A restrained palette

Yes, yes, I know we’ve already done the obligatory oh-look-it’s-autumn post, but seriously, when I said September was my favourite month? I lied. October has totally blown September into a cocked hat this year.

(Um, WTF does ‘blown into a cocked hat’ actually mean? My mum says it all the time.  But where did it come from? Answers on a postcard please.)

English hedgerows

Where was I? October. The month for trees. Heaven for a tree-hugging hippy chick, and pretty good too for Bad Dogs who love rolling, digging and shuffling in fallen leaves.

Here in England, we don’t go so much for the brash American-style fiery reds and oranges, but instead opt for a distinguished palette of endlessly varied golds, yellows, browns, beiges and warm muted plums.  Oaks in yellow ochre, golden poplars, horse chestnuts in raw sienna, copper tinted beeches and birch in palest yellow. Warm and rich and comforting in the mist or vibrant and glowing in the sunlight against a blue, blue autumn sky.

An artist hippy chick nature loving girl could orgasm on this much beauty. Just sayin’.

Full of thorny beauty

And hedgerows! Rural England, at least the part where I live, is dominated by fields bounded by miles and miles of hedgerows, most no longer strictly maintained but growing wild and tangled and full of thorny beauty.

There are rich red haws on the may – that’s the “darling buds of may” Shakespeare wrote about – which we call hawthorn, and deep violet sloes decorated with a dusty mauve bloom on the blackthorn. Shiny red hips on wild dog roses, black berries on the dogwoods, and all their leaves turning golden, plum and dusty rose brown against the tangle of thorny stems.

Rust red dock flower spike

Even the long-dry flower spikes of docks become a rich rusty value counterpoint to the beige of they dying field grasses and decaying nettle beds.

A golden rain of leaves

I live near Easton Neston, and we often walk along the old stone wall that bounds the estate, next to the mature mixed woodland inside. This morning we walked through a golden rain of leaves from six large poplars outside one of the gatehouses; the ground was completely carpeted with them. Also along that wall are what I call the Lothlórien ash trees, because they turn an incredible light gold that almost seems to glow from within, and the leaves flutter gently to the ground as they fall. There couldn’t be a better model for a mellyrn tree.

A Lothlorien ash

There are often times I wish I were back in Vancouver where I grew up – but autumn isn’t one of them. Because I love autumn in England’s countryside. I love the gentle warmth of the sun and the cool crispness of the air, the misty damp smell of leaf mould and woodsmoke, that first whiff of a coal fire when the first frosts arrive.

My roses are still blooming

And I don’t know anywhere else I can enjoy the glorious colours of the winding down of the wheel of the year, yet still have roses blooming at Halloween.

Autumn came early this year.

The horse chestnuts turned first, right at the beginning of September, no doubt partly from drought. Since the torrential rain in August we haven’t had much at all here in central England. That might’ve been good if we’d had warm sunny days instead, but no; for the most part, it’s been grey and cool and dull.

Then last week I noticed the sycamores turning rusty, and now the birches are gold tinted as well. Yesterday, I saw a Virginia creeper in its full flaming red-purple glory, and at last over the weekend we had some of the September weather I love so much – clear blue sky, freshness in the air, and a warm sun. Glorious days for the final weekend of our Open Studio, with people sitting in the garden enjoying their tea and cake (thanks, Mum!), the last hurrah of summer surrounding them.

This is my favourite time of year. I pay close attention to all the seasons as they pass, and to the plants and animals that adapt to them. Walking the Two Bad Dogs every day gives me the opportunity to watch the hedgerows as they change, to see the first beautifully constructed webs of spider season stretch across incredible distances, become spangled with dew as the mornings become misty, and finally shred and blow away as their makers move to dark dens for winter – or perish, picked off by clever blackbirds.

Leaves turn, berries ripen, acorns fall. It was fallen oak leaves that inspired Hamadryad: Oak. I picked some up on a walk and realised I’d never before noticed how an oak leaf changes colour – from the outside edges in. It starts with just a fine golden edge on a green leaf, then the gold moves inwards until the leaf is all golden with bright green veins, so green it’s hard to believe it’s real. Finally the gold leaf turns ochre and the veins turn yellow and the leaf dries brittle and fragile.

English oak & ivy research pages

(I’m terrible for bringing things home – conkers, leaves, feathers, sprigs of wildflowers, seashells – sometimes to identify, sometimes just because I love them. And yes, I do have a clutter problem.)

So when the idea for a hamadryad piece began to form, I knew she would be the nymph of an English Oak – Quercus robur (or pedunculata). And I knew it would be autumn for my hamadryad, the end of summer when her hair turns the ochre of her tree’s leaves and the glossy brown of its acorns, as she gets ready to withdraw into her tree and sleep soundly over winter, dreaming of the fresh green shoots of spring.

Because that’s part of what I love, in my life and my work, – the progression of the seasons, the wheel of the year, turning from one to the next, inevitably, endlessly and beautifully. There is something to celebrate in each season; each turn of the wheel to a new quadrant brings new wonders like the spiders of September to fascinate and inspire.

(And I am not a fan of spiders in general, so if even I can find something to love about spider season, there’s something there for all of us. Isn’t there?)

Dunno about you, but I’m enormously enjoying the saucy romp that is BBC 2′s Desperate Romantics. It may be a highly compressed and questionably accurate portrayal of events, but I declare, sir, it’s damn good fun. If you’ve missed it, all the episodes are still available on BBC iPlayer, and of course we still have one to go with the inevitably tragic conclusion of poor Lizzie Siddal‘s story.

(Alas, poor American cousins, I don’t believe you lot are permitted to watch iPlayer. Not because you’re colonials, but you see, it is part of that heinous institution that is second only to our socialised healthcare in devilry and sinful liberality – our socialised telly. Who knows where it might lead if we let you see it. Death panels for people who refuse to watch America’s Got Talent? It cannot be allowed.)

But even without experiencing the rather yummy Aidan Turner as an exuberant Dante Gabriel Rossetti, I’m guessing you know at least something about the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, that clique of young painters who challenged the painting status quo in the mid-19th century and presaged not only symbolist painting but also the Arts and Crafts movement. I’m sure you know, or at least recognise, many of their most famous works, like William Holman Hunt‘s The Awakening Conscience or Rossetti’s Proserpine. But it may be that like me, you’ve only ever seen their works in the pages of a book.

I was exceedingly gratified therefore to find out today that the Tate Gallery has had the six paintings that feature in the series digitised and they are now available online at the BBC’s website. John Everett Millais‘s Christ in the House of his Parents, Ophelia and The Order of Release, Hunt’s The Scapegoat and Rossetti’s Bocca Baciata and Beata Beatrix can all be seen in great, zoomable (yes, I made that word up) detail with commentary by the Tate’s own Pre-Raphaelite specialist. And when I say detail, I mean detail – right down to the brushstrokes delineating hair and the cracks in the paint surface.

I have no excuse for not having seen these paintings in the flesh; it’s only a couple of hours to London (even if I do loathe the place with a passion). But even if you’re not so close, you can now take fresh look at these familiar images through the marvel of modern electrickery. I commend it most highly to your kind attention.

I am, as ever, sincerely yours,