Posts tagged autumn
I don’t need to be the Queen of England. I don’t need sycophantic courtiers throwing their cloaks at my feet. I can walk under trees. Trees shedding leaves afresh each day. Creating intricate patterns in audacious colours that surprise me every year. Surely blessing anyone who cares to look where they’re putting their feet.
Leaden skies are as British as cucumber sandwiches, which, interestingly are usually eaten under leaden skies while watching a leaden game of cricket. (But that’s another story.) Grey skies are what give us our soft climate. Layer upon layer of cloud keep us warm in the winter and cool in the summer. The English rose complexion is almost entirely due to lack of direct sunlight. That, and a good moisturising drizzle! But sadly this integral and important part of our life is almost universally disliked. And while, of course like everyone else I love a sunny day, I often prefer to draw on a dull one. The pink gold of the birch can’t fail to glint and shine in the sun. Gold on blue. It’s a tussle of complementary colours. But give me the subtle glowing embers radiating from a birch tree in autumn against a grey backdrop any time. What about the lemon yellow of the leaves of the guelder-rose and it’s crimson berries? They need a grey day to be fully appreciated. At this time of year a leaden sky is something to be embraced. Use it to look at the unknowable number of colours out there. Fill your eyes with variations on russet and ochre and amber and lime. Gorge yourself, because even I admit that by January and February there’s precious little to be said for those leaden skies.
As my hair is whipped across my face and the tape holding the paper onto the board in front of me is ripped off time and time again. As leaves swirl around me and jackdaws dance and chatter, I’m feeling exhilarated by my task of drawing the wind in the trees at the edge of the wood. The swoop and swirl of their branches is fascinating. Willow and birch, subject to every capricious gust, yield to the wind, bending this way and that. Oak stands firmer, only it’s leaves showing the disturbance as they are parted and turned inside out and then flattened. The hiss and roar of air forcing itself through different trees is deafening. The familiar shapes and sounds and colours have been agitated into something that’s puzzlingly known but unknown at the same time. Pigeons are harried from place to place. The high pitched sound of a buzzard mewing reaches my ears intermittently. The wind has stirred the world into a frenzy of noise and movement. And then I look at my drawing! Half an hour of uncomfortable concentration has created……….. well, not the noisy chaos around me, more like a quiet breeze on a gentle afternoon. I’ve quelled the tumult with a few lines! Am I down cast? Yes, down cast, depressed, dejected on one hand, but on the other I’m full of enthusiasm to try again, to do better, to catch the wind on a piece of paper one day. But also perversely proud that I seem to have the power to tame the universe, in my finger tips!!!!!!
Is spindle a tree or a bush? Who knows. Who cares. Content to spend it’s days crouching in the shade of taller trees, this small bush is just there, underneath everything else. It isn’t remarkable, it’s not a plant you notice at all. It’s tiny greeny white flowers are hardly visible in the spring. The may and the rowen and the cow parsley are at their most seductive then, so you don’t give it a second glance. It’s leaves aren’t interesting and it’s growing habit isn’t particularly compelling. But, just as every dog will have it’s day so will most plants. And the dull little spindle’s day is now. It’s many fruits hint at what’s to come. They look turban shaped to me. A sort of Hollywood style turban. More like a huge over padded hat than a piece of cloth wound round a head. They start small and green. Slowly flushing a pale powdery rose pink as they ripen and swell. Faster now, the colour intensifies. Chalky madder to pure alizarin and finally throbbing magenta. Eventually, when the pink is almost unbearable and the turbans swollen to bursting, they curl open and two or three vivid orange seeds are exposed. The combined colours are wildly foreign and incredibly exciting to find lurking in the shade. The humble spindle produces about the sexiest fruit in England, it’s really worth peering into the shady undergrowth on the off chance of seeing this modest plant blushing so brazenly.
