The Nature Table: June

It’s summer!  And, despite the deeply depressing weather, there’s abundance all about.  The fields are vibrant with buttercups; the lanes are scented with elderflowers; the paths meander through waving grasses; and as for the moors…

It’s strange.  I never associate the moors with wild flowers; yet yesterday I couldn’t walk but tread on them.  Masses of them!  Ox-eye daisies and red clover; bird’s foot trefoil and dandelions; cow parsley and foxgloves.  As well as several others I couldn’t name.

The frequent showers of the last few weeks have brought out the slugs and snails, so they’ve crept onto my virtual table, too.  Which makes it pretty crowded.  But then it is June.

Wedding Bliss

Friday was a big day….spent celebrating my lovely sister-in-law’s wedding.  Which means this weekend has been spent trawling through the six hundred or so pictures I took there.

I had a ball shooting that lot; and I do enjoy editing….but it doesn’t half take time!

Still a long way to go before I’m done, but here are a few sneak shots.

How Dreams Take Flight

They say that writing a dream down gives it wings….lends it a power it doesn’t have when it’s idly floating about your mind.  Maybe it’s because I’m embroiled in Mondo Beyondo right now that I’m attuned to notice such things, but yesterday I came across one of the best examples to prove the rule ever.

I was at Gawthorpe Hall in Lancashire.  A girly gang of us had driven over for a private viewing of the Hall’s antique quilt collection.…stuff not usually on public display.  We sat in an old, stone kitchen and pored over quilt after treasured quilt; each one carefully carried from climate-controlled storage and tenderly unwrapped before our eager eyes. 

There were some amazing pieces, but the one that stopped me in my tracks was made by a young girl called Nancy almost 180 years ago.  Into the middle of her quilt she had stitched a rhyme.  The first stanza gave a few scant facts about her.  The second ran:

‘When I am dead and in my grave,
And all my bones are gone to dust
Take up this work and think of me!
When I am quite forgot.’

Nancy had written her dream down in thread, stitched it into the canvas of her quilt; and here we were, nearly two centuries later, gazing at her work, fingering it, admiring it, ‘taking it up and thinking of her’.  Her wish come true.

Write down your dreams, my friends!  Give them wings.  Set them free to fly.

P.S.  I’d love to show you pictures of Nancy’s beautiful quilt; but I signed a form to say I wouldn’t share the images I shot.  Sorry!

A Bear on Water-skis

If you’ve never stared at puddles and tried to make out what their shapes represent, you’ve missed a serious source of fun!

I love walking familiar paths with new companions….that is, folk with whom I don’t usually walk those paths.  It’s fascinating to see a place through fresh eyes.

Yesterday, Joss and I wandered about one of our favourite haunts with our friends, Poppy and Jenny and their mum.  And it was so enriching to encounter it from their perspective.

We climbed up to the trig point on top of the moor; then went in search of the Big Rock.  We picnicked in a sheltered hollow; then slid down the hillside.  We said hello to the resident horse, and picked a bunch of wild flowers.  We found a forgotten ball and an old T-shirt.  We came upon the remains of a burnt-out car; and some rocks assembled to form huge letters on the ground.

My favourite bit of all, though, was those puddles.  Without the girls, I’d have splashed my way through a butterfly and a high-heeled boot; a dinosaur and a giraffe; a map of Australia and even a bear on water-skis….totally oblivious to them all.

Bring on the rain, I say!  I can now see the point of puddles.

Sundays from Jackie’s Seat

I don’t know who Jackie was but I often sit on the seat set on the moor in her memory.  Joss sniffs for rabbits amongst the rocks as I watch the world go by.

The moor is a different place on Sunday mornings.  During the week, it’s the province of dog walkers and the occasional horse rider.  But on Sundays, the cast is a bit more wide-ranging.

There are tourists, of course - off to try and locate the Bronte Waterfalls or Top Withens.  And hikers with backpacks of varying sizes.  The number of joggers always increases at the weekend, too.  There’s even a cricket pitch on top of the moor, so the groundsmen are busy, preparing for the afternoon match.

This morning, there was a fell race underway….and from my vantage point on Jackie’s seat, I could see a long, long, string of vividly coloured dots moving across the middle distance….like a necklace of tiny flowers being blown across the hillside.

It might sound industrious and populated, but there’s a very leisurely feel to Sunday mornings up there.  Birds duet with the music of church bells drifting up from Haworth.  And, given the miles of emptiness that make up the moors, I still only passed a couple of folk in the hour we were up there.