It’s frustrating at times, but I have to admit that I’m enjoying going back to basics with my printed booklets, doing a bit of detective work to see where the hold up in printing speed is creeping in. So far, so good: this ultra-simple booklet with placeholder text prints out in a couple of minutes and it makes no difference if I use GIF images or larger format TIFs, which are about twice the size.
It’s such a pleasure to construct a really simple booklet, dropping little rough sketches in wherever I please, that it makes me want to design another booklet for real, perhaps taking a sketchbook and scanning the illustrations separately then typing up my handwritten notes.
I’m using Adobe InDesign CC 2017, a program which seems to have its quirks if, like me, you’re more used to Microsoft Publisher or Serif PagePlus.
Image manipulation and booklet printing get me every time: I always grab the frame rather than the image itself when I want to change its size, but surely by now I’ve learnt that you don’t select ‘Print’ if you want to print a booklet!
When I bought three packets of different kinds of meadow seed mixes three months ago, I wondered if I would ever end up with anything resembling the colourful photographs on the boxes. I’m delighted that all three mixes have done well, sown, each in an area roughly a metre square, on the raised bed behind the pond. On a sunny day the flowers are popular with hoverflies.
I’ll definitely repeat the experiment next year. I think that a lot of these flowers will seed quite freely around the garden, so I’ll try leaving a few bare patches here and there to encourage them, but for the raised bed itself, I’ll sow a fresh seed mix.
What appears to be an all-black bumblebee visits several flowers in the mini meadow, bending the slender stem right over when it lands. A smaller gingery ochre bumblebee is more suited to the size of the flowers.
Amongst the hoverflies is one of the familiar species with the boat-shaped striped abdomen and a small, duller-looking spindle-shaped hoverfly.
I’m typing this post on my iPad as I sit on one of the stones at the corner of the raised bed. It’s the first post that I’ve ever typed, drawn, photographed (using the built-in camera on my iPad) and uploaded entirely on location in the back garden. I wonder how far I can get from the house and still use the wifi in my studio.
Like any other part of the garden, the pond needs weeding occasionally. There’s never a time of year when the pond isn’t a vital time for some form of wildlife but, as I’d been trimming around it this morning, I decided to put on my long waterproof gloves to see if I could create a bit of open water by pulling out some of the moss which has grown to blanket most of the surface.
I was surprised how easily I could drag handfuls out, even the floating clump of creeping buttercup came out in several heavy armfuls. I’ve left all the debris close to the edge to give the tadpoles, newt-poles and any other pond life a chance to find its way back into the water. The pond is looking more like a water feature and less like a marsh now that I’ve topped it up.
There’s a scene in Joby, Stan Barstow’s novel of childhood in a small Yorkshire town, where Joby has to decide which of his small collection of model cars he’s going to take with him when he has to leave home because of some family trauma. The boy lines them up to assess the personality of each car and eventually goes for the one that seems mundane but dependable, rather than the flashy and spectacular.
Sand and gravel steam wagon, one of Lesney’s Matchbox Models of Yesteryear.
I must have gone through a similar process with this Dinky Toys die-cast van(above). At a time when we wanted to buy an Emgee Memo Stamp (a kind of hand-held duplicator) to print a little club magazine, my brother Bill and I sold most of our childhood toys to Steele’s Surplus, the secondhand shop in the wooden hut down the road (now a beauty and tanning salon), but I decided that I couldn’t part with this van which, even in the 1960s, seemed to have the dependable and practical look and feel of a bygone age.
I kept this Matchbox Austin A50 because it reminded me of our family car in the mid-1950s, an Austin A40.
It originally came to us secondhand, with a box of cast-off toys that had belonged to Mick, the son of our butchers, Mr and Mrs Thompson. I notice that I’d replaced the nearside front tyre with a slightly larger spare, which you could buy in a pack from the newsagents. It’s now the van’s only tyre with legal treads the other’s are bald.
The Bedford Removals Van(below) was a smaller scale Lesney Matchbox model. This was a gift and I went to bed clutching it in my sweaty hand during our annual seaside holiday at Filey on the Yorkshire coast. In the morning the transfer on the side of it – ‘MATCHBOX REMOVALS SERVICE’ – had been rearranged like an anagram in a crossword.
I was so taken with the model and the concept of removal vans in general that when we moved from Wrenthorpe to Horbury, my sister Linda and I persuaded our parents, and the removal men, who should have known better, to allow us to travel in the back of the van. I imagined a great adventure that consisted of sitting in comfort in an armchair on the journey but by the time that we got to the end of our road, my sister and I were convinced that a large piece of furniture lurching and rattling over our heads was going to come crashing down on us.
As we slowed down at a junction in the centre of Wakefield, passers by might have heard the muffled sound of two young children shouting ” Help! HELP!”
I bought this two gallon (10 litre) galvanised watering can at the closing down sale of a hardware store on Wood Street, Wakefield, c. 1983. It’s a traditional design, the sort that my dad used.
It’s the easiest of all my cans to fill, just leave it under the tap of the water butt. But don’t forget about it and leave it overnight as I did recently, draining what was left in the butt.
This green plastic Ward’s watering can is my current favourite; it’s well-balanced to carry down the garden and free-flowing but easy to control when you’re watering. Not the finest of sprays from the rose, but I don’t have delicate seedlings to water these days, so that”s not a problem.
This 5 litre Haw’s watering can would be the best choice for the gentle watering of seedlings and, with it’s long spout, you’d be able to reach a tray at the back of the bench.
I first become aware of Haw’s watering cans at Kew Gardens in the winter of 1976-77, when I set off to draw tree ferns for a coal forests illustration (detail above). I’d been looking forward to drawing in tropical warmth but the greenhouses were closed for maintenance, so I stood outside in freezing conditions, drawing the tropical scene.I noticed that the all watering cans dotted about the greenhouse were Haw’s, so I decided that, if they were good enough for Kew, that would be the one that I’d go for.
I bought one in the sale at the hardware store. In those days Haw’s watering cans were metal and this one had been hanging on the display so long that the joint between spout and can had opened enough to allow water to seep out but I filled it with plastic padding and used the can for years. It appears in a sample illustration (left) which I painted when I did some work on Dr Hessayon’s bestselling Garden Expert Guides.
We bought this as a spare can, a bargain from a DIY store or garden centre but it works well: the wavy handle is well-balanced for carrying and for watering.
From a garden gift hamper, this cream-coloured retro metal can is intended to be decorative rather than practical. The rose is soldered to the spout but it works well, giving the plant a gentle dousing.
Finally, we bought this one litre Haw’s plastic watering can for plants on the kitchen windowsill. With that long spout, it’s a slow but precise pourer. The brass and plastic rose produces a gentle spray.
I’ve just sent my latest article off to the Dalesman, so I decided that I could allow myself to do a drawing just for the fun of it. I love working with these hand tools which I carry around the garden in this plastic bin (a container from a live Christmas tree from about twenty-five years ago).
The last essential that I need to complete my set is a hand potato harvester, which would save me the inevitable speared potato when I use a fork; how have I managed without one all these years? Besides, it would give me another tempting subject to draw. Perhaps for next year, as we’ve already started this year’s potato harvest: the first of our Vivaldi second earlies were lovely; not huge quantities of them, but what there were were delicious.
A couple of stems of chicory escaped when I mowed the meadow area, but I might as well enjoy drawing them while they’re still here. They’re going to go as I need to keep it under control to give some of the other wild flowers, such as bird’s-foot trefoil, red campion and red clover, a chance to thrive.
Perhaps I should start eating it: buds and leaves are edible and the roots have been baked, ground and roasted as a substitute for coffee. I can’t see me giving up my Fairtrade, rain-forest friendly latte.
A pair mute swans on the canal have reared four cygnets; we’re told that they started with five, but rearing four out of five is pretty good going.
As they sit together on the bank preening, they’re all making elegant swan-neck movements, like the warm-up for a ballet rehearsal; the two principle dancers flanking the corps de ballet.
A male banded demoiselle flies alongside the canal. In contrast to other damselflies, this one is so dark that it reminds us of the chimney sweep moths that we saw flying amongst grasses in the Dales a couple of weeks ago. It’s the first that I can remember seeing in the valley.
It’s a while since we saw a gatekeeper; a male comes to rest on a bramble leaf amongst the grasses by the towpath. The diagonal streaks on the forewings of the male are scent glands. Males have a habit of patrolling a small territory , typically on the edge of a woodland ride.
Ringlets are the butterflies that we’re seeing most frequently at the moment, mainly alongside hedgerows, especially where bramble is in blossom but even more popular with them is a patch of creeping thistle which is currently dotted with purple flower-heads.
Herons, Storks and Spoonbills
A little egret wades through the weedy waters of a pool between the river and canal, occasionally stabbing at some prey in the water a foot or two ahead of it. A pigtail of a plume hangs down behind its head. ‘Little’ is an appropriate description: it looks petite compared with plump moorhen standing nearby at the water’s edge.
A juvenile grey heron touches down by the pool and steadily ambles along the bank towards the egret, which continues its progress towards the heron. I’m expecting the larger heron to see off the egret, but there’s no interaction between them.
Next to the pool is a nesting platform fixed on top of a tall pole. It was erected when a pair of wild white storks attempted to nest here in April 2004: the first nesting attempt in Britain for six hundred years. Storks like to nest near human habitation but it probably didn’t help that hundreds of birdwatchers flocked to the spot and stood on the towpath under the pole. The pair deserted.
But the good news is that it’s just been announced by the RSPB that spoonbills have nested at their Fairburn Ings nature reserve. They haven’t nested in Yorkshire since the 1700s. Unlike the storks, they were able to nest in peace as they wisely chose the cover of a stand of trees in one of the quieter corners of the reserve and the RSPB didn’t go public with the news until the three young had successfully fledged.
Buzzard and Sparrowhawk
As we walk down the Balk into the Calder Valley, a buzzard flies across in front of us, far enough down the slope that we’re getting an eye-level view of it. It’s surprising how different those long, broad wings look when seen from this unfamiliar angle.
Later a female sparrowhawk circles over the marshy field known as the Strands. At first, against the sky with nothing to judge its scale by, I’m wondering if it could be some larger bird of prey, but it soon flies right over our heads, so that we’re able to see the barring on its plumage and get a better idea of its size.
I’m fascinated to see how creative a two-year old can be with a magic painting colouring book, starting by experimenting with dragging, blending and pooling but then opting for a more meticulous approach. This is the Fairy Gardens Magic Painting Book, currently on sale at the National Trust shop.
She’s so absorbed that she completes the book at one sitting. She assigns identities to four fairies winging their way through the herbage:
‘Mummy . . . Daddy . . . Granny and Grandpa’. She adds a beard to Grandpa. I think that purple tutu will really suit him.
I’m using Adobe InDesign CC 2017, a program which seems to have its quirks if, like me, you’re more used to Microsoft Publisher or Serif PagePlus.
