Category Archives: Eden etc

Garden Notes number 20 “wouldn’t it be great if it were like this all the time”

  It’s the contrast between the lush strings and his ordinary Ulster voice; it’s the way the music stops dead at the last line and the utopian dream of ‘all the time’ becomes a moment in time that’s lost.  Ignore … Continue reading

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Garden notes 15, the corn cockle, aliens

see also Garden notes number twelve; sex, pests, culture wars, paradise and narrow observation I looked again at a photo I put up on the bathroom wall – It’s the corn cockle growing in a field of corn, as you might … Continue reading

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Garden notes number twelve; sex, pests, culture wars, paradise and narrow observation

Yesterday I browsed again – I much prefer that quiet bovine metaphor to that of the muscular (and possibly drowning) surfer – through Keith Thomas’s fascinating Man and the Natural World, thinking to illustrate, through an assembly of quotations, the … Continue reading

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Garden notes number ten, the itch to intervene, a few lines from John Clare, Adam in Eden and DH Lawrence

I’m remembering the radical ecologist (see Garden notes number three) and his airy contempt for gardeners. But also a few lines from John Clare: Where last years leaves and weeds decay / March violets are in blow I’d rake the … Continue reading

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See also:

see also: Deviations, Boundaries, Prohibitions, (revised) tracks, ribbons, edges and boundaries….. the dog tries to make sense of it all underground the worms and moles have their routes and channels In the mountain forest the path of the big ants … Continue reading

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Names (of limited interest)

I wrote and quoted the below some time ago. I actually looked for it in my blog for some time before I realised that it was unfinished and ‘unpublished’. Here it is, unedited. I came back to it because I’ve … Continue reading

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the plant itself

“Abies cephalonica Grecian fir. Large evergreen tree to 30m with a pyramidal crown and dark brown bark tinted with orange, becoming darker and fissured with age; twigs hairless and buds very sticky. Leaves needle-like, spreading, thick…. Mountain slopes. May-June. S. … Continue reading

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in the Peloponnese again (Ziria, aka Kyllini)

This gallery contains 25 photos.

Ziria – what a tasteful mountain!                                         Ziria or Kyllini, it has both names. The whitest mountain, and without snow: white … Continue reading

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I’ve been busy gardening

John Clare: Where last years leaves and weeds decay March violets are in blow I’d rake the rubbish all away And give them room to grow My favourite poem on gardens and gardening.  He’s not even in a garden, but … Continue reading

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in the Peloponnese 3, Vaidenitsa

   Torridon Since last summer I’ve trampled bracken in a couple of new places, in Torridon and in the Peloponnese. By the shore of Loch Torridon Aran, a crofter (and our landlord) has burnt off the heather scrub and some … Continue reading

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