The Goddess Ostara, the Spring Equinox and the Eclipse.

 The Goddess Eostre, the Spring Equinox and the  Eclipse.

Above is Ostara ( Eostre) drawn in 1884 by Johannes Gehrts, a popular German illustrator.  In this illustration the goddess flies through the heavens surrounded by Roman-inspired putto (which were the secular equivalent to religious cherubs), plus sunbeams, birds, animals and spring plants. From the earthly realm below, the Germanic people look up at the goddess.

Today, Friday 20 March 2015, has been a very strange day. I set my alarm to make sure I was outside in plenty of time. We were told the eclipse would start around 830, climax at around 9.30 and be over by around  10.30. So there I was up, showered, dressed, out in the garden, camera in hand and full of anticipation by 8.15. For me, that’s very organized. I was so disappointed, the sky was full of cloud and the sun was nowhere to be seen. Anyhow at the time I was more concerned with what lay scattered over the grass.  At first it looked like the site of a massacre, there were little white feathers everywhere, plus a couple of what looked like tail feathers. The culprit was nowhere to be seen, I’m guessing it was a neighbours cat, there seems to be a lot more cats around here recently. I’ve been feeding the birds in my garden for years and never had a problem with cats harassing the birds before. I felt terrible guilt for actively enticing birds into my garden only for them to be ambushed by some savage, marauding saber toothed, needle clawed feline monster. I was extremely upset. Then I took another look and on closer inspection, I began to feel a slightly more optimistic. 

There was no sign of blood or half eaten carcasses and the feathers looked as if they belonged to a young seagull. If that was the case, I pity the cat because young seagulls are never out of their parents’ sight.  The parents sit up high on roof tops and lamp posts watching their young with hawk like precision.  Woe betide anyone or anything that gets too close or threatens their baby.  Mummy and daddy seagulls are among the most ferocious of animals.  If anyone inadvertently gets too close to baby they start dive bombing and attacking, they aim for your head and they can be quite vicious. And the noise has to be heard to be believed.  I’ve now convinced myself my garden was the site of a cat learning a valuable lesson rather than place where some innocent came to a traumatic and bloody end.

Anyway……….back to the sky and the impending eclips. There was an occasional parting of the clouds where the sun could be spotted if you were fast enough. It became colder and the light changed. I had my camera ready and my prescription sunglasses on but the light from the sun was so bright it was difficult to see exactly what was going on. But I did see it, not the whole thing because much of the time the sun was behind cloud but I saw quite a lot. I tried to photograph it as best I could but it was difficult. 

My prescription sunglasses didn’t give nearly enough protection, the suns rays were concentrated and much stronger than usual and I spent most of the time squinting up at the sky waiting for the clouds to part. I did take a few photos but in the end I just pointed the camera roughly in the right direction and clicked. These are more of a happy accident than anything else and the colour isn’t at all as it actually looked. The brightness of the sun, the intensity of the cloud and the strange eerie light was quite dramatic, there were pink and orange tinges in the cloud, but the camera exaggerated the effect. 

 

Then I noticed the long shadows. This far north we get spectacular light effects and exaggerated long shadows especially late afternoon in the winter months when the sun sits low in the sky, but this was something different. 

These shadows were stretched, not only very long but also very thin, they were elongated shadows in muted half light, quite beautiful but unlike anything else. In the end I wanted to get back indoors, it had become very cold and my eyes hurt through straining to see the sun. 

 

I thought I should try to clear away some of the feathers before I went indoors and it was then that I noticed the frogs, what a noise. Five or six of them were bobbing around the pond chasing each other, blowing out their little fat chests and making the funny froggy noise they make. 

 

AND….. frogspawn!!! Yep sometime during the eclipse, my pond froggies gave me frogspawn. 

 

And now I’m exhausted, now all I want to do is sleep.

Happy Ostara.

Mothering Sunday and the garden.

Mothers Sunday in the garden.

I’ve just had a great weekend. My grandson came to stay to help out in the garden. He was fantastic, we went grocery shopping yesterday morning and he carried all the bags, loaded them into the taxi, brought them indoors, unpacked the bags and then put all the groceries away. After lunch he started painting the garden fences. Needless to say I’m very impressed. 

He spotted the frogs in the pond. Yep my frogs are back!

First I saw one, then he saw two, which I thought was wonderful because with two frogs we get tadpoles. The grandson was fascinated by the frogs; he kept stopping work to kneel by the water. He wanted to catch them or hold them and wasn’t pleased that I wouldn’t let him. He seemed to think of them as some sort of novel ‘pet’, I don’t think he understood frogs don’t want to be touched. I warned him off because I didn’t want him scaring them away but it’s a bit of a shame how kids these days don’t seem at all in tune with the natural world. 

  Anyway he continued to sit by the pond on his self imposed frog watch and eventually he counted a total of eight frogs all visible at one time. I’m looking forward to a bumper crop of tadpoles later this year. I finally persuaded him to return to painting fences.

While he painted I set about my first tidy up of the year. I’ve removed all the dead foliage from last year, sorted out the strawberries and raked up the dead leaves. 

My garden looks a terrible mess over winter because I leave all the leaves and bits of dead plants rotting where they fall, but it doesn’t seem to do the garden any harm. Once I raked away the debris the snowdrops and daffodils looked a lot better, very cheery. 

I have something pink in flower. I think it’s the Japonica bush I planted a while ago that has, until now, done absolutely nothing. Anyway, what ever it is, and I do think its Japonica, it’s very pretty and has been in flower for a couple of weeks. What a strange time of year for something to blossom.  I seem to remember buying a Japonica bush a long time ago because I once picked quince fruit from a Japonica bush and made extraordinarily delicious jelly. Hopefully, if this is my Japonica bush that I’d forgotten about, and if it’s the right sort of Japonica, I’ll be making quince jelly later in the year.  That’s a lot of ifs and maybes but, I remember that quince jelly being utterly delicious.

These odd little purple flowers have been flowering all winter, even through the winds, frost and ice. Wow………….that’s impressive, brave little flowers.

This morning the grandson finished painting the fences while I did a bit more tidying up and then, we fed the birds. He was a bit noisy in his admiration and considering his excitement, it’s a wonder I managed any photographs at all. But we were visited by a sparrow family and a lone robin and they all hung around long enough for some quick photos.

And then it was time for the rest of the family to visit. It’s mothering Sunday and they bought cards, flowers, cakes, chocolates, wine and box of luxury toiletries.  I feel like a very spoilt mother and granny. 

More evidence of spring.

Sunday was one of the best days so far this year. We had blue skies, mild temperatures and a noticeable lack of wind, rain and cold. 

My photographer friend and I decided it was time to take our cameras out for a bit of a photo session. I’m not sure why but we decided to go to the war memorial park. 

Even though the memorial is in the town and easily accessible, I’ve only visited a couple of times before. The war memorial stands at the top of a little hill just as you enter the town from where the views of the coastline are spectacular. For the first time I stopped in front of the memorial and took a good look at it. 

I don’t know exactly how many individual names are there, I didn’t think to work it out at the time; all I could think of was the apparent abundance of names for such a small town. The entire population of the town (men women and children) was no more than about 20,000 back then and the list of dead must have been between around 2000.  To me that seemed like a lot of dead men from one small town.  And then I began thinking how the wars go on. We are frequently told that thanks to the nuclear deterrent, we have all lived war free since the end of WW2; what a load of rubbish. People have been killed in conflict somewhere in the world every day since then. Somewhere in the world, men women and children are being killed in conflict right now. As I sit here in the comfort and safety of my own home, writing this, someone else, somewhere else, is dying in a war. And it hasn’t all happened in far off distant lands where we can pretend it’s nothing to do with us. Some of the worse conflicts have been right here in Europe, in Bosnia, in Kosovo, in Serbia to name but a few. All I could think as I stood in front of the memorial with that long list of names was how bloody pointless it all is. It never ends. 

Anyway, I dragged my thoughts away from the battlefield we wandered away from the memorial. I tried to put these morbid thoughts out of my mind and enjoy the rest of the day. 

Spring colour was everywhere, deep violet crocus, yellow daffodils, and that dusty yellow ochre of the catkins. The sky was blue and filled with birdsong. 

I spotted a chaffinch busy collecting feathers and twigs for nest building. I managed a couple of shots but they are poor quality because the bird stayed just out of camera zoom range. 

Clever bird, it was teasing me. The next little bird interested me because I couldn’t identify it. This fat bird sat high up in the tree where its colours were hard to distinguish making identification virtually impossible.

 Then came one of the biggest Great Tits I’ve ever seen, resplendent and puffing out its bright yellow chest. 

I’m not sure what it is about blackbirds and crows that fascinate me so much but I really like those big black birds. They have no fear, unlike the smaller song birds they don’t take off and fly away as soon as they see you. The blackbirds hold their ground; they stay put, sing even louder and ignore you. I’m pretty sure they could become quite tame in the right circumstances.

 From the memorial park to the pond is about a ten minute walk and that’s the direction our feet took us. It wasn’t planned, it just happened, we followed our feet.  I had put my camera away by the time we reached the pond but then I spotted this female mallard in the shallow water scooping up water and spiting it out. I’m not sure what she was doing but it was interesting enough for me to get the camera out again.

And to finish, I leave you with this, an owl sat on top of a pile of open books carved directly from the stump of a tree. This sits in front of the entrance to the local college. I’m guessing the tree needed to be felled for some reason, maybe disease, maybe it was in danger of falling, I don’t know the reason but what ever it was some creative person decided to invite a woodcarver to weave magic over the stump and this is the result. I think it’s a very fitting and innovative welcome to the college. 

Spring has arrived.

Spring has arrived.

I was so happy to finally put the paint and brushes back in the shed. By the time finished I’d had enough of emulsion paint for at least another year. After I finished the hall I went on to paint the new handrails on the stairs, then I decided to paint the skirting boards and door frame in the bathroom and then, I repainted all the walls and skirting boards in the kitchen. Once I started painting the kitchen I realised how discoloured it was and how much it desperately needed painting. Anyhow, now that it’s done, it looks so much better, nice and clean and bright and white. Those are not my paintings on the kitchen wall; the landscape is a print I bought from a shop. I saw it, fell in love with the view and promised myself I would go there one day. It’s a place called Riomaggiore which is a tiny medieval village high up on the cliffs above the coast of North West Italy. I bought the print and have kept it on my kitchen wall ever since to remind myself that one day….. I will go there.   The yellow rose on the kitchen wall is a photograph printed on canvas, it was taken by a friend of mine (who is an excellent photographer), she had it printed up on canvas and gave me for Christmas.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riomaggiore

And as soon as the decorating paraphernalia was back in the shed, out came the canvas and acrylic paints. I finished off the portrait of Justin, my grandson. He is only 13 but he’s joined the army cadets and goes off to camp every month. He’s very proud of his uniform and made a special point of asking me to make sure I paint the red feathery thingy on his beret (sorry military people can’t remember what he called it).   

Once he was finished I planned my next couple of paintings. I need to do a snowscape of the hills for my daughter, that’s what the long canvas is for, and I plan on doing four small square and two small round canvases of bright yellow sunflowers. Today, I prepared all the canvases and made a start on the snowscape painting. 

Last week was mostly spent saving photos to my flickr account. I’ve finished saving everything from 2014 and I’m up to date with this years photos. Looking back at the flickr account I realise I actually saved every thing quite regularly until about the end of 2010 and then for some reason, I just stopped, and now I’m playing catch up. If you want to see my growing collection of literally thousands of photos they are here;

https://www.flickr.com/photos/forget-me-not5275/

The one time I did venture down to the harbour this week I spotted the inshaw lifeboat crew doing a training exercise and I saw the old dredger was back. That same dredger spends a couple of months here every year which I guess means our harbour is high maintenance.

And lastly…………Its spring, yep its official, my snowdrops are in full bloom which means its spring in my garden. Even if its not spring anywhere else, once the snowdrops bloom, its spring in my garden. Within a couple of weeks I’ll open up my old gardening blog.

I have already booked my grandson, (the one in the painting), to help me paint the garden fences. He’s coming over for the weekend on Friday 13^th and that’s when it will all kick off in my garden.