A room of my own

December now and the poinciana growing on the easement has flowered profusely - I can't remember the blossoms being so large and densely arranged on the branches. Perhaps I notice the effect more since I have moved into this 'room of my own' right beside the tree. Its a charmed place to sit and read and write. I like that I can sit here beside the kitchen and just below the window is the front door to the studio and then the public stairway down to the train station, so either way the action is not far away. The arrangement of glass dome, mirror and two french clocks courtesy malE while the escritoire is a another clever find from Michael Allen Antiques.

Tunbridge Garden. . . . the beginning

Going back to January 2006, the first summer visit. We were focused on setting up in the house, so the next door block was just that - here are Kevin's sheep amidst the garden of scots thistles and rye grass and in the background the remnant trees and shrubs (which are about to be chewed back to the stalk and up as far they can reach).

Updated garden drawing

This is the second version which shows the full width of the plan, including the old garage, now simply the shed, with the five silver birch trees we planted in August. The young 3 metre tall trees were trucked bare root and leafless from Greenhill Nursery along with clear instructions from David Drysdale on how best to plant them, which we did, into already damp ground as there had been rain steadily all winter. Now we hear reports that they are fluttering with leaves.

My Tunbridge garden plan

Following instructions from Richard Radcliffe's booklet, Recording Gardens we set about measuring up the garden at Tunbridge on a cold and very windy day in May. My neighbour Sam not only supplied the 30m tape measure, but patiently held the other end while I wrote the down the numbers and sketched out the geometry on a flapping sheet of paper. The booklet, based on an Australian Garden History seminar describes the practical details of measuring and recording a garden, but the author also alludes to the challenges of working outdoors in dense fog or freezing rain. In this respect and perhaps because this was my first attempt, I liked the way the conditions mirrored those described in Mr Radcliffe's book.
Here's the first draft, produced in Illustrator - there is more to do, a legend, more details and description - but already it is a pleasing map.

the cat and the crescent moon

On this Japanese Shakudo button a bewitched silver cat dances in a field of flowers beneath a crescent moon
rising over the mountains - such a sweet celebration of the irrational.

heavenly buttons

What I first thought was a button, the Nebra Sky Disc is a 30cm patinated bronze disc with inlaid gold symbols of the sun, or full moon, lunar crescent and stars, including a cluster interpreted as the Pleiades. How often objects of such simple beauty turn out to be ancient, this one is dated to 1600BC, Bronze Age Germany. Its message is astronomical, religious, revealing the deep symmetries of the universe - a power object indeed. Imagining the circumstances and the culture of its origin, the landscape, the politics of how this object came to be. Who was the maker, the priest, the scientist, the artisan?