I’ve been out on our Somerset Hill doing a bit of painting this summer, and I confess I haven’t posted about that (yet) but the theme was reinforced last week by a stay at Cropton Forest Lodge near Pickering in Yorkshire. I didnt have to leave tthe house, much less climb a hill, as the meadow was there under my nose in the appropriately named Meadow’s Edge Cottage. I’ve just poetically tweaked the name. It was fascinating to try to record the interface between the gorgeous tumbling wilderness and the more uniform mounds of cut hay. The hay was fluffed up a couple of times (yes, I know it was a Tedder – or a Haybob, I do live in the country!) during the week as it got somewhat damp, so I won’t say every wisp of hay is accurately recorded:
During one of these dampish periods I also sat indoors and looked out at the little courtyard garden:
What’s more, I’ve taken some photos to help towards what is becoming (I suppose) a series:’ the House in the Woods’. This was an apparently deserted tumbledown farm with about twenty pairs of eyes gazing impassively at me from the cats that occupied every nook. More on that later…
Art by Anne Farmer 