Glitter - I love the effect - particularly after dotting my artworks with glue and then sprinkling them with glittery fragments and holding them up to the light. Glitter poster paints are almost as satisfying: as I add red and green to silver and gold. It doesn't matter whether you are five or fifty-five; glitter is a good thing.
And this season's Christmas card manufacturers agree. At the last count at least five or more friends and relations have sent us cards with glitter on the Nativity, glitter on snowmen, glitter on frozen trees.
Christmas Sparkle says the card from our Essex cousins.
Sparkle makes things special. Little girls love it. Big girls searching for party-wear want it.
On Sunday evening, coming back from the carol service, I noticed the sparkle on the snow.
Today, as I walked in my wellington boots to the post box I wondered if I would be able to see the glitter again. Is it only in the dark, under street lights or moonlight that we are captivated by those icy crystals? Should we switch off the electricity and find God once a year and that only by candlelight?
There they were. All along the unbroken snow of the avenue, under clear midday skies were those scintillating temporary diamonds. As long as the snow blankets the ground, white as wool, they will be there. As long as the frost holds and the sun shines and you have a mind to look.
The final reading at the carol service is always the beginning of John's Gospel. John writes about the one and only, the verifiable Light. Why not have a mind to look?
Monday 20 December 2010
Wednesday 15 December 2010
Quiet Sunset
On winter days like these I draw the curtains at the front to see if the cars parked outside the flat are iced over. I draw the curtains at the back to see if the sun is rising above the freezing fog. The sun climbs the sky, afternoon comes, and I make a decision. Walk down the hill and through the gate. Out there the pavements were gritted and moist. Here the grass is crisp underfoot, the old bins we use for waterbutts are still frozen over and the soil is beginning to crumble nicely under the impact of the frost. It is cold to the touch, with miniature ice crystals. No digging then.
Manure: nature's insulating blanket, weed-suppressing, worm-feeding, nutritious manure. I unlock the shed and heave out the wheelbarrow. Three or four trips and some light weeding and raking and the time has gone.
I cannot begin to describe a winter technicolour sunset. I would have to be a painter render the luminescent oranges and reds that fill the sky, a poet to pile up the meteorological metaphor.
But I can tell you what a quiet sunset feels like, as the birds fall silent. The earth turns. By degrees, the invisible sun begins its descent behind the clouds. You feel the motion. A light wind springs up, a small chill wind and it is time to turn for home.
Manure: nature's insulating blanket, weed-suppressing, worm-feeding, nutritious manure. I unlock the shed and heave out the wheelbarrow. Three or four trips and some light weeding and raking and the time has gone.
I cannot begin to describe a winter technicolour sunset. I would have to be a painter render the luminescent oranges and reds that fill the sky, a poet to pile up the meteorological metaphor.
But I can tell you what a quiet sunset feels like, as the birds fall silent. The earth turns. By degrees, the invisible sun begins its descent behind the clouds. You feel the motion. A light wind springs up, a small chill wind and it is time to turn for home.
Wednesday 8 December 2010
Wordsearch
Did your teacher ever try to improve your spelling by playing about with words, setting you to split words to make new ones? Find one animal in rational, two animals in battalion, and something you can eat in belfries. Now give me a sentence about a rat, a bat, a lion and a portion of chips (for British readers). You may also like to rise to the challenge of the entire words, if you so wish...
Emailing a friend, as new bloggers do, I looked at my title and saw it. It was a kind of nudge, a jog to the elbow if you like, that underneath all the jokes, wordplay, bargains and bric-a-brac, allusions and alliteration - parsley, sage, (it didn't do very well on our plot), rosemary and thyme (seem to be surviving so far in sub-zero conditions); there is a hidden word. Put your hand up if you find it. Now give me a sentence, look, I'll start it for you:
"Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven."
Emailing a friend, as new bloggers do, I looked at my title and saw it. It was a kind of nudge, a jog to the elbow if you like, that underneath all the jokes, wordplay, bargains and bric-a-brac, allusions and alliteration - parsley, sage, (it didn't do very well on our plot), rosemary and thyme (seem to be surviving so far in sub-zero conditions); there is a hidden word. Put your hand up if you find it. Now give me a sentence, look, I'll start it for you:
"Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven."
Wednesday 24 November 2010
Ants - a retrospect
I meant to write this post in summer. Because in the gloam of November when their heaps are low rounded humps glistening with clay slick it is harder to record their flight.
I was kneeling, uprooting weeds from among the raspberries, when I first saw the procession. Worker ants, who like to roam seemingly aimlessly hither and yon were spacing themselves in single file up and along a blade of broad meadow grass. They were communicating with each other antenna to antenna, monitoring the larger ants, the ones who were preparing to fly. These came out of the loosened soil, their translucent wings folded close to their bodies. It was time to catch the breeze.
I straightened up. Ants were swarming, from beneath our raised beds, from below the marrows, emerging from cracks in the grassy paths, climbing the low boughs of the apple tree where they had been farming the aphids. There are ecological ways of dealing with ants, nematodes for example. One day, perhaps.
But if I had watered those microscopic parasites in deadly solution into the nest, I would never have seen the ants moving in harmony. I left off weeding to watch them, not just on our patch but all over.
The winged ants took themselves along the blades of grass or up the trunk and low boughs of the Bramley, and waited for the breeze. They wriggled their segmented bodies into position and lifted their wings in anticipation. Then the moving air uplifted them and they were off, up and away. Finally, the wingless workers themselves disappeared. Only a few wandered, aimlessly, seemingly, upon the newly weeded ground.
At the end of the afternoon, as we walked home I kept a look out for ants emerging through cracks in the pavement. It was not difficult if you knew where to focus. To me, it seemed that all the ants of Essex were on the wing.
It soon comes to an end. I have seen queens divested of wings, searching for a sheltered crevice, ready to start a life of subterranean motherhood; ready to give birth to an empire of ants.
But that is not what amazes me. The ants have no internet, no telegraph or semaphore. No landlines run from heap to heap. They are 'little upon the earth' says the Book of Proverbs. Yet on one afternoon, at one time, on one day in July, they launch themselves into the air for that coordinated moment of connubial flight.
I was kneeling, uprooting weeds from among the raspberries, when I first saw the procession. Worker ants, who like to roam seemingly aimlessly hither and yon were spacing themselves in single file up and along a blade of broad meadow grass. They were communicating with each other antenna to antenna, monitoring the larger ants, the ones who were preparing to fly. These came out of the loosened soil, their translucent wings folded close to their bodies. It was time to catch the breeze.
I straightened up. Ants were swarming, from beneath our raised beds, from below the marrows, emerging from cracks in the grassy paths, climbing the low boughs of the apple tree where they had been farming the aphids. There are ecological ways of dealing with ants, nematodes for example. One day, perhaps.
But if I had watered those microscopic parasites in deadly solution into the nest, I would never have seen the ants moving in harmony. I left off weeding to watch them, not just on our patch but all over.
The winged ants took themselves along the blades of grass or up the trunk and low boughs of the Bramley, and waited for the breeze. They wriggled their segmented bodies into position and lifted their wings in anticipation. Then the moving air uplifted them and they were off, up and away. Finally, the wingless workers themselves disappeared. Only a few wandered, aimlessly, seemingly, upon the newly weeded ground.
At the end of the afternoon, as we walked home I kept a look out for ants emerging through cracks in the pavement. It was not difficult if you knew where to focus. To me, it seemed that all the ants of Essex were on the wing.
It soon comes to an end. I have seen queens divested of wings, searching for a sheltered crevice, ready to start a life of subterranean motherhood; ready to give birth to an empire of ants.
But that is not what amazes me. The ants have no internet, no telegraph or semaphore. No landlines run from heap to heap. They are 'little upon the earth' says the Book of Proverbs. Yet on one afternoon, at one time, on one day in July, they launch themselves into the air for that coordinated moment of connubial flight.
Wednesday 17 November 2010
Welcome to the avenue
Are we a couple of swells? Possibly. Nowadays Astaire and Garland might sing of themselves as time rich. Now that would challenge the lyricist.
Do we walk up (and down) the avenue? Frequently. We do both have a bike, but there are also plenty of interesting things to see when you go on foot . Take the flight of birds, for example, on this nicely pre-designed template. They could be starlings, crows or the jackdaws that fly from roof to roof with their destinctive chack call. They could even be the escaped parakeets which are now colonising the London plane trees. An Essex parakeet in the depths of winter. Let your imagination have free reign.
So with humour and the occasional serious moment I would like to welcome you to the world of the avenue and the allotment.
Alison
Do we walk up (and down) the avenue? Frequently. We do both have a bike, but there are also plenty of interesting things to see when you go on foot . Take the flight of birds, for example, on this nicely pre-designed template. They could be starlings, crows or the jackdaws that fly from roof to roof with their destinctive chack call. They could even be the escaped parakeets which are now colonising the London plane trees. An Essex parakeet in the depths of winter. Let your imagination have free reign.
So with humour and the occasional serious moment I would like to welcome you to the world of the avenue and the allotment.
Alison
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)