Abstract Landscape Painter. Rural Dweller. Lover of Modernist Art and Design.
Flowers Appear All Over The Earth…
"Winter is past. The rains are over and gone. Flowers appear all over the earth; the season of singing has come."
It may be a piece of ancient Hebrew poetry I know, but it certainly seems truer than ever this year. I've never seen as many cowslips and primroses in my life as this Spring. The hedgerows and field edges are thick with them. I even photographed a patch of beautiful star-shaped wild flowers growing in a ditch the other day. I don't think that I've ever appreciated the blossom quite as much either. On one side of our back garden there is a tree covered in elegant white blossom. I was working out there on Sunday, when I became aware of a delicate, cologne-like fragrance. I realised after a while that it was the perfume from the flowers on the tree.
We've also got some small apple trees growing in the front garden and I've been watching the buds on these. They looked like little green/white parcels until today, when for the first time they have opened to reveal tiny rosettes of pale green leaves and pink and white centres that look almost like a cluster of miniature figs. The trees are slender and delicate and with their little pattern of buds along the stems, they make me think of Japanese textile designs.
After the drab and stormy winter, I feel as if I'm enjoying this Spring more than any in my life so far. I know that it's an old cliché to say that the earth is dressing herself in all her finery, but this year, for me, it does seem like that. After being lashed by the rains and starved of light, she seems to be enjoying the warmth and celebrating by putting on her most colourful and decorative garments - (florals are so totally on trend!). The trees look as if they really are waking up from a sleep and stretching out their arms in the sun and even, sometimes, as if they are dancing. It's not difficult to see where the idea of the dryads came from.
Thinking about the trees has brought another old piece of writing to mind recently:
"there is hope for a tree: if it is cut down, it will sprout again, and its new shoots will not fail. Its roots may grow old in the ground and its stump die in the soil, yet at the scent of water it will bud and put forth shoots like a plant."
Change is a constant - as it were! Things are always moving and developing as the days pass. They never stand still. I was walking alone with my dog Millie the other day, on a path that cuts across this vast rural landscape, and looking around as I walked. I marvel that I am here. Not in any part of my previous existence did I expect to be living here, now, among people that I have not previously known. But that seems to be part of the strangeness of human life - after long periods of travelling on what looks like a very well-defined path, one or two elements can change and then the whole pattern shifts and a brand new phase emerges - something entirely new and unexpected. This principle of relentless growth that I see around me, seems to apply. Things start springing up quickly and suddenly you realise that the season and the whole context of your life has changed.
All text & images ©2014 Carol Saunderson
http://anartistinthelandscape.blogspot.co.uk/
