Enchanted Forest – Explorers’ Garden, Perthshire

Pitlochry from the air

The Enchanted Forest is a 3 week light and sound event showing off the Explorers Woodland Garden in Pitlochry, Perthshire. The show moved this year from Faskally Wood where it had been held since 2004, having inaugurated at The Hermitage in Dunkeld in 2002.

This year the event is called, fittingly, Transitions. It had its genesis in the roots of the Perthshire Big Tree Country and has attracted a number of sponsors while garnering prestigious awards:

Beating off stiff competition from some of Scotland’s finest events, The Enchanted Forest has scooped the Event Management Grand Prix, alongside the awards for Best Cultural Event and a commendation for Best Large Event.

We went to see this light and sound show – neither of us had ever been before. The web site hype is what drove us up to Pitlochry through some of the loveliest country on offer. The River Tay runs alongside the road until Dunkeld and Inver where the River Tummel joins it. Driving north from Inver which houses the River Braan also flowing into the Tay, the Tummel is a visual treat of a river seen winding its way below the hills all the way to Pitlochry.

I really like the forested hills and the smattering of deciduous woodlands that are on the valley floor. Of course sheep and cattle are always in view. I love it. Picturesque treat in the autumn when the trees are turning.

Of course Inver is of interest to me because it is so close to Birnam where Macbeth had to understand why the wood was coming to him.

Birnam Wood in Sepia 1800

And it also has a woodworking group called Burhouse  2.0 Ltd with all manner of tools, woods and machinery. The day we went, Burhouse was hosting a wood turning clinic. Combining a trip through the Enchanted Forest with the hunter gatherer’s penchant for wood and tools was a bonus.

This is the gorgeous view down Pitlochry's main street

Pitlochry itself is a pretty town and is one of those obvious reasonably well off arts and crafts towns. It sports a charming view down its main street.   It also has the Salmon Leap seen from the Pitlochry Fish Ladder

This is the Fish Leap - it looks amazing - I have to see it.

which is built into the Pitlochry Dam and power station. It is definitely a tourist attraction. We travelled through there when I first came to Scotland and my memories of Pitlochry stood the test. It is still a beautiful little town.

The photos we took at the Explorers Woodland Garden that night didn’t come out very well but here are a couple.

This is me touching the seed pod!!

There is a gallery of professional photos on the web site that are a treat and taken by proper photographers. Andy from Stravaiging would have taken excellent photographs. I will aspire to be a better photographer:-)

Of interest in the Garden are the Scots plant explorers who travelled far and wide finding plants. It could be a risky business in countries that hadn’t seen white men. My all time favourite is Robert Fortune.

I am a fervent tea drinker and when I came across a book called For all the Tea in China by Sarah Rose, I just had to have it. I couldn’t put the book down!

Fortune collected a lot more than tea from China; he brought back the Buddleja among other species. He had to disguise himself on occasion because of the hostility westerners could experience in China and elsewhere. His achievement though, was being able to finally (after years of disappointment and plant deaths) bring living tea plants back to India thus laying the foundations for the Indian tea trade. He also risked life and limb to extract the secret of preparing and making tea from the Chinese. He was intrepid. I owe him because I always need tea!!

He wasn’t the only plant hunter from Scotland of course. There was David Douglas who brought back the Douglas-fir from Canada. Then there was George Forrest who also travelled to China and Yunnan. He brought back the Rhododendrons and Primulas among hundreds of other species.

Francis Masson introduced Strelitzia and the Trilliums. One of my neighbours is fascinated by the trillium family. Thomas Drummond came back with the Acers and Phlox. William Forsyth had the Forsythias named after him.

These are a few of the names to be found on the Explorers Woodland Garden website. It is worth a visit. We plant and tea aficionados owe these explorers more than we can really appreciate.

Lights at Faskally

The Hermitage is a place I will visit soon. It sits on the River Braan and has a heritage Douglas fir, supposedly 200 feet high. The photos of the attractions look stunning. And it just over the road from Inver. Dunkeld here we come!!

Stone Steps at the Hermitage

What a walk!

Rorscharch & Connecticat: Farm Cats

Of course, the reason cats get in the way of my photographs is because they are always around the house, gardens and kitchen in particular; always on the lookout for food, a quick cuddle or a bit of a walk.

One cat who insisted on preening in front of the camera was Connecticat. And here he is as a grown-up in Booragoon, W.A.

The sleek, beautiful Connecticat

The two boys and I were living in our little handmade farm house surrounded by our own landscaped gardens, vegetable kitchen gardens and the farm animals.

Josh and I had finished visiting a friend in Lismore and while walking to the car to come home, heard a kitten mewling. Josh was small enough to fit under the pylons of the building and emerged with a wee black and white kitten that he promptly owned. The kitten was delighted. As I recall it was winter and the poor little thing must have taken shelter under the block of units. He purred non-stop for the 45 minute drive back home.

I asked Josh what name he would give the kitten and he said that we had connected with the cat. Well, that became the kitten’s name. Once back at the farm, our resident black and white cat Rorscharch was interested but fairly sanguine about this new bundle of fur. Mind you, the new bundle was very interested in Rorscharch and kept close to him. Smooched against him, played with his tail and generally pawed him all over.

Unusually tidy Rorscharch

We had picked Rorscharch up from a green grocer in Mullumbimby when he was a wee kitten a couple of years before mainly because we had field mice in the feed shed next to the cow bails and the chicken coop. We needed a cat quickly and Rorks, as he became affectionately known, was just the ticket.

Because it was a rural property I had installed a second hand slow combustion stove that filled several purposes – cooking, water heating and warming the house in general. I was and still remain enamoured of the reuse of materials rather following the current trend to buy everything brand spanking new. I am not the ideal type of consumer a capitalist society wants, needs and/or loves to encourage. That slow combustion stove was as heavy as lead!! And we had to devise rollers to get it into situ without damaging the beautiful new floors!

My sister came back from her 3 year jaunt around the world following the ‘hippy trail’ and moving into Europe as well at the end of 1976 and visited me on the farm. She made us a deadline to shift into the house. So we finished the kitchen and inside trimmings before the Christmas of 1976/77. She and I constructed and sanded benches for the kitchen and finished the window and door trimmings. We shifted in for that Christmas and I cut a branch from a tree and stood it proudly in a bucket of sand in the kitchen and we decorated it (well sort of). I have never been into Christmas but hey, when you have two kids and a sister on hand, you gotta go where the majority wants. So I did.

Back to the cats – both of them loved that fire as cats always do. They learnt not to put their paws anywhere near the stove top but loved sitting on the open door of the oven that heated the kitchen up very quickly. I spread cushions over the door so they could enjoy the heat. We all sat close to the stove on carpets, rugs and bedding on cold nights.

The two cats became inseparable except when I was taking photographs of trees and gardens. So here are some photographs of Connecticat with the greenery! Rorscharch just lay about the house when he wasn’t mousing in the feed shed.

Me first. Tree is background!

 

Oh noes! Nearly obscured.

Me! Me! I is still here

It was, in many ways, an idyllic life style. The boys grew up understanding plants and life cycles. Both learned to cook and keep their clothes clean and mended. They learned to be independent which is how I considered my role as their mother. We grew crops for market and for us and our neighbours, milked cows and gathered eggs. All the things you think of with farms except on a reduced scale. It was a subsistence farm that kept us and made some cash which bought treats and I considered as pin money.

Too tired. Rorks relaxing

All of us, including the cats, lived ‘the good life’. Both cats would trot behind me in the mornings when I went to milk the cow(s). Warm milk!! Ah. They loved it. I delighted in squirting milk into their faces. Great fun. Very 1970s, very hippy and very satisfying.

 

 

All things change however and now we are scattered all over the place and both Connecticat and Rorscharch are dead.

Rorscharch from old age and Connecticat because he was skittled by a car after I had taken them both by plane to be with us for our sojourn in Perth.

Farewell Rorks - 18 years.

Scotland’s National Woodworking Show

How beautiful - Wikipedia image

Last weekend we went to a woodworking exhibition at the Royal Highland Centre. It was hosted by publishers Nelton Group and showcased Scotland’s National Woodworkers Show.

It is an annual show and it was the first time I had been to an event where some fine craftsmen exhibited their work and gave practical tips, where there was some marvellous machinery, exotic types of wood and yummy tools for woodworking. And I love the smell of wood so I was glad to be there.

I realised I was a bit of a tool freak decades ago when I built a house out of timber and first used a handsaw and hammer. I had used axes and adzes before in the forest up the road from my property. As the house grew I found I needed to master a mitre box and chisels. This particular exercise woke me up to the amazing number of tools available for specific jobs using wood. Nailing the yellow box tongue and groove floor made me a whiz with a hammer, I can tell you! Sorting through the photos I have of that time I realise how few show the floor without rugs and carpets.

Here are two little photographs of the kitchen floor in that house.

I was snapped cooking dinner by my young son.

A very young me on the farm!

Cats always get in the way in my photographs!

I have never fitted anything more delicate than the lining of my house and putting sills on windows and architraves around doors. It was a cute, quaint house though. There was an art gallery of sorts in the township and wood workers from around the hills brought their fine and delicate work in there. I loved looking at and handling the smooth finishes of curved jewellery boxes, bowls and ornaments.

So, looking at the woodworkers displaying their talents and using lathes for turning bowls and any other number of items was an absolute treat. There was Mark Raby who makes a gorgeous job of finishing his turned items. His wife Lisa burns intricate designs onto wooden pieces.

Now, of course, we need a lathe. As if you couldn’t guess. My husband knows one hell of a lot about wood types and their qualities for woodworking. He has a CNC machine plus other necessities but no lathe as yet. That’s next.

We photographed finished items, some of which were wonderful.

Broxburn's colourful & delicate trinkets

Trinkets from the Broxburn Woodcraft Club were so delicate.

Hanbury's fiery dramatic pieces

The fiery and colourful decorations of Mick Hanbury’s plates were stunning.

The Borders' mushrooms & stool not toad!

The display from the Scottish Borders Wood Turners was charming! How’s that!! They were all very eye catching

Also took photos of the hand tools. Check out the massive ‘long and strong’ turning gouge.

Long & strong turning gouge

Nearly as tall as I am! Well, not really.

According to my husband, Robert Sorby is possibly the best maker of fine turning chisels.

Tony Wilson's travelling lathe

Tony Wilson is confined to a wheelchair and had a lathe built for him. So I took a photo of it. He had made some great candle stands.

Then there was the wall of woods. This entranced me; there were so many varieties and so many exotic timbers. It was a display by Aberdeenshire Hardwoods but, of course, everything was a saleable item. I was surprised at both the low and high costs of different wood samples. The shiny wax that protects the samples from splitting actually highlighted the amazing colours in the pieces.

All sorts of wood samples

This photo doesn’t do the display justice of course.

So next year we will visit the hall again and see what is on offer. By then I will know more about wood!

Christopher Hitchens, Cancer and Crap

Those of us who have been reading Christopher Hitchens’ articles, essays and books for some time and are attracted by and appreciative of his remarkable facility with language and his writing style, not to say the content of his writings, are now following his regular articles detailing the current problems in his life.

Christopher Hitchens

He is leading a very public ‘living with cancer’ that is as robust a life as he has ever led politically, as a public intellectual and pundit and as a combatant against religious believers who insist that their views have an absolute intrinsic value. He admits his excessive use of alcohol and nicotine are factors in his oesophageal cancer. His prognosis is poor. He writes honestly and well in Vanity Fair about this cancer and its effect on his life.

I joined battle a little while ago with a religious evangelist on youtube who had had the temerity to post a 9 minute plea for Hitchens to recant his non-belief and fall into the metaphorical arms of Jebus and be ‘saved’ before his death.

The video she made was so sickening that I clicked the stop button in order to cease the heaving in my stomach. Then I got stuck in to her. To no avail; she couldn’t see from the 340 odd comments lambasting her that she was being mealy mouthed while trying to wring a bit of Jesus propaganda from Hitchens’ sufferings. The height of disgusting religiosity.

Hitchens has also had to put up with people praying for him – no one is quite sure what form these prayers take. Could be some are praying for a death bed conversion; others praying for his recovery to full health. And, I suppose some twisted souls (!) are praying he gets his comeuppance at the ‘doors of heaven’.

Graciously Hitchens concedes that it will be of no benefit to him but may make the do-gooders feel better.

Likewise he has been inundated by the wooers telling him what magic outlandish cure to try next. It is a bit reminiscent of another journalist who developed throat cancer. John Diamond wrote a book detailing these woo ‘cures’. Snake Oil and other preoccupations was published in 2001

after Diamond’s death.  

The one thing that has slipped into the language is that the sufferer of cancer does ‘battle’ with the disease, as in:

‘He has lost a long battle with cancer.’

‘He put up a valiant fight against cancer but ultimately lost the battle.’

The ‘big C’ as a moniker imbues all cancers with a bogey-man type status. The ‘silent killer’ is another moniker that adds fear of the unseen. So it is an easy jump from that to imbue cancer with devilish design and retribution.

We are told to not get stressed – ‘you’ll get cancer’; don’t get angry/vengeful/think nasty thoughts – ‘you’ll get cancer; don’t eat GM foods (that’s a doozy) – you’ll risk a cancer and so on ad nauseum. It’s enough to make you sick.

Apart from silly woo associated with cancer and its ‘cures’, there remains strong evidenced medical research that is turning up a lot more information about different cancers.

This 2002 global study details 26 cancers and concludes that the cancers associated with affluence – the so-called Western Lifestyle – include colon and rectum, breast and prostate and all appear to have a rather good prognosis. The cancers more prevalent and with a poor prognosis in developing countries include cancers of the liver, stomach and oesophagus.

There are some 8 papilloma viruses associated with cervical cancer. There are hepatic viruses causing liver and associated cancers. There are genetic factors as well. Then there is UV radiation and background radiation from decaying radionuclides like radon extant in the earth. Soot and smoke from fire (been around for ages!) contain a multitude of carcinogens. In fact carcinogens are endemic to our planet.

And we live longer – the incidence of cancers increases with longevity. We have AIDS within our global population and that has increased the incidence, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, of Kaposi sarcoma. Also, product and resource industrialisation is spreading throughout the world carrying with it the attendant ills that increase the incidence of cancers. That is the ‘modernity’ of cancers as researched.

The upshot of the magical status ascribed to cancers of all stripe is that reporting studies in the tabloid press is less than robust. Indeed, they appear to be downright designed to misreport and sensationalise unnecessarily.

The latest newsfest concerns a study undertaken by Prof. David (Manchester Uni) and Prof. Zimmerman (Pennsylvania Uni). They are reported as stating that cancer is a modern day disease because their research appears to find few cancers in their subjects of over 3,000 years ago.  Their study uses the mummified/skeletal remains of subjects under 50 years of age. This is not mentioned in the press. Any study of subjects under 50 in modern times will also yield a lower incidence of cancers.

Mind you it appears the duo may have made some intemperate statements linking cancer to modernity. The New Scientist addressed this research in an article stating in answer to the question of there being elements of modern life that cause cancers:

Yes, indeed, but most of them are down to poor lifestyle choices that people can do something about, not, as implied, because they are drowning in a sea of carcinogens from which there is no escape.

Given the New Scientist article with its more comprehensive treatment of David’s and Zimmerman’s research plus  Coghlan’s own comments, it is surprising that the tabloids persist in showing their cavalier attitude to science reporting. Their image sinks further and is not what the populace needs in its reading matter. I try not to be depressed!!!

The House of Doors

I recently spent 10 days visiting a friend I had never met. The visit took place in a house that was full of doors. There were doors here, there and everywhere; shutting rooms up, opening them out, dividing space into manageable areas and to play peek-a-boo with.

There was a downstairs with more doors. One to the back garden which had to stay closed against any possible unauthorised breach. And more doors; one to a cool cellar with apples resting peacefully, another to a laundry cum boiler room that helped the room become a drying room as well. Doors opened into a potting room and a potential room. Well, it was a room but it has potential to be named specifically for its purpose whatever it may become. Then there is a door at the top of the stairs leading from the downstairs into the upstairs and a door straight across the hallway into my bedroom. There is another door in my bedroom that is closed – not permanently – but to shut the kitchen noises out whilst I sleep.

Now, several weeks later and ensconced in my own house again, I am reading a gloriously intelligent, humorous and very insightful book called The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery. Because I cannot read it in the original French I am relying on the undoubted skill and empathy of its translator Alison Anderson. What an absolute treat it is to stumble across a book that is utterly irresistible. I had been warned by Jerry Coyne over at his blog that I would probably be entranced. And so I am.

The thing that prompted this blog entry to describe my visit to The House of Doors – apart from having discussed this possibility with my friend – is that Renee in Hedgehog gives a smallish dissertation of the habit of Westerners to build houses with doors that open inward or outward or, indeed, swing inwards and outwards. Whatever they do ponders Renee, they make an intrusion into the room in which they open and produce a depression, a gaping hole in the room they leave thus creating a disunity between walls and rooms, space and light.

I have never before thought of doors in this fashion. Renee further applauds the Japanese sense and appreciation of space and continuity by reflecting that Japanese houses are constructed with sliding doors that don’t break the essential roomness of the rooms to which they allow access. There is an absence of any intrusion. Forgive me for this delicious quote from the Hedgehog:

When a sliding door is open, two areas communicate without offending each other. When it is closed, each regains its integrity. Sharing and reunion can occur without intrusion.

This does not mean, of course, that The House of Doors was unpleasing in any way. Just Western, as it were. And in the South West of France. All the windows and french doors had these wonderful external shutters that I learned to fold over the windows each night and fold back in the morning!!

The kitchen is a wonderfully roomy room with a table stretched along its middle. Preparing food on this table sometimes felt like tickling its tummy, though it gave no indication and remained a steady, sturdy food prep. area that kept necessary utensils within reach from either side. The large and light-giving windows over the sink brought unfettered light from a large semi-industrial block that was used by a transport company. This is good because the land will never be built out. There is a feeling of being in the country while The House is actually near the middle of the largish township.

This room opens into a larger room with a dining table at the near end and two magnificent French doors at the far end opening out onto a balcony. A sense of space is absolutely essential to comfort in a Western house and this one has it. To one side, another door opens out into a vestibule that houses a front glass door to the outside world and an internal glass door back into the hallway. A pleasant halfway resting place before leaving and upon entering The House.

I think it is the preponderance of glass that adds to the feeling of lightness and space. But it is the garden that can be seen from the windows of three different rooms that draws my eye, probably because I am, like my friend, enamoured of gardening.

So for our 10 days we talked gardening, did gardening, picked the fruits of gardening and bought some gardening additions that we immediately planted out. Seeds were sown, weeds were firmly dislodged and given short shrift. Pathways were developed and future garden plans were made.

The Yucca we planted

In this way my friend and I got to know each other and learnt about ourselves. It was profoundly satisfying for both of us.

We nearly destroyed our budding friendship twice. We are both readers of Jerry Coyne’s blog and in one of his posts he had mentioned that if you give a friend a book to read that you treasure and your friend doesn’t even like it, is that sufficient grounds on which to terminate the friendship because it was obviously built on erroneous bases in the first place?

My friend mentioned this while we were working out what fertiliser to purchase for the garden. I said one ratio and insisted on it until she was so exasperated that she said:

I must tell Jerry Coyne that it isn’t that books wreck friendships, fertilisers do!!

The second time had nothing to do with fertilisers but graduated to where plants should be transplanted to best advantage.

She offered to do a running commentary for Jerry listing all the things that can wreck friendships. Refreshments became necessary after these pretend altercations and when I left I promised to return in the spring and she promised to give me back my bedroom.

I mean, I have to see how the garden is growing don’t I?