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Website of poet Elizabeth Rimmer

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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
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
Winter Settles In

A House for Winter
The sky opens blue windows
between shutters of grey cloud.
Winter peers in.

Brittle sunshine slants
between skeletonised trees,
thin relict leaves at twig tips.

A breath of frost melts
on the cold frame, split curls
of seedpods glued to the glass.

The dark glassy river is choked
with panes of broken ice,
curdled with falls of new snow.

The warm pigeon-feathered hollow
between railway and river, bubbles
like a hearth with soft coos.

A white snow-mist climbs
the black walls of the hill.
Winter settles in.

This is the opening poem in the sequence River Calendar, and apart from the absence of blue skies and sunshine, it’s pretty much the way the territory looks just now. The temperature is climbing, and the last scraps of snow are melting down here beside the river, but there is still snow on the hills. The grass is coming through lush and startlingly green, and I’ve been checking the garden for signs of new life. The bulbs are coming through, but they don’t seem much earlier than usual in spite of the very mild December we had – there are certainly no snowdrops or daffodils out here. The witch hazel is in full flower, nearly three weeks ahead of the date I recorded for last year, and there are catkins on the hazel and birch. Otherwise everything seems to have withstood the relentless rain pretty well, as far as I can see, though some of those herbs that don’t like to get their feet wet must be struggling. I carefully moved some of the more vulnerable ones – the lavenders, myrtle, lemon verbena and so on into the greenhouse, and they look fine. Sometimes there are mice and voles in there which give tender shoots a hard time, but this doesn’t seem to have happened so much, perhaps because food has been more accessible outside.

This certainly seems to apply to the birds. They don’t seem nearly so interested in coming to the feeders except in very cold weather, and the wilder birds – the yellowhammers and reed buntings haven’t come at all. There are still berries left on the cotoneasters, even some rose-hips, which must be unusual for January, and I haven’t seen any grey squirrels lately. This might be because of the fox I’ve seen prowling on the river bank in the early morning; it seems to have diminished the rabbit population somewhat too.

The birds are beginning to have other things on their minds. Starlings are getting together in the bushes across the river, chattering and whistling, and maybe thinking about moving north. They always seem to be the first to get itchy feet. There are blackbirds as well as robins singing before dawn, and the first great tits are tuning up their spring songs. Earth is not awake yet, but perhaps sleeping less deeply.

There will be one big change this year. The warehouse on whose flat roof the black-backed gulls nest when they come back up-river in May is being demolished. I don’t think their neighbours will miss their noise and disturbance – and the house-martins certainly won’t miss their nest-robbing – but I will. I like their communal gabble, their careful boundary-watching, the brown blobs of fluff that run around the roof until they grow to flying weight, the witchy screams as the parent birds incite them to take off and go fish for themselves. One of the markers of the coming and going of summer will be gone.

January 21, 2016
Back from the Holidays

While the English are still in the middle of their summer holidays, our school-children are going back to school today. Disappointing as this is, when the weather has only just improved, there does seem to be an appropriate feel to it. The blue tits are back in the garden, there’s a grey squirrel pinching the last of the strawberries, there are goosanders on the river again, and the sound of geese in the sky at night. These are not the winter migrants, I am told, but the resident ones dispersing after the breeding season, but you know there’s change afoot when you hear them calling. The very young black-headed gulls have their winter plumage, and the rowans are red, even on our tree which is usually the last. The colours are autumn-bright, the mullein is in flower and the first japanese anemone is out. And there are feathers on the grass. Some of these are from the moult which most birds go through at this time of year – the sparrows are looking particularly ragged just now – but sometimes they are not. Sometimes you get a scatter of feathers in one place, and you know that the sparrowhawk is back. It’s a turning point in the year.

The garden has done surprisingly well, all things considered. So many of my herbs come with the warning – needs good drainage, likes sun, hates sitting in cold wet soil. And this summer in Scotland has been cold – seldom over 15 degrees, and extremely wet. And yet, most things have flourished. The chervil hasn’t – it seems to have disappeared altogether, and the seed coriander has been a disaster. There are rushes growing in the pot! I think one of the neighbourhood cats chose that particular spot for territory marking – it certainly didn’t smell like coriander!

It has to be said that the garden hasn’t had much love form me lately. That has mostly gone to the NHS, where, thankfully, answers have been found and diagnoses made, and solutions are on their way. But poetry has come back from its holidays too. The proofs of The Territory of Rain have been signed off, and I’ve had a first look at the cover. And I will be reading tonight at the StAnza showcase as part of the Just Festival in Edinburgh. It’s a weird time to start a new year, but I’m ready.

August 18, 2015

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