Create with Nature 7th August
Insects and creativity buzzing
Hello, I’m Rachel. I write about nature and creativity to encourage connection and wellbeing. In these regular Create with Nature posts, I write about what I’ve noticed, created, and what I’m reading (and watching), all in tune with nature’s seasons.
Hello! I’m still here, still finding my way but step by step, for the moment at least I’m managing to get off the sofa and both out into nature and to my art table. Here’s my post explaining why this year has not been what I intended - Half a year later.
Just today I’ve reminded myself that a dose of meadow and woodland helps to deal with the heavy tangle of emotions that arise whenever having to deal with ‘sadmin’ as I escaped to walk B, but more on that below.
I’m still considering how/whether to write more personal essays on this grief journey and indeed the other things I (and many of you) navigate. But for now, let’s just get on with noticing and creating.
Noticing
We’re in high summer here in the UK. Yes, there are the inevitable discussions of whether it’s really summer as the heavens open and jumpers are needed, immediately contradicted the following week by complaining it’s too hot. But summer is more than just the weather and temperature. It’s about the colour of the ever-changing fields, lush green a few weeks ago and now golden yellow. Where flowers graced tree branches, seed pods are now ripening and hedgerows start to hang with ruby sweets.
The insect world has a changing of the guard as the year progresses. Yesterday, the sun dried up the rain mid-afternoon and so I escaped for a quick wander in the nearby cemetery. Immediately on stepping inside, away the busy main road, a different buzzing filled my ears and my eyes focused in on shapes zipping through the airspace. Dragonflies! Or damselflies? One paused and it gave itself away by resting with its wings open - one of the easier differences between dragon and damselflies.
I stood still watching them, realising it wasn’t just a couple, but a whole party of them zipping about, too fast for me to even work out what colour they were, let alone identify the species. I’d gone hoping to find butterflies but these aerial acrobatics had me entranced for a good few minutes. It’s easy to see how they inspired early helicopter inventors, with their sharp turns in every possible direction. Some even hovered centimetres away seemingly checking me out. I tried in vain to capture their brief rest breaks and the aerial show but they are just too fast.
After that, the rest of my wander rather paled in comparison, though finding a couple of slightly bedraggled butterflies recovering from the rain did at least mean I managed to photograph something from my natural wonder break.
And all this, just 5mins walk from my house, metres from a busy road, on the edge of a city, made possible because parts of this urban cemetery ground have been allowed to grow.
This morning’s wonder was also not far from the city and came from flora rather than fauna. A few weeks ago, this field was a sea of buttercups but now it is a different shade of yellow as dried stalks and seedheads sway in the breeze. But for once it is not these that capture my interest, but more aerial dancers. Not fast moving predators but gently floating fairies drifting in search of a new place to colonise. At this time of year, thistles release hundreds of winged seedpods to the mercy of the wind. As they come to ground, they catch on other occupants of the field, mostly grasses and plants but occasionally Bridget’s tail. Am I the only one to have grown up calling these seeds fairies?
Stopping to notice means seeing the wonder that these creations are, the tiny hairs along each ‘wing’ which presumably aid flight. Some are held by other plants just long enough for me to photograph them, while others successfully touch down on what may become their new home and next year host more thistles.
Creating
While tiny wonders fill my camera roll, it’s often the lines and curves of landscapes that linger in my creative mind, waiting their turn to give inspiration for my artwork.
And while I have plenty of inspiration, I’m still working on producing landscape paintings I like (though liking the art you produce could be a whole different essay).
While I’m fairly sure it’s the fluid mediums like inks and watercolour I prefer, I just hadn’t found the techniques to do what I wanted. Well, more than that, I don’t fully know what I want to do! Definitely on the abstract end of the landscape spectrum though, as shown by my Pinterest boards full of ethereal, soft waves and curves.
And so I was very excited when Dolores Phelps an artist/teacher I follow released a more affordable version of her Wild Watercolour course. And it has been exactly what I was looking for. Using watercolour, ink and a lot of water, I’m learning techniques I hadn’t heard/thought of before, enabling much more interesting marks and effects. For the first time in a long time, I like what I am producing and I’ve only done the first few activities.
I’m also using the techniques combined with the collages I’d started playing with over the winter. These are only small but I intend on doing some larger ones as I really like the effect.
So watch this space (or my Instagram) for more playing! It feels so good to be back splashing (literally on this course!) paint around. I hadn’t been getting the calm, flow inducing therapy from my art recently so long may this continue.
I have also been getting out a bit with my sketchbook, scribbling the wonderful seedheads, but I’ll save that for another time, maybe I’ll turn it into a nudge for you to get out yourself.
Reading
Just a quick recommendation here as I’m running out of energy. The wonderful Kate Bradbury who you might know as the Wildlife Gardener from Gardener’s World, has written a second memoir ‘One garden against the world’. Through tales from her wildlife-friendly garden, she reminds us of the damage humans are doing to the world around us, but also shows the good things that can be done, even in our own back gardens.
Just a reminder - links in this section go to my online bookstore at UKbookshop. Should you buy from there, I earn a small amount through their affiliate scheme - at no extra cost to yourself.
Thank you for reading. I’m hoping to get these out fairly regularly now, I may have missed documenting the heady natural wonders of Spring this year, but summer and then autumn still have much to notice. See you soon.
I didn't know there were crickets (rather than cricket) in the UK!