Blackberries

by Total WP Support Inc.. Posted on September 14, 2012

14 Sep

Blackberry picking is as much a part of Irish childhood as the 99 ice cream cone, watching Saturday morning cartoons and rice krispie buns. I think smeara dubha was one of the first Irish words we learnt at school and there was usually a story in the first term or an essay to be written on ‘Ag Piocadh Smeara Dubha’.

These photos were taken on a road near our home where my own girls go to collect the berries with the same excitement and pleasure that I experienced at their age. They trawl the roads and hedgerows and return with sticky purple-tinted hands, brambly clothes and plastic buckets filled to the brim. G likes to make berry smoothies with vanilla ice cream ( sieved to get the bits out ) and my favourite ( when the mood takes me ) is apple and berry sweet pastry tart served with piping hot custard. Yum.

Here’s some more pictures – this one below is a more typical bunch with it’s assortment of blacks, reds and greens and some empty stalks where the ripe ones have been nabbed.

This next cluster is almost ready to bloom, each berry a strange parcel of swelling crimson lobes..

I like this next photo because it includes the berries that have just started to turn. Close up, the creeping mould looks more like sprinkled sugar than decay. Theres something lovely about it as an image of the cycle of nature, from earth to fruit and back to earth again in just a few weeks. A reminder to enjoy them while we can.

Shifting Seasons

by Total WP Support Inc.. Posted on August 21, 2012

21 Aug

I went out to the Bog Road between Clifden and Letterfrack to take some photographs this week. It was a clear evening and I expected to be able to see the Twelve Bens Mountain range beyond the bog and heathers but I found something else instead – the landscape seemed to shimmer, suspended between Summer and Autumn in the evening light. The heathers still abound in gorgeous clumps of pink but the grasses are turning from green to a tawny orange colour. In a couple of weeks they will look like they are on fire in spite of the lower temperatures.

Here are some more pictures below. It was windy so the images are a little blurred but I think this captures the atmosphere.

It may sound strange but I like this next one because the cut bog reminds me of a wound. The grasses are like a layer of skin over the marrow and bones of the black bog.

$Boglands between Letterfrack and Clifden$

I stood on a mound to take this one – the neatly stacked turf dries in the evening breeze and is almost ready to take in. The changing colour of the grasses is palpable, I love it’s coppery glow.

If you click on the image, you will get a better sense of it. I am really looking forward to using these images and getting back to some painting soon.

Late Summer Hedgerows II

by Total WP Support Inc.. Posted on August 15, 2012

15 Aug

We’ve had a bout of hot weather since the last time I wrote about the hedgerows about a week ago. Since then the roadside plants have burst into bloom and the Montbretia ( above ) and Fuchsia are aflame with blossoms. I took these photos on a walk near our home.

Here’s some more pictures of the Fuchsia. This plant is part and parcel of Connemara and it is in its full glory at the moment, slender branches weighed down with dangling blossoms.

Close up the blossoms remind me of tiny dancers in red and purple skirts, like a ragtag chorus line of marionettes..

There’s a headiness in the air that’s hard to beat. It’s a combination of good evening light, balmy temperatures and real or imagined scents – I know these flowers don’t have a strong scent but there’s an atmosphere of sweetness a bit like the conjured up whiff of an unopened bottle of wine..

I stop to take a few more pictures along the way. I think the next one is Hogweed ( correct me if I’m wrong ) which seems unfair for such a graceful plant. I love its spray of seed like flowers, it’s own little bouquet.

The next plant I encounter is the wild honeysuckle. It’s gorgeous fragrance alerts me to it’s presence before I spot it high in the hedge.

Here’s a close up. It’s such an exotic looking flower for this place, I am humbled by its presence. Right now there is no place finer or sweeter than the Connemara hedgerows.

Late Summer Hedgerows

by Total WP Support Inc.. Posted on August 8, 2012

08 Aug

The roadside is brightened with mounds of purple and yellow colour at the moment – the long flowering gorse ( remember when I took some photos of the first Spring gorse earlier this year? ) and the purple heather.

The other colour that is starting to appear is the orange of the Montbretia plant. It has been visible until now as bright green clumps along the roadside.

The sight of the first few blooms makes me a tiny bit sad because it signals the beginning of the end of the Summer (what Summer I hear you say?) In a couple of weeks, these grassy banks will be bursting with swooping orange flowers. Here’s some more pictures.

This next close up makes me think of Triffids…