Seasons Greetings!

Happy Christmas to those who celebrate it and Season's Greetings to all!

I won't be posting (much) between now and the New Year, but have a wonderful festive season and see you all in 2010!

The environment in contemporary literature

Having recently read Don De Lillo's Underworld and Bill Duncan's The Smiling School for Calvinists I've been thinking about how the environment features in contemporary fiction. Neither of these books really focuses on the environment as such but both make powerful environmental statements nonetheless. Underworld is a big novel that disects the 20th Century USA using two defining elements - baseball and waste disposal. Characters are seen sorting out their trash into the different materials that can be recycled, ships saile around the world looking for a harbour where they can dump their illegal cargoes of waste and an architect builds beautiful buildings from waste materials.

The Smiling School for Calvinists is an entertaining look at life in the poorer parts of Dundee in Scotland, made up of short stories and snippets, mostly written in a form of Scots (for more about the language used in the book, see this post on my other blog Over Forty Shades). It's mostly a very urban book, but from time to time a character will take time out to go for a walk or to sit on the roof of the multi-storey block of flats to watch the geese fly by.

Both these books show writers who are in touch with the environment and environmental issues, but who are not willing to focus entirely on the environment. I wonder though do people who are not engaged with environmental issues notice these aspects to the books they read? What do you think of the way nature and environmental issues are portrayed in the novels and short stories you read?

blizzard -
the creak of new snow
under my shoes.

Winter Wonderland

I walked my usual Monday route along the Water of Leith today. I've never before done the walk in ankle deep snow! It was very beautiful and peaceful and the sky changed from grey to white (and snowing!) to wonderful soft blues with gentle clouds. When I stopped to take this second photo I was surrounded by birds, though I don't know if you can see them in the photo. Long tailed tits bouncing in the branches with great tits and blue tits, blackbirds feeding on the berries, a wren rushing from one snowy patch of grass to another and a treecreeper foraging in the lower part of a tree trunk. Not far from here there were three bullfinches feeding in the branches (the male's red chest looking particularly bright against the white branches (and several redwings. In the river a heron was wading while a male goosander dived for food.

From beer bottle to candlestick

This is an idea I first saw over at Creatively Green, where they repurposed their beer bottles far more beautifully than I have mine! Creatively Green have been sharing loads of inspiring eco-friendly gift and decoration ideas over the holiday season! My bottle is a real ale bottle, with a pattern in the glass of the neck. I've just covered the label area with some reused gift-wrap and added some reused gift ribbon around the neck. We'll use it as a candle stick.....

Landscape Art in the Snow

We walked along part of the Water of Leith today, up to Stockbridge. We stopped at the Gallery of Modern Art for a warm drink. The lawn at the front of the building was landscaped to a design by Charles Jencks to create Landform Ueda. This is a lovely piece of landscape art that I like more every time I see it. It looked particularly fine this morning with the snow and winter sun casting subtle shadows over it. If you click on the photo you will see the two crows that seem to be exploring the artwork.

Black headed gulls at Moses Gate

These are black headed gulls in winter plumage (they only have black (or rather brown) heads in summer. Click on the photo to see more detail. The photo was taken when my parents and I visited Moses Gate Country Park, just outside Bolton, last weekend. Funnily enough, this was the only area of water that was frozen, the other ponds were all open water.

for Weekend Reflections.