Secret gardens and hidden darns

 

This summer I have found myself making miniature landscapes and oddly, they have become a form of self portrait. Not that I am a small green hump with vegetation growing on top, but the tiny houses often appear  difficult to get to, with minuscule windows implying a shy or sometimes alarmed expression.

 

The winding paths are one of my favourite motifs. You would have to walk up them to get to the house - and would there be anyone at home when you got there? Or are the occupants at home but not available to visitors?

I think, judging from feedback on my Facebook page and Instagram feed, that perception is everything with these pieces. The majority take them at face value; they are what they are. Sometimes people are a little alarmed at the proportionally 'giant' topiary figures. Others find them comforting. As for myself - I like the ambiguity.

'Creeper Cottage' is a case in point. The looming, topiary snail, could be seen as a threat to the house...or a gentle guardian.

I have also been adding extra surface elements, such as patches, as  visual puns. The patch on the front of  'Thimble Row' is deliberately clumsy, with over sized stitches and using a thick thread, as if a child had attempted their first mending project. I think the needle must have frightened the cottages, as they are leaning back and seem somewhat shocked.

'Halfpenny Hill' is similarly 'repaired'. In an actual garden, a bare grassy lawn area is re-seeded. Here, two very small visibly stitched fragments of cloth add interest to the plain hummock. One is hidden away at the back.  In life, we mend old clothes and much loved toys. In these worlds, the landscape is similarly refurbished.

'Swan Haven' is one of my more fanciful pieces; the topiary swan can never swim, but it carries an entire dwelling within a garden, as if it were a bizarre form of static barge.

The first garden I created earlier this year was the most secretive and difficult to photograph. This is entirely deliberate, as it is intended for the eventual owner to enjoy from a certain angle. My favourite view is simply head on, as if I were about to brave the long, straight path which leads to the tall, silent manor - protected (or guarded) by twin trees. Someone inside definitely knows you are coming.

'Shepherd's Cottage' is another patched and darned affair, with the sheep 'shepherding' the house - or possibly about to nibble it.

Many years ago, when I was an art student , I was taught that a good sculpture has points of interest from all views, so I delight in putting the darns in the least likely of places, where they will not at first be noticed.

The final landscape is the tiniest of all, designed to fit into a ring box. 

Behind the rather melancholy looking house, is  a neat,  incy-wincy darn in an unlikely shade of pink. This diminutive piece of felted real estate is now on a long journey to a new home, where I hope the owner will enjoy this snippet of 'the artist disguised as a house'. 

Making space for printing

  

When Andy and I moved to the cottage in 2012, the front room became the 'storage area'. And it's stayed that way ever since, as I've simply not had the mental energy, interest or funds to do anything with it. It has improved over the years, but last month Joe and I decided to really tackle it.

 

In the end it was just  case of getting rid of the old futon base and various cardboard boxes and shifting the furniture around. 

 

 

 

The room still needs re-wiring, re-plastering, re-decorating and something doing to the very old, cold linoleum on the floor, but for the moment this will do.

 

My principal motive for all of this was to make a small work area, as I am finally in the right frame of mind to start printing again. I haven't printed since 2011, when Andy and I lived in our tiny rented Cotswold cottage. (See 'Printing Little Hare').

A few months later, we would have moved to Shropshire and soon after that my life would be in pieces. Now I feel able to start again, and carry on where I left off. However, my poor old printer, which spent a few  years in the damp top shed, was also in much need of some TLC.

Time to get out the magic 'Liquid Wrench'. This is marvelous stuff, but being an American product it is hard to find over here. (I buy mine from the only UK seller on eBay who stocks it) It is a fabulous de-ruster and lubricator and I wouldn't be without it.

It looked worse than it really was, and after an hour or so with a sanding pad, I had it looking nice again and rolling smoothly. The big old cupboard is perfect for storing print gear in, and is just the right height for me.

Brian-next-door helped to to hoick the (very heavy) cast iron press up into its new space and drove me out so that I could get some thick plates of glass cut for ink rolling.  And then I was all set up for printing again, having unearthed my box of inks and rollers. Now I just had to get over the hurdle of actually using it.

 

Tall beans and broad beans

This is the first year since moving here seven years ago that I've managed to get the vegetable patch properly dug over and planted up. It isn't very large and there is a bothersome area which is mostly clay and rubble. All that considered, it's been rewarding seeing everything grow, especially considering it was a paved over area once.

Broad beans are not to everyone's taste; they are called fava beans in other places and the strong, irony taste can be off putting.

We have been mixing them in with warm potatoes, as a summer salad.

I remember having to shell some once when I was a child, at an aunt's. I loved the 'furry' lining inside the pods. Once opened, the beans seem strangely vulnerable, as if a small sleeping creature had been uncovered and hadn't quite woken up yet.

While I was sat on the draining board by the kitchen window, busily shelling, Jean-next-door popped round with a small offering of raspberries, the first from their garden. This is a tradition started from my first year here, and is always welcome. I offered her some beans, but they are firmly in the not liking them camp.

Podding took over an hour and to be honest, it seemed like a lot of work for half a large bowl of beans. But we never had any illusions about being self sufficient, especially with limited growing space. All the empty pods went back onto the potatoes to rot down as extra fertilizer.

Blanching is one of those necessary things for long term freezing - it sounds like a bit of an effort, but actually takes less than twenty minutes. I don't use iced water to cool them down as I find that cold water works perfectly well. In the end there were enough for four double portions, which will be a nice treat in the winter.

Earlier in the year I planted a whole packet of Purple Podded Peas, a heritage variety which came with the warning that they can grow up to 2 meters high. I  managed to find some very tall canes and planted them alongside the fence, to maximize growing space. They did reach an astonishing height, outgrowing the poles and tumbling over themselves at the top, forming tangled bundles.

Apart from anything else, they are simply beautiful to look at and very prolific. I had meant to pick them earlier, but being pre-occupied with Joe's health, gardening took a back seat. I was worried that I had left them for too long, as most of the pods were wrinkled. 

Happily, most of them were fine.

After another long podding session and with careful sorting, I ended up with some dried peas for next years planting,  two batches of green peas and one batch of older peas which I can make into that  traditional British stalwart 'mushy' peas. All now frozen and waiting to bring us summer joy later in the year when the warm weather is a distant memory.

A restorative bout of nature

Thank you for the good wishes regarding Joe. It's been a while since I posted, as July and August (so far) have been punctuated with worrying hospital visits and tests. Unfortunately, he has been diagnosed with an ongoing health issue, which will never go away, so we are readjusting our lives and hoping that his employers will accommodate this. It's yet another uncertain episode in our lives and future here, just when we thought we had reached calm waters. 

To take our minds off things for a while, Jean and Brian-next-door drove us over to a nature reserve a few miles away.

We settled ourselves into one of the public viewing shacks and spent a pleasant time distracting ourselves from our day to day problems, watching the many varieties of waterfowl that occupy the lake. We were thrilled to see a kingfisher fly past the shack, not once, but twice - far too fast for me to even pick up my camera. Swans are more obliging when it comes to scenic photographs. 

Joe and I went off to investigate the smaller hut, where you can watch the little woodland birds. However, as it was a late summer afternoon, there was only one bird feeding, a Greater Spotted Woodpecker.

 

Bumble bee bottoms were everywhere, as they enjoyed the giant teazels and wild growth that is growing in abundance now. 

On the viewing shack, a dragonfly and peacock butterflies soaked up the warmth from the dry wood. 

Just before we headed home, I wandered up to the top field, to capture some more views.  As usual, the Wrekin was poking its head up - it is the major landmark of Shropshire and easy to spot if you're in a central location.

 

So we go into August with some apprehension, but hoping that now Joe has a diagnosis, we can settle down into another 'new normal'.

Surrounded by cats

Last month I had my birthday. As some of you will know, I'm really not keen on birthdays and try to keep mine as private and small scale as possible, heaving a small sigh of relief when it is over. However, this year, Joe decided to that we should go out and here we are at Birmingham train station; I passed through this place many times on the way to and from workshops  when it was undergoing renovation, and it was a major pain to navigate. But I have to admit it looks magnificent now.

We were destined for the recently opened 'Kitty Cafe', located on the edge of the shopping area, where Joe had booked us seats in advance. (Pre-booking is pretty essential). For those of you not familiar with the concept, it's a free-range cat cafe, with rescued cats and kittens bouncing about all over the place. Food covers are provided, to prevent potential snacking and there are lots of basic ground rules which make complete sense if you're a cat person (for instance don't hassle the cats, let them come to you).

The service is friendly and professional and there were more than enough staff. On top of food and drink costs, here is a £6 per person welfare charge, which goes towards the upkeep of the cats. The food is nice enough,  but to be honest we weren't really there for the food.

We had an hour's worth of cafe time and it whizzed by. It was hard to get decent photos, especially of the kittens, who zoomed about like little furry rockets. There is ample space for them to run about in and the entire space is catered for their every need.

 

This was a very special treat for me. If you've endured this blog for long enough, you may recall that once upon a time I had four cats, who all made the big move to Shropshire in 2012 with Andy and myself. Within a year of that move, I had not only lost Andy, but two of my cats as well (illness and old age). My darling ginger cat, Pumpkin, had to be put to sleep three years ago, due to a blood clot in his spine. He kept me company in the long, lonely months after Andy died, and losing him was beyond awful. Joe and I buried him under the pear tree, with many tears. And the oldest, meanest cat of them all, Samson, ended up more or less living with Jean-next-door, who loved him to bits; he lasted to be nearly 22 years old and is buried next door.  So that was that for cats, and since then I've not felt able to deal with the responsibility of pet care. But I have missed cat company. So much so that I had to blink back a few tears when we first entered the café.

 

All of the cats were perfectly happy in their environment and unfazed by so many people. There are walkways near the ceiling, hideaways and access to a private area if they want time out.   

 

Now that life seems steadier, we have recently thought about getting another cat, and were very taken with this little chap, who was the only visitor to our table who did not try to nab something, but instead sat quietly, unfazed and watching the world. 

However, life threw yet another curve ball at us last week, when Joe was taken ill at work, with breathing difficulties. He spent several days in hospital, being tested and monitored and is now thankfully cleared. It's been a horrible time for both of us, but he is hugely improved and almost back to his old self. Cats are off the agenda for the time being.

Capturing the unicorn

When I started needle felting eleven years ago, I thought I would be mostly re-creating the imaginary toys that I painted at the time. This didn't really happen, as I discovered that the wool took over and I created a whole new world of little things.

However, in one of my many 'dry patches' last year, and stuck for inspiration, I decided to make a 'real' version of this unicorn, painted last year (I think) which went off to a new home soon after it was finished. I had hoped to find suitable button wheels, but ended up needle felting them instead. 

 

'Eunice' was a kind of inbetweeny piece, but she did provide a gentle push towards new designs. I finally showed her on Instagram a couple of weeks ago, and she was snapped up by one of my kind followers. I popped a card in with her and noticed with a faint feeling of shock that it was from an old artwork dating to 2008, eleven years ago. My grasp on the passing of time has never been exactly firm, but I am going to make an effort to start painting again, before another decade drifts by.