Midsummer's Day
Jun. 21st, 2009 10:52 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
essayelI haven't been about for a while due to feeling bleah and not wishing to whine about it when I've got friends whose problems make mine seem trivial.
But - BUT - today is Midsummers Day and so far has been pretty damn cool.
The dog slept in so I was up first and had the pleasure of waking him up, though I didn't do it by barking and scrabbling at the door. Then we went out for a walk. In honour of the day, and to save myself much description I'm providing a rudimentary visual aid, courtesy of Google Maps. I like playing with this now the definitions so much better and can indulge my curiosity as to what's going on behind the big walls round some of the posher houses. One thing that does shock me is the number of little swimming pools in gardens there are. This is Wales! How many weeks of the year could you use them? The rest of the time you'd just be fishing out leaves and rescuing hedgehogs.
Oh, yeah, walk. From our house we go past the Hall and right along Pentre Road, up Chapel Road [the chapel was there in 1500 or so but has long since vanished] and then into Pentre Lane. It's a good walk because it's all gently uphill until the corner by Cwmgyst, then there's a steep swoop down to Pentre Road again on a narrow sunken lane that doesn't actually have a proper name other than 'that steep bit with the wall'.
There are lots to see on the way.
We were a lot later than usual so i missed the dawn chorus - that's happening around 3.30 at this time of year - but the birds were very busy. The rooks in the 4 scots pines (1 on the piccy) by the Hall have fledged and the chicks were hopping about in the branches. Naturally the local magpies were swooping in and out hoping to make one fall so the adult rooks were flapping and cawing about it. The jackdaws, half the size of the others, seem to view it as a spectator sport and were, from their excitement, making bets.
Sizz objects to birds on the grounds that they don't play fair, ie, they fly away when he tries to play with them, so trotted along with his nose in the air, keeping an eye on the noisy so and sos.
Because we were late than usual we saw other people too - the architect with his weimaraner bitch and the old lady with Peggy, her rotund yellow labrador bitch. Sizz was very pleased to see them both but, for some reason, neither lady dog was particularly pleased to see him. I suspect that his over excited bouncing is the canine equivalent of a teenaged lad shouting 'phwooaar, darlin' show us yer tits' or something. We were careful to pass by on opposite side of the road.
Along from the hall we had a look at the two 'new' houses [2]. They were built about five years ago now by an architect on crack. Could be the one with the weimaraner because he was the clown who insisted on giving us the spiral staircase in the museum, which was fine in the middle ages, but bloody silly for carrying large items up and down. Especially photocopiers. Anyhow, one of these houses looks as though it's trying to be a castle and the other is vaguely churchlike but very modern in style and made from slightly glossy brownish stone and red glossy brick. Since all the other houses around here are made fom the local stone, which is soft matte grey/green/purple and pale yellow brick, these two stick out like sore thumbs. But the hedges are growing and so are their gardens. They'll look happier once they've got some good foliage around them to soften the edges.
As a contrast, fifty yards or so along the road there's what used to be the farmhouse[3]. This should stick out even more because its stone walls are painted white but somehow doesn't. It's low and squat, built in a defensive square, with higgeldy piggledy windows that suggest that it's probably Tudor or Elizabethan. It has been fiddled with over the years, split into three separate dwellings for instance, but the ground swells up around it and it sort of nestles down, like a hare in its form. The new houses will take a while to look so at home, hopefully not 400 years, but they'll get there in the end.
Another contrast opposite the end of the road is an immense pile of Victorian gothick brick with stained glass windows and dragon gargoyles on the roof!! [4] There's nothing at all self effacing about that place.
So left and up a bit past the corner where the waterboard have dug HUGE holes [5] and left them and onto Pentre Lane. This is much more rural with hedges along each side. I like hedges and this time of year they are at their best so it can only be a matter of weeks til someone comes along with a flail and wrecks them. But for now they are filled with campion and foxgloves, bryony, bramble, wild rose[not out yet] and honeysuckle. The wild honeysuckle isn't very impressive. It's cream and pale gold and a bit tatty. The cultivated honeysuckles are much more attractive to look at. But oh the scent of it! And the bumblebees agree, tumbling around almost drunk on the nectar.
The picture doesn't really give an idea of how the ground slopes away to the bottom of the picture, how from Pentre Lane you can see for miles. Pentre means 'top of the town' which might seem odd because we're a way from the town, but Welsh settlements tended to be well strung out rather than clustered so it does make sense.
Each side of the road there are flieds that have been given over to hay[5]. All winter the sheep graze them and they lamb there as well, but now it's better weather they have been moved to higher pastures and the grass allowed to grow. Last year the crop was awful and they didn't mow until September. This year I think they might manage two mows, one for hay and maybe one later for silage. At the moment the fields are flushed with pinkish purple as the seed heads ripen, with scatters of buttercups and ox-eye daisies. It's a good year for daisies, little sunfaces turned up to the sky.
In one of the fields is a huge tree [6] where the yackle [green woodpecker] I mentioned earlier in the year lives. I saw him [or her] this morning skimming the surface of the grass and - um - yackling. That set the starlings off. There had been a flock on the ground pecking around amongst the grass stalks and they swirled up like smoke before settling again, making their clicky peevish chatter as they went to ground.
After a slow steady climb the ground levels off where Bess lives [7]. Bess is a welsh collie and Sizz loves her dearly, though she isn't allowed out. Instead she pokes her nose under the gate, black nose, white muzzle, and they Pyramus and Thisbee at each other. If she did come out he'd probably do his bouncy thing and she'd bite his ear so maybe it's just as well that they yearn through a crack. Today there was a sign on the gate: "Please do not feed Bess. She's getting terribly fat!" I know how the poor dear feels.
Opposite is the vineyard! YES we have a vineyard. South facing slope, limestone, all present and correct. They produce quite a lot and sell it locally at quite a lot for a bottle. And maybe one day if the climate changes enough it won't taste like mouse pee.
Around the corner and there's one of those places that just don't make sense. There's the usual pattern of farm - square of buildings around a yard - where one side has been rebuilt as a very palatial one storied house with a walled garden. At the back corner of the wall is a recess with a carefully laid semicircular wall suggesting a tower at least fifteen feet in diameter. How tall it was is impossible to say since it has been capped off at about ten feet, but it just doesn't make sense in context. The inside of the curve faces the road and continuing the curve would make the circle cover the road. Most peculiar.
So down the hill, and along the right side is a high stone wall scattered with navelwort, herb robert and ferns, while to the left is a mixture of pigwire fence and bits of hedge set on ground about three feet higher than the road. There's a big house beyond the wall with specimen trees, in one of which lives the other woodpecker [6]. I didn't see or hear him, this morning, but I did hear a pair of little owls shrieking and whooping in a very camp way. To get an idea of a little owl make two loose fists and put one on top of the other, pinky to thumb, then add two enormous clawed feet, big yellow eyes and a psychotic expression and there you have it.
The slope is steep, the road is narrow and people often power up it to get to the car park on the lower slopes of the Sugar Loaf. This is the tallest of the local mountains [hillocks to those of you who live in the Rockies] and a popular place for walking. Because the cars are coming up at speed pedestrains and dogs have to be prepared to either sprint along to the next passing place or hurl themselves into the hedge. Since I am no longer athletic I put on a shameless limp as I hurry to the passing place and give them an apologetic smile as they pass. People will forgive a limp, they won't forgive being made to wait for pain that isn't obvious.
Sizz thinks it's huge fun and tries to jump up and kiss the drivers as they pass. But then Sizz is a lovely idiot.
At the bottom of the road is a large area of parkland with trees cropped flat along the bottoms by the cattle. These are ginormous red highland cattle, the closest you can get locally to seeing an aurochs, with sweeping curving horns and hair that sweeps the grass. There were six of them, then five. Yesterday there was one and he was on his own again today. Poor sad thing. I hope the others will return soon, or that they'll get some more to keep him company.
At the bottom of the hill we turn left again into Pentre Road and walk along past the estate. These houses were built in the 60s and 70s and again the picture doesn't give you any idea of the ground levels. The area is VERY hilly and in some cases houses have been built with garages under them and the garages are level with the roofs of the houses across the road.
The hedges are quite high along there so it wasn't until I turned right along the road to home that I noticed a hot air ballon to the south, flaring gently for a bit of lift. I bet the champagne corks were popping up there! What a lovely way to celebrate Midsummer.
At the bottom of the road I turn left and left again to go up the drive to the house and noticed that some of the raspberries are red so I think that's going to be my midsummer celebration - home grown raspberries and proper vanilla ice cream and no hangover to follow!
But - BUT - today is Midsummers Day and so far has been pretty damn cool.
The dog slept in so I was up first and had the pleasure of waking him up, though I didn't do it by barking and scrabbling at the door. Then we went out for a walk. In honour of the day, and to save myself much description I'm providing a rudimentary visual aid, courtesy of Google Maps. I like playing with this now the definitions so much better and can indulge my curiosity as to what's going on behind the big walls round some of the posher houses. One thing that does shock me is the number of little swimming pools in gardens there are. This is Wales! How many weeks of the year could you use them? The rest of the time you'd just be fishing out leaves and rescuing hedgehogs.
Oh, yeah, walk. From our house we go past the Hall and right along Pentre Road, up Chapel Road [the chapel was there in 1500 or so but has long since vanished] and then into Pentre Lane. It's a good walk because it's all gently uphill until the corner by Cwmgyst, then there's a steep swoop down to Pentre Road again on a narrow sunken lane that doesn't actually have a proper name other than 'that steep bit with the wall'.
There are lots to see on the way.
We were a lot later than usual so i missed the dawn chorus - that's happening around 3.30 at this time of year - but the birds were very busy. The rooks in the 4 scots pines (1 on the piccy) by the Hall have fledged and the chicks were hopping about in the branches. Naturally the local magpies were swooping in and out hoping to make one fall so the adult rooks were flapping and cawing about it. The jackdaws, half the size of the others, seem to view it as a spectator sport and were, from their excitement, making bets.
Sizz objects to birds on the grounds that they don't play fair, ie, they fly away when he tries to play with them, so trotted along with his nose in the air, keeping an eye on the noisy so and sos.
Because we were late than usual we saw other people too - the architect with his weimaraner bitch and the old lady with Peggy, her rotund yellow labrador bitch. Sizz was very pleased to see them both but, for some reason, neither lady dog was particularly pleased to see him. I suspect that his over excited bouncing is the canine equivalent of a teenaged lad shouting 'phwooaar, darlin' show us yer tits' or something. We were careful to pass by on opposite side of the road.
Along from the hall we had a look at the two 'new' houses [2]. They were built about five years ago now by an architect on crack. Could be the one with the weimaraner because he was the clown who insisted on giving us the spiral staircase in the museum, which was fine in the middle ages, but bloody silly for carrying large items up and down. Especially photocopiers. Anyhow, one of these houses looks as though it's trying to be a castle and the other is vaguely churchlike but very modern in style and made from slightly glossy brownish stone and red glossy brick. Since all the other houses around here are made fom the local stone, which is soft matte grey/green/purple and pale yellow brick, these two stick out like sore thumbs. But the hedges are growing and so are their gardens. They'll look happier once they've got some good foliage around them to soften the edges.
As a contrast, fifty yards or so along the road there's what used to be the farmhouse[3]. This should stick out even more because its stone walls are painted white but somehow doesn't. It's low and squat, built in a defensive square, with higgeldy piggledy windows that suggest that it's probably Tudor or Elizabethan. It has been fiddled with over the years, split into three separate dwellings for instance, but the ground swells up around it and it sort of nestles down, like a hare in its form. The new houses will take a while to look so at home, hopefully not 400 years, but they'll get there in the end.
Another contrast opposite the end of the road is an immense pile of Victorian gothick brick with stained glass windows and dragon gargoyles on the roof!! [4] There's nothing at all self effacing about that place.
So left and up a bit past the corner where the waterboard have dug HUGE holes [5] and left them and onto Pentre Lane. This is much more rural with hedges along each side. I like hedges and this time of year they are at their best so it can only be a matter of weeks til someone comes along with a flail and wrecks them. But for now they are filled with campion and foxgloves, bryony, bramble, wild rose[not out yet] and honeysuckle. The wild honeysuckle isn't very impressive. It's cream and pale gold and a bit tatty. The cultivated honeysuckles are much more attractive to look at. But oh the scent of it! And the bumblebees agree, tumbling around almost drunk on the nectar.
The picture doesn't really give an idea of how the ground slopes away to the bottom of the picture, how from Pentre Lane you can see for miles. Pentre means 'top of the town' which might seem odd because we're a way from the town, but Welsh settlements tended to be well strung out rather than clustered so it does make sense.
Each side of the road there are flieds that have been given over to hay[5]. All winter the sheep graze them and they lamb there as well, but now it's better weather they have been moved to higher pastures and the grass allowed to grow. Last year the crop was awful and they didn't mow until September. This year I think they might manage two mows, one for hay and maybe one later for silage. At the moment the fields are flushed with pinkish purple as the seed heads ripen, with scatters of buttercups and ox-eye daisies. It's a good year for daisies, little sunfaces turned up to the sky.
In one of the fields is a huge tree [6] where the yackle [green woodpecker] I mentioned earlier in the year lives. I saw him [or her] this morning skimming the surface of the grass and - um - yackling. That set the starlings off. There had been a flock on the ground pecking around amongst the grass stalks and they swirled up like smoke before settling again, making their clicky peevish chatter as they went to ground.
After a slow steady climb the ground levels off where Bess lives [7]. Bess is a welsh collie and Sizz loves her dearly, though she isn't allowed out. Instead she pokes her nose under the gate, black nose, white muzzle, and they Pyramus and Thisbee at each other. If she did come out he'd probably do his bouncy thing and she'd bite his ear so maybe it's just as well that they yearn through a crack. Today there was a sign on the gate: "Please do not feed Bess. She's getting terribly fat!" I know how the poor dear feels.
Opposite is the vineyard! YES we have a vineyard. South facing slope, limestone, all present and correct. They produce quite a lot and sell it locally at quite a lot for a bottle. And maybe one day if the climate changes enough it won't taste like mouse pee.
Around the corner and there's one of those places that just don't make sense. There's the usual pattern of farm - square of buildings around a yard - where one side has been rebuilt as a very palatial one storied house with a walled garden. At the back corner of the wall is a recess with a carefully laid semicircular wall suggesting a tower at least fifteen feet in diameter. How tall it was is impossible to say since it has been capped off at about ten feet, but it just doesn't make sense in context. The inside of the curve faces the road and continuing the curve would make the circle cover the road. Most peculiar.
So down the hill, and along the right side is a high stone wall scattered with navelwort, herb robert and ferns, while to the left is a mixture of pigwire fence and bits of hedge set on ground about three feet higher than the road. There's a big house beyond the wall with specimen trees, in one of which lives the other woodpecker [6]. I didn't see or hear him, this morning, but I did hear a pair of little owls shrieking and whooping in a very camp way. To get an idea of a little owl make two loose fists and put one on top of the other, pinky to thumb, then add two enormous clawed feet, big yellow eyes and a psychotic expression and there you have it.
The slope is steep, the road is narrow and people often power up it to get to the car park on the lower slopes of the Sugar Loaf. This is the tallest of the local mountains [hillocks to those of you who live in the Rockies] and a popular place for walking. Because the cars are coming up at speed pedestrains and dogs have to be prepared to either sprint along to the next passing place or hurl themselves into the hedge. Since I am no longer athletic I put on a shameless limp as I hurry to the passing place and give them an apologetic smile as they pass. People will forgive a limp, they won't forgive being made to wait for pain that isn't obvious.
Sizz thinks it's huge fun and tries to jump up and kiss the drivers as they pass. But then Sizz is a lovely idiot.
At the bottom of the road is a large area of parkland with trees cropped flat along the bottoms by the cattle. These are ginormous red highland cattle, the closest you can get locally to seeing an aurochs, with sweeping curving horns and hair that sweeps the grass. There were six of them, then five. Yesterday there was one and he was on his own again today. Poor sad thing. I hope the others will return soon, or that they'll get some more to keep him company.
At the bottom of the hill we turn left again into Pentre Road and walk along past the estate. These houses were built in the 60s and 70s and again the picture doesn't give you any idea of the ground levels. The area is VERY hilly and in some cases houses have been built with garages under them and the garages are level with the roofs of the houses across the road.
The hedges are quite high along there so it wasn't until I turned right along the road to home that I noticed a hot air ballon to the south, flaring gently for a bit of lift. I bet the champagne corks were popping up there! What a lovely way to celebrate Midsummer.
At the bottom of the road I turn left and left again to go up the drive to the house and noticed that some of the raspberries are red so I think that's going to be my midsummer celebration - home grown raspberries and proper vanilla ice cream and no hangover to follow!
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Date: 2009-06-21 01:10 pm (UTC)