Friday 8 August 2008

getting on


I've been staying away from the blogosphere lately as I've been trying hard to finish the pictures for this book so that I can go off on hols. Last night I finished the main flower section. Phew.

0524, dark outside, Shipping Forecast on the radio, shoulder stiff and creaky. Feels like autumn already. Silence outside. Only six weeks ago it was midsummer and it would have been light by now and the blackbirds would have been singing for an hour or more. Apparently, this is the time of year when the birds moult, so they skulk away and abstain from singing. I learned that from Geraldine Taylor's nature slot on Radio Bristol the other day. She speaks to the city on Tuesday mornings at 0520ish. Another early riser.

5 comments:

  1. Well done...beautiful :-) (for once I am up almost as early as you!)

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  2. They are beautiful. I must root out my paints..

    It's depressing when you realise the mornings are getting darker. On school days in summer, my alarm rings at 5, which is 4 to you, so that I can make a cup of tea to drink in bed and listen to the birds. In September it will be dark and very difficult.

    Enjoy your hard earned holiday.

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  3. Haffun on your hols, Dru!

    And fantastic flowers!

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  4. Hi Dru, I really like reading your blog and looking at your pictures. Your reflections this morning put me in mind of a wonderful poem by Emily Dickinson, full of liturgical imagery, about the sound of grasshoppers pressaging the autumn. Hope you don't mind me taking up wall space to reproduce it here (happy hols, btw!):

    Further in Summer than the Birds
    Pathetic from the Grass
    A minor Nation celebrates
    Its unobtrusive Mass.

    No Ordinance be seen
    So gradual the Grace
    A pensive Custom it becomes
    Enlarging Loneliness.

    Antiquest felt at Noon
    When August burning low
    Arise this spectral Canticle
    Repose to typify

    Remit as yet no Grace
    No Furrow on the Glow
    Yet a Druidic Difference
    Enhances Nature now

    -- Emily Dickinson

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  5. Thank you all for your comments, and the poem, Phil. I'm sorry I've been so bad about replying.

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