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.