Tag: down to the river and up to the trees

Flakes of Gold

1 Comment

Last night’s half moon was a haze and today the woods seem singed, as though burnt by an exhausted, sinking sun, with faded greens and exposed boughs. Summer is passing – it’s back to work. Yet these past few months have felt like so much hard work, with juggling jobs and balancing the books. These are not comfortable times.

It sometimes seems like the easy option would be to say, Enough! Despite knowing this isn’t an option. Not really.

Instead, I’ve fallen back on looking for flakes of gold; finding the little glimmer that can light a whole day. For me, this has often meant searching for a familiar wonder: glimpses of glow worms burning like alien lights in the hedgerows. I’ve written about these beautiful bugs before, tiny neon lanterns, but this year they’ve taken on even more importance for me.

Last thing each evening after dark, I walk up the lane in the hopes of spotting a tiny green dot of light, almost talismanic. With each passing night, their numbers dwindle, like the lights going out along the front of a seaside town at the end of the season. Still I smile to see them so late on, now into September, my birthday month – a time of personal new beginnings.

I remember, many years ago, panning for gold in a water way – and the wonder at discovering tiny glints of yellow in the mud.

It comes down to feeding the heart with these scatterings. These splinters of beauty. Flakes of gold.

Bees in the Eaves

2 Comments

With dawn, the wall begins to wake and I lie listening to the sounds of stirring. Bumble bees have made a nest under the cottage eaves. In the quiet, you can hear them as they start to go about their working day.

These bees are less intrusive than our previous summer guests – a colony of hornets. While  the hornets were placid creatures, we soon learnt to shut the windows when dark fell. The insects were attracted to artificial light, and would parade outside the glass near lit lamps. Similarly, whenever I mowed the lawn, I was aware they might be disturbed by the vibrations, so kept my distance from the site of their nest above our back door. Although the hornets would occasionally emerge to take a look while I was pottering around outdoors, we left each other respectfully alone. All the same, I admit I was relieved when they moved on.

The buildings we live in are home to many more lives than our own, from solitary masonry bees who crawl into cracks between bricks and beetles under the floorboards, to summer’s swifts swooping over the roofs of rural towns. While instinct can incite us to treat some of these cohabitants as ‘pests’, the rewards to be had from controlling our impulses towards them are manifold – from pollinating gardens to caring for the planet.

The buzz of the bumble bees in the wall and the way we react to insects generally inspired me to write the following short piece; I hope you enjoy it:

 

Inside The Wall

 

The woman and the man watch the wall

A-creep with beetles, bees and ants.

When, at last, the returning queen

Docks with the insect grace of an airship,

The woman points and the man nods.

In white suit and alien helmet

He cautiously climbs a ladder,

Puffs poison into cracks

And seals the entrance with dead white:

No hornets here this year.

 

Next summer, she lets a waking queen

Out of an upstairs window,

Then stops to listen.

The bedroom wall humming like a blocked tap.

Outside she spots them circling:

Small bumblebees, black blobs of velvet,

Nesting under the eaves.

Their song is strangely comforting –

As if the stones were alive and

Nothing quite destroyed.

 

(© Sue Belfrage, 2018)

 

In other news, Bull Mill Arts near Warminster,  Wiltshire are hosting an open studio event on 7 to 8 July, where copies of the new paperback edition of my book, Down to the River and Up to the Trees, will be available as part of the event’s celebration of trees and nature.

Of Nightingales and Sparrowhawks

2 Comments

Yesterday, at sunset, I heard a nightingale sing. Its voice trilled, dipped and soared from the shadowy boughs of a sycamore tree. My companions and I stood enthralled, hardly daring to breathe lest the spell be broken. It seemed impossible that a small brown bird, hidden from view, could weave such sounds.

Nearby, another nightingale answered, and in the distance another, while all around blackbirds chattered goodnights and blackcaps joined in the melody. With the fading of the light, the birdsong ebbed away till at last even the nightingale fell silent, perhaps to strike up its song once we had gone.

In folklore and myth, the nightingale has long been linked to love and loss. Yet listening to the birds at dusk was soothing as balm –  a contrast to an avian encounter two weeks earlier.

Then I had been sat outside reading in the sun, when a starling and her fledglings started to screech alarm calls from the garden next door. A blackbird joined in, as did other birds, and suddenly a squadron of starlings swooped in overhead.

I peered over the wall and still could see nothing. ‘What’s going on?’ I asked; I didn’t expect a reply.

As if summoned, a sparrowhawk hopped out from a tangle of plants onto the lawn, wings dropped like a magician’s cape. If it had been mantling prey, it had abandoned this and now looked at me, head cocked, eye yellow, assessing; for all the world as outraged as a pantomime villain. In a blink, it took off and scimitared across the grass, then disappeared over a far wall.

While the garden birds settled back into their comings and goings, the surprise of the episode momentarily shook me. No wonder the ancients believed in augury – in divining the future from the behaviour of birds.

And no wonder, when we hear them sing, we’re touched by untamed magic.

 

*******

Just to confirm that the publication date for the paperback edition of Down the River and Up to the Trees is nearly here: 14 June!

 

Spring Fever

Leave a comment

‘The city mouse lives in a house;

The garden mouse lives in a bower’

Christina Rossetti, ‘The City Mouse and the Garden Mouse’

 

A dash of brown caught my eye, up and over the garden wall. I watched and waited: a rodent of some description was on the move, building a nest among the masonry and scurrying back and forth to collect bedding. It was too far away to be sure and I’m no expert, but based on previous sightings, I’m guessing it was a vole.

During the winter, I found the entrances to one or two burrows in the lawn after snowmelt. (In fact, a neighbour became so fascinated by these holes that she suggested installing a camera to capture the occupants.) Now the weather’s warm enough for mowing and the grass is short again, perhaps the tunnels have been abandoned – after all, who wants to live rattled by lawnmowers – and the voles have opted for high-rise living instead?

Mouse or vole, I was impressed by the little creature’s industry as it dragged rose leaves the length of its body back to its hidey-hole. I was also secretly impressed by its lack of respect for boundaries: although it had made its home on my side of the stone wall, it kept nipping over into another neighbour’s garden to collect building materials. This particular neighbour has a very beautiful and ordered garden – and a notable aversion to rodents.

Try as we might, perhaps it’s impossible to prevent a little chaos creeping in; and maybe that’s no bad thing? The end of April and beginning of May are traditionally a time of celebration, of dancing and rebellion, fertility and Beltane fires, of waking energies and creativity on the loose…

When I inspected the wall where the beastie had built its nest, I found hazelnut shells crammed into the crevices, fragments of brown amidst grey. Evidence of life hidden in the heart of rock.

****

The paperback edition of Down to the River and Up to the Trees will be available this summer. Watch this space!

Arrivals and Departures

Leave a comment

This morning our postman, Phil, handed me a small, white package through the downstairs window, and I put it immediately to one side. I already knew what was in it and held off opening it for a little while. I can’t quite explain why.

In the package was an advance copy of my first book, Down to the River and Up to the Trees, which will officially be published in a couple of weeks’ time. The arrival of this advance copy in the post marked a year to the day since I’d left my old job to embark on a freelance career. Quite the anniversary present!

A year ago, I had no idea what the future held. All I knew was that I needed to make some changes and couldn’t delay them any longer. I was lucky to have some savings put aside and the support of my other half, so I took the plunge – and resigned.

It was a good summer and I spent a lot of time outdoors, painting landscapes and in the beautiful surroundings of a friend’s garden. It was, in a way, a deeply healing experience – simply standing there, looking at the shapes and colours of the plants, feeling the breeze and hearing the birdsong. There is something very restorative and mindful about painting landscapes, whatever the elements throw at you or your canvas (though I can definitely say that oil paints and rain aren’t such a good mix).

At the end of the summer, a seed had been sown. And that seed has grown into the new book.

There is a famous piece from Goethe, ‘On Being Bold’. Now, I’ve had that piece stuck to my wall for more years than I care to remember – but the truth of it struck me again today:

‘The moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too. All sorts of things occur that would never otherwise have occurred.’

A year ago, as I sat on a train home, feeling a little bit wistful and cradling a bunch of farewell flowers, I had no idea that a small, white package would arrive in the post today. Who knows what the next twelve months will bring?

freelance artist, oils, illustration, illustrator, freelance illustrator

Summer’s Here!

Leave a comment

Last night we had the most spectacular storm. Woken by thunder, I climbed out of bed to watch the sky light up. After such a hot day, the heavy rain was welcome and in the morning the garden seemed a shade greener, the roses opening.

This is a glorious time of year, when everything’s growing. We have bumble bees nesting in the eaves, and the bird feeder is busy with fledglings. (I guess the feeder is the welcome equivalent of a takeaway for their frazzled parents.) One particular starling fledgling is so cocky he’s already tried to see off the resident woodpecker – who’s having none of it and jabbed him a lesson in waiting his turn.

Various projects of my own are fledging too: this new website and my book, Down to the River and Up to the Trees. Having recorded the audio version and corrected the proofs, I’m expecting printed copies of the book to arrive any day. It’ll feel a little unreal to hold it in my hands at last. But exciting!

In other news, I recently had a small exhibition of paintings and am now about to help my other half exhibit his handmade furniture at various country shows. So it’s a busy time of year, but a rewarding one… Time to take flight now summer’s here.