Evening Rain

A brief heavy downpour
-almost tropical-
stops
.......................................suddenly

dark clouds lift
a pale rainbow

swifts
dance across the sky

chimney pots
glow with evening

distant thunder
later becomes a storm

Gorgie City Farm - Sugar

This is Sugar, the daughter of Daisy, Gorgie City Farm's star bunny. She seems to actually be happier to pose for the camera than her mother, but apparently she can be quite bad tempered whereas Daisy is very laid back....

Colinton Dell

The riverbanks profuse with flowers, the hot pink of rosebay willow herb, the bright white of umbellifers and the various yellows of too many species to count.

The umbellifers (wild carrot and cow parsley) alive with insects, the thin vivid red of soldier beetles, the rigid black of flies that move their wings to reveal lemon yellow bodies, the tiny irridescent black beetles that gather in groups.

A strange lack of birds, explained when we hear the call of a hunting sparrowhawk.

heat haze -
two dragonflies black
against the sky.


A walk along Colinton Dell

Garden

This is the new shed and garden composting area in the backgreen, built by the Green Caretakers, who operate the Backgreen Initiative and paid for by a grant to encourage community recycling. Inside one shed is the kitchen composting facility and in the other are the garden tools. Green Caretakers are a social enterprise and charges are made to use the composting facility and to hire the tools - there are overall packages available such as a tidy backgreen service and a combined backgreen and stairwell tidying and cleaning package. However if you live in a tenement where you can't get a majority of residents to sign up to these packages, you find yourself having to pay just to use tools or to compost kitchen waste, even if you're a volunteer with the project, hmm....

Anyway, I spent part of yesterday clearing litter from the path connecting our stairwell's backgreen to the communal area. I left behind any biodegradable litter, such as wood and also anything that was being used as a home by woodlice etc. The photo below shows the path after I had cleared the brambles, nettles and overhanging branches but before I had cleared the litter. The gardens either side of the path belong to other stairs in the block and I can't do anything with those other than prune overhanging branches and remove the worst types of weeds and litter that are at the edge of the path.

The next task is obviously to do some more weeding. I'm a reluctant weeder, because I like plants too much but the path just doesn't look nice (though at least its really a path now!). I'm also going to sow seeds in some of the verges once I've weeded. I'll buy a packet of shade tolerant wildflower seeds and sow next Spring.

My favourite wildflower

garden party -

I'm told not to let

flowers distract me.

Vipers Bugloss (the wonderful blue and purple stem of flowers in the middle of the photo) has always been my favourite wildflower, even before I'd ever seen it in real life.

photo taken at the Thistle Wildlife Garden, Edinburgh

Garden

As I've mentioned previously in this blog, the backgreen garden behind our flat is part of one of the areas chosen for regeneration by the Edinburgh Backgreen Initiative. We were involved right at the beginning when the project was in its planning stages for our backgreen but then because we had difficulties getting a key for the backdoor of the stair and because a lot of workshops were on dates that clashed with other things, we weren't able to get involved. But yesterday, at last we were able to get to this month's workshop! About ten people from the surrounding tenement flats were there and we all worked on different aspects of the garden. I spent almost two hours removing brambles, nettles and obstructive branches from the pathway that leads from our stairwell to the communal area of the garden, only removing enough plants to make it into a serviceable path - nettles may be horrible stingy things (yes I did get stung!) but they're great for butterflies and there are still plenty of nettles around out there!

It was really nice to be out there on such a lovely evening. We saw loads of swifts, and one of our neighbours pointed out where one pair are nesting. Now that we've seen how the backgreen maintenance is managed, we'll be down there regularly to help keep it tidy - and to watch the swifts. Photos will follow in due course!

Also yesterday I saw a beautiful spider on a plant at Gorgie Farm, looking through photos on the internet , I realised it was a Candy Stripe spider (Enoplagnatha ovata).

Hold Hands Among the Atoms - Edwin Morgan

Edwin Morgan is for me without doubt the greatest Scottish poet. His work is consistently vivid and verbally inventive. His issue based work is powerful and moving, his love poetry tender. This is a book of poetry Morgan wrote to celebrate his 70th birthday in 1990. The poems cover a variety of issues including nature and the environment in poems such as A Fuchsia, A Waterhorse and A Defence, which is an endearing portrait of the magpie:


a batch of tumbling clockwork liquorice allsorts,
spruce, spliced, diced, learning to prance and hurtle
through evening and morning sycamores with what must be
something like happiness


My favourite poem in the collection is An Abandoned Culvert:


The daffodils sang shrill within the culvert.
Their almost acid notes amazed the darkness
culverts are happiest with.

For anyone who admires inventive poetry that fully engages with life, Edwin Morgan has to be on their reading list.