Shadowy Trees

Inverleith Park, Edinburgh, this morning

Loch Feochan reflections

two reflections from Loch Feochan, near Oban, taken last October.

for Weekend Reflections

Waiting for Zebras by Nancy Somerville

I wrote the other day how much I had enjoyed hearing Nancy Somerville read at the Shore Poets event on Sunday. I bought a copy of her collection Waiting for Zebras that day and thoroughly enjoyed reading it this week. The poems cover a variety of topics, music and dancing; war and the opening of the Scottish Parliament in 1999. However for me the highlights are the poems that deal with nature. We have birds in the city, gulls and blackbirds and, my favourite birds, swifts, I'm glad to find I'm not the only poet whose:

......Summers
are filled with their presence
the wheeling cries
diving through tenement canyons
the boomerang shapes
rising to invisibility.

(from The Last Swift)

There are also poems of the Scottish islands, including Corncrake on Iona which captures wonderfully and humourously the search for this most elusive of birds. Humour also in Sheep:

No free thinkers here.
We go with the flock,
never stick our scrag ends out,
always do what's expected of us.

Bunny bloggers will be happy to find here the poem Rabbits in Glen Cova:

We point and point
in all directions
counting and losing count
until the last white tail
bobs underground.


Waiting for Zebras by Nancy Somerville, published by Red Squirrel Press, £6.99.

Green Music

I don't blog about music very often, but anyone who knows me over at Myspace knows that I love music!

Since joining Myspace I've found it much easier to keep in touch with whats happening in the local music scene, just as I have strangely not found it to help me to keep up to date with my favourite artists from abroad. As I've been going out more regularly to small venues, listening to local bands I realise that there's something environmentally friendly about this. The local band is likely to travel a relatively short distance in a minibus rather than halfway across the world in a private jet or even in a regular plane. Small venues can't afford energy intensive lighting and special effects. Many small venues in Edinburgh serve a selection of local brewed real ales rather than just imported alcoholic drinks.

Going out to see music means you can switch off your heating and music centre at home and share the venue's heating and sound system. It's even better if you walk to the venue or get the bus.

I then got to thinking about other aspects of the music business, these thoughts come straight from the top of my music collection, I'm sure there will be many more artists out there doing similar things:

Some bands (such as Sigur Ros and Indigo Girls) have packaged CDs entirely without plastic or have greatly reduced the amount of plastic in their packaging

Some bands (such as Indigo Girls and Bruce Coburn) sing environmentally themes songs

Some bands (such as Sigur Ros and Green Day) are involved in environmental campaigning.


for Think Green Thursdays

haiku

harvest moon -
the black cat runs across
the cobbled path


Kat also posted a cat haiku today on her new blog, Kigo of the Kat. You can read her haiku here.

Honest Scrap Award

I was delighted to receive the Honest Scrap Award from Oh. I now have to share ten things you don't know about me. I thought I would keep it to the scrap theme and some of these you probably know, so here we go, but only six:

I love using cuttings from magazines in collage but I don't make scrapbooks

I sometimes repair old clothes with scraps of contrasting fabric

I love using scraps of fabric in crafts but I've never made a quilt

I use scrap paper for making notes - even in business meetings!

I make myself a diary/journal every year from scrap paper and card

I make greetings cards and bookmarks out of scraps

I'm to pass this on to ten other bloggers, again I'm keeping this on topic, plus as i only share six facts here are six bloggers who know what to do with scraps:

Ruby Re-usable at Olympia Dumpster Divers

Deb G at bee creative

Crafting a Green World

Angela Recada

Weaver of Grass for her 'bundle'

and a special mention to Diana at Qi Papers for her use of scrap cardboard in making hay tubes, an idea that is rapidly catching on across the bunny blogosphere.

And finally, if you're looking for ideas for environmentally friendly art, you might enjoy Inspire Me Thursday's Blog Action Day post - http://www.inspiremethursday.com/2009/10/blog-action-day-40-creative-ways-to-make-art-without-destroying-the-planet/

Autumnal Weekend

Yesterday we wandered along the Braid Burn, which runs through Edinburgh. The part we walked along was yellow with autumnal trees, robins hopping around and the higher branches full of jackdaws.

This evening I was at the Shore Poets, a regular evening of poetry and music that happens at The Lot in Edinburgh. The highlight was definitely Nancy Somerville who read a few autumnal poems; a selection of poems from her collection Waiting for Zebras (published by Red Squirrel Press) and a very sobering poem about a struggling albatross colony in New Zealand. I bought a copy of her book and look forward to reviewing it here within the next few weeks.