A walk around the lake at Innisfree Garden.
Before all the leaves are down take a moment to look up. This is Innisfree Garden last Saturday. Big Halloween storm came through and probably tore a few more leaves down. Certainly took three shingles off the roof. And then look down. Robert Macfarlane tweeted about “beechmast” this week and certainly this has been a mast year for our oak…
There’s a drainage ditch runs alongside the rail trail where we often take our morning stroll. It runs with water after rain and provides an excellent damp environment for the cardinal flower (lobelia cardinalis). It’s a showy deep red spiky flower native to the US. Apparently most insects find it difficult to navigate the long tubular flowers so the cardinal…
A beautiful day and Innisfree Garden is open for the season. There is not much left of the house that once looked over the lake. More pictures at the slideshow below.
It was Clive Bennett who got me traveling down this particular track. He’s a real birder and maintains a wonderful blog – Art in Nature – where he writes of his adventures in the hedgerows and fields and where he celebrates birds and the artists who paint them. In a comment on a post about kennings he listed some wonderful…
Big excitement on The Daily Stroll! There we were, just strolling along the part of the Appalachian Trail than runs alongside the Housatonic River the way one does on a fine fall afternoon. Lots of leaves (colorful, falling), ducks (mergansers, swimming) when Splash! That was a big fish! But not a fish – a beaver thrashing its tail into the…
With Innisfree Garden closed for the season time to revisit old familiar haunts.
A glorious day for a stroll around the lake at Innisfree Garden.
The Day That Summer Died From all around the mourners came The day that Summer died, From hill and valley, field and wood And lane and mountainside. They did not come in funeral black But every mourner chose Gorgeous colours or soft shades Of russet, yellow, rose. Horse chestnut, oak and sycamore Wore robes of gold and red; The rowan…
Did you have a special place as a child? Perhaps somewhere secret and magical? A corner of a city park, a place in the garden, somewhere under the trees or behind the shed? Do you have one now? For the artist Paul Nash his first special place was Kensington Gardens, in west London, near where he was born in 1889.…
Spring comes earlier in the UK than it does here and the growing season is longer and cooler. Plath’s poem is set in March. The narcissus are already out in full bloom. But there’s a March wind blowing and a struggle to breathe. Plath’s octogenarian Percy is among the narcissi but never a narcissist. The photographs are of Innisfree Gardens…
‘We’re going to see the rabbit’ We are going to see the rabbit. We are going to see the rabbit. Which rabbit, people say? Which rabbit, ask the children? Which rabbit? The only rabbit, The only rabbit in England, Sitting behind a barbed-wire fence Under the floodlights, neon lights, Sodium lights, Nibbling grass On the only patch of grass In…
Lines Written in Early Spring by William Wordsworth I heard a thousand blended notes, While in a grove I sate reclined, In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts Bring sad thoughts to the mind. To her fair works did Nature link The human soul that through me ran; And much it grieved my heart to think What man has made…
I left full-time employment at the end of June with a grand plan of doing nothing. After 45 years in education it seemed only reasonable. The send-off was great, people were kind and generous and the summer was ahead. I had an unspoken notion that once the election was over I would begin to focus on what I might want to do…
Near the beginning of George Orwell’s 1984 our hero Winston Smith attends a rally at the Ministry of Truth where he works in the Records Department. It’s the daily ritual two-minute hate – a routine emotional release designed to keep everyone full of fear and enraged at the enemies of the state. Before the Hate had proceeded for thirty seconds,…