Cumulus clouds towering like mountains, boiling and roiling up above the plains, cauliflower crisp at the growing tops, losing definition and melting into wispy cotton-candy fluff as the cloud moves on -Cumulus Mammatus drooping multiple, witchy breasts that offer no succour beyond pouring rain from the grey underside of who knows how big a storm – photographs of motherships ominous over Texas – clouds I will never likely see in person, but regard in awe at nature’s power – mixing warm-moist air from the Gulf, hot-dry South-western and Mexican, with cool-dry Canadian in an unholy cocktail that drops twisters on the panhandle and whisks away more than Dorothy and Toto in Kansas… On a calmer day, coruscating cirrus mackerel-sky not to be confused with expanding contrails crisscrossing the blue, and definitely not the chemtrail nightmares of conspiracy theorists, make a halo around the sun on high, or the moon at night, whilst grey-day lowering stratus brings dampening drizzle followed by heavier rain as a front closes in – clouds caught on mountain tops or melting as mist in valleys when the sun comes up – clouds layered in all their glorious types from the ground up to the realm of the noctilucent and sprites seen only from space – a mystery not yet explained by Atmospheric Physics – and all possessed of an ever changing beauty that cloaks and swirls around our blue planet…
I missed the deadline for Mr Linky over at dVerse Poets Pub, where Lisa or Li in Poetics, invited us to write about Weather, something that Global Warming consequences have forced everybody around the world, to pay attention to ( and not just we weather obsessed Brits!). Li also gave a shout out to some previous posts on weather, including mine as guest editor in 2024.
1.- I am grateful for the boundless curiosity which i inherited from my Dad and too, the habit of passing on snippets which interest me – of course he was part of the age before the internet which gives us boundless access to knowledge (not all of it coorect though). One such snippet was the story of Common Ragwort, a weed which was supposedly brought to Britain and grown in Kew Gardens from which it allegedly escaped and spread across Britain along the newly built railways.
As a geography student, this story fascinated me too touching on ecology as well as the unit I studied on “Weeds, Pests, and Aliens”. I didn’t really encounter Ragwort till we bought a cottage in the West of Ireland where Ragwort grew in the three acres of fields that came with the cottage. The farmer who sold it to us, explained that whilst not poisonous to cattle and horses whilst growing, once cut along with grass to make hay, then it was poisonous and so the farmer must go over the field and remove the offending weeds. My father’s account also claimed that the weed was rife until the one and only caterpillar to munch on it was brought from foreign parts, and then the weed became manageable… There the story might end, but – I have access to the internet and there is thirty years of people adding information about their hobbies and passions to comb through…
2.- # The Internet, aka the World Wide Web
Disambiguation!
It turns out that the story of Ragwort escaping Kew Gardens is a myth and that Ragwort in endemic throughout Europe and Asia! However, there was a Botanical Garden and an escaping Ragwort which spread along the railways and it was nearer to home than we thought – Oxford Ragwort which originally came from the slopes of Mount Etna…
Senecio chrysanthemifolius and S. aethnensis grow at low and high altitudes on the volcano respectively, and form hybrids where they meet naturally at mid altitude. It was material from this hybrid zone that was grown in the Oxford Botanic Garden by Bobart the Younger in the early 1700s. Plants that later escaped from the Garden spread across the UK via the clinker beds of railway lines and, over the next few hundred years, diverged from the hybrids and their parents sufficiently to become recognised as a separate species, S. squalidus, the Oxford ragwort https://www.obga.ox.ac.uk/oxford-ragwort
As to the poisonous qualities of ragwort, it is poisonous, though animals would have to eat a massive amount to be seriously poisoned and this is unlikely because it doesn’t taste good – however, once cut, along with the grass, the unpleasant taste goes and so animals are more likely to ingest it.. This and other interesting facts can be found in this video in defence of Ragwort and on behalf of the many creatures and their parasites who depend on Ragwort…
Weed of the Week – The Runner Up…
For trying it’s best to find a place to grow…
3.- Returning from a haircut by way of the churchyard at the back of our house, I was looking at how the lower half was cleared of gravestones (with permission of relatives) and the gravestones were arranged arround the outside or laid down as paths which opened up a great space of grass.
A charming celebration of a person’s life – they don’t write elegies like that on gravestones today…
My favourite gravestone replete with a whole orchestra of instruments – our house in the background…
A nautical gravestone…
4.- This christmas tree was planted by a near neighbour ( I know the guilty party) too close to our house and it has already been cut down once but has grown 10 feet in just the last year and is directly in line with our kitchen window…
5.- Butterflies abounded…
6.- An unusual Clematis like a clematis has been crossed with a Campanula…
7.- One of the first things I posted on TToT, was a picture of Barbara when we visited a PYO wildflower field near Helmsley so that is at least a year ago, well we went again this weekend and this time we picked some flowers, which are lasting far better than I thought they might…
8.- English Eccentricity! The pictures below are at Thirsk, on the way back from the Flower Field and these knitted offerings are to celebrate the ten year anniversary of the Thirsk Yarn Bombers. They will replace this display with poppies for Remembrance Sunday and there will be 3 or 4 different displays during any given year – incredible work!
9.- MUSIC – and today I offer you Irma Thomas It’s Raining… (In the hope that you all have enough of the stuff…)
Famously, “No man is an island” But there are those who deserve to be Exiled for a whole lifetime’s remand For their crimes against humanity Their greed, hubris, crass stupidity – Insanity may be an island But no defence for crimes so clearly planned By would be Kings in perpetuity Building a court to destroy the land Feathering the nest of their dynasty Destroying hard-won democracy No regard for how the future lands – Against such Fascism we must surely Draw the firmest red line in the sand…
1.- We managed to get out yesterday, the first time Barbara has been out for some weeks – an invitation to visit our grandson, Jake, in Sheffield. His brother, Dillon was also theer and we brought him back home to the next village.
2.- Walking down to have lunch in the nearby park, I snapped this umbelliferous weed and was taken with the large size of the flowers (they are often quite small) – no idea what it is…
3.- but “weed” of the week – once prized for “carding” wool prior to spinning, is the teazel…
Also attractive as a mass planting…
4.- A less happy plant event (a hypograt) is this Silver Birch whose leaves are 95% burnt by the recent spells of hot weather. I hope it survives because I always park in its shade at the supermarket…
5.- Grateful for Yoirkshire Tea, which comes in a beautiful box decorated with scenes from Wensleydale (where the Cheese comes from). Yorkshire Tea is made stronger, for “hard” water areas such as is much of Yorkshire…
6. – The Poetry Postcard Festival is in full swing, I have sent just over half mine, so I am on schedule, and these are the ones i have received from groups 3 & ^ amd also from the International List – since there are so few non-Americans, we are listed additionaly, separately, for anyone who wisheds for the thrill of sending a postcard poem winging its way to foreign parts…
7.- I am not allowed to show you the poems themselves that I received, however, I can show you one of mine since I figure it will have arrived by now… This is near Kettlewell in the next Dale south of Wensleydale!
8.- It has not been too hot…
9.- Most of the pot plants in our garden have survived the heat and the wind -I am keeping an eye on the Wisteria though…
Ten Things of Thankful and all you good folks who sail in it…
One day I saw that the hypothetical mortality I had considered since teenage years, was now a sure thing and sooner rather than later…
A comparatively isolated childhood had given me time to consider many things that never occur to some people until they do…
Is sex before marriage a club to which members recruit others to assure themselves of their righteousness
Is there any point arguing with people who believe in irrational things like God or the supremacy of the British
One day I saw that the struggles of Feminism had largely failed let alone broken the glass ceiling and temporary wins are being rolled back…
One day I saw that World Wars had not ended all wars but only driven the game into smaller battlefields fought by proxies
Even the MADness of Nuclear Deterrence and the sanity of Non-Proliferation were undermined by countries that possess without confessing
And other countries elected demented monsters to have their finger on the button or to threaten to use the unthinkable or assert that tactical nukes would not count…
One day I saw the world was sunburnt because politicians count on being gone before the bill for sun caused cancer becomes due against their grandchildren
That the world ending less with a bang more with a whimper due to overpopulation was the least of Gaia’s problems which no amount of Attenborough will fix
One day I saw that truth was no longer binary and has, in any case, been smeared until most people don’t know what to believe and it seems pointless to care or have cared
One day I saw that another generation would have to take up the fight with new weapons like fact-checking or digital abstinence, with
keenly honed humour targeted at would be kings, and activism that won’t lie down and be quiet and disdain for status symbols
One day I saw that post-war boomer goals were the exception and not the rule and that the next world war needs to be a war for the world
And then one day I saw that I could relax a little, offer insight when asked, without leading the charge and just enjoy the day that’s in it…
Over at dVerse Poets Pub, Grace in OpenLinkNight, invites us to post a poem of our choice and this one was written for my local Keighley Library Poetry Group (the prompt was the title)and since I have now read it there, I feel like it deserves a bit more circulation…
Henri Rousseau, The Waterfall (1910), oil on canvas
When the white men came Left their priest here with his tales of Jesus and original sin we of course recognised the Garden of Eden For is not the place we live in the very same
If we want to talk to God we go to the waterfall We know our God is everywhere In plants, and beasts, and soil – the rain that feeds the river But it is here that we do truly hear her call
God waters the grass we bend to make our huts Where even now the priest leads evening prayers But I prefer our God’s song –I do not care For wearing clothes, or to hear his stories -of which he has lots
Just like the snake, the priest would give us knowledge Of our nakedness, our nature as sinners But I know we still live in the garden, where we can pluck dinner From the very trees, or, grateful, take in the life of brother deer
So whilst my kin listen to the priest’s lies I slip away to the never-ceasing waterfall Whose plashy tones are our God’s call Endlessly flowing ‘neath Her created skies…
Over at dVerse Poets Pub, Melissa Lemay in Poetics, invites us to respond to the paintings of Henri Rousseau. Melissa was in part, inspired by a poetic exchange between myself and Merril about Rousseau on her site Collaborature which you can read here.
1.- We have had some rain after days of strong sun or strong wind – which equally dry out the garden – even more critical when everything is in containers…
2.- The Stargazers are all open bar one and it is an annual marvel – especially for a flower that we more often see as a cut flower…
3.- I continue to be fascinated by this last Allium – by its slow development and by its morphology – it has now developed more pronounced florets on the underside whilst the to looks much the same as two weeks ago…
Two weeks ago
4.- I have, today, completed 32 out of 62 Poetry Postcards – the rest to be completed by the end of August…
I cannot show you the poem that was on the back of this card yet, but it was about the fact that all the posters on the many student walls, of Che Guevara, show him looking very serious as befits a revolutionary – so this smiling picture would not, I think, make the grade…
5. I am in the middle of another Speculative Poetry Mini-book and it is taking some work for such a tiny thing – watch this space…
6.- I talked to my Writing Critique partner yesterday – he and his wife have arrived in Eureka California for a few months before moving to L.A. for a few years from their home in Minnesota. Their cabin in the woods, runs in the Redwoods, sound divine, with deer at the window and other wildlife. The other evening, whilst watching a police drama on TV, the characters were smoking marijuana and suddenly they could distinctly smell skunk. At first they thought someone was smoking whilst passing nearby, but on opening the front door, they found three skunks gambolling outside lol…
7.- Barbara is no better but no worse…
8.- When I speak to my sister in Nova Scotia, every other week, she likes to hear me read one of my poems, so I typed up this one, and since it won’t appear anywhere else on the blog in the foreseeable future, i thought you might enjoy it… It was written in my Writing Group (on holiday break at present) and the prompt was to include a line from a favourite song…
Cause the Trees Don’t Need To Know
Trees, it turns out are no slouches when it comes to communicating co-opting networks of fungi intertwined with their subterranean roots to talk to their fellows “Salmon season is nearly upon us Gaia bless those little bears for dragging their food deep into the woods.” “Yes, bless them indeed they don’t even know what they do for us trees!” “I’m being attacked by those damned Leafcutter ants—anybody got anything bitter to make my leaves unpalatable to the little blighters – most obliged, dear neighbours.” “There’s a sapling here who’s struggling – let’s feed him up a little so he can make it till one of us old guys pegs it, and he gets his shot at the light…” Slow, thoughtful communications as befits elder statesman of the forest—unknowable, ineffable but now the threats come too thick, too fast drought, unseasonal snow, floods and forest fires there is little we can do now too late to intervene so let us whisper these perils quietly when we walk in the woods ‘Cause the trees don’t need to know…
My love is at sea now, quite lost in the blue A blue funk has claimed her, she’s quite lost to me No message of love works, they do not get through My love is unmoored now, completely at sea
No pills or bright potions Can bring her to land Albatross on the ocean We don’t understand
My love is at sea now, amidst darkest waves The darkness crept up and it turned down her flame Just bring back my loved one, it’s all that I crave The mind is a mystery, that merits no blame
No pills or bright potions Can bring her to land Albatross on the ocean We don’t understand
My love is at sea now, please return her at last I fire up the lighthouse to guide her way home The dark storm that took her, is now in the past There’s still life worth living, if back here she’d come
My love is at sea now Please return her at last And pray let her see how Depression can pass
These I have loved songs from The Sound of Music in glorious surround-sound kitsch, High on a Rocky Ledge, which is a more quirky song about Edelweiss from Moondog, the Viking of Sixth Avenue
The gravelly voice of late period Billie Holiday – Strange Fruit gut-wrenchingly poignant but you are commanded to listen much as broken Robert Wyatt for whom Shipbuilding was written and when you realise the real subject was the Falklands War, you can never unhear its meaning
On a more cheerful note if you’ll pardon the pun almost anything by The Electric Light Orchestra but for its lugubrious intro as smooth as melted chocolate let’s slip Need Her Love onto the turntable
And whilst we’re listening to love another song whose slight delays stretch the heartstrings achingly it has to be UB40 Please Don’t Make Me Cry whilst at the opposite end of the scale (another musical pun) Deep Purple’s Hush hurries the beat and raises your heartbeat with an excitement that threatens to burst all bounds on the cusp between pop and heavy rock
Yet another driven classic unmistakable from the first notes of it’s Electric Bass accompaniment Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons The Night will also set your pulse racing… I could go on, for music comes in endless forms and variations – but these are the cream of the crop – today… All these have been my loves…
Over at dVerse Poets Pub, kim881 in Poetics, invites us to write a list poem in the shadow of ‘The Great Lover’ by Rupert Brooke, and to begin and end our poem with lines taken from the second stanza…
I can’t face myself in the mirror anymore, bloodshot eyes from too much coffee, and the twitch, the nervous tic – it’s too much – it scares me almost as much as sleep, as you…. I haven’t slept in days, well, I have tried not to, even though my body is screaming out for rest and relief, I dare not go there. I fall anyway, fitfully dozing, into the waiting nightmare and come to with a start mere moments later – for you are always there waiting for me, remorseless, relentless, implacable hunting me down, chasing me ceaselessly away from the light, away from reality, your mantra always ringing in my ears “I am the creature who smells your darkest thoughts”. Is there no help for me?
“We’ve got you now.” I hear a voice say far away. ”Nurse, start him on Olanzapine 2.5 milligram’s…”
Over at dVerse Poets Pub, merrildsmith in Prosery invites us to write Of Jaguars and the Night, prose—fiction or nonfiction— up to 144 words, not including the title and incorporating a line from “Jaguar Song” by Artur Sze.
