Goodbye Summer. Well maybe not yet.
At the edge of melancholy, meteorological surprise and a profusion of purple
This is the point at which I say hello to you, however you have arrived here. A little like two streams converging, this piece brings together subscribers from my website and past events with those of you who have recently joined me on Substack.
I’m feeling my way into this and what I can share with you each week. This past one has been a time to take particular pleasure in being outdoors and here are some of the moments that I’d like to share with you. I hope that this journey into nature will transport you temporarily and awaken your senses.
I send out a newsletter titled 'FLOW' to subscribers which is evolving into a medley of image and word, reflecting my practice and thinking as an artist. I hope you’ll join me.
Saturday - midges and pink
Today I found pleasure in a clump of heather, opened up like a shell as if to bask in the absent sun. Pink froth around its edge, the centre relaxed in senescence. Lichen growing on old wood. Moss soft furnishing the mound below. Last night’s rain adding sparkle to plant and decorating the umbrellas of webs that appear so prominently as if to catch summer’s end.
The pain came from a late flush of midges and a rare still morning. They gathered around my face as I retreated beneath my hood, repellant left at home on the one occasion in the year that it was needed. Periodically I had to move away, and then return, a courtship dance of kinds to match that of the midges. I can feel them again as I write this, crawling and nipping.
The sounds of this quiet place are subdued this morning. Water dripping off leaves after the night’s rain. The birds are softly spoken aside from the woodpecker hammering in the pine trees. Flies buzz. Distant sheep song carries down from the hill; a persistent complaining - separation anxiety perhaps.
Greens and golds abound on stem and leaf. Wet grasses hang low with the weight of silver coin. Pricks of bright blue harebell and fluffy purple scabious nod to each other politely. And a constellation of dots pink through purple draw a picture of the heath.
Further up the track I stop at the gates to listen. The falling rain is falling again as the breeze frees the canopy of its temporary load. A timpani of trees; leaves in percussion.
Sunday - onions and ammonia
I attend the first part of a workshop on natural dyes at the Scottish Sculpture Workshop. We learn how to make onion skin dye, forage for nettles and eat chocolate chip cookies. I leave with a jar of lichen in ammonia and instructions for its care. It starts off a vivid green but quickly shifts though ruby and begins to look purple. That colour again.
Monday - rabbit holes and dear friends
It’s been a day mostly sitting at the computer. It wasn’t planned that way. An hour I said. But then like Alice I entered the rabbit hole labelled Substack and three hours went by as I wrote and shared a first post.
Now I’m out skirting through the trees looking out over the moss, here purple with heather. It seems to have been slow to peak in bloom, behind that on the hills, and is now only putting on the pizazz at the very end of August.
The mizzle that was hanging over the hills has finally departed after a shower heavy enough to make me run out and bring the washing in. There’s a warmth to the sun that now feels increasingly precious. You get to a point in the year where you feel that summer is fast slipping away. It makes you want to grab onto every moment, to hold it close like a dear friend about to leave.
Wednesday - yellow flags and black eyes
Today I hear water in the conversations between trees, the push and pull of a tide. Surf churning, a season slipping and shifting like a restless sleeper repeatedly turning this way and that. Already I can see leaves colouring atop the canopy in places - rowan here, maple there.
Red berries hang heavy. Pheasants lost in a rolling ocean of ripening oil seed rape call below a soaring buzzard. Last year these two fields were barley, and I can’t help but wonder if the new yellow flags flown this spring under blue skies stemmed in part from the war in Ukraine and an increased demand for domestic rapeseed oil.
I pass the old farmhouses that lie derelict and unloved. First Old Town. Then Crampstone and looking over its shoulder from high up the hill is Todstone, roofless and black eyed. Raspberries now crowd around the open doorway like guests waiting to enter.
I wonder who farmed this high land on the edge of the hills, who gave their sweat and blood, who looked at this view and lived a life more bleak than beautiful. The names make me curious. The suffix - is it stone as I first thought or a weathered form of ‘ton’ or town? The names perhaps came from those who built these places or the families that farmed here - Cramp, Tod(d). Higher still is Greens of Harystone. I remember a conversation last year relating that, within memory, the last family who lived there had to walk the length of the valley to collect the provisions and post left for them at the limit of the nearest road.
Below me butterflies hang on to summer’s coat-tails adrift among thistles at the field edge.
The life-giving stream still gives life. At the corner of the track I unexpectedly find a large clump of garden mint, purple in flower and fuzzily healthy. I pull a leaf and breathe it deeply.
The stream whispers quiet secrets in my ear as I head back down the hill. We keep each other company for a while. By next year, the gorse and the broom will have blocked the way.
Thursday - Summer’s End?
The last day of meteorological summer has been presaged all week by the robin singing from the top of the lilac. From my window I can see the last few flowers on the ends of the rose branches bowing to gravity after last night’s rain, framing the view across the moss. Blushing pink, this inherited climber has flowered its socks off this year. It’s amazing what a top dressing of rose food can do. Sadly its exuberance has been met with an excess of wind and rain and I’m amazed that it’s still on the wall such has it been pulled and pushed around. Too many petals have fallen before their time.
Today the wetness of the morning dew is transformed before my eyes from heavy water to ethereal mist and upwards in veils of vapour to cloud a previously clear blue sky.
Out in the garden I find that the Alchemilla has drunk deeply and its leaves carry a galaxy of glimmering gems.
Saturday - More mist than melancholy
During the night I tiptoed down the hall to gaze at the bright blue moon which had remained hidden by clouds the previous night. By morning the mist that had just been visible further down the valley had wrapped itself around the house. Condensation on the inside of the windows hinted at the low temperatures outside.
I think when I go to sleep tonight I will dream of purple and smell the heady perfume of the heather.
This week my photography has taken the upper hand. I haven’t been a fan of purple moors yet this soft shade, somewhere between pink and purple has seduced me. I have drunk greedily of its nectar as do the bees and the now tattered butterflies. It’s been hard to resist the effervescence, the sheer profusion of flower this year. I don’t remember such abundance on the moss last summer.
To be continued…
Softness suffuses the majority of images that I make. I’ve looked into and photographed water for so long now that it shapes my view of nature more broadly. If I want sharp edges all I have to do is read the news... This is my sanctuary, my meditation, my place of ease. I hope you will find a little tranquility here too, and if you enjoy the feel of this vision of the natural world you’ll find more on my website.
With best wishes,
A gentle narration of moments of your week. Feels like I'm sitting in your kitchen chatting away over a cuppa tea. The heather has been exceptional this year. I've enjoyed being out climbing and sitting on rock faces watching the busy bees scooting around in a frenzy. Lots of butterflies too enjoying it's rich nectar.
Lovely piece Michela, I love how you find something that characterises each day and just riff on it. I feel like I'm looking over your shoulder.