Amaryllis and Penguin

 

Amaryllis and penguin – not words that go so often together. I was given this plant for Christmas, put it in its pot, watered it, nothing happened for six weeks, then overnight there was this triffid growing several inches a day, with a multi-beaked head, and then this lovely creature, filling the February windowsill with its colour and its eight red flowers, four on each stem. A couple of leaves right at the bottom are struggling to catch up. I think the person who gave me this deserves an amaryllis card.

The Flowers of Liddesdale

 

These are a fraction of the flowers seen in over a few days staying in an old house in hill-farming country. In the arable countryside where I now live, I have not seen a fraction of this diversity. In a space of about a mile I found, without looking hard, close on a hundred species of flowers, just along the roadside. There are also merlin, deer, barn owls, hawkmoths, linnets, blue butterflies…. Up the hillsides among the stones are small flowers I have not seen elsewhere. The fields have been left to rushes once more, and many of the sheep are unfenced. The place is quite empty of people, though there are enough in the area around to keep many businesses open in the nearby village of Newcastleton. I used to live here, and was working to try and survive, illustrating books mainly, and I never appreciated the diversity of the land (I used to copy pictures of flowers out of books!) – though the barn owls were a constant spirit of the place, and to go out at night and hear the foxes barking and see the autumn moon rising enormous over the hillside is something I remember clearly. My son, when I tried to tell him the names of some flowers, said: “Don’t give me bloody nature study.” I realised that at primary school they were getting information out of books, whereas he was roaming free (accompanied by the cat) and seeing badgers, foxes, deer, the birds, close up. Going back, many years later, I see the place more clearly. I want more of the world to be more like this.

Doorway

Cold River 4

 

Cold River 3

Cold River 2

 

Cold River 1