Bird Stamps

This stamp is made from a drawing I did of a little bird like the ones I often see from the windows of the house hopping about on the plantpots and walls around the garden.

I used it on my Christmas and New Year cards, each one utterly unique, coloured in watercolour.


They looked very apt in festive colours; gold and claret coloured wings, ivy-green undersides and a bright red flick for the tail.

In Detail: The Drawing Room

The dark winter nights drawing in have meant I haven't been able to crack on with photographing everything as I would have wanted so progress has been slow.

However, I thought I would start recording some of the beautiful details of the house anyway starting with the Drawing Room.

This room is either lit by the bright streaming sun of a winter morning or warmed by lamp or firelight in the evenings so the ambient halflight in these photos evokes all it needs to, shining off the faces of the ladies in the prints and the gilt detailing of their frames.

Remember, remember the fifth of November.

Gunpowder, Treason and Plot.

I see no reason why Gunpowder Treason

Should ever be forgot.

As I mentionned in an earlier post about 'The Orchard', as my birthday falls in Mid-November we usually celebrate with a traditional bonfire party; fireworks, towering inferno, sparklers, hot dogs: the lot. When I was a child the heatproof foam cups that warmed our hands held creamy tomoto soup but in recent years hot, spicy cider has been added to the menu, and has achieved cult status as 'GROG', our Winter drink (and wet festival) favourite as a result. Here's the recipe we've used in recent years.

In other places the garden persists in colour - the rose still going strong amid gales and downpours, now redundant terracotta pots resting until next Spring and the Holly, bright and green, and looking forward to it's time entwined with ivy above the big mirror in the Dining Room looking down on turkey and sprouts and mahogany shining in the candlelight. For now it hangs in glossy green bunches and little gatherings of bold, crimson berries.

Autumn continues here with long Sunday afternoon walks in the woods and the clocks going back. At least I am able to see some of the day now when I rise at 6.30 and the dawn is beginning to break. My evenings are now just long and dark but the living room at home is cosy and welcoming as usual.

The trees are now showing their bare boughs as their summer coverings are blown to the ground in blustery gales or shimming october breezes in beautiful swathes of russet, gold and crimson, crunching and mulching underfoot.

The Mallow is still going; its pink heads alert to the onset of Winter, they begin to whither slightly in the chill but still shine on against the deep, bright blue skies and warm, toasted colours of Autumn.

The Vine: 2009

What was left of the late Summer sun has already withered the poor grapes into little shrivelled clusters. Last Sunday at dusk I took this picture just before leaping into the pool. Although there were very chilly temperatures in the open air the pool still has a vestage of warmth left and the steam rising off the surface into the dusky, autumn air was irresistable, like a scene from Iceland or open air baths in Budapest. I waded into the comparative warmth, the air all around me thick with autumnal sights and smells; bonfire smoke on an earthy breeze, the nip nip of evening bird calls in hedgerows.

Opening my window last Sunday morning Autumn entered with a blast.

Fresh, crisp, chilly air swept into the room and along with it the tang of woodsmoke, the freshness of the last of the green, a sweet vague smell of rotting apples and the taste of a new term, birthdays and bonfire nights.

Mornings like that are my ‘lacrosse mornings’ evoking ‘Back to School’ memories and early risings on Saturdays to stand, stick in hand, in red woollen socks, pleated kilt and an insubstantial t-shirt dashing around a newly hardened, bumpy ground in recently bought football boots warming up through dashes and sprints after the little yellow ball; orange squash, doughnuts and shopping.

The garden is tinged with Autumn; the tree tops dipped in umber, the lawns and furniture glazed with a slight dusting of frost; everything sparkling slightly against a blue sky and bright sun refusing to be moved.

Remember that illustration of the Shubbery leaves?

For her 70th birthday I gave my mother a watercolour I did of our lovely cottage in the Yorkshire Dales, now sadly sold.

I wrapped it in paper I made from this illustration and another design created from drawings of flowers and shrubs I made whilst out on a local walk last year.

I just wish we had an A2 colour printer at work.