Into the Glen to look at more Particular trees, I find my first ladybird of the year, a six spotted one among the ivy. Passing the well I catch a glimpse of the Brigid’s Cross collapsing back into the undergrowth and reminding me the divine feminine and of Sheelah, whose long forgotten day it is. I think of the birch shrunken inside its hollow bark, and saw the oyster bedraggled, all succulence turned crispy brown by the pedestal, no longer with Patrick hovering, I have now named this rock ‘The Alter’ because of the ritual burnings here. Apparently this blocky stone arrived with the bridges and may once have shown the date and name of the Lord Mayor whose watch it was when they were done. Possibly part of the NDP plan that the big sign at the Blackpool end says culminated in 2006, the peak, before the dwindling of the Celtic Tiger. So much has happened since and who’d have thunk a pandemic would bring so many here to the bridges, a kind of regeneration nobody anticipated.
I was taken to the woods where the celandines have eased off and the anemones have taken the stage. So pale and delicately held on their stems, an image of gentility, flower heads closing now in the late afternoon light. Other plant life is vigorous, the sycamores uncrumpling from their buds, leaves newly crinkled and so tender charged by their capilliary networks.
The bending trees of the Fleischmann a characteristic that must be a lingering presence while the knotweed is shooting up all about among the mossy stems. Crumbling walls in their graffitti finery Rückenfigur with tree trunks placing me ringside on some ardent plant drama, a perfect equilateral entanglement. There has been more human activity here, I’m enjoying the piecemeal interventions, liking their lack of serious commitment. The plant life joins in from below, lords and ladies are beginning to carpet the old gate frame, breaking up the wrought out linear obsession. Trees act out like ushers pointing out the greening new order, you can sit wherever you want for the best view in this cinematic experience.
on the upper field where the council have clears there has been a dramatic spillage of household paint
