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Website of poet Elizabeth Rimmer

Walking the territory

The Territory of Summer

This is no longer the territory of rain – at least for now. There hasn’t been a summer like this since about August 1994 – which is when I wrote a journal post that became this:

Sunlight hits a blow to the head,
and the sky is molten, carved
by the screaming flight of swifts
round the steaming tenements.

The local weather service says this (30.5º) is the hottest temperature on record for the area. It’s rather pleasant so far. In our north-facing stone house I can wear a sleevelss dress in comfort, and the garden is flourishing though the tomatoes in the greenhouse need much more watering than I was expecting.

The birds have done well too – fledged brrods of sparrows and starlings, blackbirds wrens, bluetits and great tits, and more swallows, swifts and housemartins than I remember for years. The black backed gulls have dispersed, but they are still about, and the black-headed gulls have taken full advantage of their diminished impact. There aren’t any chiffchaffs resident, however, and lapwing numbers – never high at the best of times, are tragically low.

On the other hand, bats, moths and butterflies have done very well, and there are plenty of small insects crashing into windscreens as we drive, as there used to be. I’ve seen more hares this spring than ever, in a field across the river, and two weeks ago there were three deer in the long reeds on the bank. One of them saw me watching and stared at me for a while, before apparently realising that I couldn’t reach her across the water, and going back to browsing, disappearing so completely that only the twitch of her brown ears helped me to see her at all. Last week, however, construction work began on a building site nearby, and the pile driving was too much for them.

I have been solar dyeing in this hot weather, and got some good yellows from leaves, which I will photograph when they are dry. I’ve harvested gooseberries and blackcurrants too, chopped a lot of mint for the freezer, and steeped some ladysmantle in oil to make a skin balm. It’s a busy time of year, but we need a break, and there will be a pause in the blog until after we come back from holiday.

Enjoy the weather!

June 28, 2018
The Quiet Week

Today is sunny and not even too cold, which makes today the last before the cold air from Siberia hits. Forecasts show that the day time temperatures won’t rise so high and the night time ones will dip lower over the next fortnight, reminding me of that cold spring when daffodils came out and stayed for weeks in the stubborn chill, and seeds didn’t germinate until May.

But today, I am enjoying it. When I went out to look at the garden just now I was dive-bombed by the first bee, and birds are busy in the hedges and the trees, trying out their courting voices. It sounds as if we have a good few thrushes this year, which is lovely – for most of my time in this house the territory has been dominated by blackbirds, and much as I love them, there is something special about thrush song.

All the bulbs are rushing out of the ground, except where pigeons have flattened the ground underneath the bird feeder. Last week I moved the feeder to the patio, where they can’t do any damage, and the crocuses are already making up for lost time.

but the best spring thing is something I couldn’t have photographed. On my way home on Monday morning I looked across the river to a big open field. Just in case this sounds impossibly idyllic, I should say that this field is between the railway station and an industrial estate, but at the point where I was standing, there is an open prospect across the river and towards the hills, and in the field there were four hares. I have seen single hares on our side of the river, but never four together, and they were staring each other out, chasing each other and doing the mad march hare boxing thing. Even if this cold snap lingers, I think spring has already delivered!

February 21, 2018
Winter is Coming

The robins are active in the garden, and though there are still swallows and housemartins about, last week there was the winter landfall of starlings all in their speckled feathers. The first geese are about, and the black-headed gulls have their white winter heads on.

The summer windowboxes

are almost done, and yesterday I planted up the new one for winter

It will sit in the sun for a week or two to get established, before I move it into place. I’m planting bulbs, putting out the bird feeders again, harvesting tomatoes, and tidying up in the garden,

and in the house, I’m getting to grips with the new central heating system and a new cooker

which, being electric, requires a whole new way of thinking and some new techniques.

This is a very visual post, because I’m pretty much worded out. This year’s anthology for the Federation of Writers (Scotland) has just gone to the printers’ and I’m planning for two readings in Falkirk at the Storytelling Festival next weekend, and two more on National Poetry Day. There will be more information about this in my next post, but meanwhile I want to thank Janet Crawford and Ian Maxtone for so generously inviting me to what looks as if it will be a varied and fascinating weekend.

September 14, 2017
Changing Seasons

While demand for power is relatively low, the turbines at the Corra Linn Fall are turned off so you can see them at their best. So we did. We took our grand-daughter, and we picked wild raspberries and blaeberries, spotted new pine and fir cones, wild flowers, emerging mushrooms and interesting stones – a really good day out.

But it did reveal that there isn’t too much left of summer. On Tuesday, there were swifts, wheeling and screaming over the river as they have been since May – and then they seemed to gather together and shot away westwards. I don’t expect to see them again until next year, though the swallows and housemartins are still with us. We went away when the new rowan berries were still yellow, and we came back to find them red, much to the delight of the blackbirds. Willow warblers and bluetits are back in the garden too, along with what I think is a third brood of sparrows, and this means that so is the sparrowhawk. I got my first glimpse of it crossing the road from a tall hedge on one side to a garden on the other. I heard an owl hooting two nights ago when the moon was bright and full, and this tells me more than anything that autumn is on its way.

On the other hand, there are still bees everywhere, and butterflies – not so many this year, and mostly whites. But yesterday I saw the first small copper I’ve seen in the territory, in a sunny south-facing front garden. And today the Countryside Rangers are going to release a thousand peacock butterflies, in the hope of building up the local population. It’s a good day for it, warm and mostly sunny, and I hope they’ll thrive.

August 9, 2017
May in the Territory of Rain

sunny garden 1

Well not so much territory of rain this week. It is beautifully hot and sunny, and after everything in the garden hanging fire for about a fortnight, it has all started happening at once. Seeds have grown (but so have a million weeds), the thyme and sage have come into flower, and I have started harvesting. Chives are in the freezer and I have made tarragon and basil vinegar.

I’ve found some chickweed

not this plant, I hasten to add – it is very near to territory marking posts of dogs and foxes – and I am infusing it into oil. I’ve done the same for cleavers (I wish I could say they weren’t from my garden, but they are), and I’ve made some hawthorn flower tincture

I will be drying the thyme and sage,

plus some lovely sprays of eucalyptus and bay my friend Rita Bradd brought me, when she came to discuss editing her new pamphlet of poems, which will be out in September. She also brought me a hand of ginger, and as I noticed a little growth spur on it, I’ll be planting up a division of it to see if I can grow it on. There are cuttings to take too, so I am looking forward to a very busy weekend.

Elsewhere, the black backed gulls have pretty much moved on from their old nesting site. I only counted three yesterday, nesting on chimney pots. But on the plus side, there are more housemartins and swallows and swifts than ever, and I hope they will rear broods successfully. The robins abandoned their nest in the ivy pot, but they must have found somewhere else because there are baby robins and blue tits in the garden. The magpies that were a problem in other years seem to have taken themselves off, so the small birds are very active. There are frogs and newts in the pond, and I’m hoping this year will repair some of the damage last year’s cold and wet did to our wildlife.

May 26, 2017
April in the Territory of Rain

This is not really a typical month, as it has certainly not been the territory of rain. There hasn’t been any serious rain all month, and not much in March. The pond is low and I’m already watering things that I wouldn’t usually need to worry about until June. On the other hand, until last weekend, it wasn’t really cold, so we have had a beautiful month, with blossom – the cherry coming a good fortnight earlier, and the apple just opening. Daffodils and primroses weren’t battered by winds, and the wind anemones flourishing and spreading.

The cow parsley is just beginning on the road verges, along with white dead-nettle and garlic mustard – the first time I’ve seen it here, and the bluebells are out. Soon it will be time to go to Inchmahome, where the bluebells are like a flood under the old chestnuts and oaks, and the geese will be nesting.

Migrant birds are back, though not in large numbers yet, and the dawn chorus is pretty impressive. We had on major disappointment, in that robins made a lot of progress on a nest just below my study window, but then abandoned it. They haven’t gone far, however, as I still see them foraging.

There have been some changes, most of them quite encouraging. Wrens chaffinches and gold-finches are about in greater numbers and there are more song-thrushes. There are more skylarks in the fields this year, but I haven’t seen any lapwings at all, nor heard a curlew. The biggest change is the lesser black-backed gull colony. The warehouse they used to nest on was demolished, and though a good number tried to nest among the rubble, they were disturbed by surveyors, and I saw no chicks at all. This year fewer gulls have come back, and only the boldest are on the site – which isn’t being developed at all yet. Some of them are on chimneys, and some of them must be on the river bank, but it seems awfully quiet without them.

The other change is the deer. Once the sight of a deer coming down from the crags was a rare thing, but now you can see them browsing in the fields furthest from the road almost every day. As the human community begins to struggle with our social and environmental pressures, some quiet resurgence may be beginning among our neighbours. I’m taking all the hopeful signs I can get!

April 29, 2017
A Week Among Islands

This is the view from a walk up to Dunollie Castle near Oban, looking at Kerrera, where we did not go, while we were on holiday last week. We did, however, go to Lismore, which you can just see in the distance, and saw this:

which, much as it looks like a strange rock formation, is actually Coeffin Castle. It was owned by the MacDougalls, who also own Dunollie, and a few more fortified buildings on this coast, which enabled them to control much of the country round during the Middle Ages.

Taking advantage of some beautiful weather, we also went to Knapdale to see the beavers, and though we did not catch a glimpse of them, we saw how active and ingenious they can be, with traces of their lodges on the loch,

and some surprisingly big tree stumps which they had gnawed through. And to Kilmartin to look at the cairns and the henge at Temple Wood – and the beautiful herb garden at the museum, which must have been planted by someone very knowledgeable.

At all these places we were impressed by the visitor centres – well-designed and built, and though obviously making a profit and providing much needed employment opportunities, not rampantly commercial. The staff were well-informed and very friendly, and the inevitable cafes and gift shops used locally sourced food and gifts. Argyll lives gently and creatively with its history and its landscape, and I have come back inspired by this dialogue between past and present, between land and sea, and between the earth and the creatures on it.

By the time we got to the holiday, it was mostly about taking a break from a long period dealing with family illnesses and upheavals, but as well as being rested, I’ve come back with some thoughts about living and learning and writing in my own landscape. Some of the books I took with me have helped with this, and I’ll be writing a bit about that next week – but also, how can you not be inspired by landscapes like this.

October 18, 2016
The Year on the Turn

Not a great picture, but the best I could do at the time. We have hit that time of year. The children are back at school, the rowans are red – though the birds don’t seem too bothered just yet – and there are geese overhead in the twilit sky. These are not the migratory pink-footed geese which come in from the north in astonishing numbers in September. These are greylags which have been here all year round, but which are gathering together and finding more suitable roosts for the coming harder weather.

It is not quite autumn, although the first bronzing is showing on trees most exposed to temperature change. We have had plums, but no apples yet. The brambles are ripe, but hips and haws are barely tinged with colour, and the elderberries hard green pips. Tomatoes are ripening fast in the greenhouse, and though the winter barley has been harvested (and one field ploughed already) the spring wheat will stand a week or two yet – much to the joy of the sparrows and finches. There are plenty of swallows and housemartins, but every telegraph wire has its long line of birds sitting, thinking about it, getting ready to move on.

I’ve been in Edinburgh a lot at the festivals, including the magnificent Grit at the Playhouse, and helping to launch Signal, the book of responses to Ciara Phillips Every Woman a Signal Tower project.

And I’m winding up the festival season at Callander, at the Poetry Weekend. It’s going to be the usual mix of poetry, book launches (including four from red Squirrel Press), book sales, performance, discussion and socialising, and this year includes a walk along the Poetry Path at Corbenic and The Write Angle’s

Word Exchange,

on the Saturday evening, which sounds intriguing.

But I’ve been using the summer pause to revisit some old projects and re-evaluate where I’m going next. I’ve done a lot of new things so far this year – poems for five anthologies, judging a competition, editing and translating, and more readings and reviews than ever, and I’ve loved it. I’ve been at my desk more and in the garden and walking the territory less, which I’m less happy about, and some things seem to have been lost in the shuffle – regular themed posts here, for one. The grounded poetics strand is one I’ll be revisiting over the next month, as well as herb poems and some thoughts about weathering changes in both personal social and environmental life. There’s a thing called ( full of mythology and politics and ecology) The Wren in the Ash Tree which is going to make its debut at Callander, and which is going to take me some time ——

Stick around, it’s going to get interesting!

August 26, 2016
Lavender’s blue

Well, you’d think, wouldn’t you. But sometimes lavender can look like this – lavender stoechas, possibly ‘Avignon’

or this

Which is lavender rosea, or this

which is lavender alba. They are all flowering their lovely heads off, and I’ve taken cuttings. With luck there will be some to share with poets at the Callander Poetry Weekend, which falls this year on the 2nd to the 4th September. Usually I would be encouraging people to sign up for a reading slot, but it seems that the word is out already and there is a wonderful programme in prospect, with the usual mix of readings, book launches, performance pieces, discussion groups, and a lot of good food and conversation.

The weekend got plenty of publicity at the Callander Haiku readings last night, as many of the contributors had met, or learned about haiku at previous weekends. I can’t recommend this weekend too highly, particularly as all the events are free, so if you are new to poetry readings, it’s an easy way to dip your toe in the water.

But in the meantime, I’ve been gardening, harvesting gooseberries and redcurrants, drying oregano for the winter, and beginning to cosset the first tomatoes. The roses are in full bloom and the honeysuckle is just beginning to flower – I think the combination of warm weather and torrential rain which we’ve had this week has really suited the garden! And there are flower buds on the myrtle bush for the first time.

In the quiet of the school holidays, I’ve taken time to rethink the next phase of this blog. I have a couple of poetry projects cooking – some translations from Old English, and a LONG poem dealing with land ownership and exile, environmental neglect, femininity, wildness and poetry. I’m getting sidetracked by research into wrens, fairy tales, folk music and early monasticism, but if I can bring it off, it’s going to be enormously satisfying. I may post scraps of it here every now and then. And I’m focusing my reviews to come up with a poetics of inhabitation – more human than eco-poetry, but less anthropocentric than pastoral. But I have no doubt that there will be the same mix of territory walking, domesticity and comment as usual. I hope those of you who are kind enough to read this regularly will enjoy it.

July 22, 2016
Summer in the Garden

The gallica rose is in full bloom, but it is soaking wet. After a lovely fortnight, the summer is cold and rainy, and the whole garden is lush and dripping. The strawberries have all been eaten by the sparrows and starlings, but there are gooseberries and blackcurrants aplenty. The angelica is setting seeds in flower-heads like great chandeliers, and there are marigolds and borage in flower. I have been drying sage and thyme, and taking cuttings, some of which have struck, but not as many as I might have expected. The tomatoes are beginning to set fruit, but they are looking chilled, and I’ve shut the greenhouse door for a day or two.

On the verges the cow parsley is going over, but ox-eye daisy and willow herb are going strong and the thistles are just feeling their strength before they flower. Usually there are clouds of clover and vetch, but not so much this year. On the other hand, the wild roses and elder flower have been magnificent.

The young birds have done very well, apart from the black-backed gulls. They took up residence among the rubble of the warehouse they used to nest on, but surveyors seem to have disturbed them at the wrong time, and I haven’t seen any chicks this year. I am sure that the smaller birds will benefit, but gulls (although they seem so prevalent, not to mention annoying) are endangered now, and I miss the racket they usually make. I’ve seen more kestrels, however, and the first bat, and this morning I saw a juvenile great spotted woodpecker on the birch tree in the garden – it’s an ill summer that doesn’t favour some species!

July 6, 2016

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