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'.