Category: Habitats

Rowan and Sumac

AS I WAS saying the other day, Sumac (left) seems to be out of step with the seasons; since I last drew it, some of its leaves have turned reddish, others have fallen but it has also come into frothy, cream blossom.

The Rowan (right) is changing colour too; it has already taken on an autumnal yellow cast. It doesn’t seem long since the blossom was coming out, followed by the berries, which were eaten by the local Blackbird as soon as they turned orange red.

Tilly

Tilly, the Welsh collie at the Rickaro, is getting more at ease with customers in the bookshop and spending less time hidden under the desk.

Raspberry and Peach

THE AUTUMN Raspberries, variety Joan J, are beginning to ripen faster than we can eat them, so this morning we decided to make some jam. Yesterday Paul the gardener presented us with a bag-full of fully ripe peaches (which he grows in a greenhouse) so we decided put the two fruits together.

Once prepared we had just a fraction under two pounds of fruit so we added the same amount of granulated sugar, the best part of a bag. We suspected that peaches might be short in pectin so I added the juice from one large lemon.

The Three-drop Method

A professional jam-maker once told me that the way he gauged when a pan of jam was reaching its setting point was when he held the spoon and three drops dripped from it. We never seemed to get to this stage, it seemed more like syrupy fruit juice every time I tried it, so, after about half an hour, we checked using the cold saucer method. After two minutes in the fridge it was obvious that the jam was ready; it had skinned over and started to set.

You can hold a jar of the finished jam upside down and it won’t flow out but luckily it’s still easy to spread. And delicious. I can’t claim that I can taste the peaches – for me the raspberry dominates – but they do add something to the mix. There’s the difference in texture; how can I put it – a bit floury? A fruit element in addition to the berries.

Banberries

If trying to describe a fruity flavour is difficult for me, imagine how difficult it would be for Alex, the African Grey, described as the world’s cleverest parrot. He had already learned the words for ‘banana’ and ‘cherry’ so when he was presented with an apple he improvised a new word for it; ‘banberry’, a combination of the two.

Alex might describe our jam as ‘peaberry’.

These watercolour and gouache raspberries were illustrations I drew for a Marks and Spencer range of bisuits back in the late 1980s or early 1990s. At that time I worked through an illustration agency, Bernard Thornton Artists.

Onions and Bonfires

IT’S THAT time of year again when the garden is at its most productive. We’ve just cleared the broad beans but the runners are still at their best. We had the first tomatoes this week – two small sweet ones from the yellow variety we planted. The courgettes are doing well and we’re just about winning the battle to cut them before they turn into marrows.

We’ve had some decent rain this week, which was welcome but it did mean that we needed to lift the onions and spread them over the staging in the greenhouse to dry out gradually. The necks would have started to rot if we’d left them where they were in the bed. I’m always impressed by how many onions we harvest from an area no bigger than a hearth-rug.

Paul the gardener came today and we cut back the Canary ivy which was killed by frost last winter.

As it was a dull, overcast morning none of our neighbours had any washing out, so, as the woody stems were too large to add to the compost bin and I’ve got plenty of habitat piles already, we decided to dispose of the large pile of clippings by lighting a bonfire. Despite the recent rain the mass of stems were dry enough to burn but, as usual, in the minutes it took to get the fire started a column of white smoke drifted sideways and, although there wasn’t a breath of wind, it managed to find some low level turbulence and started heading straight up the garden path, over the hedge and up towards the one bedroom window that our neighbour had left open. You’d almost think that smoke had some kind of homing instinct that enabled it to find the nearest open window.

Greek Basil

GREEK BASIL, also known as Bush Basil, Ocimum minimum, has smaller leaves than the more familiar kitchen herb Sweet Basil, Ocimum basilicum. We’re looking after a little Grecian urn of Bush Basil for a neighbour, which has started to flower (left).

Ocimum is from the Greek okimom meaning ‘aromatic herb’. Basils are members of the Labiate family; relatives of mint, thyme, woundwort and dead-nettle.

Writing about Sweet Basil Culpeper says;

‘This is the herb which all authors are together by the ears about, and rail at one another, like lawyers. Galen and Dioscorides hold it not fitting to be taken inwardly, and Chrysippus rails at it with downright Billingsgate rhetoric : Pliny and the Arabian Physicians defend it.’

From this, I guess that Culpeper had some first-hand experience of lawyers and of Billingsgate fishmongers. Basil is such an integral part of the healthy Mediterranean cuisine that today it seems inconceivable that it was ever regarded with such suspicion:

‘Mizaldus affirms, that being laid to rot in horse-dung, it will breed venomous beasts. Hilarius, a French physician, affirms upon his own knowledge, that an acquaintance of his, by common smelling of it, had a scorpion bred in his brain. . .

‘I dare write no more of it.’

Autumn Berries

I WAS SURPRISED to see the first red Hawthorn berries this week, just odd ones, not a whole bunch as in my drawing. Most haws are still green but a few have ripened on a south-facing bush on the top of an embankment overhanging a pavement, so they’d had more warmth than most. I’ve also tasted my first Blackberry of the season and in the garden the autumn Raspberries in our garden.

On the black railings of Addingford Steps there were dozens of ladybirds, so many in one place that I had the impression that they might have recently emerged from pupae, but perhaps it was the warmth of the metal that attracted them.

 Clearing Willows

There’s a patch of devastation on the marshy field known as The Strands between the river and the canal downstream from Horbury Bridge. My vague memories of this area of willows is that it started as a few willows next to a water-filled hollow and over the years grew to become a dense circular thicket. It has evidently taken a great deal of effort to clear it.

Equine Delinquents

EARLIER THIS week at 6.30 in the morning we heard galloping hooves going down the lane and thought someone had got up early for a ride. At breakfast-time we saw that it was the three ponies from the field behind us that had escaped. They were escorted back up the lane with a police video van bringing up the rear.

The owners soon identified the weak point in the fence; a small gate to a service area. They sat on guard there drinking cups of coffee until repairs could be made. Later I could see from the hoof prints that the ponies got at least as far as the main road, making their way along the pavement and into the ends of driveways as they went.

Next door’s Sumac is now in flower and attracting hoverflies and bees. It’s a tree that doesn’t seem quite in step with the seasons.

Frog Trap

This morning I was upset to be unable to save a frog. It had become trapped in a drain at the edge of the road in front of Barbara’s mum’s house (which is currently up for sale). I found a pair of rubber gloves and a small bucket. Not ideal for the job, but what completely stumped me was that, without a crowbar to hand, I couldn’t use the lever point to flip open the grating. By then the frog had disappeared into the opaque black water in the sump.

Inky Feet

After drawing my slippers yesterday I thought I should try drawing my feet but I think I prefer drawing hands. The proportions are more familiar.


 

Mossy Logs

26C 4.45 p.m.

THIS PILE of moss-covered Buddleia logs and darker crab apple branches looks rather autumnal and I expect that a month from today we really will be seeing summer fading away fast. During the 3 or 4 hours that I’ve been drawing, a male Gatekeeper butterfly has been patrolling this north-facing side of the hedge. I’m surrounded by House Sparrows; it sounds as if there are dozens of them continuously calling and chattering to each other.

After a week when we’ve been doing a lot of work on the house and the garden, I felt the need to settle into a proper drawing. What could be more inviting to draw than a pile of mossy logs? – They don’t move about and, as it is an overcast afternoon, the light is steady. What could be easier to draw?

It proves to be an absorbing subject (I won’t say a ‘difficult subject’ because whenever I get into a drawing everything seems difficult to some extent!) –  because of all those interlocking shapes and criss-crossing stems. Drawing something like this, looking into its details, is like getting lost in the jungle; you find yourself repeatedly losing your way.

I might be drawing ‘just’ a pile of logs, but it doesn’t feel like that. There are elements of landscape, botany too of course, but I also I find myself half-thinking of the shape of a crocodile’s head, or of fishlike shapes as I draw.

Adding watercolour to my pen and ink drawing isn’t as simple as ‘colouring in’. To get a sense of depth I need to establish a tone for every detail. It’s only when almost every scrap of white paper has disappeared that the tonal arrangement of the log pile becomes apparent in the drawing.

I started adding a wash of neutral tint to most of the darker areas but this has resulted in a colour key which is noticeably cooler when I compare it with the log pile itself. I’ve added wash of yellow ochre with a touch of scarlet lake to try and correct this but I should have started with a brownish, rather than a greyish, tonal wash.

It feels good to have the time – a whole afternoon – to get involved in drawing again.

Heron at the Pond

7.15 a.m.; AS I OPENED the blind on the window in the studio I was puzzled by a shape like a Grecian urn reflected in the pond. It was only after I’d seen the reflection that I realised that there was a juvenile Grey Heron standing behind the pond. It flew off towards the wood. As far as I remember, this is the first time in over 25 years that we have seen a Heron by the pond, although we’ve had them in the garden before.

It’s a reminder to me that I need to continue adding marginal, emergent and floating water plants to the pond to give the frogs and newts some cover.

Yesterday morning and again this morning we heard the high-pitched ‘mewing’ of a bird of prey. When I heard it yesterday, all that I could see in the air were a couple of crows. Today we saw a Buzzard soaring over the wood and I wonder if it has been perching somewhere down at this end of the valley, causing commotion amongst the local crows.

I’ve been working down by the compost bins. I opened the lid of one of the bins to add more compost and there, sitting at the top of the pile was a small Toad. It’s rare for me to do much work on a compost heap without coming across one.

Moriarty in Colour

With all the clearing up I had to do in the garden there’s not much time to immerse myself in the world of Sherlock Holmes today but I did have time to add a spot of colour to Moriarty. There’s a black and white engraving by Paget that I’d also like to draw from. It has the caption ‘He turned his rounded back on me’. In it Moriarty looks like a cross between a black beetle and a Marabou Stork. A colourful character even in black and white.

Thrush’s Anvil


2.30 p.m., 22°C

FLIES, INCLUDING one bluebottle and three glossily metallic greenbottles, are attracted to the slimy stain on this fragment of sandstone in the bottom corner of the garden. The Song Thrush has been using it as an anvil, leaving fragments of the shells of at least three Brown-lipped Snails and one Garden Snail. I think that the plain ochre yellow snail in the middle is a colour variation of the Brown-lipped Snail.

You might think that the colour would provide suitable camouflage in this corner of the garden but it evidently wasn’t enough for it to escape the attentions of the Song Thrush.

Leylandi Stump

Soon after I’d started drawing this stump, a Bank Vole appeared, pausing under the stump before disappearing beneath it. Later I had a glimpse of its white front paws (do voles have ‘paws’?) beneath the adjoining log pile. Bank Voles have chestnut fur and a longer tail than that of the greyer Field Vole, which is also known as the Short-tailed Vole.

I’ve stacked the stump and sawn-up branches here as a habitat pile, so I’m pleased to see the vole using it.

But I have removed another habitat that it had been using; voles (or perhaps Wood Mice) had excavated a small network of tunnels beneath a clump of the Flag Iris that we removed from the pond. That has now gone on the compost heap.

Flying Ants

There’s more than usual ant activity on the patio by the kitchen window this afternoon. It’s a still, warm settled day and it’s been chosen as the time for ant colonies in the area to release their winged queens and smaller winged males on a nuptial flight. Barbara said that on her walk home from work at 5 p.m. there were lots of them about, some of them landing on her as she walked down Quarry Hill.

Little Black Shrew

WHEN I RETURNED to work at the end of the garden this afternoon, I disturbed a small creature – smaller than a vole – that scurried around in the undergrowth beneath the hedge before disappearing into next door’s garden in a place where they have a large, and currently rather overgrown, pond.

It was blackish rather than brownish so, looking in the book, it is more like a Water Shrew than a Common Shrew, which is the species that I’d expect to see in our garden. I didn’t get a view of its head and I can’t be sure that I’ve drawn its tail in the correct proportions but I did get a good view of the blackish sausage-shaped body.

We’re near to Coxley Beck here and in at least three consecutive back gardens there are ponds, supporting reasonable numbers of frogs and newts which would provide suitable prey for a Water Shrew. Water Shrews are often found away from wetlands.

Iris Roots

I’ve been splitting the clumps of Yellow Flag Iris that we removed from the pond, whittling down hulking blocks of root, rhizome and moss into manageable chunks. At first I tried hacking at them but I couldn’t make much impression on the springy mass of vegetation so I used two garden forks, stuck into the root-mass back-to-back, to lever them apart.

I’m know going to cut them up into fist-sized pieces before I put them on the compost heap.

Perhaps the mystery shrew had been checking out the debris. Blackbirds were pecking about amongst it later.