the day is overcast, mild, snow is forecast but I can’t see how as I step out with a desire to do nothing else at this hour…going past the new saplings and walking between the rows feeling the tenderness as the shoots unfurl, I say hello to Hazel and Alder, Rowan, Holly, Birch and Birdcherry and a tentative hi to the unbudding Blackthorn too, with her long black spikes pricking the soft grey sky above, and odd nobbly trunk below where her lower limbs might have formed a bush…not sure to name her yet, as the others are in bloom across the park, but who else could she be? I am lulled and seduced, tuning in to the awakening, a gentle unfurling on this soft day, I have fallen in love with the Glen again and feeling the magic that has been there just beneath the surface always, away from the busyness and business of all that human stuff, just shimmering there once you shake off that other shroud …
I am brought along by the urge to make a connection with the very tips of all the trees before they open, that dense matter. A sycamore is cracking open by the ponds while a sister spreads her leaves already on the zig zag. I see the signature charcoal tip of the ash and bundled next to it a surprising purple flourish, the dense black of its buds become husks to a wildly different story. This tree has kept me guessing for some time, its bony branches lit against the blackthorn and willows all around, it was the blackthorn I had come to see to find some clues about our newcomers across the valley.
Looking back at the images today I am once again struck by how a sense of unheard music comes through the forms, of domes and hollows the halo colour and live wire squiggles reaching, falling, repeating rhythms and arcs the arias and the cadences intermingling all at once
I notice soft tracks entering the dumping zone I have called the pencil factory, the pile has been pushed back and possibly picked over as I no longer see the the generous rosy margins of the cypress cross sections. Sound is softer here, we are insulated from the road and this sense is enhanced by the soft tread underfoot of deeply piled vegetation, I stop and enjoy the heaped variety of garden and wild cuttings – the old Christmas tree raises an arm while the palms fan making quite a Goya of their plights.