Ushering in Spring

What I wanted to do this week was bow out and let a poet supply the words. But I cannot find the poem I want (I've just spent more than half-an-hour looking for it on my own PC and online): I read it years ago and it comes into my mind at this time every year ... I shall search for it again and perhaps I'll manage to put it here next week.

What brought the poem home to me once again was spending an afternoon in Mount Usher Gardens with a friend, celebrating her birthday, enjoying the cool sunshine, wandering through the garden, from time to time stopping to look, sometimes to sketch, or just to chat ... (Thanks for a lovely day LB!)

I think the best sight for me was a huge Magnolia tree, its bright white, but pink-tinged, goblets glowing against a blue sky. We don't get to see magnolias of that size too often in Ireland and to see one with a deep blue sky behind was a blessing. I remarked to some other (French I think) visitors how beautiful it was and one of them agreed but said that he was rather disappointed with the messy planting underneath ... (a mass of wild garlic and scillas). What I didn't say out loud was "It's a Robinsonian garden for heaven's sake! It's supposed to look slightly wild!" At last I'm learning the difference (well, sometimes) between inner voice and outer voice.  I know I find many of the very formal gardens in France and Italy to be much too controlled for my taste, but perhaps if that's what someone has grown up with, the informality of somewhere like Mount Usher might well be a bit of a surprise. It's gorgeous though. As well as the magnolias, there are deep red rhododendrons, camellias and white cherries in flower at the moment; there are exotic looking trilliums coming into their own, and there are squills, ramsons and wild garlic smothering  the woodland floor, punctuated here and there with fritillaries. And as well as all that - a river runs through it.

Magnolia in Mount Usher Gardens

Camellia

Trillium sp.

Trillium sp.

The River Vartry runs through Mount Usher Gardens

While I was out looking at someone else's garden, the resident photographer was finding treasures on our own little patch:

Muscari macro shot by catchlight.ie (http://www.facebook.com/Catchlight.Ireland)

And today, in the same patch, I spent some time re-potting in the greenhouse (alpines mostly, though also some hostas, some cuttings from a friend's garden and my puny tomato and cucumber seedlings) and just marvelling in the rest of the garden as the late spring started to show off a bit: racing spikenard, impossibly beautiful unfurling ferns and the expectant curves of comfrey florets (I have Symphytum 'Moulin Rouge' which is a lovely variety).   But I'm mourning the loss of water from our garden pool: it was the perfect storm of a loose flagstone, a ball in the water, a loud splash, one surprised schnauzer and a sudden gap in the edging of the pool. A few hours later the water had started go down and it's clear that somewhere there's a tear in the butyl liner. We'll have to put some thought and effort into fixing all that, but it might be a chance to change the level of water in the pool - something I'd wanted to do for a while.

To end this week, here's a cone I picked up in our local park from underneath one of the Giant Sequoias:

Old cone of Sequoiadendron

 Have a good week all.

One swallow

Listening to John Martyn on the radio as I sit here at the laptop. Seems as though this evening's blog will include a reflection on the Joy of Radio. I know, I know, how middle-aged is that?? Yep, that's what I am. This evening, while messing about with paint and pencil, I've lived through the loneliness of Irish emigration in the 1940s (RTÉ.ie Radio 1: Documentary on One - The Things we remember); imagined the life of a musician born in Ireland as a tall person in a family of dwarves due to a genetic mishap; learned a bit about genetics as a follow-up to that play (think about it: you're related to just about all life on our planet - to an ash tree, to the HIV virus, to the tulip I was trying to draw today; our DNA departed from that of chimpanzees a mere seven million years ago; and more...). I've also heard Steve Cooney play Fáinne Geal an Lae, followed by Nick Drake, and then later John Martyn: they were all courtesy of Philip King on The South Wind Blows.

The South Wind really Blew last week. Fierce gales swept up the country on Sunday and Monday. But they must have eased the journey north for some of our migrants -- on Tuesday morning, I saw my first swallow! It was swooping and diving over the field where Iz and I walk in the early hours, doing the 'Summer's Coming' aerial dance. What a welcome sight.  The news from outdoors this week was all about Spring. Finally, finally it's on the way. And if you needed any further proof, look what B shot this week in the park - we had spotted the slowly emerging ash flowers on Tuesday evening and B went back to do his macro thing. It's really beautiful:

Ash (Fraxinus excelsior) flowers start to emerge. Photo courtesy of catchlight.ie (Thanks B.!)

Sunshine and warmth have meant that at last things are on the move: a bumblebee droned slowly through the sun-warmed air in the garden the other day; close to the forget-me-nots a hoverfly sat still on the same air; not so welcome were the first aphids I spotted in the greenhouse: hopefully their emergence will feed hungry birds like that swallow that arrived this week from warm climes as far away as North Africa.

Out in the Spring sunshine, I did some tidying up in the garden, cutting back blackened and tattered old fern foliage, staring impatiently at an Erythronium I planted last year, re-discovering a tiny Epimedium that I thought I'd lost, potting up some alpines I bought a couple of weeks ago at the AGS show and plant sale; potting on a couple of cucumber seedlings that had started on the bedroom windowsill and now must put up with the vagaries of a cold greenhouse, and finding a remnant of last summer's poppies:

Remnants of an opium poppy capsule 

Sadly, a quick check of both our 'ponds' reveals that just about all of the frog spawn that appeared there in February has succumbed to frost (or perhaps to a fungal disease too, according to Michael Viney; I would find it hard to tell), so it doesn't look as though we'll have tadpoles this year. Into the small shallow pondlet I put a small pot of Primula secundiflora, just to see what happens. I planted another one nearby into the soil, but it may be too sunny and dry there. It'll be interesting to see which does better. Speaking of plants in water, here are some Equisetum, looking as ancient as they are (they've been around for hundreds of millions of years):

Equisetum happy in the mud and water of a local woodland

Happy alpine

Saxifraga spp. and Dianthus, in their new home

Indoors, there was a bit of messing about with paint. I find it incredibly frustrating, but know that to get any better at all I need to keep doing and doing. But when I get too dispirited with the paint, I return to pencil where there's still so much work to be done, but at least I understand the medium a little better.

messing about with tulips

Back to the drawing board 

Sigh. 

A couple of weeks ago I was lucky to get a chance to see Holly Sommerville, a wonderful botanical artist who lives and works here in Ireland, give a demonstration of her approach to painting. What a delight, though like all masters of their work, she made it look deceptively easy.

Sigh.

Enough of this sighing nonsense, I can't sign off without wishing two dear friends Happy Birthday: hope it was a good one LB, and I know it was a good and significant one CE!

Have a good week all.

Seven million bulbs

Thirty-two hectares of woodland and gardens, an army of gardeners, a strict planting plan, 85 bulb suppliers and breeders, a well-executed project and ... 7,000,000 bulbs. Planted by hand. It could only be Keukenhof: a showcase for  the Dutch horticultural sector (or at least the bulb-growing bit of it) and a magnet for tourists. It's a well-oiled machine which does mean that thousands of visitors can move through the gardens without it becoming a crowded and tetchy affair, and that's no mean feat--the woods in which the bulbs are planted are peaceful even with that number of people moving through. In these few months about 800,000 visitors will wander through the gardens, marvelling at the colours, the vast swathes of plants, the verging-on-tacky souvenirs in the shops, the heady hyacinth perfume in the floral tents, the endless variations of tulips on display, not to mention the orchids, the roses, the narcissi ...

The one thing Keukenhof can't control is the weather.

And the cold weather that I've been whining and moaning about here in this blog has been experienced right across Europe. It has meant the Keukenhof is well behind schedule, which must have been disappointing for the many foreign tourists (including ourselves) who had arrived this week: it was mostly crocuses in the outside displays when we were there on Saturday, and Keukenhof markets itself on its tulips. But still it was great to see. Such order doesn't play a huge part in my own gardening life (no snorting down the back, those of you who know me) and it's always interesting to see in other gardens. But in the same way that some people feel about dogs (or even children), it's something I like to see in other people's gardens, but can't imagine in my own. It was great fun though: a marvellous spectacle and I saw some covetable new tulips (Red Raven was one, Rousillon another) and Muscari. Some of the growers do seem to believe that taller plants, bigger blooms and bizarre colours are the way to go (there were some particularly ghastly narcissi there, with huge blooms and over-frilled salmon-coloured coronas. Hideous. I couldn't even bring myself to take a photo ...), but for all that, there's some serious work too on breeding longer lasting blooms and stronger plants.

Plants weren't the only thing we saw over the weekend. B and I paid our customary visit to the Boijmans museum in Rotterdam, and I got the chance to see once again those exquisite still lifes by Pieter and Willem Claesz and the startling and stunning self-portrait by Fabritius. I've included the still lifes here, from inexpertly taken photos (you're allowed as long as you don't use flash) but I wouldn't do the self-portrait the insult of a sad little JPG, you'll just have to visit the place yourselves! The Boijmans is great -- it's far removed from its more famous counterpart in Amsterdam (the newly renovated Rijksmuseum) and wa-a-a-y quieter; you can enjoy the paintings in peace, each room rarely has more than one other visitor in it and there are really comfortable seats in which you can relax and drink it all in. And it's not only 17th century art in there; there's Magritte, Monet, Bosch, van Ruijsdael, and a stunning Rothko. Quite the mix! GO.

Anyway, here are a few images from the couple of days and many thanks to our lovely hosts, as always!

Spring comes late to Keukenhof; white crocuses form the vanguard

The best laid plans ... spot the scilla

Muscari 'Siberian Tiger'

Up close and personal (for a much better rendition, see B's photo here)

"When I am an old woman, I shall wear purple/With a red hat ..."

Cool weather, hot tulips (yes, that is a giant bulb there in the background :-))

Still life with oysters, a rummer, a lemon and a silver bowl, 1634
Willem Claesz, Heda.
Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen

Breakfast piece, 1636
Pieter Claesz
Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen

Kitchen still life (detail), ca. 1615
Frans Snijders
Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen

Have a good week all.

How can it be that Winter lingers yet?

Text and illustration by Katherine MacCormack, from The book of Saint Ultan, produced by Candle Press, Dublin 1920
(typesetting and binding especially for LB)

A Miracle hasn't quite been wrought here yet and while the sun finally came out, the temperatures have remained low... -5C one morning this week.

I took that photo of MacCormack's work at an exhibition called 'Drawn to the Page', which is on in the Trinity College Long Room ... While it's no doubt true many of the smart phones or computers on which you look at this blog carry (or at least have access to) more information than is stored on the shelves in that room, none of them look as beautiful or carry anything like the same sense of history, learning and, well, awe really. It's expensive enough to get in there, but what a treasure: simply to stand in the wood-panelled, vaulted, double-height room, lined vertiginously with volumes of all shapes and sizes--some of them very old--was worth the entrance fee. And that's not counting the early 9th Century Book of Kells,  Book of Durrow and Book of Armagh. Well worth a visit (says she who hadn't been there for decades; why do we always neglect the treasures in our own cities?).

The exhibition was a delight and runs until 21 April, so those of you who live in Ireland still have a chance to see it. The skill of the woodcutters and the engravers and the incredible detail of the work they did was amazing to see (the two examples I've included here don't show the detailed work). By the way, we were permitted to take photos as long as we didn't use flash and the photos here were taken through glass so apologies for the quality.

And of course, apart from the engravings, drawings and woodcuts, there was the typesetting: done in the days when leading, spacing and kerning were implemented by real humans, not algorithms. On one of pages an 'i' had partially escaped the confines of its line and slanted drunkenly downwards into the leading space below. These quirks--like the messages and obscure codes that you'd sometimes see scratched onto the ungrooved middle of vinyl  records--don't appear any more on either the printed or the e-page.

Pen and ink illustration by Cecil ffrench Salkeld,
from Red Barbara and other stories, by Liam O'Flaherty, 1928

Before we entered the beautiful twilight of the Long Room, we had been out in the cold morning sunlight of a delayed Spring. Walking in woods pungent with the smell of wild garlic and drenched in the sound of the river and stream, we were delighted to find one shy (and yes, late) primrose. In the same wood, we found the furred and fluffed catkins of willows and in spite of the breeze, B caught them in close-up. 

Primose, Primula vulgaris, and wild garlic/ramsons, Allium ursinum

Willow catkins, courtesy of Catchlight (if you can't open that, try here)

And away from the randomness of woodland and water, the sometimes tiny perfections of alpine plants were on display this week at the annual Alpine Garden Society show. I have to boast that two of my own plants got a first and a third placing (in Novice classes, I hasten to add). I was more pleased than I thought I'd be. But when I wasn't inwardly crowing with delight while outwardly trying to maintain a diffident demeanour (I'm quite sure I fooled no-one; as a friend commented one time, I can't maintain anything like a poker face, more a crazy-golf face...), I had a good 'gawk' at the plants displayed by the big guns; thanks to the expert alpine gardeners whose plants I've shown here, and apologies that I don't have attributions.

But first, a first :-)

Silene acaulis 'Frances'

Hepatica 'Merlin'

Draba ossetica

Gypsophila aretoides 'Caucasica'

Tecophilea cyanocrocus

Not much time for drawing this week... the Muscari sketching continued, but I do have some shame and won't publish them here, perhaps when the sketching has paid off. I hope to meet some true botanical artists on Tuesday this week for a morning of looking at art and chat and insights. So many experts to learn from (in drawing and in growing small plants), so little time!

Have a good week all.