One Saturday in Coventry...

Wall painting on Hay Lane;

Window of the disused County Hall (although 'the city's most significant 18th century building');

The Devil under St. Michael's foot (Jacob Epstein);

The Whittle Arches;

Young man sleeping next to waterfall, Priory Gardens (despite a gaggles of goths splashing in the water about 12 feet away);

The People's Bench - watching street artists;

Up or down? Hales Street;

God's lawyers taking a passerby to Hell. Down then.

Taken on a Kodak EasyShare Z740 on 29/7/06.

Painted lady

Just round the corner from me is a patch of waste ground with a clump of ragwort which is buzzing with life, including these:



The Painted Lady butterfly (Cynthia cardui) flies here from Europe and Africa. Possibly there are more this year because of the hot weather. Possibly I am noticing them more because I have a nice new butterfly book which was part of my leaving present from the Wildlife Trust.



This is also just down the road from me!



And this is growing in the Organic Allotment at work: runner bean 'Painted Lady'.

Ryton Flowers #1: The Organic Allotment

I'm lucky enough to work in one of the best gardens in Britain (I'm biased already!) We have a civilised hour for lunch, which gives me plenty of time to eat (an organic!) lunch then go out with a camera or sketchbook and wait for the flowers to stop waving about in the wind. It would be out of place for me to aim to describe the whole gardens, as we've an excellent website (www.gardenorganic.org.uk/) already which does that job. But I'll post some of my photos from time to time, and perhaps they'll encourage you all to visit and see it for real!

The Organic Allotment is one of over 15 gardens, and has lots of ideas for people wanting to grow their own food. It has four plots which are rotated so that no crop is grown in the same place more than once in four years. This helps to keep pests and diseases down, and also is used to control the level of fertility in the soil for different requirements of different crops.

A big feature of the garden is the use of 'companion' planting using plants which some might consider merely ornamental. Here there is Painted Sage (Salvia viridis) in the foreground to attract pollinators for the beans. In the background are tomatoes and sweetcorn and aubergines, being grown as a 'catch crop' after potatoes, surrounded by marigolds (Calendula) to attract hoverflies to eat aphids.



In a different plot brassicas are being grown. Next year they will move into the plot where the beans are now. Beans and other leguminous plants can 'fix' nitrogen from the air into the soil, making it suitable for 'hungry' crops like cabbages and sprouts. The strong taste of these vegetables is partly the reason for their requirement for nitrogen: they turn it into chemicals which can repel pests. But not all, which is why there is a net to keep out Large White butterflies, and Echium vulgare (Viper's Bugloss) almost swamping the cabbages, to put off Cabbage Root Fly and attract hoverflies. (How this repells Cabbage Root Fly is really interesting but it'll take too long this time!)



It seems fortuitous that the blues of the cabbages and that of the Bugloss go so well together!

The composite picture at the top includes (clockwise from top left) Verbena bonariensis with Achillea in the background; sputnik-like Nigella seed-heads; Calendula, and Statice, an 'everlasting' flower which is also very attractive to pollinators such as butterflies.

Ryton Pools Country Park

Went on a very pleasant walk yesterday evening, organised by Warwickshire County Council countryside section. Enthusiastic and knowledgeable Assistant Ranger Pam took us on a figure-of-eight round Ryton Wood, which is owned by Warwickshire Wildlife Trust and is a Site of Special Scientific Interest. (http://www.warwickshire-wildlife-trust.org.uk/reserves/ryton-wood-sssi.htm)

It’s a lovely place to be on a warm (understatement of the day) summer evening. Under the oak canopy it was rather cooler, but still very sultry. Perhaps that was why we didn’t see the White Admirals, nor the Purple Emperor (! but introduced and possibly a lonely batchelor as only one seen this year). However we saw several Marbled Whites (which according to my lovely new book about butterflies and insects which was one I bought with my leaving pressie from the Wildlife Trust is not a White but a Brown butterfly. Confusing.) And several Ghost Moths plus a pair of pink knickers which another participant mis-identified as a hat.

But Pam and I had a jolly good natter!

Marbled White on Teasel in butterfly meadow, Ryton Pools Country Park

More moths

A sultry evening as I said, which finished with thunderclouds looming. As the sun set with a fiery pollution-generated glow I pedalled back home as fast as possible without mowing any pedestrians down (no lights - doh!) and managed to get back before the storm started. Actually it didn't, which was a disappointment, but I didn’t switch on my computer just in case the house got struck by lightening.

Anyway, just settling down with a glass of cool lager and a good book when there was a bit of a commotion on the landing. Cries of ‘get it!’ ‘eek!’ ‘it’s got away’ and a pshhhhttt sound…so I popped my head out and found my two neighbours armed with rolled-up newspapers and a can of fly-spray trying to get a couple of not very big moths. I am now official moth-catcher of the block, having rescued both moths (didn’t stop to ID them) and got the cat in as the neighbour whose turn it was (they cat-share) was too phobic about the moths to go down the stairs. They are really nice neighbours, I hasten to add! Just a bit funny about moths…

Not a naked lady in sight #2

Sunday evening – Swarb’s Lazarus

This time I brought my bicycle!

Dave Swarbrick was introduced to a packed and wildly enthusiastic audience as ‘a living legend – with the emphasis on the living!’ This refers to the publication of his obituary a few years ago by a well-known broadsheet of a conservative leaning. Actually he was very ill, and has since had a lung transplant. Just getting up on stage was an effort, a painful sight compared to the energy he had when I saw him play, somewhere or other, something or other years ago.

But once he started playing that fiddle…



Yes, this is theoretically a technically hopeless photo, but it does capture the energy of the man. I would say he plays the fiddle like a god, but as it is the devil who is the one who plays the fiddle, that might be a better comparison!

Lots of proper photos at http://www.swarbslazarus.com/. Look at the biographies too to get an idea of the influence Swarb, Kevin Dempsey and Maartin Allcock have had on folk music.

It was like a greenhouse in the tent, and this might be why only two people got up and danced. Oddly they were people I felt I’d seen before at festivals: the girl in the middle of the audience flailing her arms out of rhythm who doesn’t stop when the band does, and the intense and staring man who dances slowly at the front in a kind of tai chi fashion.

The gig finished with a standing ovation, spot-on at 7.30pm ('so the neighbours don't complain' as Swarb said gruffly 'you know what I think about the neighbours!'). Then I cycled home, uneventfully, thinking nostalgically of past festivals. Anybody fancy going to Cropredy?

Not a naked lady in sight...

It was the Godiva Festival in Coventry this weekend, and though I was working at the Organic Food and Wine Festival at work (and meeting some lovely people) I did get down to Memorial Park both evenings and saw two of the headline acts. This is my first attempt at music reviewing, you may prefer that it is my last!

Saturday night - Mercury Rev

It's a while since I've been to a gig, even longer since I've been to a festival. The idea with the Godiva seems to be something for everybody, and it probably just about does that. Wandering in at about 8pm were punks with their hair in proper big spikes, guys in baggie trousers, goths of all ages, skater boys (or is that skata boyz?), various hippieish people... (Or is that hippyish people?) Going in the opposite direction were lots of very sunburnt people with rather grizzly children. By catering for so many people, the festival inevitably ends up lacking any real character. Perhaps that is its character. Actually, the really big distinguishing factor for me was the amount of litter. Drifts of perfectly good recyclable beer cans and bottles mixed up with chip wrappers and burger-boxes.

'Deserter's Songs' is one of my favourite cds, but I never saw Mercury Rev in their heyday, which I realised looking at the date on my cd was 1998, so I was curious to find out what else they did/had been doing. Well, not that much apparently, as the set included virtually all the songs on the cd. The lead singer has a rather irritatingly camp way of posturing, but this got less annoying as they got into the set and as the music got heavier, and better. There were a lot of apparently diehard fans (Revvers?) who whooped and sang along, and a small group of crusties who danced very enthusiastically like they used to at Leveller's gigs.

Although seeing Mercury Rev has taken a bit of a shine off them, actually I really quite enjoyed it, mainly trying to take arty photos with my newish digital camera, which all turned out to be totally hopeless once I got a proper look at them. I quite like this though, even though it's all blurry. Gigs are fairly blurry occasions anyway.



For some really good gig photos, and some proper reviews, look at http://peteashton.com/. In fact for a really good blog anyway.

Coventry folk are very friendly - at the gig a very happy-looking man tried to give me a hug, and another wanted me to take his photo as he posed like Popeye. Then I ended up walking three miles home (no change for the bus, how divvy is that?) and one very wobbly man wanted to tell me all about his 'missus' and how he loved her and how he was getting married in 7 weeks and he was shitting himself about it, and he'd 'see me right through all the underpasses, bab' until he bumped into some mates and I just carried on. A mile or so later a young guy shouted across the street what was I doing, and when I said 'going home like everybody else' he suggested cheerfully that I came home with him. But I didn't feel like taking him up on the offer!

Bike ride to work - edited highlights

This is very different from my journey up and down the City Road which I did for over two years.


Footpath leading to Stoke Floods Local Nature Reserve www.warwickshire-wildlife-trust.org.uk/reserves/stoke-floods-lnr.htm


Bridlepath between wheatfields.


Wolston village. Spot the lollipop lady. I say hello to her every morning.



And this is where I work now! www.gardenorganic.org.uk. More about this another time.

If you're interested, you can see the whole lot on http://taraxacum.zoto.com/galleries/routetowork It was a very sunny morning even though these photos were taken between 7.45 and 8.30am! So a bit contrasty for ideal picture quality. But you'll get the general idea.

Intent

Me, sitting in a tent, drinking tea. Two of my favourite activities.

This may be the only time a picture of me gets published on here - my intention with this blog is to stay the other side of the camera, to take some interesting photos (which may or may not be of Coventry) and to not burble too much.