Tish Farrell Writer

Look Out! The Wood’s On Fire

For one reason and several it was nearly 6 pm by the time I headed to the allotment yesterday. It had been a perfect day, an almost summer day, and I was sorry I’d not gone gardening sooner. There were, after all, the first early spuds and onion sets to plant, and parsnips and peas to sow, and several other jobs to be done. When I did finally get myself there, the sunset was so brilliant, I took to snapping scenes like this instead of doing what I’d meant to do. The rooks watched me from their gathering points on the powerlines, and even let me take their photo. Otherwise, I had the allotment entirely to myself, and there was that deep sense of the plots settling down for the night, free of their gardeners’ interventions.

I did make it to the polytunnel eventually. And in the remaining half-light planted out some lettuce seedlings in one of the raised beds. Then sowed some Early Onward peas in pots, since sowing them in the ground only seems to feed the mice. I also decided it was time the sprouted Aqua Dulce broad beans, likewise sown in mouse-avoiding trays, should go outside on the potting bench under some fleece before they grew to used to the warmth in the tunnel. And I had just stepped out of the polytunnel to fill my watering cans, when I saw this:

A moon in the pink, and the rooks flying over it. And I thought it probably was time to go home. And so a few photos later, I set off across the darkening plots, scrambled through the gap in field hedge into Townsend Meadow, again beheld the moon in picture book mode, this time over the Priory ruins, and thought how good it was to be alive, and that this was my first ‘home from the plot by moonlight’ of 2019.

Spiky Squares #21

Out In The Late Day Sun

Usually when it comes to lime tree photos, I’m snapping the Linden Walk which is just a short trot from the house. But when I walked up there on Sunday afternoon the photos I took of it looked flat and gloomy. It was only as I was heading for home that there was a sudden change in the weather. Sun. Here it is shining through the lime trees that line the road beside the Linden Field. And here it is marking an end to our recent bout of storms and rain. At least for the next week or so. Time to get sowing and planting.

Spiky Squares #20

Signs Of Spring In Rookery Wood

The things I do. Yesterday’s twilight with its magnificent post-storm sky had me standing on the cabin bed in my study and resting my camera on the open rooflight. If I use lots of zoom I can spy on the rooks in the wood on Sytche Lane. At this time of year there’s much to watch. For one thing they are making some serious extensions to their old nests.

For another, now is the time when the more spectacular ‘fly pasts’ begin. There seem to be two modes. The first kind involves a sudden outburst in the rookery (there are jackdaws in the wood too). For no apparent reason all the roosting birds whoosh out over the meadow, bowl around in a swirling mass and then return to the trees as if nothing had happened. The second kind is a much bigger production and usually happens around sunset or shortly afterwards. It seems to be about a gathering in of rook cohorts from the four quarters, a reconfirmation of rookery membership perhaps (?) – this after their day’s foraging around the fields.

As they return to the rookery so the aerial dance begins: sometimes high above Townsend Meadow, at others in high-speed mass swoops at ground level. It is very exhilarating. And perhaps that’s it. The display is an expression of rookish joi de vivre. And why not? If I were selling my house, I would say the view of rooks from the study rooflight is a very particular asset, though maybe not for the ornithophobic or anyone with a tendency to vertigo.

Spiky Squares #18

The Little Gate To The Cliffs

Llanddwyn Island, Anglesey, North Wales shot in monochrome

Cee’s Black & White Challenge: Fences and Gates

Six Word Saturday

Remembrance For Days Like These

No man is an island,
entire of itself;
every man is a piece of the continent,
a part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less,
as well as if a promontory were,
as well as if a manor of thy friend’s
or of thine own were.
Any man’s death diminishes me,
because I am involved in mankind;
and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
it tolls for thee.

John Donne 1572 – 1631

Thursday’s Special: Desert Dawn

We’ve been suffering serious gales and wetness in the UK, and it’s set to persist, bluster and precipitate for several more days yet. Which has me thinking of dryness and deserts and heat and stillness and no wind. This photo was taken early one morning in the desert outside Dubai. It was around 5 a.m. and I had just given up the battle of trying to sleep in an igloo tent while close by our guide snored loudly in the open back of his 4×4. And when I walked out alone and saw all this, what could I say. Who cares about mangled limbs and a sleepless night? Why would I?

Thursday’s Special This month Paula challenges us to show her any or all of the following: inversion . circuitous . corniculate . sabulous . interstice . I’m definitely claiming the last two in this shot, and also some circuitous tyre tracks. And then there’s inversion – the up and down-ness of the dunes and sand ruts, the light versus shade, the cool of sunless valleys versus sun-warmed peaks. I suppose at a push too, you might say the distant small lumps and bumps are reminiscent of newly erupting horns?

And It’s Not Only A Pelican…

Not the best photo, I know. I cropped it so you can just about see what is going on in the papyrus to the right of the pelican. i.e. the rear end of one of Lake Naivasha’s hippos going ashore and the roaring, open mouth of another hippo who is objecting to the intrusion. Hippos have whopping teeth and tusks, and quite apart from being grouchy with each other, they also kill quite a few humans, especially fishermen. They are at their best when mostly immersed in water, and their surprisingly tender hides well protected from the heat of the sun. But even so, it always pays to be wary.

A glimpse of some of Lake Naivasha’s rich bird life (apologies for grainy old ‘out-of-Africa’ shot).

The lake is fed by underground rivers and is Kenya’s only freshwater lake among its Great Rift string of soda lakes. Many of the fresh flowers bought in Europe – roses as well as carnations – are grown in corporate-owned flower factories around the lake shore. Their presence has created jobs and some social services (e.g. company funded primary schools and clinics) for local people, but there are big costs too: too much water abstraction that has shrunk the lake and pesticide and fertilizer run off that have threatened fish stocks. There’s a good little video (7 mins) focusing on these problems and showing more of life around the lake HERE.

Spiky Squares #13

Accidental But Interesting

Not sure what was going on here. I think this is one of my camera’s own recent compositions. I recognise the power lines behind the allotment, but who knows where the wafty branches came from. The whole thing looks like a charcoal sketch, with just enough spikiness to qualify for Becky’s March Squares.

Spiky Squares #12

Today The Weather Feels Like This

Country lore has it that if March comes in like a lion it will leave like a lamb. Well roll on flocks of little ovine entities. As I write this, the wind is roaring up over the Edge, and blowing right through the house even though all the windows are shut. And IT IS ICY. And outside, it is blow-you-over gale force across the field with intermittent fierce rain squalls. Yet the BBC weather people claim that here in our corner of Shropshire we are currently having ‘sunny intervals with a fresh breeze’. In support of this contention, they have staked out their hourly weather map with a row of sunny-cloud icons. It’s a sign of the times of course. You can no longer trust a single mediated report, not matter how supposedly trustworthy the source. Wear more vests, that’s my advice. And balaclavas.

Photo: Bin bag and barbed wire, St Bride’s Bay, Pembroke, March 2018

Spiky Square #9

Six Word Saturday

Shopping In The Papyrus At Lake Naivasha

Even locals said that anything could happen in Kenya. And so one Lake Naivasha morning, when I thought I was alone in the wilderness outreaches of an old safari lodge, I was both surprised and unsurprised when a young man stepped out from the papyrus swamp clutching two bunches of carnations. Fifty bob, madame, he said after the customary greeting. He seemed nonplussed when I started to laugh.

“Do you always keep your carnations in the papyrus,” I asked.

“Yes,” he said.

“What, waiting for people like me?”

“Yes,” he said.

This exchange seemed to seal the deal. I didn’t even bother to haggle. And although I have no idea why I would have 50 bob on me in such a place, I bought a bunch. Given the general lack of wazungu humanity in that particular location, I also wondered how long he had been waiting for the likes of me to come along; or how long he would have been prepared to wait for a customer. Or if I was just the unexpected thing that happened to him, rather than he to me. (You could tie yourself in knots second guessing). The rest of the lodge guests, I knew, were male entomologists, engaged all day in seminars and workshops; only I was free to wander about the hotel grounds buying flowers for which I had no particular need.

For the rest of this story see: Carnations, Crooks and Colobus at Lake Naivasha

Spiky Squares #8