Madonna Lilies ~ Stanley Spencer
I sometimes muse whether I make my life in the country sound like too much of an idyll. Yes, it is idyllic but there are downsides as well. sometimes I think that despite the photographs I have published occasionally people paint their own mind picture which is different to the reality. Villages come in all shapes and sizes, and with many different features depending in which area of England you are in. Some villages have village greens and/or duck ponds, though many have lost their village greens by now to development. Architecturally villages differ immensley throughout England as well, you can go from hardy grey granite to chocolate box thatched cottages.
I thought I would like to try to get across to you exactly what it is like to live in my village in the North of England. First let me say that to me, any village living is better than living in the city. My village is rural, the nearest town is just over six miles away, but as years pass I can see the town encroaching ever nearer the village, I would think twenty years ago that the town would probably be about seven miles, but its outskirts are ever widening. If I had to move again, I would be happy to move even more rural to the point of being an isolated house somewhere, though I would have to have communication with the outside world, I am definitely too chatty to be a hermit.
Spring Solstice ~ Paul Nash
Our village itself has grown from a long street with some small offshoots until over the past sixty or so years there have been four small developments tacked on at various times.
The biggest downside is that the A road to Newcastle, the nearest large city, sixty miles away, cuts right through the main street of the village. Obviously as the years go by the traffic becomes worse and worse, although a bypass has been talked about for years. From the west you approach our village over an arched sandstone bridge over the River Eden. This is a fine sturdy bridge, but was certainly not built for articulated lorries using it as a short cut, also the terrible floods we had a couple of years ago have washed lumps of the sandstone stanchions away. Everyone complains about the traffic rushing through the village, especially as the pavements are narrow and old fashioned and there is a bad bend where numerous accidents have happened. Our cottage is on this main street, but luckily we are double glazed and in the garden at the back, the big barn plays tricks with the acoustics and the traffic noise is not too loud and doesn't detract from the joy of the garden and the birdsong.
Autumn Sunlight at Sennen Cove [Cornwall] Laura Knight
The old buildings are all built from a rich red sandstone, a stone that wears away very easily as it is a soft stone, especially in our polluted world sandstone gets eroded very easily. Our barn is of this beautiful sandstone. Our cottage on the otherhand, has been faced and is painted, the next door cottage has been too. We have no village green, but we do have a church with a steeple and an old graveyard, in fact, we have two churches, with graveyards, the Church of England church and the Catholic church. The upside is I can walk out of my door and within a couple of minutes be on a quiet country road and turn off onto a bridle way. Occasionally, the village has a mild panic when there is a rumour that someone is selling more land off for development, but luckily so far, these have just been rumours, as I do believe our infrastructure and cannot take any more homes. We have a village school that is full to capacity, in fact, a few children in previous years have had to go to the next village school.
I would also hate you to think that every moment of my life is perfect, and I spend my days pottering around my garden, in floaty skirts [thought I often do drape a shawl round myself and I suppose at times I do tend to gypsy skirts] musing on the missel thrush on the wall. It often is, but I also have the mundane tasks to perform, the changing of beds, the washing, the cleaning. There are days when I feel stressed and am just happy to come home to the cottage and close the front door behind me and give a sigh of relief. There are days when I can feel slightly down, and a little bit grumpy, this usually makes me realise I have been overdoing things 'burning the candle at both ends' as my Mother would say. It is just I try to find extra bliss in all the small things that make my day enjoyable. Silly little things like the feel of my old straw hat on head when I am gardening, the blackbird that is not frightened of me and sits near my feet if I am quiet with a worm in his beak. The sun shimmering through the silver birch leaves, and later at twilight sitting out in the garden as the stars switch on in the sky and the tiny bats come out from the derelict barn down the lane and dart hither and thither. Or on colder evenings sitting in my living room with the rich smell of incense burning, candles flickering glad to be inside. At the moment my most blissful moments are waking just as the first note of the dawn chorus rings out and lying in bed listening as more and more birds join in then turning over and going back to sleep. Some mornings I even get up for a cup of herbal tea and listen to them before returning to bed.
Today has been a lovely day, the sun has been shining after a cool start and I have been busy planting a lot of my bedding plants and rearranging pots in the garden. I am just at the point where I know I still have a bit to do, but the plan and arrangements are clear in my mind and I have done enough to look around the garden and see some small points of perfection. When I was sitting having a break, I decided I must try to keep an eye on the insect population this year, especially after reading the article about the bees. I have seen one bee, quite a few ladybird and one butterfly. My husband is also concerned about the sandmartins, this year there are not as many of them in previous years, he is keeping an eye on them. I wonder what is keeping the numbers down, is it something about the environment around the river, or is perhaps because there are not enough insects around? He will be watching their numbers, has anyone else in England noticed any difference in numbers? I did think that we had not as many swallows, they arrive later than the sandmartins but the number of swallows in the blue sky looks the same now as other years. I presume they came in two batches.
There is an important happening in the night sky this month. There will be a Blue Moon, this happens when there are two full moons in one month, the second is called a Blue Moon. There is a complication to this, it depends where you live, if you live in the Americas, you get the second moon right at the very end of May, everyone else, Asia, Africa, Australia and Europe will get their Blue Moon in June and poor old New Zealand will have to wait until the end of July. This is because of the time zones around the world. We roughly get a Blue Moon in the month every two to three years, so it is very special. Lots of extra lovely Moonlight.
We have a public holiday on Monday in England, so this is a holiday weekend, and weather permitting I intend to make the most of it and get the garden right.
Some of the illustrations in this postings are paintings by some of my favourite English artists. I believe that a lot of people under estimate what wonderful 20th century painters we had in England. The names are underneath the pictures.
