Vessel

The threads that stitch this watery place together

Each 
d
r
i
p
is a drink

Each sip
s w e l l s
vessels
e   x   p   a   n   d

Crossing blades of rush

Greetings to you all, and a warm welcome; it’s lovely to have your company for a while. Briefly, it was warm here - and sunny - but we are now back to the seemingly endless grey of rain. I know, I should be happy with all this water, and for a while I was. Last week’s letter was sandwiched by words and images of the moss, and Friday’s sun encouraged me to head out. As is often the case, the path I followed was not the expected one.

I leave with lichen in mind and a macro lens but at the edge of the pine where bog asphodel grows a deer trail new to me calls.

An old ditch, shallowed but of uncertain depth, best crossed carefully. The track follows the left side through ragged pine, ling and lichen. After the previous day’s downpour this vessel is brimming and collecting the glitter of morning sunlight. A complex weave, a tapestry of vegetal matter living and dead: cross-leaved heath, rush, sedge, deer grass, the ubiquitous sphagnum, pine needle and cone, flakes of bark, branches. A soup of organics to sustain the moss. At the level of the water, I find a little magic and it turns out to be a Good Friday indeed.

A soup of organics

The images are a little more ‘bling’ than my usual enquiries, but they have made me curious to learn more about the moss and its plants; I may have got a little carried away this week with my order of books on the subject…

Hare's Tail Cottongrass (Eriophorum vaginatum) flower in bud

Drawn and quartered, edged by channels, scored and seamed by man. Crossed by deer: roe, and in winter, red. Edged by old peat cuttings, their rind reveals the regular but ragged tooth marks of consumption.

The threads that stitch this place together:

Connective vessels

Sutures

Seams

Stem, braid and blanket stitch of

Sphagnum

Lung tissue

My compulsion to enquire of water has me looking in ditches that others ignore or adulterate.

Sphagnum moss

There’s something other worldly, almost alien, about Sphagnum moss. With star moss, it’s possible to imagine yourself in a miniature forest, but see Sphagnum engorged aphid-like with water and it feels as if you have landed on a different planet; and it may even return to haunt your dreams. Perhaps this sense of unease stems from a lack of understanding. Vascular plants are familiar, we may already know some of them, but enter into the domains occupied by mosses, liverworts and lichen and it can be hard to know where to start.

I am at a beginning.

Hopefully my identifications are accurate but please feel free to correct me!

A tapestry of the living and dead

Thank you again for your orders and kind feedback about ‘A New Topography’. In between sending out the remaining copies I’m beginning to think about ‘what next’, which may be handmade and draw on my observations and words about the moss.

---

This week I’d like to share:

• Reading. Evocative words from

  Samantha Clark
  in last week’s post The Brimming Moment, perfectly timed for the excess of water.

  The brimming moment

• Photography.

  Marcel Borgstijn
  writes a blog on Substack and publishes Darkrooms Magazine quarterly. The latest issue has just been published and includes project work by 22 photographers; I’m delighted to be a part of the diverse range of work featured.

  Darkrooms Magazine issue #3 - Photostack edition

Thank you for joining me and for reading this. Until next week,

You’ll find more image rich writing in previous posts on FLOW’s home page. My photography and mixed media art live here on my website.

Cross-leaved heath (Erica tetralix)

All words and images copyright © Michela Griffith