Icy garden, Green fields and The Red Dress

Tags

ACE Arts, Glastonbury Tor, heather, icy clover, Icy rose, ivy, Kirstie Macleod, mahonia, Red Dress, Red Dress Project, robin, Somerton, starlings, water lily

Our first Friday walk was postponed for a couple of weeks so that we could go to an exhibition, not open yet on 7th January, in nearly Somerton. My friend Zoe was delayed arriving at my place because of a traffic diversion, and I filled in time wandering around my icy garden, where I saw:

two last roses of summer, and some new shoots,

some clover,

part of the hedge I have had cut right back, the future of which is pending discussions with neighbours yet to move in (both sides of it having been much neglected for the last three years),

a few starlings at the top of a further neighbour’s silver birch (some of the dozens which invade my garden when I have put out the day’s food),

a robin,

ivy,

mahonia,

last year’s water lily trapped under the ice of my pond,

and some heather.

Our short walk was for Zoe to see a nearby view which I have only quite recently discovered.

And from the bottom a look back at Glastonbury Tor across a field which had been very boggy, with streams of melted frost.

We then went on to the ACE Arts centre in Somerton to see The Red Dress. I cannot explain the project better than the first four paragraphs of the home page of the Project’s website.

“The Red Dress Project, conceived by British artist Kirstie Macleod, provides an artistic platform for women around the world, many of whom are marginalized and live in poverty, to tell their personal stories through embroidery.

“During 12 years, from 2009 to 2022, pieces of the Red Dress have travelled the globe being continuously embroidered onto. Constructed out of 73 pieces of burgundy silk dupion, the garment has been worked on by 259 women and 5 men, from 29 countries, with all 136 commissioned artisans paid for their work. The rest of the embroidery was added by 128 willing participants /audience at various groups/exhibitions/events.

“Embroiderers include women refugees from Palestine; victims of war in Kosovo, Rwanda, and DR Congo; impoverished women in South Africa, Mexico, and Egypt; women in Kenya, Japan, Paris, Sweden, Peru, Czech Republic, Dubai, Afghanistan, Australia, Argentina, Switzerland, Canada, Tobago, USA, Russia, Pakistan, Wales, Colombia, and the UK, as well as upmarket embroidery studios in India and Saudi Arabia.

“Many of the women are established embroiderers, but there are also many pieces created by first time embroiderers. The artisans were encouraged to tell a personal story they would like to share, expressing their own identities and adding their own cultural and traditional experience. Some chose to create using a specific style of embroidery practiced for hundreds of years in their family, village, or town.”

Kirstie Macleod and another woman were working on it while we were there. We wished we could have seen it more spread out, but that would have left insufficient room for visitors, especially given the need to keep a distance. I took an awful lots of pictures. Here are some.

The underside is very neat.

Towards the end of our visit I was beginning to be quite moved, thinking of all the women who had worked on the Dress.

At one point I turned to Zoe and remarked that you’d need a week to study it all in detail. Kirstie was in earshot, and said, ‘A year. I know this work intimately, and I’m still discovering new things.’

I might go back. It’s at Somerton until 29th January, and continues its tour around the world for another ten years.

Wildlife in the garden, part 3

Tags

ants, badger, crabapple, dragonflies, ovipositor, Spiders, urban fox, wagtail, water lily

Some things old and some things new for this final post in the series. Here’s a small white butterfly on lavender.  Insects just love lavender.  I’m going ensure they have more next year.

A grasshopper on ground that ants have churned up a bit.

I think I can understand those who don’t like spiders, but for me they and their webs are beautiful…

This is a minuscule verbascum, and the fly is about 8 mm long.

Not a Gatekeeper on the Verbena, but a Meadow brown butterfly

It’s the spider season – or it’s the season when we notice them.

I confess that this was not taken in my garden, but from the window of my friend, Mary’s, house in inner London.  This fox was in her neighbour’s back garden.  I have seen cubs there too, but not on this occasion of a visit to her in late August.

Wagtails seem to prefer the roadway itself usually, where they seem to be able to find the tiny insects that nourish them.  But this one came on to my front lawn.

Goldfinch, great tit, and I think another goldfinch and a sparrow.  Even more difficult to get a decent picture on this furthest feeder in the shade of the summer leaves.

Blue tit and chaffinch

Holly blue butterfly. Some butterflies settle with wings open, and some don’t…

Papa (Mama?) wagtail brought juvenile this time.

I thought I was taking a photo of a fly about 10 mm long on this Evening primrose flower.  Only on seeing the result on the screen did I realise that there was also an almost invisibly small further creature in the image.

Badgers leave their mark where they pass regularly.  The cats also choose to use their path under the crab-apple.

Badgers dig for cockchafer larvae and other delights.  Even if I wanted a perfect lawn, it would be impossible here.

Views on ants are divided, but my wildlife friends say that they are great for breaking up the soil, distributing nutrients and bringing fertilising elements to the garden. (Here is an enthusiastic website.) My ‘meadow’ has many anthills, and here is the most impressive. It’s about 8 inches high.

I accidentally disturbed some ants recently, and watched as they hurried to save the eggs:

Penultimate spider:

I think this is a harmless solitary wasp, and that that fearful looking instrument at its rear is an ovipositor.

The water lily is sadly going to have to go next month.  It has totally taken over the pond, depriving it of light and oxygen.  The pond snails will have to find somehere else to perch when they want to take the air,

as will the fly when it wants to drink.

When the sun was out a few days ago, there were at last half a dozen dragonflies darting around at just above head height, presumably snatching minute insects.  I actually saw one take quite a sizeable midge.  Rarely do they settle, but when they do, they don’t seem to be too worried about the presence of a human nearby.

Sorry, this is the penultimate spider:

Early evening, the sunlight catches the midges near the hornbeam – when there’s any sun.  This is my best effort, from indoors, to capture them digitally.  I’ll hope to do better next year, perhaps from outside.

The sparrows don’t only line up in my neighbour’s garden, but in mine as well.

How’s this for a beauty on my garden rubbish?

Finally, this is how my crab-apple, flowering so gloriously in April, looks now, in a rare moment of sunshine.