‘Inspiration is needed in geometry, just as much as in poetry’

We were in the grounds of Harewood House the other day. Well, mainly we were in its adventure playground: we had our daughter and two year old granddaughter in tow. But we did walk through the formal outdoor areas near the house too, and we happened upon this hyper-geometric topiary garden.

I wondered if the quotation by Aleksandr Pushkin which forms the title of this post fitted the bill. A well-formed garden seems to me a thing of poetry. And this well-formed garden, which I was surprised to find I rather liked, is a thing of geometry too.

It’s the first time I’ve joined in Paula’s Words of Wisdom challenge, where she invites an image with a matching quotation. Let’s see if it cuts the mustard.

Mainly about reeds and rushes.

This week’s Nature Photo Challenge from Denzil is about water plants. My archive has not been especially revealing, and if you think I’m going out on this day of torrential rain to find more, you’ve got another think coming. Perhaps this is a chance to join in to with Jez’s Water Water Everywhere challenge too?

I’ll issue a challenge of my own too. I rather like the images below of spiky, statuesque reeds and grasses in black and white. But perhaps you prefer the original colour?

My first one is from the lake at Kiplin Hall, North Yorkshire

Then we’ll move to Lake Prespa in Greece, where the reeds obscure a handsome egret.

Then back to England, to the River Wye in Derbyshire.

This is a local Nature Reserve at Staveley, North Yorkshire on a bitingly cold day which at least the bulrushes could endure.

My header photo is also from Lake Prespa. I thought the egret and his reedy background demanded colour. Just as my final shot, taken in the gardens of the National Museum, Seoul. South Korea rather requires that splash of orange.

Today, I’m blowing my own trumpet

Last weekend, Masham, the town up the road had its wildly popular Steam Engine and Fair Organ Rally. With heavy rain forecast, this year we didn’t go to the out-of-town fields (doubtless muddy) where it’s held. Anyway, we had an exhibition to get to – Masham Photographic Club always has a display in town during the Fair, and invites members of the public to vote for their favourite four images, out of – this year – a field of 57.

By Monday, the votes were counted and the winners announced. Astonishingly, I took first place. And second. Probably because they’re local views. The winning shot is my header photo, and below is the runner-up.

Eavestone Lake

The header photo was just sheer serendipity. Walking down the lane early one morning I saw the scene you see now. I jut happened to have my phone with me, and captured the moment.

For Debbie’s Six Word Saturday.

What’s the Point of Fences?

Here in England, in the countryside, we tend to rely on walls and hedges to divide up farms and fields, leaving fences to suburban gardens. Though fences are becoming increasingly common as the years pass. And sometimes fences are added to walls that are getting old and past it. In this shot, I think the fence may be past it too.

I’ve been looking for fences for this week’s Lens-Artists Photo Challenge. I found fences to contain animals:

I found fences that have objects suspended from them:

… deliberately in the case of the moles. Molecatchers round here have the unhappy habit of suspending their deceased victims from fences, to advertise their services. And, perhaps, to deter other moles …

… accidentally in the case of sheep’s wool…

… deliberately in the case of young lovers declaring their – perhaps – lasting attachment to each other by attaching a padlock to a fence edging a bridge or harbour railing…

Then there are fences for perching on.

Stonechat

And there are fences for making statements. Here’s a local garden fence repurposed during Covid Lockdown in 2020 to thank the NHS. The nurse behind was part of our village’s scarecrow competition which celebrated keyworkers, from NHS staff to supermarket delivery drivers.

Local farmers at election time tend to give the oxygen of publicity to our sitting MP, by advertising him on their walls and fences It wasn’t me who bent the poster over, making it nearly illegible. But I’d definitely have given a hand to the perpetrator.

And finally, though in fact it’s my header photo: a fence in winter. It’s by way of being a historical curiosity. Snow is so last decade, or even last century.

For Dawn’s Lens-Artists Photo Challenge #258

Birds in Black

To go with the dismal weather we are having here in Britain this July, Denzil’s Nature Photo Challenge #20 asks us to focus on black. Inevitably, most of my shots are of birds. Let’s go …

That cormorant spreading its wings at the end of the pier at Whitby is a shot I’ve shown before and will probably do so again. I’m quite fond of it, so I’ve made it my header shot.

These shags are from the Farne Islands, currently closed to the public during the devastating avian ‘flu outbreak.

… And this is also where we saw these guillemots.

Here’s a blackbird, silhouetted against the evening sky.

I can’t resist taking you to Studley Royal, where I spend so much time – as do the jackdaws who think they own the place. Maybe they’re as much clerical grey as black. Never mind. I wonder if this is the one that Sarah (Travel with Me) snapped in her own response to this challenge?

Let’s go into town for the next two shots: starlings gathering on the weather vane of my grandchildren’s school, and a tame raven in Knaresborough.

But I can’t let you go without a sweet treat. Here are some juicy blackberries.

Blackberries

And in fact, I still can’t let you go. Not till I’ve shared this crow presiding over a street in Berlin. Or he was when I was last there.

I have just counted. I have offered you ‘Five-and-twenty black birds’. But not baked in a pie. And not twenty four. (English nursery rhyme, non-UK readers!)

And I’m going to add the cormorant – or any other of my featured birds of your choice – to IJ Khanewala’s Bird of the Week challenge.

A Simple Holiday

It’s summer – well, here in Europe it is anyway – and our thoughts turn to holidays. So when Philo of Philosophy through Photography fame threw down the challenge to celebrate Simplicity for Lens-Artists Challenge #257, I thought I’d leaf through my holiday albums and see what I could find.

Let’s go to the beach first, in Alnmouth Northumberland.

And then back to Yorkshire, to Wharfedale, where water coursing down the limestone slopes has formed this dramatically undulating landscape.

Let’s stay in Yorkshire, for harvest time at Sutton Bank.

Still, we can’t stay in England forever. Let’s catch a ferry across the North Sea.

We’ll nip across to Valencia, to l’Albufera: send a postcard as the header photo, before going south to Cádiz …

 … and all the way over to Greece …

… before coming back to England ..

…where poppies blow …

… and the fog descends…

Holiday well and truly over, I think.

Six times six = hours of reading joy

More than half way though the year. The longest day has come and – oh woe! – gone. And quite a few book-bloggers whom I follow have been joining in Six in Six, a way of recording at least some of the books read and enjoyed in the first part of the year, hosted by Jo of The Book Jotter. She proposes all kind of headings for lists-of-six. I’ve interpreted these fairly liberally. Here are mine.

Six books set in a country not my own:

Leila Slimani: Watch us Dance (Morocco)
Barbara Kingsolver: Demon Copperhead (USA)
Lauren Chater: The Lace Weavers (Estonia)
Roy Jacobsen: Just a Mother (Norway) 
Georges Simenon:Monsieur Monde Vanishes (France)
Jennifer Saint:  Atalanta (Greece)

Six books in translation:

Philippe Claudel: Monsieur Linh and his Child (French)
Hubert Mingarelli:  A Meal in Winter (French)
Guadalupe Nettell:  Still Born (Spanish)
Hanna Bervoets: We had to Remove this Post (Dutch)
Jenny Erpenbeck: Go, Went, Gone (German)
Daniela Krein:  Love in Five Acts (German)

Six books set in the past:

Kiran Millwood Hargrave: The Dance Tree
Lauren Goff:  Matrix
Victoria Mackenzie For Thy Great Pain Have Mercy on my Little Pain.
Peter Ackroyd:  The Lambs of London
Annabel Abbs: The Language of Food
Jo Browning Wroe:  A Terrible Kindness.

Six works of non-fiction:

Dan Saladino: Eating to Extinction
Katherine Rundell:  Super-infinite
Patrick Galbraith:  In Search of One Last Song
Matthew Green: Shadowlands
Patrick Modiano:  The Search Warrant
Kushanava Choudhury: The Epic City: the World on the Streets of Calcutta.

Six books set in Ireland:

Sheila Armstrong:  Falling Animals
Hugo Hamilton: The Speckled People
Audrey Magee:  The Colony
John Banville:  The Lock-up
Louise Kennedy:  Trespasses
Sebastian Barry:  Old God's Time

Six books I enjoyed and haven’t yet mentioned

Caleb Azumah Nelson: Small Worlds
Shelley Read:  Go as a River
William Trevor: Last Stories
Kate Grenville:  A Room made of Leaves
Elizabeth McCracken: The Hero of this Book
Joseph O'Connor:  My Father's House

This has been a bit of fun, revisiting books I’ve enjoyed and authors I’ll read again. Popping books onto the appropriate list was a challenge in itself . Many of them fitted into two, if not three categories. Have you any particular favourites from the books you’ve read this year? Do any of my choices appeal to you? Thanks for a fun challenge, Jo!

My header photo was taken in the Bosu-Dong Book Alley in Busan, South Korea.

The Rat & Me

I’m - fairly - intelligent. Just like a rat.
Empathetic. Just like a rat.
I laugh when I’m tickled.  Just like a rat.
I need companionship. Just like a rat.
And I’m - usually - clean.  Just like a rat.
So why don’t I want to be … just like a rat?

For Rebecca at Fake Flamenco’s July 2023 Poetry Challenge.

My header image comes from Slyfox Photography at Unsplash, and my second, also from Unsplash, from Dave Alexander. Oddly, I have not a single image of a rat in my photo archive.