Showing posts with label Orchard. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Orchard. Show all posts

Sunday, 7 August 2011

Clear as crystal


Early, early morning, bright and clear and pure as cut glass.
As I heave open the old oak door I was rushed by a swirl of cool, cool fresh air - the wind is coming from the north today. I glance at the Boodle who sniffs his agreement.

The wind grew impatient and flipped up my hair "OK!" I reach for my wellies and step out into the early morning clean chill. Exhilaration - a great surge of joy. Go back and grab the camera, ready to take a wander.Such a playful wind, all calm and still and then, in a moment, a thrill in my throat as an unexpected gust whips through me. I smile at my childish delight.

Conscious of being observed I remember my attire (wellies and P-Js!). I look over the barn, into the Gods and there the swallows line up along the telegraph wire that stretches from behind the barn across the top field and away. They too are sensing this new freshness on the breeze and I fancy mentally mapping long haul flights to come.


The remaining audience are in the stalls, quietly munching the sweet green shoots beneath our feet. The garden is large enough that they have become brazen enough to continue to graze even in sight of Mr.Boodle, cleverly judging the exact distance required to safely out run him. Not that he has the slightest inclination to chase them.

I confess that I linger for quite some time by the brick farm building. Pipe dreaming and planning all the creative activities it will house.....just think, all the things I will paint/make/do inside those lovely brick walls.



Round the corner and into the orchard, so much windfall already, I must bag them up for friends pigs and horses!


Back at the house I must show you this lovely coral red rose against the weatherboarding.
Oh and yes, you must just take a peep inside.....



Whilst I hang out the washing!




So lovely to feel the delicious thrill of a cold wind - but now I am off to find a jumper!
xXx

Saturday, 19 February 2011

Eve's pudding


Van Goch

My dreams are especially vivid at the moment.

Night after night I find myself surrounded by fruit trees, apples, cherries, pears, mulberries, medlars, quince.

Every night this week I have visited an orchard, a small ancient orchard around which I wander in my nightie!

As I float through it I gaze wonderously at bough after bough of sweet soft blush blossom


and then miraculously those same boughs are laden with ruby red fruits and I am stumbling on the mounds of windfall


Apple trees have been etched on my consciousness all my life.

From as far back as I have memories I ate from this bowl.

I would scrape the food away to reveal that apple tree somehow worried it mught not be there or exactly as I remembered it, I would stare at those rosy apples.

Later I would try to recreate that tree with my paints and pencils, over and over again in my sketch book.



I love this painting by Deb Grise the apples are so brilliantly suggested

It seems that we are all beginning to think of blossom, Country Living has a beautifully illustrated piece this month that I have been returning to over and over again.



As I was driving home the other day I turned the radio on and as serendipity would have it caught the first play of the new Fleet Foxes song ~ listen here if you are interested.
It so captured my mood, so ethereal and strangely appropriate.
My eyes pricked with tears.
I especially loved these lyrics
I was raised up believing
I was somehow unique
Like a snowflake distinct among snowflakes
Unique in each way you can see
And now after some thinking
I'd say I'd rather be
A functioning cog in some great machinery
Serving something beyond me
But I don't, I don't know what that will be
I'll get back to you someday soon you will see
What's my name, what's my station
Oh just tell me what I should do
I don't need to be kind to the armies of night
That would do such injustice to you
Or bow down and be grateful
And say "Sure take all that you see"
To the men who move only in dimly-lit halls
And determine my future for me
And I don't, I don't know who to believe
I'll get back to you someday soon you will see
If I know only one thing
It's that every thing that I see
Of the world outside is so inconceivable
Often I barely can speak
Yeah I'm tongue tied and dizzy
And I can't keep it to myself
What good is it to sing helplessness blues?
Why should I wait for anyone else?
And I know, I know you will keep me on the shelf
I'll come back to you someday soon myself
If I had an orchard
I'd work till I'm raw
If i had an orchard
I'd work till I'm sore
And you would wait tables
And soon run the store
Gold hair in the sunlight
My light in the dawn
If I had an orchardI'd work till I'm sore
If I had an orchardI'd work till I'm sore
Someday I'll beLike the man on the screen
Pissaro

Yes, I think if I had an orchard I too would work until I'm sore.
I have been thinking about The House with the purple trees a lot too.........
All this night time wandering can make a girl hungry so I am planning to bake Eve's Pudding for tea tonight, yum!

Hope you all have a lovely weekend
from the girl in the orchard
xXx