Author: margaret21

I'm retired and live in North Yorkshire, where I walk , write, volunteer and travel as often as I can.

It’s a worm’s life

Recently, I’ve started to follow a few poetry blogs, and last week, David of The Skeptic’s Kaddish, accepted a challenge: to write a Quatern.

A what? This …

Not just any old quatern however. This one has to contain the word ‘quiet’. I thought I’d have a go too. It happens that this fits quite nicely into my self-imposed challenge, set as I looked yet again at my geological map of Great Britain. What’s it like for worms? Some of them contend with sandy soil, others heavy clay. Some soil is chalky, some loamy, and what must soil up in the old coalfields be like? Or that thin acid soil of the moorlands?

I’ve written a gaggle of poems about worms, each one living in a different kind of soil: I obviously don’t get out enough. Each poem uses a different verse form. So why not sum the whole worm thing up in a quatern?

Quiet - can you hear a sound? 
The barley rustles in the breeze. 
A buzzard mewls, the crows confer, 
The rabbits waken.  Dusk descends. 

Below the ground it’s different though - 
Quiet - can you hear a sound? 
There are no noises from the worms 
who turn the earth, eat leaves and chaff. 

Their world of darkness is not ours. 
They churn the soil by night and day. 
Quiet - can you hear a sound 
as worms keep soil in rude good health? 

There’s life above, there’s life below - 
each dependent on the other. 
Do not dismiss the lowly worm: 
quiet - can you hear a sound?

Music for Monks?

A concert in the cellarium of Fountains Abbey last Saturday.

Pitch black, cold.

The singers gather,

muffled up.

Sing loudly, like long-gone monks -

conquering the dark.

And to lower the tone, that’s the scene once the audience had departed.

For Bren’s Mid-Week Monochrome.


	


	





	

		
		
We’re going on a Deer Walk …
	


	
	
	

		
	

		

I went on a bit of a safari yesterday.  Only down the road to Studley Royal’s deer park.  Here are some snippets from the afternoon.





Autumn is the time of the rut, when stags compete to get the biggest and best harem of does, to secure their own blood like survives to the next generation.  They wallow in the mud to leave their sexy scent behind, score trees and trash vegetation- they may even aim to toss leaves and grasses to their antlers to make them look even more imposing.  We saw none of these behaviours.  But we did hear them roaring and making that strange loud roaring belching noise that can be heard from quite a distance, and which warns other males that They Mean Business.





It doesn’t pay to get too near to deer at this – or indeed at any other – time of year, so all of my photos use zoom at its highest setting, which doesn’t make for the crispest of images.  But you’ll know you’re in the deer park when you see trees looking like this.  That horizontal finish you can see is the browse line – the highest that a red deer on its hind legs can reach to get a mouthful of leaves.










We saw these fellahs next.  They’re young stags.  They know they haven’t got a hope this year of attracting the females, so they just sit it out.  Maybe a bit of play-fighting to get a bit of practice in, but really … it’s just not their party.  That first one posed for Monday Portrait.










On we walked.  Over the old bridge where females often give birth and shelter their young, to the crest of a hill where we have far-reaching views over to Ripon and the North York Moors beyond,  And below, deer: fallow deer and sika deer, browsing and grazing together, with their stags keeping a proprietorial eye on them.  We kept our distance and just enjoyed watching them.










Younger, older, does and stags …










Then onward, past the sweet chestnut trees they love so much at this time of year, for their tasty chestnuts, past a popular wallowing place (oops, forgot to take a photo).










So let’s finish our walk with a few shots of those views I mentioned.










In the shot above, that’s Ripon down below.  The eagle-eyed will just be able to spot the cathedral in the centre of the shot, in the distance.










For Monday Portrait and Jo’s Monday Walk.

	


	







	

		
		
Postcards from Kiplin Hall
	


	
	
	

		
	

		

Kiplin Hall.  That was our destination on Sunday.  We first went there a few years ago for joyful Shakespeare productions, such as Romeo and Juliet, by the irrepressible Handlebards.  These days, we go if we need a quiet few hours at a country house whose grounds are extensive enough to offer a walk, a view and coffee and cake after.  Here are my picture postcards – monochrome, as picture postcards always used to be – for Mid-Week Monochrome #110 – and to send to Jo, of Jo’s Monday Walk fame.





Kiplin Hall was built as a hunting lodge in the 1620s by one George Calvert, who was Secretary of State to King James VI.  American readers may like to know that he was made Baron Baltimore, and was granted a charter to found a colony in America.  This colony became  – the State of Maryland.





Here’s our first sight of the hall:










Goodness, it was breezy that day.  But walk we would, all the way round the lake -into the wind at first – one of the images give an idea of the scudding waves.  We  set off to get various views of the lake and hall.  Here’s a clutch of postcards.










There are woodlands to explore: but the wind was picking up.  Better to find shelter and explore the huge walled garden perhaps, where they grow all the fruit and vegetables used in their tearooms, and to make the jams, jellies and chutneys on sale.  But wait!  Suddenly it’s quite forbidding … Hallowe’en is on the way…












We’ll take our courage in both hands and enter anyway … there, that’s not so bad …










Although …. who’s that sitting on the bench over there?












We decided the tea room was a better option.  Coffee, date and pecan cake anyone?  No photo available.  We ate every crumb before we gave the camera a thought.

	


	





	

		
		
The Power of Yellow
	


	
	
	

		
	

		

Goodness, we all need some brightness in our lives just now.  The unremitting bad news every time we turn on a news bulletin.  The fiasco calling itself the British government.  And if all that’s not bad enough, the clocks turn back at the end of the month, leaving us plunged into the darkness of winter.





Leya’s Lens-Artists Photo Challenge #221 this week gives us an opportunity.  Ann-Christine asks us to showcase our favourite flowers.  Well, that’s a bit of a task.  But what I do know is that a yellow flowers always brings me cheer.  The earliest aconites. The first bright-faced daffodils poking through the ground at the beginning of spring.  Primroses.  Celandines. Even dandelions and fields of rape. Vivid gorse bushes pointing our way on a country or seaside walk.  Or – and this is where we’ll begin, summer sunflowers.  They always bring a smile to my face as they gradually turn their faces throughout the day to face the rays of the sun.  Bees constantly scramble over the heads crammed with seed that will feed the birds – and us – over winter.  










 Even their hangdog look as they droop and die is characterful.










For the rest, I’ll just give you a small gallery of some of the yellow flowers that bring me cheer year after year, in public places, in gardens, in farmers’ fields and in city streets.






	


	





	

		
		
A Landscape at Harewood House
	


	
	
	

		
	

		

After visiting Harewood House, a visit to the grounds seems a good idea.  Maybe the formal garden just beyond the house.  Maybe the Bird Garden.  Or maybe just a stroll in the managed landscape of Capability Brown, overlooking Wharfedale beyond.  Come.










Let’s approach those trees.  I wonder what we could see beyond?










Keep walking ….












… closer …










Ah!  There’s a view …










… or there was.

	


	





	

		
		
Monochrome or Colour, Adam?
	


	
	
	

		
	

		

If you’re reading this, the chances are that you’ve also glanced at my previous post today, showcasing Jacob Epstein’s Adam at Harewood House. I’ve been playing with the photos, and have decided I would have done Adam more favours by showing him off, not in glorious technicolor, but in monochrome.  What do you think?










An addition to Lens-Artists Photo Challenge #220 One Subject Three Ways, and a contribution to Bren’s Mid-Week Monochrome #109.





You can have too much of a good thing, so I’ll hold back my other post from Harewood for a day or two.

	


	





	

		
		
A Heavyweight at Harewood House
	


	
	
	

		
	

		

Harewood House is the archetypical country house.  Built for Edward Lascelles, the first Baron Harewood, in the mid eighteenth century to designs by John Carr and Robert Adam, it is set in one hundred acres of garden designed by Capability Brown.  It’s among Yorkshire’s most prized treasures.  These days, such treasure has lost some of its lustre as people remember that the Harewood family acquired their immense wealth from being slave owners and having plantations in West India.  The present Harewood family can’t change that past, but their exhibition programme does what it can to redress the balance: this month there’s an exhibition on Windrush generation Arthur France, founder of Leeds West Indian Carnival.





I mention this, because as you enter the house, this is what you see:












A spacious and gracious entrance hall: delicate plaster work, elegant columns: and slap bang in the centre, a mighty sculpture, monumental, assertive and demanding attention.  This figure isn’t a slave: he’s not even Afro-Caribbean.  No, this is a sculpture by Jacob Epstein, who was greatly influenced by what was in the early twentieth century thought of as ‘primitive’ art – that of Polynesia and Africa. This is Adam.





How he got here is a curious tale.  Back in 1961 the then Lord Harewood saw this sculpture in of all places, a Tussaud’s peep show in Blackpool, together with other works by Epstein.  A long and complicated story, but he eventually bought it, and now it’s recognised for the stirring and monumental piece that it is, rather than a grotesque to be laughed at.  Do look at this post here  to get a flavour of how Epstein’s work was regarded in its early days, at least as it was displayed in Blackpool.  The short video below however places Adam in the context of Harewood House.













I wanted, for this week’s  Lens-Artist Challenge #220 One Subject Three Ways by Patti, to observe Adam in several ways, to look at how this potent figure works in a space to which it seems in many ways unsuited.  I found the lighting difficult and am not pleased with my results, but … I did it anyway. You’ve seen the first one already.  Here are more…










So … Adam.  But knowing the story of Harewood and where the money came from to build it, I found this figure,  which relies on an African, rather than an European artistic heritage, makes a powerful statement to those who enter this house to enjoy its treasures and its finely proportioned and handsome grandeur.





I’m going to have another go at the challenge, perhaps tomorrow, when I take a stroll in the artfully designed ‘natural’ landscape of Harewood House.