roses, cat fluff and
a rather cunning folded book
from notebook scribbles at dawn
It is 5.30 am. Birds are beginning to welcome the day, wittering and singing it into being1. I have returned to my bed after letting the pups out briefly and they are tucked into theirs again too. Martha (my twenty-year-old cat) is sitting next to me, occasionally placing a paw on my arm. She sang me to sleep last night, trilling musical purrs at me as though I were her kitten. When she was younger she would greet my returns from travels rather more coldly, letting me know that my faithlessness should not expect a warm welcome. With age cometh urgency, if not wisdom, and these days she stays close, leaning in for gentle contact…which made it rather tricky to dress the bed with clean sheets on my first evening at home. Ideally I would make up my bed before leaving, but given Martha happily pulls back any dust sheet and covers the bed with fur which needs to be (literally) scraped off, that would be pointless. So there I was, trying to spread the bedclothes across the bed, with a small dark furry blot alternately pouncing on the sheet or simply wanting to hold my hand. It took a while, as you may imagine.
She’s not easy to photograph…
When I make the first cup of tea for the day I shall pour some for her in a saucer. That ought to distract her from dipping her paw into mine.
During my time away I missed the blooming of the Malus ionensis, my favourite blossoming (though not fruiting) crab apple. It has been thoroughly toasted by the unseasonably warm and dry weather.
The roses on the other hand, seem pretty chipper. How David Austin could name the exquisitely voluptuous flower pictured below “Jude the Obscure” has me mystified, especially since I now know something of the story behind the name. Click on the link if you dare, I’m rather wishing I had not asked Granny Google about its origins.
The gloriously pink rose below comes from stock that survived the Ash Wednesday fires of 1983, bravely sending spikes up through the blackened earth about a month after the first rains fell post-scorching.
According to Mr Evans, the venerable gardener my parents were ‘bequeathed’2 by the former owners when they purchased ‘The Glen’ on the Mount Lofty (Yuridla) ridge, the rose was planted in the 1850s from a slip gifted by a Mrs Thomas. Given that occurrence would have preceded Mr Evans’ arrival on the planet, and that our house was only constructed in 1877, I wonder whether it was originally planted at the Hardy property, Mount Lofty House (1851), across the road from us, and perhaps shared with the Giles family (who built our house as a summer residence) when they were establishing their garden. Searching for the elusive Mrs Thomas I found mention of one who arrived in the colony on the Africaine in 1836. She’s not dignified with her own name, merely described as the chattel of her husband Robert Thomas. This particular Mrs Thomas appears to have been a prodigious writer, however, and you can read her account of arriving in Australia here'. The dismissive way in which the Kaurna people are described in her diary makes me rather uncomfortable, though I do wonder if she brought a rose with her.3 Mrs Thomas’ insouciant descriptions of the existing inhabitants of the Adelaide plains certainly make a mockery of the British colonisers broadcast assumption of terra nullius…clearly it was not.
I’ve returned from my travels with renewed enthusiasm for attempting to grow Japanese indigo again. It can be so disheartening to find ones tender darlings shrivelled by the north winds of summer as has occurred in the past (which is why I gave up) but given I inherited my mother’s shade house on her passing, and so have a sheltered spot available I think it’s worth another try. The blues we made from fresh indigo both in Bretagne and in smaller quantity but perhaps more intensely from an armful of very late harvest plants (rather tougher than those grown in France) brought to the retreat at Ardtornish by Jane Lindsey were just so delicious that I simply cannot resist. I ordered seeds while I was away, they have arrived and there’s no time like the present (or present like the time)!
Not only did Jane supply us with indigo, she also made a rather lovely video compilation of our time together. I do not usually permit videoing of me in a workshop situation, and tend to be a trifle fierce if someone begins following me about with a device without bothering to ask first, but Jane asked very nicely and proposed to make something that captured the spirit of our week and so here we are…
The beginning of this month was also the first anniversary of the utterly unexpected and shocking passing of Tim McLaughlin. Maiwa have shared remembrances of him, along with a beautiful poem found amongst his papers and a link to the marvellous talk he gave about the Poetics of Textiles. I have a feeling I have shared that talk here before, but it is well worth watching again. Click here to be transported.
In my most recent post I mentioned sharing a book-fold with you. For years now (at least eleven, seeing as the fold was named while working on the banks of the River Tay) I have been folding large (A1) sheets of paper into River Books, for ease of transport when I have stumbled across a beautiful sheet at a paper sellers somewhere and cannot leave it behind nor fit it into my luggage in its original form. At the end of our workshop at Ardtornish it came to me that this was a tad excessive, and that a fold that would result in an A5 notebook (either landscape or portrait) would make far more sense, especially as it could be deconstructed later and the pages stitched together so that both sides of the paper were visible (the River Book only allows you to use one side). So, for the kind subscribers who help me pay the bills at home, here it is.