Woodland treasure - Sky-heart cradle, a Dragon or two and a Fuzzypeg family...

 Well it seems once more despite all hopes that weeks are fleeing by without me picking up a pencil or a brush, so I have no artwork to post here yet for now... but I know that all the imagery and scents and sounds of recent weeks are storing up in a quiet corner of my mind, waiting to flow outwards again... I'm still not sure why or what I am waiting for, but I know that if I sit worrying over a blank page chewing a pencil it will do no good. Time WILL come to just sit quietly and let the words and images that wait, quicken and unravel...

 But here and now is the small infinately delicate treasure I found today on our walk through the woods, light as breath, frail perfect sanctum that nourished a flickering wonder of coiled life-spark. That from something so fragile comes the brief bright-wing spirit to sing under rain laden leaves and brush the sky with its small heart... how can that not inspire!

The foxgloves also are all reaching tall in my parents garden despite the stormy winds and rain we've had... I love their speckled-ness. I even managed to catch a bee or two in my photos...
 I have a vivid childhood memory, perhaps aged about six, of watching a bee go into a foxglove flower, and for some unfathomable impulse of curiosity I had pinched the petals gently shut. The bee inside of course was furious, bizz-buzzing away angrily inside... and I was so horrified I was too scared to let go! I think mum came to the rescue luckily for me and the bee...!

Harebells too, the colour of summer skies...

 Later we went to our local Castle a couple of miles down the lane in Nunney, with the particular purpose of photographing our daughters for a competition at school - a bit of fun, for a picture of people reading in unusual places... so Elora being in love with Dragonkind at the moment posed like this...

 

Here's a bit more of the castle, its a nice place to have on the doorstep...

These ruined turrets rising through the trees remind me of Gormenghast a little...

 And here's Elswyth's photos reading Robin Hood of course!

I will leave you for now with some gorgeous little prickly babies...

 Our neighbour is a volunteer at a nearby animal hospitol and is currently nursing this lovely family of Fuzzypegs back to health until they are strong enough to be released into the wild. A well meaning but sadly ignorant family were keeping them in a rabbit run and feeding them milk and bread so they were really malnourished and sickly, one of them even had a plastic ring from a beer can around its middle. Thankfully they have all survived and have grown a lot in the last week now they are eating meatier food.
The children have been lucky enough to see them up close a couple of times now. Beautiful creatures indeed!

Huge gloves for little hands but necessary!

Beautiful heart shaped faces

This one almost reminds me of a little old woman swathed in cloak and shawl...

Hope you enjoyed these little prickle-pins... I will let you know how they get on when they are ready to be released! Bye bye for now...

An early Halloween, Acorns, Oaks and the writings of a great wordsmith....

Being the last day of school before half term, the children had their Halloween school 'disco' tonight, a week early... I've only just recovered enough to restore brain functions! Very manic and very noisy! I can handle heavy metal concerts far better than a barn full of two to ten year olds running riot!
My eldest Elora has gone every year as a cat, so this year she broke tradition and went as a skeleton... then at the last minute buckled and added the cat ears!
Here they are very excited and proud of their pumpkins...

Then, looking on my camera I discoverd pictures from an autumn walk a couple of weeks back that I'd totally forgotten about, so I thought, it's still autumn so not too late to show some of them...

(This spidery ones suitably Halloween-ish!)

Here's some of the treasure me and Elswyth found on our way...


There's a very grand old Oak tree where we like to stop and rest, very Squirral Nutkin-like with lots of little hollow doorways in the roots. I love the expressiveness of the limbs, all gesturing crazed and contorted, and the fragile little girl gathering acorns, dwarfed by its presence...


And these limbs bring to mind one or two of Ted Hughes' poems...
I love the raw, sometimes brutal power of his wordcraft, he was so good at drawing out the elemental roots of the world, savage and wild as it has always been... both of nature and human nature...
Here is a short excerpt of a very long poem from 'Gaudete'...

Your tree - your oak
A glare

Of black upward lightning, a wriggling grab
Momentary
Under the crumbling of stars.

A guard, a dancer
At the pure well of leaf.

Agony in the garden. Annunciation
Of clay, water and the sunlight.
They thunder under its roof.
Its agony is its temple.

Waist-deep, the black oak is dancing
And my eyes pause
On the centuries of its instant
As gnats
Try to winter in its wrinkles.

The seas are thirsting
Towards the oak.

The oak is flying
Astride the earth.

How I love Ted Hughes. He has had a huge influence on my own writing and its time I started reading again I think... I have a shelf-ful of his books waiting, brooding bound within their pages, wanting to get out!
( I think there is a bit of Pratchett creeping in there, with images of restless muttering books flexing their covers ready to take flight from the shelves!)

And Elswyth's acorns have just reminded me of a bronze romano-british acorn in a little antiquities shop I saw years ago. Probebly the best part of two thousand years old found by some metal detectorist no doubt...
It was verdigreed and fashioned as a pendant and from the moment I walked empty handed out of that shop I have always regretted not buying it...
I always wondered who would once have worn it and what it meant to them... I really should have bought it!
Anyway, time to stop rambling on me thinks...!