a gunslinger or a boxer in the run-up to a contest he’s got a steady gaze and half smile. In keeping with this tough guy image he’s wearing a sheepskin jacket and understated ear pearcings. Rather like the action heroes of the 1960s – Patrick McGoohan’s ‘Number 9’ and Sean Connery’s ‘007’ – we’re introduced to him simply as a number: ‘1624’ (the year in which Louis XIII built a hunting lodge at Versailles and appointed Cardinal Richelieu as his chief minister).

There’s a hint of ‘Eye of Horus’ makeup. Also known as the Wadjet, the Eye of Horus was a symbol of protection, royal power and good health, but the horns are more reminiscent of Ammon, later know as Amon-Ra, who often wore ram’s horns.

This idea caught on and Alexander the Great was depicted wearing ram’s horns and Michelangelo added a small pair of horns to his statue of Moses.

I’m used to sheep looking sheepishly at me when I try to photograph them before hurrying off to join the rest of the flock but this ram held his ground and looked right back at me.

Hens are so expressive and this one had a fed-up demeanour about her that suited the wet afternoon. Perfect weather for geese though. I’m guessing this is the gander, puffing himself up indignantly as we stop to take a look at the little flock.

There are still clusters of flowers on birdsfoot trefoil which scrambles amongst the grasses and rushes at the edge of the track.

Sneezewort grows in buggier places, amongst rushes and sedges, on acid soils.

Eyebright is a semi-parasitic member of the figwort family, growing in grassy places.

Harebell, found on heaths and in dry grassy places is a member of the bellflower family, so not a relative of the bluebell, which is a lily.

This afternoon we’ve had a succession of showers with odd bursts of sun between, so the lighting on these shelter belt sycamores has been changing as I painted. Again, there was no initial drawing for this, not even a pencil outline.