The Philosopher's Garden

Bees

2011-09-04T10:19:00.001+01:00

The best plants that I have for bees and butterflies are Buphthalmum speciosum, teasel, buddlea, and sedum.

The Buphthalmum (shown here) flowers before the teasel and buddlea.

Teasel tends to attract only bees, and buddlea to attract only butterflies. Sedum is very useful for the end of season.

Bees on teasel...

Bee on Sedum:

Bee on Surfina:

Bee on a cowslip.

Bee on a flowering currant.

Bee on a Hellebore.

Bee on a Taraxacum.

Bee on Wallflower (Erysium Bowles Mauve)...

Now, this is a bee, landing on a honeysuckle...

Once you've taken a photo of a bee landing on a flower, somehow, nothing less will do.

This is a bee coming in to land on a foxglove.

Bee entering a purple foxglove.

I've tried photographing bees landing on a range of flowers.

I found that lupins were the easiest flowers to use.

This is a bee landing on Gaillardia:

My Garden in September

2011-09-03T07:38:00.002+01:00

A few photos from my garden for September, mainly rudbeckias, lobelias, and couple of late season lilies.

And lots of friendly bees. I've been using a new close-up lens to take some of this month's bee shots.

This shot shows a honey bee on Echinacea White Swan.

Summer is drawing to a close.

The odd splashes of yellow in this shot come from Rudbeckias, and there's some purple Verbena in the shot, plus a few roses having a weak second flush of flowers.

Bees

We'll start with the bees.

First, a couple of photos, taken with my standard camera lens.

This is a honey bee on a gold variant of Rudbeckia Cherry Brandy.

This is a honey bee working on Lobelia Russian Princess.

There's also another honey bee behind the petal at the right. You can just see him peeping at us.

This is a bumble bee, also on Russian Princess.

Three honey bees on Lobelia Cardinalis Queen Victoria.

One bee, center, is just landing, and two are the behind the petals, lower left, and at right.

This is a honey bee working on Lobelia Tania.

These Lobelias originate from the United States. They have a very long narrow tube (corolla), and are normally pollinated by hummingbirds or specialist butterflies.

These tubes are too long for a honey bee's tongue, and too narrow for the bee to climb into. So the bees perform keyhole surgery to get at the nectar.

Three honey bees on Sedums.

The plant in the foreground is a purple variety of Sedum, Purple Emperor.

Purple Emperor seems to come into flower a little bit earlier than the standard variety, which is just behind, top left, and not quite out yet.

This is a honey bee on Purple Emperor. This photo, and the following photos, were taken with a proper close-up lens. All the photos on this page enlarge to almost full-screen size by clicking on them.

The camera manufacturer calls this lens a '60mm Micro'. Some other manufactuers call these lenses 'Macro' lenses.

This is The bee at the centre of the Cosmos.

Using a special purpose close-up lens does make a big difference to the images.

This is a honey bee in a Gaillardia.

Gaillardias carry a lot of pollen. When working in Gaillardias, bees normally have their windscreen wipers and headlights on.

Finally, two honey bees, both on Goldsturm.

Even using a proper lens, these shots are still quite difficult to take. Focusing is very difficult, because the depth of field is very shallow. Also, bees gathering nectar, are moving their body parts very rapidly.

Lilies and Lobelias

This is lily Mambo.

Mambo is a very late flowering variety, and it looks a exotic too, though I'm not actually growing it with the other exotics.

Mambo is in a little corner with Cleopatra, and some tall late-flowering lobelias.

Lobelia Queen Victoria

These Lobelias are also semi-exotic.

This is Lobelia Cardinalis Queen Victoria, a very bright red. There's a wider shot below.

Lobelia Cardinalis comes from the Eastern United States. It has a long flower tube (corolla) which is not naturally accessible to native English bees. But that's no problem, as we shall see!

Just below are two purple Lobelias.

Below left is Tania, and below right is Russian Princess. The flowers of Tania are very similar to Russian Princess.

The main difference between the plants is that Tania has green foliage, and Russian Princess has purple foliage

Lobelia Russian Princess

Lobelia Tania

This shot shows, from left to right, Tania, Victoria, Cleopatra, Russian Princess and Mambo.

There are a few more photos of these lobelias, showing bees in them, a bit further down the page.

Rudbeckias

The colour in the cottage part of my garden during September comes mainly from various Rudbeckias.

This shot shows a couple of patches of golden Rudbeckia Goldstrum, some white Yarrow, and some tall mauve Verbena.

The mauve haze is the remains of Wallflowers (Erysium) which have been flowering all Summer, since April.

The strappy leaves are Hemerocallis, which is long past flowering.

This is Rudbeckia Goldsturm.

Goldsturm is bright and colourful even on dark and rainy days. It manages to survive Winter on my heavy clay soil without any protection. It's sturdy and needs no support. It has quite a long (late) flowering period too. Goldsturm is a very good plant.

This is my favourite Rudbeckia, Autumn Colours.

Autumn Colours is not as robust as Goldstrum and definitely needs Winter protection. But the flowers are larger and the colours are more interesting.

This is Rudbeckia Berlin, rather similar to Autumn Colours, but the blooms are not quite as large.

This is Rudbeckia Prairie Sun.

Bright and with large flowers, though a little plain.

This is Rudbeckia Cherry Brandy.

In England Cherry Brandy is sold as an annual, and I raised all these plants from seeds sown this March.

I don't know whether this plant might be perennial in milder climates.

The same packet of Cherry Brandy seeds actually produced quite a range of shades.

I don't know if this was a mistake by the seed merchant. I quite like some of the variations.

This one is a slightly darker shade, and has recurved petals.

And this is one has streaks of gold in it.

Photos of My Garden in Previous Months

My Garden in August
My Garden in July
My Garden in June
My Garden in May

Butterflies

2011-08-30T10:04:00.002+01:00

These are some photos of butterflies and moths, all taken in my garden.

A painted lady butterfly on buddlea...

Small tortoiseshell butterfly on sedum:

Peacock butterfly on buddlea.

Comma butterfly on buddlea.

Speckled wood butterfly on a lily.

Red admiral butterfly on buddlea.

Common blue butterfly on bird's foot trefoil.

Gatekeeper butterfly in long grass.

Brimstone butterfly on viola.

Holly Blue butterfly on buddlea.

Orange Tip butterfly on wallflower.

This is a Small Copper butterfly on a wallflower.

This is a wider shot, showing more of the wallflowers.

Nice matching colour scheme with the butterfly.

This is a Common Blue butterfly.

This is a green-veined white, shown here on a wallflower, and just below in long grass.

This is a Mother Shipton moth. It's one of the few moths which are active during the daytime.

Just below is a wider shot showing the same butterfly and some of the flowers surrounding it...

And this is a Burnet Companion moth, another daytime-flying moth.

This moth is a Six-Spot Burnet, on a sidalcea.

Related Posts

Bees

Frogs Spawning

Reviews of Wildlife Gardening Books
Natural Garden Style

My Garden in August

2011-08-02T07:49:00.000+01:00

A few photos from my garden for August - lilies, cottage garden, sunflowers, lots of bees, fairies, and a few frogs.

Lilies

The most spectacular flower in my garden at the moment is lily Shocking.

Shocking is a tall variety, mine are about 6 feet tall.

Shocking needs strong stakes to support the weight of those blooms, especially after rain, when the flower-heads become very heavy.

The very tall yellow lily on the left is Manisa. Manisa is about the same height as Shocking, but not such attractive colouring.

The shorter lily is Salmon Star. You can see that Salmon still has many unopened buds. It's later flowering than the other two.

I bought the Salmon Star bulbs because I like the colours...

I think salmon (king of the fish) makes a good symbolic companion for the mermaid too.

This is lily Scheherazade. This is another 6-footer.

The flowers on Scheherazade face downwards, rather like a Hellebore.

With a Hellebore, that is just a few inches above the ground, it's difficult to see the flowers. As Scheherazade flowers 6 feet up in the air, you can see the flowers with ease.

This is lily Forever Susan, a modest 4-footer.

The name 'Susan' actually means a lily: Susan (Wiki).

Cottage Garden

I only have a relatively small patch that I'd call 'Cottage Garden', and only a relatively small number of plants. This style of garden can be labour intensive.

In the photo at right are some tall yellow achillea, and tall verbena, and some mauve sidalcea.

Just below is a wide view. It all looks a bit of a mess. But that's the idea of cottage garden - a mixed community of plants all growing together.

In the photo below, the mauve flowers are mainly sidalcea. Other plants include - a couple of hollyhocks, an odd dahlia, some white leucanthemum, and petunias. Right at the back are a some sunflowers, a feathery stipa gigantica, and phormiums. The greenery which forms the background is evergreen bamboo..

Sidalcea

I've got quite a lot of sidalcea, mainly for the simple reason that this plant grows well on clay, and seeds itself readily.

Sidalcea is a very good plant for bees.

This is an unusual moth that I haven't photographed before.

It's Six-Spot Burnet, on a sidalcea.

(My previous collection of butterfly and moth photos is here: Butterflies).

Mystic Merlin

Mystic Merlin is half-way between a sidalcea and a hollyhock. They are all members of the mallow family.

I grow mystic merlin simply because it has such a wonderful name.

Gaillardia

This is the first year I've tried Gaillardia and I'm very pleased with it.

It flops a bit, and seems to need some support; perhaps I should have pinched it out.

Gaillardia is covered with flowers, which bees and hover flies love. It seems to be quite long flowering too.

Sunflowers

These are variety Harlequin.

Harlequin is not one of the super-tall varieties, which many people go for. Harlequin is about 6 feet. But I like the nice range of assorted colours that it produces.

Buphthalmum Speciosum

Buphthalmum speciosum is one of the best plants for bees, certainly on clay. This plant is also known as Telekia speciosa.

Some people might think Buphthalmum is a bit rampant. Some seed catalogues describe Buphthalmum as an 'impressive and stately border plant'.

This photo shows five bees working on a Buphthalmum.

This photo also shows how the centre of the flower turns from yellow to brown, and then resembles an ox-eye. In the US, this flower is also known as ox-eye daisy.

Artemis

This is a new statue of the goddess Artemis with her wolf, that I recently acquired.

She's not easy to place with flowers. She's not exactly a shrinking violet; nor even a lily or a rose.

She looks as though she'd be more at home in a wood.

Fairies

Fairies normally keep out of sight, but during the past month fairies seem to have been popping up, in the most prestigious places - and across the world, in fact.

The BBC's web page for the RHS Hampton Court Palace Flower Show included a photo of a fairy statue. The page is here: Hampton Court Palace Flower Show (BBC)

A report on the show by gardening editor of Country Living magazine included a photo of a different fairy statue, and said ‘fairies seem to be obligatory’.

Also last month, and quite independently, The American gardening website Gardening Gone Wild ran a feature about Faerie Gardens, with photos of lots more fairies: Fairie Tales

To try to attract some more fairies into my own garden, I sowed a packet of 'Fairy Mixed' Annuals.

The illustration on the front of the packet was a bit misleading.

The flowers which came up seemed to be mainly assorted annual poppies, but still very pretty.

Did 'Fairy Mixed' succeed in attracting fairies?

Yes, it did.

If you look very carefully you may be able to see the fairy...

In fact, I also managed to find a little home that the fairies had built, in a wood pile. They had fitted a little fairy door, and there was a little fairy watering-can parked outside...

Hugo

Just a brief introduction to my assistant Hugo.

Hugo is in charge of slug control, which he likes to handle personally.

Hugo likes to poke around in the vegetation, where he gets his own breakfast.

Wise Frogs

Finally, a few frog photos.

With Hugo around, frogs can take it easy.

Jung gives a wonderful psychological analysis of the fairy tale of the Frog King. Frogs and toads are important symbols, in dreams and fairy tales.

Here's a very spiritual frog.

Finally, a wise frog explaining a subtle point in Jung to myself, and to his froggy friend, over a cup of tea...

My Garden in July

2011-07-06T08:25:00.000+01:00

A few photos for July, mainly roses, plus some photos of my new 'push reel mower'.

The end of June and the beginning of July is the period of the year for roses.

Roses grow quite well on a clay soil, and are one of the very few good plants that I am able to grow.

Roses need sunshine, so I can't put them anywhere. I don't have a 'rose bed'. My roses are mixed up with other perennials, and annuals.

Just below is a view looking along a path made of paving stones. There are roses (and perennials and annuals) on either side of the path...

This is Alnwick Castle, visible, second from the right, in the previous photo.

This is a David Austin, and one of the first of my roses to bloom. Scented.

This is Abraham Darby, another very early variety.

Abraham has very large blooms, and is strongly scented. A weakness of this flower is that the blooms are often so heavy that the stem is unable to hold them upright, and the heads tend to flop.

This is Graham Thomas, a strong sturdy rose, with a good scent.

According to David Austin's website:

Graham Thomas has been voted the World’s Favourite Rose by the World Federation of Rose Societies which represents over 100,000 rose lovers in 41 member countries. The award was announced at the 2009 World Rose Convention in Vancouver, when the rose was inducted into the society’s Rose Hall of Fame.

I don't very often find bees in David Austin's roses. But I did manage to get the photo just below. I think this photo shows what some people find so special about Graham Thomas. It's not the bee. But, in this photo, you can see the luminosity of the petals, how light appears to come from within the rose itself...

Emma Hamilton

My favourite rose, in terms of taking photos, is Emma Hamilton. David Austin describes this rose as "unusual colouring... useful for creating a little excitement in the border".

It's strongly scented, but what I like about this rose is the colour...

The buds start out as a deep apricot, and then graduallly turn to a veined pink.

The two blooms in this shot are the same rose, at different stages of blooming.

L D Braithwaite. Large blooms on a strong plant.

Unfortunately this rose has only a very weak scent.

Tess of the d'Urbervilles.

Slightly similar to Braithwaite, with large crimson red blooms, but again, virtually no scent.

Crown Princess Margareta. Scented. This rose forms a large spreading plant...

Janet. Scented...

The Generous Gardener. Slightly scented...

Iceberg. Very little scent...

Here are a few roses which are not David Austin's. These are mainly grown by a company named Mattocks. It's simply the brand which is stocked at my local garden centre, Wyevale.

This is Fascination, a pretty little rose, and long flowering. Not scented.

Port Sunlight

Golden Beauty.

A slightly scented floribunda.

Cleopatra, a very large blousy bloom, in a deep rich red, slightly scented...

This is a view along a grass path, running between roses and other perennials and annuals...

Single Rambler Rose

One drawback of many of the David Austin roses is that, being double, they are not attractive to bees.

This is an old single rambler rose that I have, which is very attractive to bees. This variety is not repeat flowering, so in a few weeks, it will have finished flowering.

This rose is trained along the front of the house...

I took a simple cutting from this rose, which I simply stuck in the ground, beneath an apple tree. And now the rose covers the apple tree.

A honeysuckle also covers the same tree. Somehow, the tree still manages to produce apples.

My Push Reel Mower

I have quite a lot of grass. I have grass paths through a flowery lawn and a meadow, and I have grass paths through flower beds. Grass is a serious business for me.

I have several mowers. Currently I have a push petrol mower, a self-propelled petrol mower, and a hover mower. And I also make a lot of use of a strimmer.

So I'm always interested in new mowers. I recently discovered 'push reel mowers'. These are 'old fashioned' mowers, with rotating cylindrical blades. That you push.

Are they serious?

I read several reviews on Amazon, and everyone who'd bought a push reel mower seemed amazed and delighted. So I decided to buy one of the least expensive models available, just to see what it was like.

I've only had it for a couple of weeks, but I have to say, until now, it's far better than any of the other mowers I've got.

It's very easy to lift; I can lift it up with one hand. It's very manouverable. It takes less effort to push than a push petrol mower or hover mower. It cuts better than a hower mower. And there are no fuel bills. And the price was only a fraction of the cost of a power mower. I guess the blades will need adjusting and sharpening at some time, considering the pounding I'm giving it.

My only reservation about this model is that it's not silent. It makes a clattery noise as the blades go round, but it's still a lot quieter than a power mower. There is a new generation of hand mowers with 'contact free' technology, and which are said to be very quiet in operation. The range actually available in the UK at the moment is still very limited.

The acid test was to try to cut a new path through long grass. It took about six passes back and forth along the path, but the little mower managed to do it. There were a few tough stalks (cats ear) still standing, but they were easily dealt with using a light-weight battery-powered strimmer...

I have wondered - why bother to cut a path through a meadow at all. Walking through a meadow, and the tracks of animals do tend to make natural paths.

Cutting a smart path, through a meadow, or around a flowery lawn does show that this meadow is 'meant' to be here. This is particularly true if growing a flowery lawn by the house. You need to demonstrate to neighbours that it's intentional.

Also, you, and the animals, can then walk through the meadow without getting wet. I believe that some moths and butterflies also particularly like the tall grass along the edges of paths, because the air and warmth can penetrate through the grass.

In 2008, Gardening Which magazine ran a comparison between powered and hand mowers. Their report is here: Hand mowers can outshine powered ones.

These are the reviews of the Bosch/Qualcast hand mowers at Amazon UK:
Reviews of Bosch/Qualcast mowers at Amazon UK

That mower is similar to the one I bought, though having a lot of grass, I bought the wider 380 model.

These are reviews of Brill hand mowers at Amazon US (these mowers are not readily available in the UK):
Reviews of Brill mowers at Amazon US

More Recent Photos

There are more recent photos, showing my garden in August, here:
My Garden in August

Related Posts

My Garden in June
My Garden in May
My Garden in April

My Garden in June

2011-06-13T01:23:00.000+01:00

Some photos from my garden for June.

Mainly foxgloves, Shasta daisies, poppies, lupins, wisteria and irises.

Plus some wildlife - flowery meadow, bees, butterflies, deer and fairies. Plus a few odds and ends.

General Border Shots

It's not that easy to make out the detail in this mass of foliage.

A few foxgloves, red poppies, and Shasta daisies stand out.

There's a lot of greenery too - hermocallis leaves (yet to flower), Ladies mantle (alchemila) in the foreground, and leaves of a big miscanthus on the right.

Red poppies.

Unfortunately they don't last very long, and some have already dropped.

I do like Shasta and ox-eye daisies. They flower from now, right through the Summer.

I'd like them to grow
in my flowery meadow, but they simply won't grow there, on the clay soil.

So these are in the cultivated part of the garden.

Shastas, and ground cover hardy geraniums.

This is a very vigorous variety of geranium, and might be considered a weed. But it's excellent ground cover. It flowers from now, right through the Summer, and, unlike many geraniums, this one is impervious to all other weeds.

I have a few roses, most of which are not yet out. This is the first one to flower. It's a variety called The Times.

It's underplanted with Shasta daisies as ground cover. I'm not sure if that's such a good idea. The remaining roses (which are underplanted with a variety of things) will have to wait till next month.

Here's a lion, in the jungle, behind some lupins and foxgloves...

Wisteria

The largest single flowering plant in my garden during this June has been Wisteria.

Wisteria was flowering very late for me this year.

Wisteria is not the most striking flower to photograph. You have to look quite carefully to see wisteria hanging down all the way along this horizontal support.

This is the same pump and half-barrel water feature from a different angle.

The post in the centre is holding up the horizontal support, supporting the wisteria. You can just see strands of wisteria along the top of the photo.

Irises and Goddesses

This is a water iris.

A different variety of water iris, a darker blue, and this one is slightly shorter in stature.

Both these varieties can be seen together in the next shot.

Water irises around a birdbath statue representing the triple goddess.

I've written a separate post about the interesting symbolism of this particular statue here:
The Triple Goddess

This is Zantedeschia aethiopica, the Ethiopian lily, together with an Ethiopian dark goddess.

The twiggy material in the background is Vitis coignetiae. It was hammered by the frost and is barely alive. But it has survived.

And this is a wider shot, including some water irises.

And just below is an even wider shot, including a water lily in the foreground...

This is a foxglove, how I prefer them.

There's a trend among nurseryman to offer 'compact' foxgloves, and with the bells sticking straight out, and even pointing upwards.

You can't beat a proper foxglove.

And these are 'proper' foxgloves, growing in the wild part of the garden.

Alpines and Fairies

A couple of shots in the Alpine garden.

Blue violas still flowering, and the red flower is Saxifrage Pixie Red. A very appropriate name.

This dianthus was not in flower last time you saw this shot.

This variety is appropriately known as 'Can Can'....

Bees and Butterflies

The most popular bee plant in my garden, which is full of bees right now, is weigelia.

This has taken over from flowering currant as the favourite bee nectar plant.

This early-flowering variety of honeysuckle is climbing up into an apple tree.

Just below is a bee landing on the honeysuckle.

Once you've taken a photo of a bee landing on a flower, somehow, nothing less will do.

This is a bee coming in to land on a foxglove.

You can see that it had just been raining.

Bee entering a purple foxglove.

I tried photographing bees landing on a range of flowers.

I found that lupins gave by far the best results.

Cirsium seems to be the richest bee nectar source. It's a bit like teasel.

However, with this flower, a bee will land, and then spend perhaps 5 minutes working slowly over the entire flowerhead, so there's not much time spent airborne.

Alright for the bees perhaps, but not that good for action photos.

This is a small copper butterfly on a wallflower.

This is a wider shot, showing more of the wallflowers.

Nice matching colour scheme with the butterfly.

Wildflower Patch and Grasses

This is a deer that I came face-to-face with while photographing butterflies and moths in my little patch of flowery meadow.

Some photos of butterflies in grass are shown just below.

This is a deer, photographed at 5.20 in the morning.

Shortly before, this one had been eating my roses. I didn't catch it in the act, but merely discovered the evidence at the crime scene quite separately.

Deer are very nervous and it was off like a shot as soon as it became aware of me.

I was quite pleased to get this shot because it was an action shot in near darkness.

This photo shows mixed grasses, as grassland is meant to be.

There is a wide range of species in this photo, though they are not easy to distinguish. You can just about see a tall arching grass on the left, and a tall upright grass on the right, and around are shorter species.

It's only when you allow grass to grow long and flower, that you begin to realise what a great variety of grasses there is.

This is a montage of different grasses growing in my little patch. None of these were deliberately sown. They just 'arrived'. If I looked more carefully I could probably find a few more. I can't put names to any of these grasses.

This is a kestrel (I think), hovering over my long grass, spotting mice.

I have never seen a mouse in long grass. This bird can see far better than I can.

Some butterflies and moths in grass...

This is a common blue butterfly.

This is a green-veined white, actually on a wallflower in the cultivated garden. Just below is a similar butterfly on a buttercup in grass...

This is a Mother Shipton moth. It's one of the few moths which are active during the day-time.

Just below is a wider shot showing the same butterfly and some of the grass and flowers surrounding it...

And this is a Burnet Companion moth, another daytime moth. It's on a very coarse grass.

My full collection of butterflies is here:
Butterfly photos.

Other Wildlife

This is a charming toad that I came across when moving some rockery stones.

This is a heron, just visible, hiding behind some bamboo.

Herons are particularly partial to frogs for breakfast.

He managed to get away, before I could get a decent shot.

Odds and Ends

This was my first crop of strawberries. It's an early variety, Honeoye.

The photo was taken on 5th June. You can see I'd already eaten one, from the vacant stalk in the middle.

By the end of the day, the whole lot, including those on some other plants, had all been eaten. They were deliciously sweet and juicy.

I have some bamboos. Bamboos are useful as evergreen screening, but can easily become nuisance plants. I have to prune them vigourously, to keep them under control.

Shredded bamboo makes a good natural path...

More Recent Photos

There are more recent photos, showing my garden in July and August here:
My Garden in July
My Garden in August

Related Posts

My Butterflies
My Garden in May
My Garden in April
The Triple Goddess

My Garden in May

2011-05-22T08:31:00.000+01:00

A few photos of rhododendrons, bluebells, Celtic sacred trees (hawthorn, ash and oak), and some friendly robins.

First, a general view. A little bit of colour comes from wallflowers, doronicum and primroses. And scattered throughout are forget-me-nots...

The lush tall spiky leaves (not in flower) are hemerocallis. I have plenty of hemerocallis, because it's one of the few good plants that will grow happily on my heavy clay soil.

Beyond the border are some rhododendrons, and beyond them are the hawthorns and some big trees.

Rhododendrons

The rhododenrons are the most showy individual plants in my garden, right now.

This is Anna Rose Witney. It's the earliest, and also the biggest and blousiest, though not the brightest.

Right now, this is the most popular nectar plant for the bees.

I think that this rhodendron is Nova Zembla, only just coming into flower, near the end of the month...

From huge flowers to the tiny ones.

These are daisies, growing in short grass.

Grass does need to be cut in order to keep daisies. Daisies won't grow in long grass.

Bluebells

These are English bluebells.

You can tell that these are English bluebells by their nodding heads.

Bluebells like lightly shaded locations beneath trees.

Celtic Sacred Trees

These are the opening buds of hawthorn, also known as May.

This shot was taken at the start of the month. These are the 'Buds of May', as they appeared on the 1st of the month.

The Buds of May were the subject of a previous post The Darling Buds of May.

I have several hawthorns.

Hawthorn is a wonderful plant for wildlife.

This are the flowers of May, photographed on the 21st.

It has only just come into flower, which is very late.

The hawthorn is one of the three Celtic Fairy Trees. The other two are the ash and oak. See Wiki: Celtic Tree Worship.

Right at the far end of my garden there is an ash, and some oaks, together with some hawthorns. The ash is late coming into leaf this year, and the leaves are only just beginning to open in the shot just below, taken on 21st...

It is said to be particularly auspicious if these three fairy trees are grown together (See: Fairy Lore).

Fairies are very elusive, and very hard to spot. In fact, there is a fairy, barely visible, in this shot...

She is sitting at the foot of the hawthorn at the right.

Just here-->

Blossoms

Most of the fruit trees blossomed at the start of the month, well before the hawthorn.

This is a pear...

And a cherry.

And, just below, a Bramley apple...

Wildlife

Here's a nest box, up in an old apple tree..

And here's its little occupant, a blue tit...

And these are the tadpoles, as they were at the beginning of May.

A friendly robin...

Robins like worms for breakfast.

In fact, anything that wriggles...

This one is on the edge of the pond, fishing for tadpoles.

He has his head cocked on one side, because that's what robins do when looking at the ground, or looking into the water, in this case.

More Recent Post

My Garden in June

Earlier Posts

My Garden in April
My Garden in March
Frogs Spawning (in March)

Natural Garden Style

2011-05-06T07:55:00.000+01:00

Natural Garden Style by Noel Kingsbury (Book review).

This book was recommended to me by Amazon, 'based on my browsing history'.

It's not a cheap book, at least when compared with the numerous books on Wildlife Gardening that I bought through Amazon Marketplace for one penny each.

The most valuable feature of this book is the photographs, taken by Nicola Browne, which include images of gardens designed by many well-known contemporary garden designers.

The book is organised into chapters, each chapter covering one particular type of environment. So, there are chapters on Meadows, Prairie Gardens, Arid Gardens, Woodlands, and Water Gardens.

The chapter which had greatest relevance for me was the chapter on Meadows. This was the only chapter that I could properly relate to, and identify my own situation with.

From that chapter, I picked a couple of sample photos; the ones that I personally found the most appealing.

These are all from gardens designed by Jinny Blom.

It's possible that these images are actually photos of different sites in the same garden. The tree-house, visible in this shot, can also be seen, from a different angle, in the shot below...

This is a gravel garden, designed by John Brookes.

I'm not sure how sustainable this design is.

If this gravel was in my garden, all of those stones would be occupied by dandelions and other weeds in no time.

From the chapter on Prairie Gardens, comes this design by Piet Oudolf.

Numerous gardens by Piet Oudolf are shown in the book. This one is his own garden.

There is also a chapter on Garden Ornament.

This is a weak chapter. The only ornamentation the author thinks worthy of a natural garden is that made from wood, mainly chairs, most of which are hard and appear very uncomfortable.

But I did like the look of this Summer House with seats, designed by by Ben Forgery for the garden of James van Sweden on Chesapeake Bay.

Another image that I found very appealing, is from the Water Gardens chapter, of a design by Dan Pearson. There is something like a ruined monastery wall, covered by wisteria and roses, beside a lake:

I'll have one of those.

A couple of the photos I've picked - the one with the big oak tree, and the one with the castle wall - both depend on features which were not put there by the garden designer, but were part of the orginal landscape, to which the designer has made some relatively minor embelishments.

That's a sample of the photos, now for the text...

I found the accompanying text of this book disappointing. There was little that I hadn't read about elsewhere before. I didn't get any ideas that I might have been able to use, from reading the text.

There were some remarks in the text, not actually about gardening style, but more political or moral in tone, that did catch my attention, and some of which are worth mentioning:

The summary inside the dust jacket refers to 'ethical gardening'. And inside there's a reference to 'moral' issues, concerning our treatment of the natural world and wildlife. It's widely accepted that some common gardening practices can be anti-social, for example, using water on a lawn, or running a noisy lawnmower on a Sunday afternoon, and perhaps using peat. But I don't think I've seen gardening referred to before as a moral issue.

On the subject of allowing long grass to grow in a garden, the author says that long grass is a 'statement of intent'. p28: "The garden meadow is a profound rejection of the tradition of lawns and mowing... it rails against the conformity of the lawn... it is the firmest statement of intent that a garden is not just about neatly trimmed beds and shaved grass".

The author says that the purchase of trendy artifacts such as bee-boxes, gives gardeners the false impression that they can pay a few pounds and buy a little box, and that completely absolves them from any further responsiblities.

Those are good points. Though, in some respects, the idea of a 'morality' of gardening - a set of rules that gardens or gardeners should conform to - is contrary to the 'spirit' of a natural garden, which is wild and free, and pays little attention to the thoughts of men.

Also, for me, a natural garden needs to be about forming some kind of relationship with nature; to some degree a natural garden needs to be a wildlife garden. Although this book mentions the desirability of catering for widlife, it doesn't tell the reader how to construct a wildlife garden. There's virtually no mention of butterflies.

There is a section titled 'further reading', but that makes very little reference to any wildlife gardening books. The natural gardener does need a wildlife gardening book, such as one of those I reviewed recently: Wildlife Gardening Book Reviews.

Related Post

Wildlife Gardening Book Reviews

Catherine Middleton, Nature and the Language of Flowers

2011-05-02T09:49:00.007+01:00

The theme of the Royal Wedding was 'Nature and the Language of Flowers'. The theme was particularly expressed in the trees inside Westminster Abbey, the bridal bouquet, the embroidery on the bride's dress, and the wedding cake.

Many weddings have a 'theme' which often says something about the particular couple being married. There is a TV series called 'Four Weddings' which illustrates the way that couples may give a wedding their theme, which usually relects the personality of the bride in some way.

The theme of Catherine Middleton's wedding was 'Nature and the Language of Flowers'.

Thousands of newspaper articles have been written about this wedding, but only a very few have mentioned the theme.

I'm not actually aware of any article which has tried to pull all of the elements of the theme together, and tried to relate these ideas to older traditions.

In one of the first posts that I made on this blog I said that I'd like to cover the interesting subject of the language of flowers. I have a few books about the subject, but I have never got round to doing this. So now might be an opportunity to open the subject.

The Trees inside Westminster Abbey

The floral arrangements inside Westminster Abbey included eight 20-feet high trees: six English field maples and two hornbeams.

It was the trees inside the Abbey that first gave me the impression that there was something significant about the theme, and this, in fact, is what caused me to find out more about the details of the floral arrangments.

We didn't actually see any TV shots showing how this scene appeared to the congregation. It must have appeared as though the wedding was almost taking place in a wood. This echoes ancient ideas about the King and Queen dwelling in a sacred wood (Rex Nemorensis).

The English field maple is said to symbolise humility and reserve, and was used to make loving cups in medieval times, while the hornbeam is said to signify resilience.

All of the trees were growing in tubs.

Afterwards, the trees will be taken to Highgrove (Prince Charles' estate), where they will be planted.

The floral displays inside the Abbey also included azaleas, rhododendrons, euphorbias, wisteria and lilac.

The overall floral arrangements were designed by floral arranger Shane Connolly.

More: Floral Displays in Westminster Abbey (Official Royal Wedding site)

The Bridal Bouquet

It's not easy to identify the flowers in Catherine Middleton's bouquet, even from the best photos available.

A floral website, British Cut Flowers, states that the bouquet included lily-of-the-valley, sweet william, and myrtle.

The flowers were selected to have specific symbolic meanings.

Ideas that specific flowers have meanings, which may be 'magical', go right back to Ancient Egypt. The idea of associating meanings with specific flowers became very common in England in the Elizabethan period.

Lily of the valley

The symbolic meaning of lily of the valley is 'return of happiness', because of the flower's associations with Spring...

Sweet William

Sweet Williams are a variety of carnation. The formal meaning of this flower is 'boldness'...

However, seeing that William is also the name of the bridegroom, I think that that we should consider that reference as taking primacy, within its various meanings.

Myrtle

Myrtle is often associated with weddings, because it was the flower of Venus-Aphrodite, the Goddess of Love.

I briefly mentioned the symbolism of myrtle in a post about the Garden at La Mortella, which name means myrtle, and which was built on a hillside of myrtles.

Catherine Middleton's bridal bouquet contained stems from a myrtle planted at Osborne House, Isle of Wight, by Queen Victoria in 1845, and a sprig from a plant grown from the myrtle used in The Queen’s wedding bouquet of 1947.

More about the Bridal Bouquet: British Cut Flowers

Lace Floral Embroidery on the Dress

The lace embroidery on the bride's wedding dress also incorpoated a floral design - of roses, thistles, daffodils and shamrock.

These four flowers are the national flowers of the four countries that comprise the United Kingdom. These four flowers also decorated the wedding cake (described below).

Guinevere Maying

The trees inside Westminster Abbey, coupled with the white and green theme of the bouquet and floral decorations, coupled with the fact that this wedding was taking place on 29th April, which is virtually May Eve, strongly reminded me of the painting of Guinevere Maying by John Collier. I have mentioned this painting in previous posts.

Guinevere was not a real historical person (although she was modelled on the person of Eleanor of Acquitaine).

What Guinevere does represent are certain archetypes of the collective unconscious. The symbols of Princess or a Queen (or a King) are archetypes.

What is actually happening with Catherine Middleton is that people, collectively, are projecting those archetypes onto a real person - her.

In Jungian terms, Catherine Middleton is acting as a 'hook' for archetypal projection. Jung describes this process in some detail. Jung actually uses Hitler as an example of how a large number of people can collectively project a particular archetype onto a real person (with catastrophic consequences in that particular instance).

The Wedding Cake

The wedding cake was created by confectioner Fiona Cairns, and was decorated with a remarkable collection of 900 intricate floral symbols, depicting 17 different symbolic flowers.

I've assembled this image from various sources. It is annotated with descriptions of the various flowers depicted on the cake, and their symbolic meanings.

The image can be enlarged by clicking on the image, so that the detailed annotations become legible.

This is a summary of the symbolism of the flowers detailed on the cake:

--Tier--	---Flowers---	---Symbolism---
Sprig on top	White heather	Protection, wishes will come true
Top tier	no annotation
7th tier	Thistle, shamrock, daffodil, white rose	National flowers of Scotland, Ireland, Wales, England
6th tier	Lily of the valley	Return of hope, sweetness, humility
5th tier		no annotation
4th tier	Sweet William	Bridegroom's name; grant me one smile
	Rose	Happiness, love
	Acorns & oak leaf	Strength & endurance
3rd tier	Honeysuckle	Bond of love
	Jasmine	Amiability
	Orange blossom	Marriage, eternal love, fruitfulness
	Apple blossom	Good fortune
2nd tier	Daisy	Beauty, simplicity
Base	Myrtle	Love
	Ivy	Wedded love, marriage
	Lavender	Ardent attachment, devotion, luck

More about the cake: Daily Mail

Queen Elizabeth I

I am not aware that the present Queen (Elizabeth II) has ever had a particularly strong connection with nature, or flowers. It was certainly not the theme of her wedding.

One previous monarch who did have a strong connection with nature, and was specifically interested in the Language of Flowers, was Queen Elizabeth I...

This is the 'Welbeck portrait' of Elizabeth I.

Each of the flowers on her dress, and shown in this painting, has a symbolic meaning.

The garden at Kenilworth Castle, which is also full of symbolism, and which I have described in two previous posts, was created soley for her.

More:
Elizabethan Garden at Kenilworth
and
Queen Elizabeth's visit to Kenilworth

Clouds and the Psyche

2011-04-20T06:33:00.001+01:00

This post consists of some musings about clouds, as reflections of our moods, and as manifestations of the psyche.

Topics include:

Clouds in the English Romantic Movement - Shelley, Wordsworth, and the paintings of John Constable.

An interpretion of the weather from a Jungian viewpoint, including Jung's story of the Rainmaker.

Clouds in the Old Testament, specifically how God is represented by The Pillar of Cloud (a storm cloud), and the Shekinah (the feminine aspect of divinity) is represented by thin translucent cloud.

And there's a review of the basic meteorology of clouds, and the main cloud types.

Remarks about the weather in this post apply specifically to the climate in the UK, which is temperate and very changeable. In other parts of the world, other peoples may have quite different experiences of the weather.

Clouds and our moods

John Constable - the Hay Wain

An area of low pressure, a depression, which causes dull cloudy weather and cold rain, generally makes people feel 'depressed'. There is a figure of speech 'under the weather.'

In constrast, an area of high pressure, which brings sunshine and cloudless skies, tends to give people a 'high'.

This painting of a sunny Summer scene, by John Constable, is intended to portray an optimistic feel.

There are numerous other metaphors which describe our own moods, often relating clouds to cares and worries - a cloud hanging over someone, a cloud on the horizon, or we can 'chase the clouds away'.

Scientific or Acausal Explanations

There are some simple scientific explanations about why we feel good in sunshine. It happens because sunlight creates certain hormones, melatonin and serotonin, which affect our moods.

But what I'd like to look at in this post is something deeper, involving the connections between the psyche and weather, more along the lines of Jung's ideas about acausal relationships, synchronicity, and ideas that are basically religious.

Meteorology - The Classification of Clouds

The classification of cloud types that is used by meteorolgists today, was invented in 1802 by an Englishman, a Quaker, Luke Howard.

Luke Howard's ideas had important consequences in two very different areas - they were the starting point for the science of meteorology and ideas that weather might be predicatable by observing the clouds. And also, Howard's ideas helped to inspire the English Romantic movement - the poets Wordsworth and Shelley, and the painter Constable.

We now know that cloud forms when moist air rises, and, as a result of rising, cools and condenses into water and rain.

Luke Howard believed that all clouds could be classified into one of three types, which he named cumulus, stratus, and cirrus. Every cloud is a variant of one of these three types, or a transitional state between two of them. This nomenclature is still used today.

Cumulus

Cumulus are nice fluffy clouds, associated with fine warm weather. These clouds are associated with feeling good.

Cumulus clouds are created by thermals of warm air, and so are necessarily associated with fine weather.

Cumulus are low-level clouds and generally have bases less than 2 km above the ground.

If there is a lot of water vapour in the air, then, as the day progresses, cumulus can gradually grow to become large, like this one.

But, even at this size, cumulus do not cause rain.

Stratus

Stratus is a flat layer of cloud, impervious to the sun. Stratus gives a depressing feel to the weather.

Stratus is formed when a wide area of air rises uniformly. There are very few breaks in the cloud and a vague amorphous structure.

Like cumulus, stratus is low cloud, generally with a base less than 2 km above the ground.

Cirrus

Cirrus is a very light high-altitude cloud, in the form of light wisps or curls. I've been looking out for some cirrus for the past week, but have not seen any, so there's no photo.

Cirrus cloud is made up of fibres or strands of cloud, and occurs when the air is so cold that water condenses as ice crystals rather than as liquid water droplets. Cirrus clouds generally form high in the atmosphere, 6-12 km above the ground.

Other Clouds

Modern meteorologists recognise a total of 10 cloud types, all variants of the three named above: names for transitional clouds states are formed by combining the basic names, for example, stratocumulus, which can occur when many large cumulus clouds merge together, to make a sheet of stratus.

This is stratocumulus, being formed by many large cumulus clouds merging together. But a few pockets of blue sky are still visible.

'Alto' is a prefix used to describe clouds higher than normal, eg altocumulus, which are cumulus clouds having a floor higher than 2km.

Additionally the word 'nimbo' can be used as a prefix or suffix, if the cloud is causing rain. So cumulonimbus is a cumulus which is causing rain, and nimbostratus is a raining stratus.

This little digaram (from Wiki) shows the names of the various types of cloud, at different altitudes.

Cumulonimbus

A particularly interesting cloud is the one at the far right in the diagram above, cumulonimbus. This is a thunderstorm cloud. A cumulonimbus begins life as a cumulus, which grows into a very tall pillar, upto 10 miles in height.

A cumulonimbus may contain the energy of several atomic bombs. Where does all that energy come from? In order to create water vapour, from liquid water, a large amount of energy is required. The oceans act as great solar panels, absorbing vast quantities of energy from the sun. Some of that energy is used in evaporating the sea-water, which is stored in the atmosphere. When the water vapour condenses back into liquid water (to form clouds), then the stored energy is released (more: The Water Cycle).

The English Romantic Movement

Luke Howard's ideas about the classification of clouds were an inspiration to the English Romantic Movement. The English Romantic movement, which had a religious view about nature, believed that nature was the primary manfestation of God.

Shelley

Luke Howard inspired Shelly's poem, 'The Cloud'. This is the first verse:

"I bring fresh showers for the thirsting flowers,
From the seas and the streams;
I bear light shade for the leaves when laid
In their noonday dreams.
From my wings are shaken the dews that waken
The sweet buds every one,
When rocked to rest on their mother's breast,
As she dances about the sun.
I wield the flail of the lashing hail,
And whiten the green plains under,
And then again I dissolve it in rain,
And laugh as I pass in thunder. ..."

Shelly's complete poem is here: The Cloud by Percy Shelley

Wordsworth

The following poem, by William Wordsworth, begins with possibly the best known opening line in English poetry:

"I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze..."

Wordsworth's complete poem, sometimes called 'Daffodils', is here: I wandered lonely as a cloud. And there's a Wiki article about the poem here: I wandered lonely as a cloud (Wiki)

Goethe

The German philosopher Goethe wrote a poem specifically dedicated to Luke Howard, titled 'In Honour of Howard', with verses describing each of Howard's cloud types. Goethe's poem is only available on the web in German: In Honour of Howard (German). Google will do its best to translate: In Honour of Howard (translated by Google).

But the person who was the most enthralled by clouds was the painter John Constable...

John Constable - the Man of Clouds

John Constable - The Hay Wain

John Constable was one of the greatest English landscape painters.

Most English people are familar with John Constable's paintings of idyllic countryside views.

John Constable - Salisbury Cathedral

In all of Constable's paintings, clouds and the sky, are dominant features, and set the mood for the painting.

This painting, of Salisbury Cathedral, incorporates a rainbow and sunbeams (and another horse-drawn cart in a river).

These are extracts from an article about Wordsworth and Constable, explaining the they believed that nature was the clearest revelation of God's Will, and the importance of light and shade (chiaroscuro) in Constable's paintings...

During the period 1820-1822, Constable created at least a 100 studies of clouds alone.

Constable was familiar with Luke Howard's cloud nomenclature. Many of Constable's paintings are accompanied by notes about the time of day, and other aspects of the weather, such as wind direction.

Constable said that clouds were the 'sentiment of the landscape'. Constable referred to himself saying: 'I am the man of clouds'.

A number of Constable's original cloud studies were collected by Paul Mellon, and now form part of a collection of British art at Yale University.

Study of Clouds - Ashmolean Museum Oxford

Art experts consider this particular Constable cloud painting, owned by the Ashmolean Museum Oxford, to be one of the great paintings of the world, and almost religious.

Immediately below are some extracts from an article about this painting, Great Works: Study Of Clouds by John Constable...

"Constable's vantage point is Hampstead Heath. The canvas is marked on the back: '31 Sep 10-11 o'clock morning looking Eastward a gentle wind to East.' Still, the painting itself may leave you wondering what kind of formation you're looking at.

"Given that these are clouds, with their supernatural associations, this pattern may suggest, subliminally, a sign or a message forming in the heavens. But then, the whole effect remains very subliminal. The structure is so elusive that it might have arrived with no deliberate shaping. Perhaps it appears in the painting simply because it appeared in the sky, and Constable transcribed it with unblinking accuracy from an ambiguous natural cloud formation.

"Five years before Constable painted this picture, Keats was writing, in praise of a rare creative faculty. He called it 'Negative Capability, that is, when man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts without any irritable reaching after fact and reason'. It happens when artists know how to stay back, leaving their work open, unsolved, holding unknowns. If you want to know what negative capability looks like in paint, it looks like this."

This Constable cloud painting, owned by the Tate Gallery London, is, in many respects, similar to the previous painting.

This painting was featured in a recent article produced by the Tate, about Painting and the Environment.

The extracts just below are taken from the article...

"While clouds played a crucial artistic role for Constable, for scientists trying to understand the way the world's climate system works, they are the most frustrating and intractable of elements to tackle. They best embody the tentativeness of our predictions of future climate. For example, one the most powerful computers in the world - the 35-teraflop Japanese Earth Simulator - is still unable to simulate the growth and decay of individual clouds, reverting to statistical approximations of 'typical cloudiness' over parcels of sky several square kilometres in size. Clouds, then, remain one of the most persistent sources of the uncertainty that afflicts scientists' predictions of future climate change.

"The emotive power of clouds, our fascination with them and their scientific intractability make them a good metaphor for the deep complexity of the climate change conundrum. And without clouds, there is no rain, and without rain, we die."

Double Rainbow

John Constable - Stonehenge

This is Stonehenge, again painted by Constable, and depicting a slightly unusual atmospheric effect, a double rainbow.

Sunbeams - Fingers of God

Sunbeams, sometimes called 'fingers of God', and technically known as 'crepuscular rays', are rays of light which come down through holes in clouds.

Sunbeams normally appear to radiate out from a point in the sky. In fact, the beams are always parallel. If there are two holes in the clouds 200m apart, then the two rays will illuminate spots on the ground 200m apart. Because the holes in the clouds are normally much further from the observer than the points on the ground, they appear closer together. It's just like railway lines, which appear to converge to a point in the distance.

This Constable painting of Waterloo Bridge, owned by the Tate, shows sunbeams which converge.

The sunbeams, at the centre of the painting, are shown in greater detail in the image just below...

Converging sunbeams are a very unusual atmospheric effect, which can only occur if the holes in the clouds are further from the observer than the points on the ground. This can occur if the cloud is low, and the sun is low in the sky. This meteorological effect is termed anti-crepuscular rays. Constable painted this effect, simply from observation, before the effect had been described by meterorologists.

Jung and the Weather

I think that Jung would have described clouds (and weather) as the manifestation (projection) of an autonomous complex in the collective unconscious.

An autonomous complex is what primitive people refer to as a 'god', and many peoples did regard the weather as being caused by a god.

Zeus, Baal and Thor were all gods of thunder and lightning. Wiki lists some 62 thunder gods (Wiki), from cultures around the world. From a monotheistic viewpoint, weather is an aspect of God.

The Rainmaker

I am not aware that Jung ever wrote specifically about clouds. However, Jung's favourite anecdote was about weather, though in a slightly different way.

In England, we look forward to nice sunny weather. In England, we do not like overcast skies and rain. But in some parts of the world, people want rain, and even pray for it.

Jung's favourite anecdote was the Rainmaker story:

"There was a great drought in China; for months there had not been a drop of rain and the situation became catastrophic. The Catholics made processions, the Protestants made prayers, and the Chinese burned joss-sticks and shot off guns to frighten away the demons of the drought, but with no result.

"Finally the Chinese said, ‘We will fetch the rain-maker.’ And from another province a dried up old man appeared. The only thing he asked for was a quiet little house somewhere, and there he locked himself in for three days.

"On the fourth day the clouds gathered and there was a great storm, an unusual amount, and the town was so full of rumours about the wonderful rain-maker that Wilhelm went to ask the man how he did it.

"The little Chinese said: ‘I am not responsible. I come from another country where things are in order. Here they are out of order; they are not as they should be by the ordinance of heaven. Therefore the whole country is not in Tao, and I also am not in the natural order of things because I am in a disordered country. So I had to wait three days until I was back in Tao and then naturally the rain came.”

These rains were caused by thunder clouds (cumulonimbus).

The Chinese believed that there was always a correspondence (a synchronicity) between the weather and the state of mind of the Emperor.

Clouds and Jung - Paul Mellon

One interesting synchronicity between clouds and Jung involves the American philanthropist, Paul Mellon.

Paul Mellon collected many of the original cloud paintings of John Constable. He endowed the Yale Center for British Art, who now own the largest collection of Constable cloud paintings. At the same time, Paul Mellon financed the English translation of the complete works of Jung.

The symbolism of clouds in the Old Testament

The symbolism of clouds is used numerous times in the Old Testament.

There are several Hebrew words that are used to represent cloud. Two words which are of particular interest are 'anan' which is used in the sense of a pillar of cloud, and 'shachaq' which is used in the sense of thin light cloud.

Anan

The table below lists just some of the references to 'anan' in the books of Genesis, Exodus, and Numbers. In Genesis, the references are to the presence of the rainbow in the clouds after a storm. In Exodus, it is to the pillar of cloud which led Moses, and the Jews, out of Egypt, and also to a cloud on Mount Sinai, where Moses was given the 10 holy words. A few of the references in Exodus and those in Numbers are to a cloud covering the tabernacle which accompanied Moses and the Jews...

I don't know of a good classic painting showing the Exodus and the pillar of cloud.

I'm surprised that Rembrandt or Gustav Dore didn't paint such a thing.

The best image I could find is this free modern clip art, courtesy of The Bible Revival.

This painting, by the Renaissance painter Cosimo Rosselli, depicts the sequence of events on Mount Sinai.

God appears to Moses, from within a cloud.

And this is the cloud hanging over the Tabernacle, illustration from the 1890 Holman Bible.

Shachaq

The word 'shachaq' is an alternative word, with the meaning of thin cloud (not a storm).

The word 'shachaq' is used only 11 times in the Old Testament, though it does occurs extensively elsewhere in Talmudic literature...

In the 12th Century, this word came to represent the 'shekinah', the feminine aspect of divinity.

It's very interesting that God should have been represented by a pillar of cloud, a cumulonimbus (a thunderstorm), while the 'shekinah' should be represented by thin translucent cloud.

My Garden in April

2011-04-15T08:22:00.000+01:00

Scenes of flowers and wildlife in my garden in April, plus activities in the greenhouse and the vegetable plot.

The most significant flowers in my garden throughout April have been the daffodils.

This shot shows trumpet varieties, growing in the cultivated part of the garden.

This variety is King Alfred. That always struck me as being a strange name for a daffodil.

Daffodils look more natural growing in grass.

This is an old double variety.

These have a softer appearance than the trumpets.

The doubles are a bit frilly and girly.

Here a double variety is naturalised in a wild area.

Primroses, also naturalised in a wild area.

These are Winter-flowering pansies.

They seem to have hidden their little faces during most of the Winter, but are now flowering well.

This is part of my small alpine bed.

The blue plant is Veronica, and the purple plant is Arabis.

The Arabis is shown in clearer detail in a shot further down the page.

An understated lime-green Corsican Hellebore.

And another lime-green plant, Euphorbia Robbiae.

Cherry Blossom just coming out.

These are the hardy annuals, that I sowed among the snowdrops and other fading Spring bulbs, last month.

These are bluebells, eaten by Bambi.

They hadn't got to the point of flowering. Luckily, I have a few more which have survived, so far.

These are hardy geraniums, eaten by Bambi.

You can see the characteristic 'hair-cut' that Bambi gives to her favourite plants.

Wildlife

A pheasant.

These always appear, after I've sown hardy annual seeds.

Comma butterfly on daffodil.

Small tortoiseshell butterfly on hardy geraniums.

Peacock butterfly on Wallflower (Erysium Bowles Mauve)...

Brimstone butterfly on viola.

Holly Blue butterfly on buddlea.

Orange Tip butterfly on wallflower.

Ladybug. This is one of the 7-spotted native species.

This one is on the tip of the tiny clematis that I bought last month.

I have planted the clematis beneath a Philadelphus. The twiggy structure of Philadelphus should be ideal for a clematis, providing the clematis doesn't get too big.

Bee on a cowslip.

Bee on a flowering currant.

Bee on a Hellebore.

Bee on a Taraxacum.

Bees on Wallflower (Erysium Bowles Mauve)...

Tadpoles. These are the tadpoles that were spawned just about a month ago.

There are fairies too, at the bottom of my garden, down among the alpines...

In the Greenhouse

Most of the the seedlings have now been pricked out.

Just a few stragglers which have not yet germinated, are still remaining in the seed propagator (not shown).

Just below is an aerial view of the far end of the greenhouse bench.

The plants shown are mainly petunias, with the odd geranium, sunflower, and lobelia.

This is lily African Queen.

This is one of the earlier flowering varieties. It might be better off out of the greenhouse, to prevent it coming into flower too early.

This is one of the tree lilies. It's in its second season. The stalks are very thick, compared with African Queen.

They are much thicker than this lily was last year.

And this is another tree lily, also in its second season. Here, you can compare the thickness of this season's stalk with the stalks from last season.

The description of this plant does say that the stalks are two inches thick. I didn't believe it. After taking these photos, I decided to repot both lilies.

This is Ensete Ventricosum, Abyssinian banana.

He's looking a bit rough, but seems to have survived the Winter.

And this is a canna. The new shoots are coming through, and have already been nibbled by slugs.

Vegetable Plot

I don't grow many vegetables.

These are kidney beans. The variety is Streamline. It's supposed to be frost hardy. You're supposed to plant out in Autumn so you get an extra early crop. Given the hard Winter we've had, I'm glad I didn't do that. These have only just gone outside, and have yet to face a frost. We shall see what happens.

Related Posts

My Garden in March
Garden Art and Symbolism
The Frog King

Wildlife Gardening Books

2011-04-10T08:16:00.000+01:00

Reviews of ten Wildlife Gardening books.

How to Make a Wildlife Garden, by Chris Baines

First, How to Make a Wildlife Garden by Chris Baines.

Chris Baines is the person who originally conceived the idea of gardening specifically for wildlife, at least in the UK.

In 1985, Chris Baines built the first wildlife garden to be exhibited at the Chelsea Flower Show. The concept was so novel that the medal that he received was incorrectly inscribed as being an award for his 'wildfire garden'.

This book was written in 1985, but outlines all the main principles: creating a woodland edge habitat, long grass, log piles, pond, nectar plants, using native species. Many books have been written since, but they add little to the main framework that Chris Baines originally created.

The figure below shows Chris Baines' template for a wildlife-friendly garden for a typical suburban home:

It's remarkable that Chris Baines worked out all of this 25 years ago, and only now are gardens for wildlife, along the lines that he described, becoming widely accepted.

You can read this book on Google Books: How to Make a Wildlife Garden

Chris Baines' book, and most of the books in this review, apply principally to wildlife gardening in Britain - where we have native broadleaf woodlands, and lush green grass. Many of the details will be different for gardens in other parts of the world.

Some of these books are now out of print. But they are all available second-hand through Amazon, some as cheap as one penny.

Creating a Wildlife Garden, by Bob and Liz Gibbons

The second book is Creating a Wildlife Garden by Bob and Liz Gibbons.

This book covers basically the same ground as Chris Baines' book.

It was published a few years after his, and was updated in 1996.

It's organised slightly better than Chris Baines' book. There are more photos too, though these just tend to pad-out the book. Does a full-page photo of a chaffinch really tell the reader anything useful?

The chapter on meadows is an advance on Chris Baines. This book spells out 3 different types of cutting regimes - Spring flowering meadow; Summer flowering meadow; and butterfly meadow.

The regime for a butterfly meadow is complicated, and shown in this diagram. If you want to read the details, you can enlarge the image.

Collins Wildlife Gardener, by Stefan Buckzaki

Stefan Buczaki comes from an academic horticultural background, and his book has a scientic slant. I would not recommend this book for someone starting a wildlife garden, without reading one of the other books first.

But this book does include many useful detailed ideas that I have not seen in any other book.

For example, on cutting hedges, Stefan explains that hedges are best cut close, to provide a dense nesting habitiat, but that it's better to leave a few branches sticking out, to provide landing points. He has statistics to show how leaving a few branches increases the number of birds by a factor of five.

This is the only book I've seen that recommends using a hedge trimmer to cut long grass. Stefan says that he has tried lots of methods and this is definitely the best way.

And we even have a photo of the author doing exactly that.

It the book also has tables showing the number of insect species hosting on different species of native tree.

I like the style of this book.

How to Create a Wildlife Garden, by Christine and Michael LaVelle

This is the largest format of any of the books I'm reviewing. It's more basic than most of the other books, and also describes some basic gardening techniques, for example how to raise plants from seeds. It doesn't attempt to go into the details of maintaining wildflower meadows.

It's also more pictorial. There is a chapter specifically about animals, birds and bees.

I felt this book would make a good present for a child, partly because this is a 'big book', with lots of pictures.

To illustrate this book, I've picked this set of pictures, which shows how to go pond dipping, and how to build a hide.

If you want to read the words, you can enlarge the image. I didn't see anything quite like this in any of the other books.

These activities for children are another reason why I think this book would be good for children.

RHS Wildlife Garden, by Martyn Cox

On the subject of wildlife gardening books for children, there is a book, produced by the RHS, specifically for young children.

I have not actually seen inside this book, though being produced by the RHS is a very good recommendation.

The Natural Garden Book, by Peter Harper

This book has a scientific orientation, and it's American. The foreward is written by Geoff Hamilton, who was a well-known presenter of TV garden programs in Britain.

I felt this book would be most suitable for a seriously-minded, scientifically-literate, teenager. The book includes topics such as Gaia and the workings of climate.

This book contains a lot of detailed information, much of it in tables.

This is an American book. So there are chapters on creating wildlife gardens in deserts and mountains. But there's no mention of wildflower meadows, English, or any other variety.

The book has three authors, and I wasn't convinced they were all telling the the same story. At one point the book talks about reliquishing control to nature; and yet at other points in the book there is a desire to micro-manage the garden: you can't have it both ways.

As an example from this book, I've picked out this 'garden experment' which might be suitable for older children.

The experiment tries to discover the potential diversity of native species in a garden, and a strategy for maximising the number of different species.

If you want to read the details, you can click on the image to enlarge it.

This table shows how various species of plants selectively absorb different elements from the environment. It is typical of many tables in the book.

This scientific approach to gardening seems a long way from 'relinquishing control to nature'.

But there's a lot of information in the book.

The Wild Garden, by Violet Stevenson

This book looks at the subject in a slightly different way to the other books.

This book is more of an inspirational book, containing a few idealistic images of what a beautiful country garden can look like.

This photo actually shows the wildflower meadow at Great Dixter.

The primary intention of this book is to make a romantic garden which looks nice.

What you see in this photo is very carefully managed, and lacks the abandon of Dixter. The foxgloves are carefully grouped in aestheticly pleasing positions. If there are any log piles in this garden, they are well-hidden.

And I can't see much long grass, which is essential for butterflies.

It's surprising how few images, like these, the author had been able to find. There are not that many.

From the various National Trust and other Open Gardens that I've visited personally, not many gardens really look like this. And poppies have a very short flowering period, so even this garden will only appear like this very briefly.

It's an ideal that we haven't been able to create on any significant scale.

Unfortunately the book is a rather small format, and the photos are not glossy. The pictures look better on a computer screen, than they do in the book.

The National Trust Book of Wild Flower Gardening, by John Stevens

This is a basic book, just about growing a few wild flowers in your garden.

It doesn't attempt to get into the complications of trying to create a butterfly meadow. It says, quite honestly, 'It is all marvelously experimental'.

The book includes a useful simple identification key, with photos, enabling the reader to easily identify many common species of wild flowers.

Garden Plants for Butterflies, by Matthew Oates

Garden Plants for Butterflies by Matthew Oates is a very slim book. I obrained my copy for just 1 penny through Amazon.

The book includes an identification guide for common British Butterflies, and a list of useful nectar plants.

The most valuable part of the book is just a couple of pages which provide a good summary of what you need to attract butterflies, namely some nettles, and a variety of grass species (not rye grass!), and the grass needs to be cut irregularly, so there is always some short and some long grass.

Making Wildflower Meadows, by Pam Lewis

.

This is a book for the serious meadow-maker.

I've tried making a meadow, and know that it's not easy: My Meadow.

This book tells it as it is.

This is the end result.

I've have some grass which looks just like this.

'Uptight' gardeners will think that this looks a mess. There's no place for a garden like this in Violet Stevenson's sanitised 'Wild Gardens' book.

But this is what nature wants. This habitat provides the greatest number of insects, birds, and animals.

This book is what wildlife gardening is really about.

You can read this book on Google Books: Making Wildflower Meadows

It struck me as curious that the two books in this review that are the most 'groundbreaking' - Chris Baines' book, and this one, are the only books that their authors/publishers will allow people to read, for free, on Google.

All of the other authors/publishers, who are effectively recycling Baine's ideas, don't want the public to have free access to their books!

Natural Garden Style

All of the books reviewed above cover the essential elements of trying to garden for wildlife. The plants and animals don't really care what the garden looks like.

None of the books above get round to the aesthetics of designing gardens for nature.

This is subject is covered by a book Natural Garden Style. I have reviewed this book in a separate post, here: Natural Garden Style

The Real Garden of Eden

2011-04-07T08:07:00.003+01:00

Biblical Scholars say that the original Garden of Eden was the palace and garden complex of the Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem.

The theory that the Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem was the original Garden of Eden was suggested by Lawrence Stager, Professor of the Archaeology of Israel at Harvard. Some important evidence for this theory is a reference, in the Book of Ezekiel to Eden, which identifies Eden with the Mountain of God, Zion. See, for example: Jerusalem as Eden.

The Alhambra

This idea was the subject of a recent BBC television series 'The Bible's Buried Secrets', presented by Francesca Stavrakopoulou. Some of the images in this post are screenshots from that series.

This series of programs also covered the story of Eve and the Fall from Paradise. This particular post is an abbreviated version of another post that I have just written on my other blog, which covers more of the religious ideas, specifically about goddess worship in Ancient Isreal, and the fall: Asherah, Eve and the Shekhinah.

Ancient Near Eastern Beliefs about Sacred Gardens

The characteristics of the sacred garden are illustrated by this Assyrian relief, in the British Museum.

It shows a garden of trees built around a mountain. At the summit of the mountain is a palace or temple, which is the dwelling-place of a king.

The King as Gardener of God

I can do no better than to reproduce a transcript of exactly what Francesca Stavrakopoulou said in the program:

"The King was the crucial link between the human and heavenly worlds, enjoying a special relationship with the gods, and this tells us exactly who Adam was in the Eden story.

"Sacred gardens were built and maintained by kings. In the Ancient Near East there was no distinction between religion and politics, and the king embodied this.

"The king functioned as a link between the divine realm and the earthly realm, mediating the relationship between his people and the gods, and his role in the sacred garden reflected this. He was granted access, by the gods, to the garden, in order to tend it and to cultivate it. In essence he was the gardener of the gods.

"This is exactly the role that Adam plays in Eden. Not only does he enjoy privileged access to his god in the garden, but he is placed in Eden in order to tend and cultivate the garden. According to Ancient Near Eastern belief systms, Adam fulfills the role of a king.

"Eden was an earthly dwelling place, built for a god. A garden tended by a king. Adam is the Gardener of God."

The Garden of Eden - the Temple of Jerusalem

Francesca Stavrakopoulou said that the original Garden of Eden was, in reality, the Jewish sacred garden at the Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem, and that Adam represented the King of the Jews.

This is an artist's impression of the Temple of Solomon in Jeusalem, in its original condition.

The best example of a present-day garden in this style is the Alhambra in Spain.

The design of this garden is based on descriptions of the Garden of Eden in the Koran.

The Alhambra combines a garden of plants with architecture.

Ain Dara

This is a recently excavated temple and garden complex at Ain Dara in Syria.

This temple and garden here was contemporary with the Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem.

The Old Testament gives a detailed description of the Jerusalem Temple. Here Francesca compares plans of Ain Dara, with the Biblical description of Jerusalem, showing that both temples have a similar layout and dimensions.

The Book of Genesis describes how the Garden of Eden was guarded by cherubs.

These are Abyssinian cherubs, in the British Museum. These are exactly the type of stone figures that would have been used at the entrance to the garden.

The Expulsion from Paradise

In 587 BCE, Jerusalem was sacked by King Nebuchadnezzar, the Temple of Solomon was destroyed, and the Jews were taken into exile.

The period in exile was the period in which the Old Testament was written down. Francesca Stavrakopoulou said that the expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise, described in the book of Genesis, reflected the real historical event of the expulsion of the Jews from Jerusalem.

There is a lot more about this topic in the article on my other blog: Asherah, Eve and the Shekhinah

The Tree of Paradise

An important source of Jewish mystical teaching is the Zohar.

Etrog (photo courtesy of Wiki Commons)

According to the Zohar, the Tree of Paradise is the etrog tree.

The etrog is a type of citrus fruit.

The fruit plays an important role in Jewish ritual today.

Asherah ornament

Related Post on My Other Blog

About the worship of the feminine in Israel:
Asherah, Eve and the Shekhinah

My Garden in March

2011-03-25T16:14:00.000Z

A few photos showing what's been happening in my garden during March.

There is a more recent post, showing my garden during April, here:
My Garden in April.

March is a month for spring bulbs, hellebores, the first spring flowers (primroses), and frogs.

And it's been a very busy month in the greenhouse.

Spring Bulbs

Dwarf irises.

Snowdrops and dwarf irises.

Heavy rain, a couple of days ago, finished off both the snowdrops and dwarf irises.

I've now sprinkled hardy annual seeds over this area. We'll see what happens.

Crocuses.

These are in grass. These are actually set along a grass path, and they occasionally seem to get stepped on. Poor things.

I'm not too keen on Hellebores, because it's so difficult to see the flowers.

But I do have a few.

I had to lift up the heads in order to take the photos below...

This is one of the dark varieties.

Primroses are among the first flowers. The name prima(first)-rose(flower), means the first flower of spring.

And the lesser celendine is also among the first.

Wildlife

This is my highly-effective slug control regime.

It's a couple of thrushes who patrol the garden first thing every morning.

Controlling slugs is just a matter of letting nature achieve the balance.

This shot is not very clear, but it's the only shot I managed to get with both birds in the same shot.

The second thrush is just visible at the lower right of the picture. It's well camouflaged.

The butterflies are out too.

This one is a Brimstone. It was very hard to get the photo. There were a couple of them. But they simply would not settle. This shot is actually taken in flight.

They seemed the most interested in a privet bush.

And, of course, it's been a month for frogs and spawning, which I covered in the previous post - The Frog King.

This photo was taken a week after the photos in the previous post, and shows proud parents, with masses of frogspawn.

In The Greenhouse

I'm only a hack at raising plants from seed, and don't take this as seriously as many people do.

At the start of the month I start my seeds off in an electric propagator.

I only use one propagator. As soon as each tray germinates, I remove the tray, and put another tray into the propagator, in its place.

These are seedlings from the first batch. A few are slightly leggy.

And this is the greenhouse bench, where pots of potted-up seedlings are literally stacked two-stories high.

This was a novel buy, from the local Garden Centre.

Tiny clematis. With their mini-obelisks, just a few inches high, they were irresistable.

I'm not sure whether they will flower this season. We shall see. It was an impulse buy.

Related Posts

My Garden in April - more recent photos of my garden, in April
The Frog King - more photos of the frogs spawning

Frogs Spawning

2011-03-17T20:55:00.001Z

Sometime around mid-March, the frogs wake from their Winter hibernation at the bottom of the pond.

They come up into the warm sunshine, and celebrate the onset of Spring.

All these photos were taken in the frog pond my garden.

There are 6 frogs in this photo.

They are not very easy to see, as they are quite well camouflaged.

Frogs have a special place in myths and stories.

The best known frog story is the Frog King. It's the first story in the Grimms' collection of fairy tales. It was afforded first place in the collection because they believed it was one of the oldest.

A Princess 'accidentally' (it's really an act of fate) drops a ball into a pond or stream, and the frog helps her to retrieve it. Eventually the frog turns into a Prince, and they all live happily ever after.

The Earth Has a Soul

2011-03-08T19:15:00.000Z

'I derive a great deal of pleasure from growing my own potatoes', Carl Jung.

The Earth Has a Soul is a phrase that was used by Jung in a letter written in 1958. It's the title of this book, which is a collection of Jung's writings and thoughts about nature.

This is not a book review. But rather, I've picked out a few quotations, a very brief extracts from each chapter, and which hopefully give a flavour for the entire book, and for the man. This is deep stuff.

The Earth has a Soul means that Jung believed that 'nature' consists of more that just the physical things we can see - the plants, trees, rivers and clouds. He believed that, just as we have an unconscious, a part of ourselves that we cannot see, but which still affects us, so that nature also has an invisible spirit, a soul, which, in some way, controls nature, and affects us too.

Here are a few extracts from each of the chapters. The extracts from the book are indented. Within the indents, the italicised words are those of Jung; the plain text is the interpretation of Meredith Sabini, the editor:

p19 Letting Nature Heal Us

Meredith Sabini writes:

The practical advice Jung gave to men and women was not much different from what is available today:

Work a shorter day and week; have a plot of land to cultivate; and make the sparest use of of TV, newspapers and gadgetry.

In Jung's view, however, the purpose of doing these things is not to repair nature, but rather to let nature affect us.

Time, money, and energy are now dedicated to repairing the damage done to nature. However, the balanced interaction requires that we invite - allow - Nature to heal us.

p33 Commenting on his time at University

Jung didn't like living in a city, and being separated from nature.

The more familiar I became with City life, the stronger grew my conviction that what I was now getting to know as reality belonged to a different order from the view of the world I had grown up with - in the country, among the rivers and woods, among animals, in a small village, bathed in sunlight, with the winds and the clouds moving over it; ordered by God, and filled with secret meaning.

The Fairy Tale Castle that Carl Jung
built for himself at Bollingen.

p35 On Life at Bollingen (the home he built)

I have done without electrcty. Evenings, I light the old oil lamps. There is no running water, and I pump the water from the well. I chop the wood and cook the food. These simple acts make a man simple; and how difficult it is to be simple.

This life this isn't as primitive as it might seem to us. Jung wrote this in the 1920's. My own grand-parents used oil-lamps and drew water from a well. Though, as far as town-dwellers were concerned that might have seemed primitive, but it was actually very civilised, in its own way.

Jung talks about his 'stone', which I described in a previous post: Jung in His Garden.

p37 On Mortality

Life has always seemed to me like a plant that lives in its rhizome. Its true life is invisible, living in the rhizome. The part that appears above ground lasts only a single summer. Then it whithers away. What we see is the blossom that passes, the rhizome remains.

p42 Travels in New Mexico, Kenya and Uganda

A couple of chapters deal with Jung's travels in New Mexico, Kenya and Uganda. There he learned, first hand, about the beliefs of indigenous peoples, and their relationship to nature.

A key idea is that native peoples need to be keenly aware of the natural world - the weather, the location of game, the presence of danger - simply for their survival. This is an instinctive awareness of nature that we have lost.

p79 Nature was Once Spirit and Matter

Not so long ago the spirits within Nature were still alive and active. Scientific materialism has contrbuted to the current negative attitude toward the spiritual dimension. Jung sees the necessity of restoring Nature to its original wholeness and considering matter and spirit as equal mysteries. Matter and spirit are qualities of the world that can only be partially understood, and thus tend to be presented by numinous symbols.

p91 The Primitive Knows How To Converse with the Soul

Jung makes the case that although our modern world attributes certain events to chance, our primal or natural mind seeks a more meaningful explanation.

This chapter expands on the things he learned in Africa, where the native people are keenly aware of nature, and are, to our way of thinking 'superstitious'. This is really leading towards the next chapter...

p103 Causalty and Chance

It is a presupposition of ours that everything has a perceptible cause. Causality is one of our most sacred dogmas. There is no place in our world for invisible supernatural powers. We resent the idea of invisible arbirtrary forces. Primitive man, on the other hand, believes that everything is brought about by invisible arbitrary powers. Only he does not call it chance, but intention.

When the unexpected occurs he is justifiably astonished and wishes to know specific causes. To this extent he behaves exactly as we do. But he goes further than we. He has more theories about the arbitrary power of chance.

It is civilised man who strives to dominate nature. He strongly resents the idea of arbitrary powers and denies them. Their existence would amount to proof that his attempt to dominate nature is futile.

p 121 'We Have Conquered Nature' is a Mere Slogan

Our intellect has created a new world that dominates nature and has populated it with monstrous machines. The latter are so indubitably useful and so much needed that we cannot see even a possibility of getting rid of our odious subservience to them.

p129 Contemporary Events (The events of WWII)

This essay, written in 1945, contains what may be Jung's most profound analysis of Nature's loss of the spiritual dimension. He begins by asking what happened to the nature spirits - wood nymphs, etc. Where did they go?

We have lost our superstitious fear of evil spirits and things that go bump in the night, but instead are siezed with terror of people, who, possessed by demons perpetuate the frightful deeds of darkness. That the doers of such deeds think of themselves, not as possessed, but as 'supermen', does not alter the fact of their possession.

The suppression, by the Catholic Chruch, of ideas associated with 'nymphs', and with the place of the feminine in the psyche, were responsible for the witch-hunts and the Inquisition during the Middle Ages. It's the same phenomenon.

p137 Civilizing potential has led us down the wrong path

The danger facing us today is that reality will be replaced by words. This accounts for the terrible lack of instinct, particularly in the city-dweller. He lacks all contact with life and nature. He knows a cow from the dictionary or the movies, and he thinks he knows what is like - and is then amazed that a cowshed 'smells' because the dictionary didn't say so.

All time-saving devices, do not, paradoxically, save us time but meerly cram our time so full that we have no time for anything. All haste is of the devil as old masters used to say.

Separation from reality is even truer today, when so many people experience, what they imagine to be 'reality', through TV or a computer screen, and never actually walk outside. You can't smell a rose through a computer.

p14 Man and His Environment

Every man should have his own plot of land. To own land is important psychologically and there is no substritute for it. We need nurishment for our psyche. It is impossible to find nurishment in urban tenements without a patch of green or a blossoming tree. I derive a great deal of pleasure from growing my own potatoes.

p195 Archetypes

The archetypes are the hidden foundations of the conscious mind. They are inherited with the brain structure. They are the deep portion of the psyche - that portion through which the psyche is attached to nature, or in which a link with the earth appears at its most tangible.

p211 The Rainmaker - The Physician who Heals Himself

The Story of the Rainmaker is a story that Jung loved to tell, and he told it often:

There was a great drought in China and the situation became catastrophic. The Catholics made processions; the Protestants made prayer; the Chinese burned joss sticks, all with no result. Finally the Chinese said 'Fetch the rainmaker', and from another province an old man appeared. The only thing he asked for was a quiet little house. On the fourth day the clouds gathered and there was a great storm.

The town was full of wonder. The little man was asked how he did it. He said 'Iam not responsible. I come from a country where things are in order. I had to wait 3 days until I was in order, and then the rain came'.

That is the way the East thinks - without causality. It is the kind of experience which, to our Western mind is sheer nonsense.

The idea behind the rainmaker story is that the rainmaker, the physician, had to bring himself into order, and that is all he needed to to. Jung explains that this is the real application of 'physican heal theyself'.

The Western idea - particularly in late Christianity - is to cure your neighbour, to help him. Those people who try to be very helpful, themselves need help. If they are physicians they should treat their own neuroses, otherwise they are vampires and want to help other people for their own needs.

In my previous post, Weather and the Feminine Psyche, I was asking some questions about the origins of weather and climate. Shakespeare came to the same conclusion as Jung, which I summed up in a quotation from A Midsummer Night's Dream:

Oberon: Do you amend it then; it lies in you

Read the Book

You can read a limited preview of The Earth Has a Soul, and search for specific topics inside it, at Google Books:
The Earth Has a Soul (Google Books)

A few pages are omitted from what you can see in the preview. The Rainmaker Story itself is one of them!

You can still read Jung's conclusion, the page where he says that the best cure lies within the self: The Earth Has a Soul - Best Cure

Related Posts

Divinity, Nature and Gardens
Jung at Work in His Garden
Nature and the Feminine Psyche

Arthurian Romances and the Holy Grail

2010-12-09T09:12:00.009Z

A beautiful woman on horseback leads an army of knights across a bridge.

I took this photo at a jousting tournament at Warwick Castle.

This is the real world of chivalry, in which the Arthurian Romances were composed.

The principal composer of the Arthurian Romances was Chrétien de Troyes, court poet to Eleanor of Aquitaine, and her daughter Marie de Champagne.

Eleanor of Aquitaine was a real historical person. She is said to have been beautiful, intelligent and cultivated. The romances were composed for her, and her daughter.

Eleanor of Aquitaine was Queen of France (1137–1152, married to Louise VII), and subsequently, Queen of England (1154–1189, married to Henry II).

Eleanor was the model for the character of Guinevere who appears in the Arthurian Romances. In his biography of Eleanor of Aquitaine, Jean Markale writes:

"As he portrays Guinevere, Chrétien de Troyes makes a living portrait of Eleanor both psychologically and physically... Guinevere is the fictionalised portrait of Eleanor."

Above - Guinevere and Lancelot by Herbert Draper

This post is mainy about the Grail Quest stories.

Guinevere appears only briefly in the Grail Quest.

Guinevere's first main appearance, with one of her lovers, Lancelot, is in a separate story, 'Lancelot The Knight of the Cart', which was also written by Chrétien de Troyes.

This is a screenshot from the BBC's Merlin, showing the BBC's depiction of Guinevere, on horseback, leading the Knights of the Round Table into Camelot.

The cultural ideas which inform the Arthurian Romances consist of a melting pot of Celtic and Greek mythology, infused with Christian and Moorish (Arab) ideas coming from Spain and the Middle East. Joseph Campbell has described the Arthurian Romances as the most developed form of literature that we know of, surpassing even the work of Dante.

The Grail as a Historical Reality

Some people believe that King Arthur and Queen Guinevere, Merlin, and the Grail Cup, really existed and that the adventures described in the Romances were real events.

Some people have expended much effort pursuing these lines of enquiry. I shall give just give two examples. These first two examples should not be taken seriously. There is some more serious material about the Grail myth following them.

The Search for the Grail by Graham Phillips

This author of this book claimed to have tracked down the physical Grail Cup.

The book cover, at the bottom, reads 'Astonishing New Proof of the Existence of the Grail in Britain'.

The book includes many photographs to support the author's claims.

This photograph, which appears in the book, shows the cup that the author's search led to.

This cup subsequently became known as the Hawkstone Grail.

Experts at the British Museum subsequently identified this cup as a Roman scent jar, so the cup does date from the correct period. And the author still maintains that this particular jar once held the blood of Christ.

The Grail Cup is supposed to bring healing to the world. But what has this cup done? Absolutely nothing!

The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail

The book 'The Holy Blood and The Holy Grail' by Henry Lincoln et al, is a more elaborate Grail investigation.

The book presents some, extemely tenuous, 'evidence' to support a theory, that Jesus lived as a real person, and had children, and that the divine bloodline could be traced to an identifiable French family, still living, the Saint-Claire's.

This is Pierre de Sainte-Claire.

This photo comes from a sequel to 'The Holy Blood and The Holy Grail', also written by Henry Lincon.

Was this Pierre really a living descendent of Christ?

Dan Brown took Henry Lincoln's entire theory, and invented a grand-daughter for Pierre Saint-Clair, named Sophie Saint-Clair.

Dan Brown added some exciting murders, car chases, airplane scenes, and a few sinister undertones, and turned Henry Lincoln's ideas into a blockbuster film.

The book shown just above, includes the still image shown at the right.

This is the moment when Sophie discovers that she is the grand-daughter of Pierre Saint-Claire.

For authenticity, Dan Brown used the same surname, Saint-Claire, that Henry Lincoln had apparently discovered. You can see Saint-Claire in the caption below the photo... "It's Saint-Clair. One of the oldest families in France. From a line of Merovingian kings".

Unfortunately for Sophie, her grandfather was not actually descended from a line of kings. Sophie's grandfather, Pierre Saint-Clair was, in reality, a small-time crook. He was a forger.

Some of the historical documents, discovered by Henry Lincoln, about Pierre Saint-Clair's ancestry had been fake. They had been forged by Pierre Saint-Clair himself. The real Pierre Saint-Clair was charged by a French court and convicted of fraud.

And Dan Brown was also charged, in London's High Court, with plagiarism of Henry Lincoln's work (Dan Brown Plagiarism Case, report at BBC).

Henry Lincoln's original book does includes a great deal of material about the Knights Templar, who did exist, and which is correct, and some interesting comments about the myth of King Arthur, which are correct, though Dan Brown makes no reference to the myth of King Arthur in the da Vinci Code.

Taking the Arthurian Romances as literal history, actually leads nowhere.

The Romances as Myth

Alternatively, the Romances can be interpreted as a myth, which reflects a psychological reality. This is the only approach that might possibly achieve something - it might possibly change ourselves.

Image from the BBC series Merlin - it's a myth

The Grail Legend by Emma Jung

The best analysis of the Holy Grail, from a mythic-psychological perspective is 'The Grail Legend' by Emma Jung and Marie-Louise von Franz.

This book is the life's work of the wife of Carl Jung, the founder of analytical psychology. Emma Jung died before her work was complete. The book was completed and brought to publication by Carl Jung's protégé Marie-Louise von Franz.

This book is rather too heavy for the casual reader.

Joseph Campbell has also helped to popularise Jung's mythic-psychological interpretation. Further down this post, I have included a very short, and illuminating, video clip of Campbell talking about the living meaning of The Grail.

The Grail Quest stories

The Grail Quest stories were composed in a very short space of time, around 1200AD. There are 3 principal (and very similar) Grail Quest stories:

Percival, composed by Chrétien de Troyes, c1180, for his patrons Eleanor of Aquitaine and Marie de Champagne. This is the earliest version.

Parzival, composed by Wolfram von Eschenbach, c1200. Tthis is the version later adapted by Wagner. Most of Wolfram's story is very similar to Chrétien's version, but Wolfram's also includes a preface which emphasises certain aspects of symbolism.

La Queste del Saint Grail (The Quest of the Holy Grail, also known as the Vulgate Cycle), composed by an unknown Cistercian monk. This version extends the story. It was translated into English, and further adapted, by Malory, and became the story Morte d'Arthur.

Emma Jung and Marie-Louise von Franz also describe many other variants by other authors. All of these stories are slightly different, and occasionally contradictory. Some elements are introduced into the story only in the later versions. There is no single 'correct' or definitive version.

The Stories

I shall not attempt to give the details of any of the stories. If interested, you can read those for yourself in the available paperback editions.

Chrétien's 'Knight of the Cart', about Lancelot and Guinevere, is quite short, about 80 pages, and a good starter. It gives the flavour, of brave men performing utterly ridiculous deeds, at the whim of women. Chrétien knew how to please his patrons.

It's more illuminating for me simply to pick up just a few of the comments made by Carl Jung, Emma Jung and Marie-Louise von Franz, that I found the most interesting, and to add a few of my own.

Perceval - The Red Knight

The hero of the Grail Quest is Perceval. His name is spelt slightly differently in the various versions of the story. It may also be Parsifal, and sometimes Parzival.

Perceval sets out from his home having the appearance of a country bumpkin. Perceval is depicted in the first card of the Tarot pack, which is called The Fool.

Perceval arrives at the court of King Arthur just as a knight has insulted Queen Guinevere.

Perceval kills the impudent knight, by spearing him in the eye with his stick.

Red Knight in action at Warwick Castle

Perceval takes the defeated knight's armour, which was red, for his own. So Perceval becomes the Red Knight.

Emma Jung and Marie-Louise von Franz explain that red means 'blood'. And blood symbolises two contrary ideas - death; and life and vitality.

Perceval and Gawain Contrasted

Gawain is another important knight in the Romances. Gawain is the perfect Christian knight. Through some parts of the quest story, Gawain undertakes a fairly similar parallel path to Perceval. Although Gawain is the perfect Christian knight, this is not sufficient for Gawain to attain the Grail.

Emma Jung and Marie-Louise von Franz provide an illuminating contrast between Perceval and Gawain:

"Perceval whose most essential characteristics were a spiritual search and a lack of certainty takes the stage alongside the perfect Christian knights (Gawain and Galahad) as the most important figure in the Grail legend. A higher value is placed on the more human hero [Perceval] than on the conventional knight [Gawain], for to be able to doubt onesself, to grope one's lonely way, step by uncertain step, appears to represent a higher acheivement of consciousness than to follow collective ideals. The Christian attitude of mind with its emphasis on the struggle for good exposes a person to the risk of aggressive pride that comes clearly to the fore in Gawain, in contrast to Perceval's uncertainty.

"The contrast between Perceval and Gawain may also be considered as a contrast between introversion and extraversion. The stories centering around Gawain are concerned with a chain of outer actions. However, as soon as the hero [Gawain] is obliged to experience something concerning the Grail kingdom, he falls asleep."

The Importance of Asking the Right Question

On his first visit to the Grail Castle, Perceval fails to ask an important question. This failure condemns Perceval to years of wandering. It is also the cause of suffering throughout the land.

Emma Jung and Marie-Louise von Franz compare Perceval's initial heedlessness to the attitude of many people today, who fail to ask important questions. Specifically, if a person comes across something unusual in their daily lives, such as a coincidence or even a dream, many people will brush them aside and pretend that they didn't happen. These people may be physically alive, like vegetables, but spiritually they are dead.

"Perceval [on his first visit to the Grail Castle] heedlessly observed a wonder without using his head or asking about it and therefore, from the point of view of the Grail world, he was like the walking dead."

Perceval and Perseus

Early in the story, a maiden asks Perceval his name. We are told that 'for the first time Perceval reflects on the meaning of his name'.

I'd like to do just that, and to draw attention to a similarity between the name Perceval (or Parsifal or Parzival), and the Greek Perseus. All of these names are constructed from the same P-R-S root.

This painting by the Pre-Raphaelite painter John Millais depicts an Arthurian knight rescuing a Damsel in Distress.

This motif is very similar to the Greek myth of Perseus and Andromeda. If you didn't know that this was an Arthurian painting you'd think it was the rescue of Andromeda.

In psychological terms, this motif depicts the liberation of the feminine, which is a predominant theme in the Arthurian Romances. It is about men coming to terms with the nature of women (who are psychologically different), and aspects of the world that are reflected in that body of ideas.

The English Pre-Raphaelites effectively created pictorial representations of the same mythical motifs, that were originally created, in prose form, by Chrétien, and the other romance authors.

Arthur

In a post on my other blog, Weaving and Magic, I began to ask the question 'What's In a Name?'

Most of Carl Jung's work concentrates on the significance of symbols, as they occur in dreams and in myths. Symbols are the currency in which most students of mythology think today. Very occasionally, Carl Jung looks in detail at a particular word or name. In my view, a name is just as important as a symbol. I believe that if Jung had had more time, then he would have undertaken a study of words and names.

The name Arthur is one of the names considered, in some detail, by Carl Jung.

Arthur is releated to the name of a Celtic God, Arte. The name means a bear, which is the oldest worshipped deity in the world. Carl Jung explains that the bear is associated with the goddess Artemis, whose name is also related to Arte. Joseph Campbell also follows Jung down this route, and additionally connects Arthur with Arcturus, the brightest circumpolar star.

And 'art' is also a Gaelic word meaning a stone, which is my addition to the list.

So there is a matrix of 'king-like' symbols associated with the name Arthur.

Mary and Morgana

The Arthurian Romances incorporate Christian myths. Mary is both the name of the Mother of God, and also the name of Mary Magdalene, arguably the most important woman in the New Testament. The New Testament also refers to a Martha, another important witness to the Ressurrection. Martha is often believed to be sister of Mary Magdalene.

Why do these three important women have such similar names?

This extract shows part of Carl Jung's musings about words related to 'mar'.

You can see that he says that this "proves nothing... this strange connection... remarkable... accidental".

This is just a small snippet, of three pages of very similar speculation.

Jung suspected that there was something significant and important here, but couldn't say exactly what this means.

Carl Jung's extract, just above, refers to Stella Maris. In The Grail Legend, Emma Jung and Marie-Louise von Franz write:

"She whom the ancients worshipped as Aphrodite, the foam-born, and who is still called upon today as Stella Maris. Morgana, the sea-born, is the name given to the fairy, skilled in magic and healing who holds sway in the world of the Breton stories."

In an earlier post, I considered the spiritual term Marga, and some names related to the word Marga. One of those names was Morgana.

This BBC still, from Merlin, shows Morgana, and at Morgana's left hand can be seen the Grail Cup.

On Morgana's far side is her sister Morgause, who has yet another M-R-G name.

I should add that my own name is neither Arthur, nor Percy. Nor do I personally know any Margarets. So my interest in these names is purely that of an objective observer, rather like Emma and Carl Jung, whose own names were not particularly noteworthy.

The Grail as a Stone

Wolfram introduces a number of Moorish (Arab) themes into the story.

In Chrétien, the Grail is a vessel or vase, but in Wolfram's version the Grail is a stone. Wolfram writes:

"The Knights of the Grail live from a stone of the purest kind. It is called lapsit excillis."

The most sacred relic in the Muslim world is a stone. This is the Black Stone of Kaaba. This stone is a real object that is worshipped at Mecca. The stone is supported within a silver frame.

Islamic tradition holds that this stone fell from Heaven, to show Adam and Eve where to build the first temple to God. This is somewhat analogous to the Christian Grail.

Some Westerners that this stone is a meteorite.

It is important to stress that muslims do not regard this object as a meteroritic stone, such as may be found in many secular museums, but as a truly divine object that fell from heaven.

Emma Jung and Marie-Louise von Franz explain the connection of this stone with beliefs about the phoenix and meterorites:

"The lapsit excillis has caused much speculation. There was a wish to interpret the Grail as a meteorite, for in antiquity, meteorites were considered to be stones with a soul... The Grail is described as the stone through whose power the phoenix arises rejeuvenated from the ashes... The motif of the phoenix and stone in Wolfram links links the Grail with alchemical ideas."

It has been claimed that the capstones of some pyramids, are also sculpted from meteoritic stones.

One of these objects is exhibited in the Cairo museum.

In Ancient Egyptian, the technical name for a pyramid capstone, is the same as the Egyptian name for the phoenix. The word is related to the verb meaning 'to rise', as in sunrise.

The definitive book which covers the worship of meteoritic stones is 'Cosmic Debris: Meteorites in History' by John G. Burke. This book is available in full on Google books, here: Meteorites in History.

That does not mean that the Black Stone of Kaaba, or the pyramid capstone in the Cairo musuem, IS the Holy Grail. They are simply symbols that refer to an idea, about something unique and rare. They are symbols of an archetype.

Merlin

Merlin is the mythical architect of the Arthurian Romances. Merlin arranges Arthur's conception, by magical deception. Merlin arranges the sword in the Stone, which will reveal Arthur to be the rightful king.

The role of Merlin raises some interesting issues. It is often believed that Fate is a feminine attribute. But in the Arthurian world, the architect of destiny is Merlin.

BBC: Merlin fusing the sword into the Stone

Merlin is not mentioned in Chrétien. Merlin becomes introduced into later versions of the Romances, from a story by Geoffrey de Monmouth.

Merlin is another figure on whom a large amount of effort has been expended by those trying to discover whether Merlin was a real person. Again, such effort is irrelevent, compared to asking about the meaning of the myth, for us, today.

Merlin is an example of the archetype of the 'Wise Old Man'. This does not necessarily mean a real wise old man, though it can. It may refer simply to an act of the unconscious, an act of Fate, which helps a person in a difficult situation, such as some form of coincidence, or an unexpected event, which solves a difficulty. There is far more to the subject of Merlin than simply the archetype of the 'Wise Old Man'. Five chapters of 'The Grail Legend' are devoted to the subject of Merlin.

The Arthurian Romances and Eclecticism

The Arthurian Romances incorporate elements from the Pagan word, and from Christianity, and from Arab and Jewish thought. Important themes originating from each of these traditions are carefully selected and woven together. The Arthurian Romances are eclectic.

Joseph Campbell's Summary of the Essence of The Grail

Many books about the Grail go into minute details on particular points, but fail to present, or grasp, the big picture.

This is a very brief (1-minute) video clip in which Joseph Campbell explains, in a nutshell, the essence of the Grail story.

The key sentence is: 'Each entered the forest at a point that he himself had chosen, where it was darkest, and there was no path'.

Those are not Joseph Campbell's words. They are quoted from the version of the Grail Quest story, the Vulgate Cycle, written by the unknown Cistertian monk.

Eclectic Spirituality

Campbell's interpretation is exactly the prescription that was outlined by Jung. Campbell takes most of his ideas directly from Jung. It's the essence of Jung's introduction to 'The Secret of The Golden Flower', which I have mentioned in several previous posts.

Spirituality cannot be learned from a book, even a book written by Jung. If a person is following someone else's path, even Jung's, then they are not on the adventure.

In modern terms, this is termed Eclectic Spirituality. Eclectic does not mean a rag-bag collection of ideas. It means making informed choices.

Eclectic Spirituality means observing, primarily, what is in front of you, and then, if you require an intellectual framework, considering the available array of explanations, and selecting those which match reality as you find it, as it really is.

Tarot Cards and the Arthurian Romances

The Tarot cards are not an integral part of the Grail story, though many books about the Grail, and the Arthurian Romances, do include interesting references to the Tarot.

The Tarot cards are similar to a set of playing cards, but also include an additional set of 22 cards, called the Major Arcana, which depict a set of archetypal images - a Fool, a Magician, a King, a Queen, etc.

Some books, including a book about the Arthurian Romances, edited by Joseph Campbell, suggest that the images on the Tarot cards can be related to specific people and motifs in the Arthurian Romances. This is a typical example:

#	Card	Arthurian character or motif
-	-----	-----------------------------------
0	The Fool	Perceval
1	Magician	Merlin
2	High Priestess	Lady of the Lake and Morgana
3	Empress	Guinevere
4	Emperor	Arthur
5	The Pope	Catholic Church
6	Lovers	Perceval and Conduireamour, or The White Hart
7	Chariot	Grail Horse
8	Strength	Gawain
9	Hermit	Grail Hermit
10	Wheel of Fortune	The Round Table
11	Justice	Sovereignity
12	Hanged Man	Fisher king, or Knight of the Cart
13	Death	The Washer at the Ford
14	Temperance	The Way of Nature, or The Cauldron
15	Devil	The Green Knight
16	Tower	The Wasteland
17	Star
18	Moon
19	Sun	Logos
20	Last Judgement	The Quest Achieved
21	World	Paradise Restored, or The Flowering of Logres

The earliest examples of Tarot cards certainly come from 14th Century France. Some books claim that the Tarot cards originated alongside the Arthurian Romances. A respected and scholarly book about the Romances by Jessie Weston says:

"No one has as yet ventured to suggest the popularity of the works of Chrétien de Troyes among the gypsies!"

Though by making that remark, Jessie Weston is suggesting something similar.

It is easy to imagine that the cards may have been created for the amusement of the ladies at the Court of Eleanor of Aquitaine.

Somewhat like 'names', this is an area which many people find intruiging, but the details remain unclear.

More About Jousting at Warwick Castle

Where some of the photos on this page were taken.

Jousting at Warwick Castle

The Apple of Immortality

2010-10-27T06:40:00.009+01:00

This post begins with some apple photos, taken in my garden.

I then outline several stories involving apples:

The Temptation of Eve
The Judgement of Paris
Rapunzel
The Lady of Shalott
The Apples of the Hesperides
Avalon, the Isle of Apples
Demeter and Persephone
Cain and Abel

Why These Stories?

This is not just an arbitrary collection of apple stories. Each one of these stories was brought to my attention, within the past couple of weeks, by some Act of Fate. It may have been a TV commercial, or something I noticed recently on one of the blogs that I follow.

In fact, the entire idea for this post grew out of a notice about an 'Apple Guru', that I saw on the BBC website, just over a week ago. Some of these coincidences are described below.

The apple is a numinous symbol. Each of these stories helps to illuminate part of a whole.

The motifs in the apple stories involve three themes, which are related: fall and healing, vision and truth, and death and immortality.

The photo at the right is an iconic symbol for this post. It shows a statue of Rapunzel. It is actually a mirror, and her long hair forms the frame around the mirror. There is more about this statue, and where she fits into the picture, further down the post.

The Apples

I have some old apple trees in my garden. There are 13 old trees.

Until last week I had never taken a deep interest in the apples. I knew them all simply as either 'eaters' or 'cookers'.

All of the trees have ripe fruit on them. Here they are. (If you want to skip past the apple photos, you can go straight to the next section: The Apple Guru.)

#1 Early Victoria

Early Victoria is a very large apple. It's the largest fruit I have. It's yellow, with a slight red blush

#2 Ellison Orange

Ellison Orange has a taste very similar to Cox, sweet and crisp.

But this apple doesn't keep as well as Cox.

#3 James Greive

You can see that the birds have been at this one.

#4 Bramley Seedling

Bramley makes a large tree. Bramley is undoubtedly the best cooking apple.

However, I don't cook apples, so all of these Bramleys go to the birds and animals.

#5 Gibson's Yellow

This apple is slightly mysterious. An apple guru (see below) recently tried to identify all my apples, and was unable to identify this one from the photo.

My own investigations suggest that this apple might well be an old variety, Gibson's Yellow. But this identification is uncertain.

#6 Lanes Prince Albert

A late keeping cooker with the distinctive qualities of a true Victorian variety - sharp and juicy. It is said to store well, and during storage mellows, making it suitable as an eating apple.

#7 Newton Wonder

For thousands of years it has been known that apples fall to the floor.

But it took Isaac Newton to realise that falling apples meant something important, and that realisation led to his theory of universal gravitation.

#8 Monarch

Monarch is a cooking apple, very similar to a Bramley.

#9 Cox Orange Pippin

Everyone's favourite eating apple.

Sweet and crisp, and it keeps well.

#10 Allington Pippin

Said to have a something of a pineapple flavour.

This is the apple with the 'golden eye' which features further below.

#11 Peasgood Nonsuch

The apple with a very curious name.

This apple is named after a Mrs Peasgood, who first raised this variety from an apple pip.

#12 Warner King

Warner's King is an old cooking apple which was popular in Victorian England.

#13 Blenheim Orange

An 18th century English dual-purpose apple.

Another apple that is very popular with the birds.

The Apple Guru

These 13 apple trees have been in my garden for a long time, a lot longer than I have.

Until last week I didn't know the names of these various apple trees. Then, last week, I noticed an advert on the BBC website about an 'Apple Guru'. The advert said:

Apple Guru

"Do you have any questions about apples? Perhaps you have an unidentified variety in your garden? Or your fruit or tree is ailing in some way?

We'll put your query to one of the apple-growing gurus at Brogdale Farm in Kent, home of the National Fruit Collection."

I took a set of photos, exactly the ones that are in this post, and E-mailed them off the the BBC. And the Apple Guru very kindly provided most of the answers.

Brogdale Farm also provide a commercial service, to the public, for identifying apples. They charge £12 per apple, and identification takes up to 6 weeks. I got most of my apples identified for free, and express service within a week, so I did very well, thanks to the BBC offer. The free offer from the BBC was only open for a week.

There were a couple apples that the Apple Guru was unable to identify from the photos, so I got hold of an apple book, and did a little bit of extra research, which enabled me to complete the set.

The act of my taking all of those photos, and investigating the various varieties, led to a curiosity about apple stories...

Eve and Paris

First, I'd like to mention the story of Eve tasting the apple, and the story of Paris presenting the apple to Aphrodite.

This image shows a garden statue, which depicts the Temptation of Eve. Eve is stretching to reach the apple. A serpent is coiled around the tree.

This statue is not owned by me!

The statue is in the form of a plaque, made of bronze, and is the work of the contemporary sculptor Rodney Munday. There are several other fine garden ornaments on his website.

This is a classical painting, by Enrique Simonet, showing the Judgement of Paris.

Paris was invited to present an apple to one of the three goddesses, Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite.

He chose Aphrodite, and that choice precipitated the Trojan War.

The apple in both the story of Eve, and in the story of Paris, is exactly the same apple. It is the Apple of Discord.

The stories say that, because of that apple, Adam and Eve were cast out of the Garden of Eden, and the city of Troy was destroyed.

The idea of a Fall, is always accompanied by a promise, or at least a hope, of some form of healing.

The Garden of Eden also contained a Tree of Immortality, which was also an apple tree. I discuss this the Tree of Immortality towards the end of the post.

Rapunzel

Rapunzel is another Eve story, which tells of tasting a forbidden fruit, of a fall and healing.

Rapunzel came to my attention as it has been mentioned on two blogs that I follow very recently. Rapunzel has been made into a film by Disney. The film, which is titled Tangled, is due for release on November 25th.

The photo at the right shows a Rapunzel Fairy statue that I got hold of. The statue incorporates a circular mirror, and Rapunzel's long hair forms the frame around the mirror.

Disney re-creations of fairytales sometimes bear little resemblance to the original story.

Here is a short (3 mins) video clip, from Disney, about some of their ideas behind Tangled:
A Tangled World (Disney Animation)

I'm not entirely convinced that Disney scriptwriters have ever seen a real forest; one with real trees.

According to Jung and Marie-Louise von Franz, the first significant motif in Rapunzel, is an incident in which Rapunzel's mother tastes some forbidden lettuce. This results in her daughter becoming enchanted. The second motif is her daughter's disappearance. The reason why Rapunzel disappeared was because her mother had tasted the forbidden fruit.

Marie-Louise von Franz asked the question, 'why lettuce and not an apple?', with no satisfactory answer.

Rapunzel's Long Hair

The first thing that most people associate with 'Rapunzel', is 'long hair'. In my opinion, the long hair is analogous to the golden thread, with which Theseus, and others, find their way through a labyrinth. Long hair can also have an allusion to weaving something.

This little book, Rapunzel edited by Heidi Anne Heiner, is a collection of 'Maiden in the Tower' stories from around the world.

The book makes only a very superficial attempt at examining the meaning of these stories, and says nothing at all about psychology, Jung or Marie-Louise von Franz.

I did however find a couple of the stories in this collection particularly interesting - The Lady of Shalott, and the story of Demeter and Persephone. These are both 'Maiden in the Tower' stories that also involve apples.

The Lady of Shalott, Avalon and The Apples of the Hesperides

There are many paintings depicting The Lady of Shalott.

Some artists are more perceptive than others. I particularly like this painting by Holman Hunt.

In the Arthurian romances, Avalon means the Isle of Apples. There dwelt the nine sisters of healing.

There are apples in the scenes along the top of the painting, depicting the fall of Eve.

The hair of the Lady of Shalott covers more than half the width of this painting. Hair would never look like this in real life. Hunt is drawing our attention to her long hair.

The pattern that the Lady of Shalott is weaving in Holman Hunt's painting depicts the Arthurian Holy Grail.

Its not easy to see. This is a close-up of that part of the painting.

This painting is bringing out various symbols of the Avalon myth.

This is another close-up showing the right-hand side of the wall in that painting. It illustrates yet another apple myth. This is the eleventh labour of Hercules, picking the Apples of the Hesperides.

The Garden of the Hesperides was an orchard of apples, in the West, tended by nymphs, that confer immortal life. This is very much like Avalon, which was an island in the West, tended by women.

Pikcing the apples of immortality was one of the last of Hercules' tasks.

Therefore this apple painting definitely refers to the healing aspect of the apple.

This is Lord Frederick Leighton's version of the nymphs of the Hesperides, and the serpent, around their apple tree.

Demeter and Persephone, and the Pomegranate

The Latin word for an apple is pomum, which gives us pomegranate.

The connection between Eve, the serpent, and the pomegranate, forms part of a current TV advertising campaign for Pom pomegranate juice.

The full Pom Eve commercial is here: Pom Eve commercial

Demeter and Persephone is another forbidden fruit story described in Heidi Anne Heiner's Rapunzel.

In this Greek myth, Persephone, the daughter of Demeter, was picking flowers one day, when she was abducted into the underworld. One might consider that equivalent to death.

This story also involves eating a forbidden fruit. In this case, Persephone eats the fruit, and the fruit is a pomegranate.

This painting is Gabriel Rossetti's version of Persephone, with her pomegranate.

The meaning of the story of Demeter and Persephone is not understood. There is a huge amount of modern speculation, most of it almost certainly incorrect.

The best reference for the story of Demeter and Persephone is Eleusis by Carl Kerenyi. Carl Kerenyi also co-operated with Jung on some other publications about Eleusis. And Jung also wrote his own analysis 'The Psychology of the Kore', which is difficult to understand.

The myth was certainly very important, and lay at the centre of Greek religion.

The initiates had to enact the role, in a dramatic manner, of a grieving mother, searching for her lost daughter. This is a curious act for a religious worshipper to have perform.

The Eleusian Mystery involved experiencing some kind of realisation. The highest stage of the initation was 'epoptiea'. Epoptiea means 'seeing' something. This has been compared to experiencing a 'beatific vision'. That does not mean an illusion, but more of a realisation about something.

This is a fresco, a wall painting, that is reproduced in a book by Marie-Louise von Franz.

The fresco comes from The Villa of Mysteries in Pompeii. The scene depicts an initiate into the mysteries, who is looking into a mirror.

More: Villa of the Mysteries, Pompeii
(That article isn't particularly illuminating)

Apple - The Pupil of the Eye

As late as this Monday, it occured to me to look up the word 'apple' in a couple of old dictionaries.

In Medieval English, 'apple' was a word used for the pupil of the eye, and the word 'apple' also then became used for the eyeball.

The 'South pole' of an apple is known as the 'eye'.

This photo is the nearest I could get to a 'golden eye'.

The Single Eye

A single eye is a common archetypal motif, found in primitive art throughout the world. Normally a single eye is interpreted as a charm, intended to ward off 'the evil eye'.

However, Jung says that the single eye symbolises the all-seeing eye of God. This eye operates in 2-directions. It refers to God's ability to see through us; and it also refers to our ability to 'see' the situation. This is 'epoptiea', 'seeing', in the Eleusian sense of the word.

Abel

Another dictionary relates common English words to their Sanskrit and Indo-European root origins. According to this dictionary, the word 'apple' is descended from the Indo-European root 'abel'.

Abel was the name of the son of Adam.

Marie-Louise von Franz, writing about the all-seeing eye of God, summarises a poem, 'Conscience', originally written Victor Hugo, about Cain and Abel. The illustration to this poem is by François Chifflart:

"After killing his brother Abel, Cain flees from God; with his family he stops to rest on a mountain but is unable to sleep; he sees an eye, wide open, in the darkenss, fixed upon him, 'I have not gone far enough,' he calls out, trembling, and continues his flight. For thirty days and nights he hurries on until he comes to the seacoast, but as he settles down there he sees the eye again, in the heavens. He cries out to his family to hide him from God. They build a tent for him but the eye is always there. Finally, at his request his family digs him a deep grave in the earth. He sits down in it, on a little seat, and his famiy pushes the heavy gravestone over him. As the grave closes and he sits there in the darkness, The Eye was in the grave and looked at Cain."

So, those are the apple motifs - fall and healing, vision and truth, and death and immortality.

Ways of Looking at these Stories

There are several, quite different, ways of looking at these stories:

They can be regarded simply as entertaining tales. There's nothing wrong with that.

There are ethnological explanations. These may say that the stories are primitive attempts to explain agriculture and the seasons, and such like.

There are moralistic viewpoints.

There are feminist explanations, often motivated by some form of egoist or political agenda.

There are Freudian explanations, saying that the stories explore social attitudes, and personal fears, about sex.

There is Jung, who has a mystical and spiritual viewpoint. I'll expand on this a bit more...

Which viewpoint anyone takes towards these stories is a matter of individual choice. Marie-Louise von Franz specifically warns her readers against being misled by feminist and Freudian viewpoints. Marie-Louise von Franz also warns her readers against being misled by philosophies that are watered down versions of Jung. I trust Marie-Louise von Franz. So, I'm taking her advice.

Marie-Louise also points out a fundamental difference between Jung's viewpoint and all the other viewpoints. The other viewpoints all give the reader the impression that the myths are understood, and that everything is under control; the Ego is on top of the situation. Jung's viewpoint is that this is not so; we don't understand what's going on, nor where we are going; but it's better to know that we don't know, than to fool ourselves into thinking that we do.

The Tree of Immortality

There were said to be two trees in the Garden of Eden. There was the tree that Eve tasted, and there was also a Tree of Immortality (Wiki). Some people say that these two trees are the same tree. The fruit that causes the problem is also the key to the answer.

Marie-Louise von Franz writes that the apple is connected with both the Fall and healing:

"Avalon, which is the Island of Apples (the word is derived from the Breton aval) is where King Arthur goes towards the end of his life. It was with the apple of this court that I first understood...

What I would like to pick up on is the strange relationship of the apple to the land of death. King Arthur was carried to the Insula Avallonis, the Island of Apples, to be restored to health by the nine sisters who dwelt there, one of whom was the famous Morgana.

In the legend of the voyage of Bran the Blessed, this Irish saint, during his journey to the Promised Land, also comes to an island in the West planted with apple trees. This orchard signifies the second Paradise, the goal and salvation that have to be rediscovered after the loss of the first Paradise through the instrumentality of an apple tree."

Joseph Campbell says something similar to Marie-Louise von Franz, that the two two trees in the Garden of Eden are the same tree. Though as most of Campbell's ideas come directly from Jung, this is not surprising.

This is a short (30 secs) video clip, in which Joseph Campbell says that the two trees are the same tree.

He tries to explain how their meaning is connected with ideas about Time and Eternity, Death and Immortality, and Unity and Multiplicity. All explained in 30 seconds!

Malus

A very small point. Malus, which comes from the Greek, is the botanical name for an apple. According to The Valkyries by Maggy Anthony, Malus was the nickname commonly used for Marie-Louise von Franz.

The Healing Motifs

Did Eve, and Persephone, really have to taste the apple? The Catholic doctrine of Felix Culpa (Wiki), says that without a Fall, there could be no salvation, and implies that it was God's Will that Eve should taste the apple.

In these various stories, healing always seems to be the objective or at least the promise, but it seems to be achieved in different ways. And what healing might actually mean also depends on the reader's own viewpoint.

Photographing Garden Wildlife at Night

2010-10-12T08:56:00.010+01:00

Some still photos, and short video clips, of wildlife in my garden, mainly taken at night.

The BBC program Lost Land of The Tiger, which was televised two weeks ago, showed some remarkable footage of rare cats that had been filmed in the foothills of the Himalayas.

The extraordinary images had been made possible by small remote digital cameras.

These cameras detect motion just like a burglar alarm, and take a still photo, or short video, whenever something passes by. The cameras will operate in both daylight and darkness.

The image at the right is a screenshot from the program. It shows Alan Rabinowitz fixing one of these cameras to a post, along a path suspected of being used by animals.

I made a few simple enquires, and found that very similar cameras are available for home use, and are not too expensive. These are advertised as being ideal presents for wildlife enthousiasts.

There is a huge variety of such cameras available from Amazon US, but only a very small number available from Amazon UK. So I actually decided to buy one, over the internet, from a specialist game hunting supplier in the UK, who had a larger selection than Amazon UK.

I've only had the camera for a few days.

The camera comes with some straps, and is designed to be strapped to a tree.

However, I decided to mount mine on a tripod, so that I can move it anywhere in the garden.

The first night was something of a trial, just to see if the camera would work. But I was still very pleased to get these images of a fox. He hadn't seen the camera, on his nightly stroll before, and was clearly very curious about this funny thing on stilts.

The camera will take either video footage, or still images. On the second night I tried taking still images. I got some more photos of the fox, a snap of a hedegehog, and one of a deer eating a fallen apple.

Taking a photo of a black Hugo, on a black night, is unlikely to produce a wonderful photo.

Bambi is a little more photogenic.

I thought that I might be able to provide my visitors with more posing opportunities if I put out some more food.

I thought the fox might fancy some chicken in gravy, with dog biscuits. I'd also read that hedgehogs like peanut butter on bread, so I got some peanut butter too.

I also sprinkled the ground with peanuts, and a few crushed fallen apples.

And provided a little bowl of water. I'm sure my guests will be thirsty.

This is the table, set out, awaiting its guests.

The fox turned up again, and, yes, he definitely approves of chicken and biscuits...

This is a still image, taken from a video clip that was filmed a little while later.

It shows two sets of head-lights. There's not much more to see on the video, other than these two sets of lights moving from side to side.

This is a brief clip of a deer passing through, taken a little later...

But the big surprise of the night was an unexpected visitor. I've never seen this animal in my garden before...

During daylight hours, the camera automatically switches to colour.

This was a squirel that turned up on the morning after.

I don't know how long I'm going to keep it a secret, from him and his mates, that free peanuts are on offer.

I had no idea that badgers might be living in my garden. I've often found small pieces of grass torn up, and occasionally, small holes excavated in the garden, but I'd always believed that activity was caused by foxes.

On investigation I found some tracks, through long grass. The grass along the track is flattened down and looks exactly as if a sack of potatoes has been dragged through the grass. I'm reasonably confident that this is a badger track.

It leads to a bramble bush. I don't know whether the badger lives beneath the bramble bush, or somewhere beyond.

Scarabs, Golden Cats and Dogs, and Synchronicity

2010-09-30T08:42:00.014+01:00

This post describes some auspicious animals that appeared in the BBC TV program Lost Land of The Tiger.

It also describes a dream synchronicity, involving Lost Land of the Tiger.

The images on this page are screenshots from Lost Land of the Tiger. They were taken in the foothills of Tiger Mountain in the Himalayas. More details at the BBC Lost Land of The Tiger and also in my own previous post Feng Shui in The Garden

The Scarab Beetle

This is a scarab beetle that appeared in Lost Land of the Tiger.

I'm mentioning this because Jung regarded the scarab beetle as auspicious. A particular coincidence involving a scarab occured in Jung's own practice. The incident made a big impression on him and was influential in forming his own ideas about sychronicity.

In Lost Land of the Tiger, the zoologist holding this beetle, said this was the largest one he had ever seen. It was very much alive and kicking.

The following two items are screenshots from some video footage that was captured on remote 'trail cameras', the cameras that were used to film high altitude tigers.

Baby Snow Leopard

This is just a cute photo.

It's a baby snow leopard. Film of snow leopards in the wild is extremely rare.

This photo was taken at an altitude of 5000 metres.

This little animal seemed particularly inquisitive about the remote video camera.

Or maybe he just wanted to get on TV.

The Golden Cat

In an earlier post, The Way of the Dream, I mentioned the Egyptian image of the golden cat, and also a golden dog, Anubis.

The golden cat is a distinct species of real cat, though very rare.

A few specimens of the golden cat are alive in captivity in zoos.

This is a real golden cat, in the wild, that was filmed by one of the remote trail cameras on Lost Land of the Tiger.

The film explained that virtually nothing is known about this animal in the wild state.

Auspicious Tigers

This is one, of several, 'auspicious tigers' that are painted on many of the houses in the village at the foot of Tiger Mountain.

This is a screenshot from a video clip that I posted in my previous post, Feng Shui in The Garden.

Panther

Technically a 'panther' is a name given to either a jaguar or a leopard.

Panthera, with an 'a' on the end, is the zoological name for the cat genus which includes the lion, tiger, jaguar and leopard.

Panthera (Wiki) is also the name used by the organisation which Alan Rabinowitz has set up, to help save endangered species, and you can see this name on his cap.

The word 'panther' comes from two Greek words, 'pan' meaning 'all', and 'thera' meaning a 'beast' or wild animal. I'm including 'panther' in the list of auspicious animals, because I feel that this word is interesting, and because the question of words and the significance of names seems to be slowly rearing its head.

Alan Rabinowitz

This is Alan Rabinowitz, priming a remote trail camera.

Alan Rabinowitz has been a driving force and mastermind behind work to save many endangered species, not just tigers.

The tragedy is that he is suffering from leukemia, and has a limited, though unknown, time to live.

His overriding concern is that 'time is running out', both for himself, and for the animals that he has been trying to save.

This is a 40-second video clip, in which Alan Rabinowitz explains his position and his outlook.

Dream Synchronicity

A few days after Lost Land of the Tiger was shown, I noticed an item on The Daily Dreamer Blog where a lady, from Boston, USA, had had a disturbing dream which involved a Floor Lamp which fell to the floor, and a man who was slowly dying, and she was asking 'what does this mean?'

I'm not quite sure how this happened, but I made a mental connection between the lady's dream and Alan Rabinowitz. Perhaps this was just a way of realising that the symbol of a slowly dying person in a dream might signal a sense of urgency, and the fact that none of us have an unlimited amount of time.

It is debatable whether I was right to make a connection between the Boston lady's dream, and this TV program. But according to Jung, if a connection has been made, then we would be wrong to ignore it.

Boston Babe's post, and the responses to it, are here: The Daily Dreamer (Floor Lamp).

The Broken Floor Lamp

The 'floor' is a good metaphor for the unconscious, and a lamp illuminates something, so a 'Floor Lamp' is a good metaphor for a book written by Jung: it illuminates the unconscious. [Though 'Floor Lamp' could still have other meanings.]

In Boston's dream the Floor Lamp was broken. This is motif of the 'broken symbol'. The broken symbol is a symbol that has lost its numinosity. A good example of a broken symbol was Alchemy. This was considered mumbo-jumbo, but Jung showed how, by looking at the subject in a new light, it could again become numinous.

Books That Fall to The Floor

In the comments on that post, I noted that books written by Jung seem to have a habit of falling to the floor. I mentioned an incident, described in a book about synchronicity, written by a Jungian analyst, where exactly such a thing had happened to the analyst.

Since then, and that was only two days ago(!), I've come across yet another instance of a book written by Jung falling to the floor!

This account of 'a book written by Jung falling to the floor' is described in a short collection of reminiscences of Marie-Louise von Franz, the book shown at the right.

This particular incident didn't happen to Marie-Louise von Franz, but to another woman, Anne Maguire, who, because of the falling book, became a very good friend.

Anne Maguire says:

"How did I meet her [Marie-Louise von Franz]?.. I had been browsing in a bookshop in the Rue de la Paris in Paris, searching for a Simenon thriller. Suddenly a book fell upon me from a higher shelf. I opened it and found it to have been written by C.G. Jung. I was on the point of replacing it, but decided to glance through it. A paragraph caught my attention. I decided to buy the book for the sum of thirty-four francs and on that day my life changed forever. From late afternoon until dawn the next day I read the book. Then I fell asleep and dreamed. In the dream a beautiful golden dog with golden eyes came to lead me to the future..."

Anne Macguire goes on to say how this incident led her to reading the works of Jung, and subsequently going to Zurich, where she met, and became close friends, with Marie-Louise von Franz. Anne Macguire read the valediction at Marie-Louise von Franz's funeral.

In my post about The Way of the Dream I mentioned a dream that someone had had, in which they saw a dog with golden eyes.

I don't know if that woman was Anne Macguire, or someone else. The dream described in Way of the Dream does sound slightly different. So these may be two separate dreams.

Previous Feng Shui Synchronicity

By chance, Lost Land of the Tiger was first televised on the BBC on the Day of the White Tiger, in the Year of the White Tiger (according to the Chinese lunar calendar). This synchronicity is described in my previous post, Feng Shui in the Garden.

Postscript

Wildlife tracking cameras, very similar to the ones used in Lost Land of the Tiger, are available for home use, and are not too epensive. I've just bought one!

My first night-time garden photos can be seen in the following post:
Photographing Garden Wildlife at Night

More about Lost Land of the Tiger at the BBC

Lost Land of The Tiger
The program can only be watched on-line within the UK

Previous Related Posts

Feng Shui in The Garden
The Way of the Dream