The Colour of Autumn

When at last we get a really cold snap of weather the trees get the message and turn their brilliant autumn colours. In England we don’t get those wonderful vibrant reds of the American New England natives but the many different greens of our native trees do take on orange, ochre and lime, yellows, rusts and browns, which give a beautiful, toning tapestry look to the landscape.

In gardens, sumach trees show us just how wonderful those foreign reds can be, and the odd red leaf oak looks stunning; the leaves of our garden cherries only a soft and pale imitation. The first foreigner to turn in my garden is the Amalanchier, which goes from green to mass of pinky red. The beautifully textured leaves of the Cornus kousa Chinensis turn a deep rich claret, those of the Malus a bright, light yellow.

Two of our best native trees for autumn colour are the hornbeam and beech which turn a rich copper, the hornbeam holding onto to its curling, brown paper rustling leaves throughout the winter. The leaves of our large weeping copper beach turn, surprisingly, from copper to almost green before - with the hardest frost – they turn steadily darkest orange to pale tangerine.

The grass beneath gradually becomes a rust-coloured carpet that parts satisfyingly as we walk through it. When the leaves have all fallen we will rake them up and use them as a mulch, piling them in situ in corners of the garden where no wind will send them skittering away. There they will stay until next spring, a thick warm blanket, protecting the bulbs, suppressing the weeds.

The oak tree is the last to turn, the leaves holding stubbornly on until its every neighbour is nearly denuded. Then, by Christmas, the wind will have taken these and sent them all over the garden to settle themselves like blankets under hedges and gates. Or we will find them, damp or dry, piled in between pots and plants.

Then, before we have had time to track them down and consign them to the compost bin, sneaky snow or ice will cover them, making a treacherous surface for the unwary who venture out without wellies.

Some people say that this is their favourite time of year, the air crisp, the colours so beautiful. But for me, Spring must be the best time with its promise of things to come. Although I must admit that the landscape now is mellow - the hedges trimmed, fields ploughed, verges cut - everything ready for a winter rest.

Out walking with Freddie today – himself the foxy colour of fallen leaves – this world seems still and quiet. A rabbit – wary and waiting – goes almost unnoticed against the bare brown earth until, suddenly, snow white tail up, it makes a dash for the hedge and home. Freddie sees it too late. A motionless pheasant - the iridescent emerald and pillar box red of its head surprisingly camouflaged in the landscape – thinks we are getting too near and suddenly scurries across the field to the safety of the wood edge.

The light is beginning to fade: tonight is All Hallows Eve when in days gone by bonfires were lit to the dying sun. Superstitions and ghosts, apples and nuts, games and wine were intertwined, all part of this night. It marks the end of the colourful season of autumn: winter’s ahead.

Lucy
www.lucyannwrites.blogspot.com

Shakespeare's Sonnets & Simon Callow

Simon Callow was performing Shakespeare’s sonnets at the Tonbridge Arts festival. Simon Callow, on locally, how could we pass this up. “Shakespeare’s sonnets contain some of the most famous lines in the English language and yet nothing is known of the story behind them” reads the blurb.

In presenting this one man show, Master/Mistress of my Passion, Callow tries to show the audience that in fact Shakespeare’s sonnets tell a tale – they are a narrative that charts Bill’s infatuation with the ideal of beauty.

Apparently, Shakespeare met and admired Mary Sidney, the Earl of Pembroke’s mother and whilst at her pad saw a painting of her son, William Herbert, and was mesmerised. This boy came to personify the ideal of beauty to Shakespeare although he had yet to meet him. And this is where the sonnets start.

These are poems that praise the beauty and disposition of his young idol and are passionate poems of unrequited love:

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this and this gives life to thee.

Shakespeare, the poet, is not the same as Shakespeare, the playwright. In the latter he is the writer of brilliant and entertaining plays that explore character. In the former, he is a philosopher investigating the question of Time and its effect. “Time triumphs over flesh, and Love over all”

Callow was quick to point out that Shakspeare’s crush was not a homeoerotic one but solely a passion for beauty. Eventually he met the beautiful young man who was not very impressed with Bill’s ardour and admiration. Young Herbert did not reciprocate the passion Shakespeare felt and Bill was miffed.

Slowly Shakespeare’s passion waned although one is hard pushed to tell from the contents of the sonnets. At the time, he had a mistress and some of the sonnets are addressed to her. Like many poems of the day the content was often very bawdy and, if we could have followed them a little more slowly, we might have been a little more shocked. Finally, Simon says, Bill and Will became good friends. Although, to me, Bill still seemed a little struck.

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

Simon’s reading of the sonnets were interspersed with madrigals sung by Quintus. These obviously suited the period but also gave the audience a break from the intensity of Callow’s rendition. With two bass, two sopranos, one counter tenor, one tenor and one contra-tenor it was quite a large group who sang the fugues quite beautifully without musical accompaniment. A lute player also performed at intervals although we found this rather tedious.

To really understand and appreciate the sonnets it needs a great deal of scholarship, attention and experience. To hear Shakespeare’s sonnets rendered so theatrically – in true Shakespearian actor style – meant that they were a little difficult to absorb. To have followed the written word would have helped or, if we had known what homework to do, we could have read them beforehand and got our ear in. It meant that much of it went over our heads.

In fact, our group of ten found the entire programme a little long. I suspect that many of us were remembering Callow’s excellent show on the life of Dickens. It had been on in the West End and the costume and content was really quite splendid. This show, it was felt, was but a pale imitation.

But Simon Callow did get me thinking: here was a reason to read the sonnets again armed with a little more knowledge about their background. And to have a man of Callow’s fame and ability, here, in the sticks, spouting Shakespeare: we would have been Philistines not to go.

Lucy
www.lucyannwrites.blogspot.com

Put your faith in trees, not paper

In an uncertain world there are some things that are givens and the best of these have had as little to do with man’s tinkering as possible. One of them is the oak tree - a symbol of merry olde England if ever there was one. In a world that's in a constant state of flux at the moment it’s reassuring to learn that a natural feature can still be relied on to enhance our environment.

Oaks were native to Britain in the prehistoric era before they were finished off by the ice-age and driven southwards to warmer climes. Then, gradually, they made their way up from the Med into northern Europe again.

The tree was sacred to the Anglo-Saxons and Druids and by the middle ages the native oak, Quercus robur, grew extensively in woodlands throughout the south east and central areas of England. For centuries it's been used for timber framed houses and barns, cathedrals and churches: the wood warmed houses, the tannins preserved leather, ships were built of oak timbers.

But although we can now manufacture materials as durable as oak and more stable it is good to know that the oak tree still has a vitally important role to play. As far as biodiversity is concerned, the native oak tree supports more wildlife than almost any other tree. Over 400 species of insects and fungi can exist on one specimen which in turn attracts a wide variety of feeding birds and many small mammals.

The Turkey Oak, Quercus cerris, a native of southern Europe and further east, was re-introduced to northern Europe in the eighteenth century. It reached Britain in 1735 at the time of Trafalgar in an attempt to boost oak supplies for ship’s timbers. It is possibly the fastest growing of all oaks in this country and is easily identified by the winter buds and the acorn cups being hairy.

As our climate changes we have come to realise that the return of this oak may help our birdlife survive warmer temperatures. The Turkey oak’s particular claim to be truly beneficial is because gall-wasps like to lay their eggs on it. A gall forms round the eggs to protect them and birds (those such as tits which are now laying earlier in the year due to a warmer climate) rely on them to feed their young.

The oak has always featured in literature and here is a rhyme by Geoffrey Grigson that demonstrates just what a large part it played, from cradle to grave, in the lives of men throughout history.

THE CAULD LAD OF HILTON
Wae's me, wae's me!
The acorn is not yet
Fallen from the tree,
That's to grow the wood,
That's to make the cradle.
That's to rock the bairn,
That's to grow to a man
That's to lay me.

And it is still playing an important role in all our lives: it’s a small ecosystem all on its own and something we can continue to put our faith in. No matter what state your finances you can now gather an acorn, plant it deep in the earth and watch something worthwhile grow.

Lucy
www.lucyannwrites.blogspot.com

Michaelmas, an autumn festival

Today is Michaelmas Day: known in the Christian church as the festival of St Michael and All Angels it is, more simply, the feast of St Michael, the Prince of Angels. The Archangel Michael was a scary being. No messenger he. No, he commanded the War in Heaven. He could be portrayed as quite terrible in that old sense of the word: causing terror.

Marble statues of angels are pure white, beautiful and perfect of face and body. And paintings too show us angels with beautific expressions, golden auras, flowing white robes and golden wings and so we think of them as guiding man kindly between birth and death. There is supposed to be a unity of men and angels, the natural and the supernatural, and in days or yore this unity was celebrated on Michaelmas Day.

But the festival of St Michael that most of us are aware of is that of celebrating the end of harvest. To quote my blog of last year: it was on this day that servants were hired, farms changed hands and magistrates were appointed. And many tenant farmers presented their landlord with a goose as a gift or sometimes in lieu of rent. A goose was a gift to prize: dried, salted or pickled it would last through winter and roasted goose was a meal to celebrate with.

You can simply look in my blog archive (in the right hand column) to read what more I said then so I shan’t repeat myself. Very often the only time we remember Michaelmas now is when we think of the Michaelmas daisy. The daisy was that simple white flower with a yellow centre first mentioned in literature by Chaucer. The cultivated ones we know best are the asters in shades of rose red and varying shades of mauve that are such a welcome splash of colour in our borders at this time of year.

These perennials – given some sun and half decent soil – will grow nearly anywhere including coastal regions. But, beware, they can become very annoyingly invasive and absolute stink to get rid of. However, they are like manna from heaven to wildlife and worth giving a forgotten corner to just for that. Bees, butterflies and seed loving birds like finches absolutely love them, as do they the sedums that are so colourful now.

The sight of Michaelmas daisies in flower reminds us that autumn is approaching. Rosy apples fall from the tree, cobnuts and hazel nuts (those the squirrels have not filched) are collected, blackberries fruit in the hedgerows and leaves begin to turn colour. John Keats (1795-1821) describes this time of year beautifully in his ode, To Autumn. Here is the first verse:

SEASON of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.

Lucy
www.lucyannwrites.blogspot.com
lucy.ann.white@hotmail.co.uk

The Girls by Lori Lansens

The groupie who chose The Girls for our September book group meeting said she did so because the novel is, in her opinion, an amazing feat of imagination. And very well written too. Like the subject or not, there can be few who dispute either of these statements.

Rose and Ruby are born naturally but emerged joined at the head. Their teenage mother – who must have been in a terrible state after such a birth – disappears and the saintly nurse, Lovey, who delivered them, wins guardianship. With her Slovakian husband, Stash, she raises them on her Ontario farm to live as independent and normal a life as is possible.

A potential reader could be forgiven for wondering:
a. Who wants to read about craniopagus twins
b. Do I want to read what can only be a heart-rending and possibly mawkish story
c. Can such an extraordinary tale end in anything but grief.
I know I thought these things.

But Lori Lansens manages to pull it off: the story begins when the girls are 29 years old, and Rose (the clever one) about to start her autobiography. She convinces Ruby (the pretty one) to write her side of the story too and this is the way the novel is structured: Rose’s romantic chapters interspersed now and then with Ruby’s down-to-earth ones.

The twins share a major artery and can never be separated. Rose has to carry her sister on her hip making Ruby appear to be more reliant on Rose than vice versa. But Lansens manages to convey how much the girls rely on each other - spiritually as well as physically - and how both have to compromise to survive life as a conjoined twin. Eventually, the weaker of the twins emerges as the stronger.

The theme of the novel could be seen to be all about connections and dependency: that of Rose and Ruby is of course obvious but there is also their dependency and connection to Aunt Lovey and Uncle Stash, and theirs for each other; their neighbour Mrs Merkel and her lost son Larry, Stash and his lost family in Slovakia, their ‘cousin’ Nick and the girls.

Lansens throws in some surprising – and not altogether successful extras – Rose has a child and Stash takes the family to a weird family gathering in Slovakia; Mrs Merkel and Stash have an affair. And when the character Nick – a useless ex-con – undergoes a complete character change when he begins to care for the twins it seems a rather obvious tale of rehabilitation.

But Lansens manages to convey that Rose and Ruby, with their separate brains, personalities, interests and views are like any pair of sisters could be. And what she also convinces us of is the deep love they have for each other, for their adoptive parents, the parents love for the girls and the deep feelings they all have of belonging and caring for the landscape they live in.

Soon we are convinced that the lives of these conjoined twins are lives that have been worth the living, that pity is not part of it and that humour, love and achievement is. It is, finally, a difficult book to put down.

Lucy
www.lucyannwrites.blogspot.com

Summer End

We have had a rotten summer here in the UK. It must be the wettest on record. We did make the most of the odd week of sunshine and grasped greedily at the occasional sunny day, only too aware that summer can be elusive. And we were right.

With an economic turndown and a growing awareness of carbon footprints – well carbon wings – many families took their annual holiday in dear old Blighty this year. By now they will remember why they usually holiday somewhere the weather is more predictable and reliable.

The only benefit has been that the garden has not needed watering. In fact it is looking very, very green. However, the blowsy and pastel colours have now gone from most of the beds and borders: a few roses throw up a welcome colourful bloom and one or two perennials soldier on but that’s about it.

But thank goodness I’ve got my hot bed which has really come into its own: I developed it about five years ago using shrubs from around the garden, interspersing them with perennials. In a year it looked established, now it looks really mature.

The backbone is a purple hazel (Corylus avellana purpurea) which has grown to quite a tree. The purple leaves are a great foil for the green border that is its backdrop and a marvellous foil for the orange and yellow flowering perennials in front of it. A Golden Elder (Sambucus aurea), and Pheasants Eye (Leycesteria formosa) provide dramatic deciduous colour and an evergreen Strawberry Tree (Arbutus unedo) and Mahonia complete the shrubs.

Tall grasses (Miscanthus sinensis, Stipa gigantea and Calamagrotis) and low bronze mounds of Carex comans add movement and lightness whilst a large claret phormium and smaller rust-red cordyline provide strong vertical elements.

In July, in between yellow and orange daisies of rudbeckias and heleniums, orange day lilies and red hot pokers provided bright splashes of colour. For ground cover there were mounds of flowering geraniums and Lady’s mantle and a very thick layer of wood chippings, weathered to a pleasing dark brown.

But now, when everything else in the garden is looking faded and sad, the dead-headed daisies and geraniums in the hot border are beginning to flower again and the silver feather grass has beautiful silky heads. And suddenly some bright beacons burst into flower too, warm enough to cheer a failing heart: bright flame coloured crocosmia makes a stunning statement, lime green eucomis looks wonderfully exotic and a beautiful late-flowering toffee coloured kniphofia is elegant and unusual.

And these all remind me so much of days out at Kirstenbosch - the South African world famous botanical garden in Cape Town - that I find my spirits lifting despite the wet and grey skies. Summer is ending with a splash - in every way!

Lucy
www.lucyannwrites.blogspot.com

Favourite Books

It’s August; holiday time. Our book group doesn’t meet in the school summer holidays. This is historical. In fact, as our children are no longer young, we can actually sometimes manage to finish a book at a sitting even though they are at home. We don’t really need that break any more. So when one groupie invited us all for a social evening – albeit with a literary theme - we were all up for it. And everyone did their homework.

The suggestion was that we all note down our favourite books. I was one of those who was actually up against it time-wise and so cheated by reading out my blog (The 3 R’s: reading, reading and re-reading) of February 2007. Strangely – or perhaps not - most people mirrored my views. Nearly everyone chose books that reflected different stages in their lives.

Enid Blyton came out as a clear winner in the childhood choice: today it would be Rowling for much the same reasons. They were books with a clear structure, a story that was full of excitement with a good moral underlying it all. Many said that it was the Enid Blyton books that got them reading: the plots are sequential – not too many time shifts - so it’s not necessary to re-read great sections every time the story is picked up again.

A few of the same books cropped up as ones we enjoyed as teenagers: The Catcher in the Rye and To Kill a Mocking Bird for example. And then most of us seemed to have enjoyed books such as The Great Gatsby and Gone With the Wind, and easily digestible books such as those by the Mitfords, Laurie Lee or H E Bates.

I was surprised, though, at how many of us chose Thomas Hardy as a favourite author. So many people immediately dismiss his works as too lengthy and descriptive. Perhaps it’s because Hardy was often the exam choice when we were at school and maybe because we had to read the whole book we got a taste for it.

On the other hand, no-one mentioned Dickens: another author who often gets a bad press as ‘difficult’ to read. Nothing could be further from the truth. His novels are a doddle, amusing and colourful. George Elliot, on the other hand, cropped up in several groupies’ choices.

Overall, Midnight’s Children – which had been one of our book group choices - was the clear favourite. Others that several groupies chose were My Name is Asher Lev, The God of Small Things, Wuthering Heights, anything by Margaret Attwood or Jane Austen.

For re-reading Dorothy Dunnant was mentioned by a few, as was The Alexandria Quartet, Music & Silence by Rose Tremain and The Mill Stone by Margaret Drabble. Latterly – so it must be an age thing – several groupies are enjoying biographies: two we’ve read in the group - Georgina, Duchess of Devonshire and Samuel Pepys – were both mentioned by more than one member.

It was a very interesting exercise and a great way to remind each other of books we had loved, those that we should read and those we intend to: a very successful evening altogether.