Category: Habitats

Chard

chardThe rainbow chard looks bedraggled but I thought that it would be worth leaving it in because, if the weather improves, it should start sprouting fresh leaves. I remove dead and nibbled leaves plus any that I don’t like the look of; the test is ‘if I saw this in a the supermarket, would I buy it?’ If the answer is no, it goes on the compost heap.

Definitely not going on the compost heap are the white rhizomes of couch grass. There are just a few blades showing so I need to dig down now before this invasive spreads any further. There are also a few rosettes of forget-me-not and opium poppy but they’re not a problem.

Hawthorn

hawthorn stemshedge layingThese hawthorn stems are at a good stage for laying, which involves cutting through most of a stem near ground level, bending it over at an angle and weaving it together with other stems and stakes driven into the ground to create a hedge with no gaps at the bottom. It won’t be very high of course but new branches will soon start sprouting upwards.

wood pigeons
In the half hour that I spent drawing this, down in the corner of the garden beyond the greenhouse, a few wood pigeons flew over the wood and a robin hopped amongst the branches of the hawthorn.

blue titI was concerned to see a blue tit with an injured wing, closely accompanied by another uninjured blue tit. Hope it recovers.

 

A Hole in the Hedge

habitat pile

‘the twisted gorse on the cliff edge, twigs, like snakes, lying on the path, the bare rock, worn and showing though the path, heath hits, gorse burnt and blackened, the high overhanging hedges by the steep roads, which pinch the setting sun, mantling clouds, and the thunder, the deep green valleys and the rounded hills – and the whole structure simple and complex.’

Graham Sutherland,
Notes by the Artist, Tate Gallery, March 1953

On a walk alongside the hedge banks near the Pembrokeshire coast, Graham Sutherland came across a gap in the hedge that particularly appealed to him.

‘I may have noticed a certain juxtaposition of forms at the side of a road, but on passing the same place next time, I might look for them in vain. It was only at the original moment of seeing that they had significance for me.’

‘If at first I attempted to make pictures here on the spot,’ he recalled, ‘I soon gave this up . . . I found that I could express what I felt only by paraphrasing what I saw.’

robin in the holly3.30 p.m., 7ºC, 45ºF; For my hole in the hedge, on a showery afternoon, I go to the trouble of setting up my pop-up tent at the end of the garden. A robin hops into the hedge seven feet away from my and eyes me suspiciously. Perhaps because I’m so used to watching birds through the double-glazing of the patio doors, its colour seems more vivid at close range.

pheasantAlso eyeing me suspiciously is the cock pheasant who strolls through the meadow, pauses at the hole in the hedge and decides that he’ll give me a wide berth.

Link: Paintings and Drawings by Graham Sutherland, Tate Gallery. In his statement, I wonder what Sutherland meant by ‘heath hits’. Perhaps a typo. In the context, I assumed that ‘steep rods’ should have read ‘steep roads’.

Snowdrops by the Pond

pond sketch view from pop-up tent10.30 a.m.: Snowdrops are at their freshest around the pond so I set up my pop-up tent and start a sketch in the gusting wind and passing showers.

Before the afternoon rain sweeps in I roll up the tent into its dustbin lid-sized bag. I can never quite work out how such as large tent fits into such a small bag but it does, in what seems to me like the most tent folderillogical and inelegant fashion. I resort to grabbing the writhing figure-of-eight coils and pushing them to the middle. I’ll try and practice with it on a regular basis until it becomes second nature.

First Snow

snow sketchSnow settled yesterday evening, the first covering that we’ve had during a mild, wet winter. It brought more than the usual one or two siskins to the feeder this morning: six or more.

Snow is a strange thing to draw. In fact you hardly draw it at all, it’s mainly the white spaces that are left when you’ve drawn everything around it.

Bonnet Fungus

bonnet fungusGrowing on a lush mat of moss on our front lawn, this looks like one of the bonnet fungi, Mycena.

Buds of winter aconite are swelling in the flower beds in Holmfield Park.

Drawn to the Dales

 

My January Dalesman article

‘It would be a pity if he disappeared to Yorkshire & just wrote for the Dalesman’

That was the typically wry comment of my professor, Brian Robb, head of illustration, as he looked through my folio at the Royal College of Art in March 1975. So, with apologies to Brian, you can probably guess what I’ve been writing for the last three years?

This month's Dalesman includes spectacular photographs of the waterfall at Malham Cove, following persistent rains at the beginning of December. A once in a lifetime event.
This month’s Dalesman includes spectacular photographs of the waterfall at Malham Cove, following persistent rains at the beginning of December. A once in a lifetime event.

With this January article, I’m starting the fourth year of my Wild Yorkshire nature diary for the monthly magazine, described as the parish magazine for the whole of Yorkshire by Alan Bennett. As my deadline is always four or five weeks ahead of the month in question, I’ve based my articles on the observations and sketches in my online Wild West Yorkshire nature diary, which I started on Sunday 4 October 1998.

I’ve kept the focus of my Dalesman diaries on the kind of things that anyone can see in Yorkshire if they get out and about in their local patch and explore gardens, country parks, woodlands, waterside and moor. Now I’m ready to go a little further . . .
Northern EnglandHere at Middlestown, five miles south west of Wakefield, close to where Coxley Beck joins the Calder, I’m well placed for heading for the hills with four National Parks – the Peak District, the Yorkshire Dales, the North York Moors and the Lake District – and I mustn’t ignore the Vales of York, Pickering and Mowbray, the Humber Estuary and the Yorkshire Coast.

I should be able to find plenty of material for next year’s Wild Yorkshire diary!

Soaring Around Town

peregrine, meadow and loosestrife.2 p.m.: Peregrine flying past the town hall, over Wood Street, Wakefield, heading in the direction of the cathedral.

4.30 p.m.: Two weeks or so after the shortest day, the light already seems to be lingering longer in the afternoons. It helps that today has been a lot brighter than the wet, overcast days that we’ve had so much of recently.

The purple loosestrife seed heads were drawn with a dip pen, using Winsor & Newton peat brown ink.

Swiss Chard

swiss chardThe swiss chard is looking bedraggled but it adds some colour to the winter vegetable garden along with the five cannonball-sized red cabbages in the next bed.

Pheasants

pheasants and blackbirdsThere were eight blackbirds in the garden this morning. The lawn is the main gathering ground but now that the crab apples are starting to turn soft there will occasionally be one in the tree. Wood chip paths and a cotoneaster bush dripping with berries give them further foraging opportunities.

Star of the show is the ring-necked pheasant with white streaks on his crown. A female gives him the opportunity to puff himself up and display his plumage. As I add the colour, I can’t decide whether his tail coverts are grey or a very pale green. I get Barbara to take a look and we decide that the exact shade changes depending on how the fine feathers catch the light but the colour really is a sage grey-green.