A Nautiloid

White-lipped snail.

A post to deal with mid-September last year.
On a dull Sunday, after a walk around Jenny Brown’s Point with TBH, I went to Lambert’s Meadow and took a few photos of spiders and a lot of photos of snails. Do snails breed in September? I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many in one visit.

More banded snails.

Cottage at Silverdale Green.

Another cottage at Silverdale Green.

On the following weekend, the second Morecambe Poetry festival took place at the Winter Gardens. This time TBH joined me and we went to see the headline poets on both the Friday and Saturday nights; first Brian Bilston and Henry Normal, then Jackie Kay and Carol Ann Duffy. Fabulous.

Morecambe Winter Gardens.

The line up for this year’s festival looks every bit as enticing, hopefully TBH will join me again.

I saw Lemn Sissay at the first festival and years ago when I lived in Manchester and likewise, I saw Mike Harding live several times, but not for a very long time. This time, two BBC programmes – Loose Ends and The Verb – will be broadcast live from the festival. Things are on the up and up, both for Morecambe and for the Winter Gardens.

On the Sunday of that weekend, TBH had a mission to perform.

Hazelwood Hall.

She took me to Heald Brow with a hand drawn map she’d been given by a colleague.

TBH on Heald Brow – Bowland Fells on the horizon.

The map showed the location of…

Heald Brow fossilised Nautiloid.

I’ve heard about this impressive fossil a few times from friends in the village, but have never actually managed to find it. With the aid of TBH’s map, we found it this time almost immediately. It’s hard to spot because it’s generally covered with a piece of turf which you’re supposed to replace, although I’m not sure why.

A skein of geese.

Post sunset light at The Cove.

Later, I was out again for a wander to the Cove and across the Lots.

After years of not putting out food for the birds because our cats were a bit too interested, we’ve now realised that our one remaining cat is too old, fat and slow (I sympathise) to do any harm anymore. I snaffled a number of feeders from my parents a while ago and since TBH strung them all up (the feeders, not my parents!) from the Silver Birch by our kitchen window they have been giving me a great deal of pleasure ever since.

Starling eating dried meal-worms.

Starling on our beech hedge.

Expect a lot more photos of our very varied visitors as I catch-up (ho ho) with the intervening six-months or so.

Illimitably Earth

Reading Gerard Manley Hopkins recently I was put in mind of a poem by e.e.cummings. I was prompted to reread Hopkins by posts on Solitary Walker’s blog. Returning there today and reading about Emerson and Thoreau (and thinking that I must reread Walden – so many books!), I followed a link to In A Dark Time and seeing the title ‘Celebration of Spring’ expected to see that same poem that I had been reminded of. I suspect that there are probably several cummings poems that could be classed as celebrations of spring. This is the one that I particularly treasure:

i thank You God for most this amazing
day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue dream of sky;and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun’s birthday;this is the birth
day of life and love and wings;and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any – lifted from the no
of all nothing – human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

I’m not entirely sure what links this poem and Hopkins in my mind. Something in the rhythm perhaps. Perhaps the shared religious sentiment and joie de vivre of this and ‘Pied Beauty’?

Afterwards

When the Present has latched its postern behind my tremulous stay,
And the May month flaps its glad green leaves like wings,
Delicate-filmed as new-spun silk, will the neighbours say,
“He was a man who used to notice such things”?

If it be in the dusk when, like an eyelid’s soundless blink,
The dewfall-hawk comes crossing the shades to alight
Upon the wind-warped upland thorn, a gazer may think,
“To him this must have been a familiar sight.”

If I pass during some nocturnal blackness, mothy and warm,
When the hedgehog travels furtively over the lawn,
One may say, “He strove that such innocent creatures should
come to no harm,
But he could do little for them; and now he is gone.”

If, when hearing that I have been stilled at last, they stand
at the door,
Watching the full-starred heavens that winter sees,
Will this thought rise on those who will meet my face no more,
“He was one who had an eye for such mysteries”?

And will any say when my bell of quittance is heard in the gloom,
And a crossing breeze cuts a pause in its outrollings,
Till they rise again, as they were a new bell’s boom,
“He hears it not now, but used to notice such things”?

Thomas Hardy

Solitary Walker recommended this poem in his comment on my last post. I liked it so much, I thought that I would share it here.